She forced a smile to her face, stepped close to Allen again, touched his cheek. The fog swirled in around them, clinging cold and damp.
"I will come to you again," she said.
"When?" The raw hunger in the single word embarrassed him.
But she was gone.
The ground left his feet. He was falling backward through the fog, a long, deep drop into nothing. Allen opened his mouth to scream.
"Knock it off."
Allen started, lifted his head, blinked.
The tough one stood over him. Clover.
"Where am I?" His voice was a hoarse croak. The easy chair in the witches' lair. He tried to lift his arms, found that his wrists had been duct-taped to the arm of the chair. More tape around his ankles.
"We'd prefer you stay put for a while," Clover said.
"Where's Amy?"
"Your little girlfriend's not here. And I don't trust you. Sorry if it's not comfortable. I think our Amy has a little-girl crush on you, so we thought it better if I stood guard."
"We don't even know each other."
Clover shrugged. "No, I guess not, but she's the nice one. She'd probably feel sorry for you, and we can't have you sweet-talking your way out of here right now. Not until we get further instructions from our people."
"What if I have to pee?"
"Hold it."
"Let me rephrase that. I have to pee."
There was no warmth in Clover's smile. She sucked hard on her cigarette, blew smoke into Allen's face. "What was all the noise about?"
"What noise?"
"You were sound asleep in the chair, and then suddenly you screamed." She blew more smoke at him.
"Could you fucking stop that please."
Clover smirked.
"It was just a bad dream," Allen said.
"No fucking shit, Sherlock. What was it about?"
Allen opened his mouth, closed it again. What had the dream been about? He strained to remember but couldn't. He couldn't recall a single detail; he retained only the vague feeling that there was something dreadfully important he was supposed to be doing. Being tied up only added to the sense of urgency.
And Dr. Evergreen. He and his wife would be wondering where the hell Allen was. Had they arrived in Prague yet? He needed to go to them, find them. It occurred to Allen he didn't know the time, how long he'd been sleeping. He didn't even know if it was day or night.
"Dreams can be dangerous things," Clover said. "Some must be taken very seriously. I don't mean the Freudian crap, or the ones where you show up to school in your underwear. The other dreams, the strangely vivid, disturbing ones. You need to be careful who and what you let into your mind."
She dropped the cigarette butt on the cement floor, smashed it out with the heel of her combat boot.
"I wish you'd dispose of those properly," Amy said from the doorway.
The grin on Clover's face was half snarl. "I was just chatting with your boyfriend."
"Stop saying that."
Clover made exaggerated kissing noises and flopped back down on her bed.
"I hate that you're so rude," Amy said.
"Better than being fake nice."
"It's, like, called courtesy, okay?"
Clover said, "Fake nice, courtesy. Just two ways to say the same thing."
"I really do have to pee," Allen said.
Clover grunted impatience. "Just spell him back to sleep."
"Spell?"
"Man, you really are slow on the uptake, aren't you?" Clover slid to the edge of the bed, a fresh cigarette between her fingers. "We're witches, man. Don't you get it?"
Witches. For some odd reason, this revelation didn't surprise Allen. It didn't even seem like a revelation.
"I went to sleep," Allen said slowly, "because I was exhausted. That's all."
"Wake up and smell the Ovaltine," Clover said.
"I also cast a spell to help us get away from the Vatican troops," Amy said. "Remember in the kitchen? When we were running from the priest? That was a hindrance spell."
Allen shook his head. "No, no, no, no. He tripped on something. There was a cup on the floor, and he stepped on it. I saw it."
"Well, like yeah," Amy said. "Because I spelled him to do that."
"Oh, come on. He tripped, and we got away."
"Fuck him." Clover lit the fresh cigarette, puffed it hard. "He's just another nonbeliever."
"Remember when you came out to the alley and we put you in the trunk of the car?" Amy asked Allen. "The luring spell."
Allen rolled his eyes. "A gorgeous blonde asks me to meet her. Yeah, that's some complicated magic there."
Amy frowned. "You really don't believe us?"
"Don't waste your time with him," Clover said.
Amy pouted. Clover smoked. The silence stretched.
Allen cleared his throat. "Are you going to let me pee, or what?"
EIGHTEEN
Father Paul was not the sort of person who enjoyed throwing his weight around, but on the phone in the wee hours of the morning with an angry bishop, the priest had to remind the man how upset the Vatican might be if Father Paul was hindered in the pursuit of his important mission.
So the bishop pulled some strings and got Father Paul and his unit access to one of the interrogation rooms in a suburban precinct and a sympathetic police captain willing to lose the paperwork and look the other way. Finnegan escorted a bearded radical to the room, put him in a chair, and closed the door. They'd let him stew about a half hour while they watched him from behind a two-way mirror.
"A bit of a punk, isn't he?" Finnegan said.
"Still dangerous," Father Paul said absently. He watched the kid's knee bounce up and down. They'd had a doctor patch up the boy's shin after an X-ray had revealed that the bullet had only nicked the bone. Lots of bright red blood and screaming, but mostly sound and fury, signifying a fairly minor wound. The kid would limp for a while.
"We've sent his fingerprints through the system," Finnegan said. "We should have something back soon."
"We've let him twist long enough. I'm going to talk to him. You watch from here."
"Right."
Father Paul went into the interrogation room, the kid looking up with a start. Father Paul sat across from him, shook a cigarette loose from the pack. Lit it. Puffed. Sat back and smoked.
Give him a chance. See if he talks first.
"I don't know what you think you're going to get out of me."
The priest shrugged. "You want a smoke?" He held out the pack.
"Those things will kill you."
Father Paul put the pack away. "In my line of work... well, cancer sticks are pretty far down on the list. So, you're not European. No accent. What part of the States are you from?"
"Nice try, Priest. I'm not telling you dick."
"This is just routine, really. Small fry like you doesn't know much probably."
There it was. Just barely noticeable, a frown and a flinch. The kid wanted to think he was important. Not many revolutionaries aspire to be pawns.
"Let's just keep it simple," Father Paul said. "What's your name?"
"You can torture me all night, and I'll never tell you."
"We found your passport in your back pocket. Says you're Thomas Varley."
Varley looked away. "Shit."
"Where are you from?"
"You go to hell. I said I'm not talking."
"Your driver's license was in your wallet. Home address, Waco, Texas."
Varley slapped the table. "Damn it."
"Look," Father Paul said, "this'll all be a lot easier if we can just have a nice conversation."
Varley crossed his arms, sat back in his chair, his face stone.
"You put up quite a fight when we busted in on you," Father Paul said, putting a hint of grudging admiration in his voice. "Eight or ten of you guys were almost more than we could handle."
"Eight or ten? Man, there was only five of us. If we'd had ten guys, you Vatican motherfuckers would be toast."
Father Paul took a small notebook from his jacket pocket, scratched a brief note. "Five. Thanks for clarifying."
Varley slapped the table again. "Damn it!"
"Let's see." The priest tapped the pen against his chin. "Three dead, then you. That's four. Let's talk about number five."
"Let's not."
"A young lady. Blond and pretty. What's her name?"
"You're not tricking me into saying anything else, man," Varley said. "So just. Fuck. Off."
"I'm sorry to hear that." Father Paul turned to face the mirror. "Father Finnegan, I think we'll need to go to the next level of interrogation."
Ten seconds later Finnegan's enormous bulk squeezed into the interrogation room. He carried a little black bag in one fist. He set it on the table, opened it, and pulled out a syringe.
Varley's eyes went big. "No way, man. You're not doping me. To hell with that." He started to rise from the chair.
"Stay put." Finnegan took hold of Varley's shoulders and pushed him back into a sitting position, like a giant manhandling a ventriloquist's dummy. "It'll go easier if you hold still, lad."
"Oh, shit." Panic edged Varley's voice.
Father Paul filled the syringe with clear liquid from a small vial.
"I think this will pave the way for that nice, friendly conversation I was hoping for."
An hour later they put Varley on a cot in one of the holding cells and left him snoring there.
In the precinct break room, Father Paul and Finnegan hunched toward each other, discussing the interrogation in hushed tones. They each sipped tepid, bitter coffee from Styrofoam cups.
Father Paul would need sleep. He felt fatigue tugging hard at him around the edges. Somehow the big Irish slab of meat had the power to go on and on, but if Father Paul didn't find a bed soon, he'd simply keel over.
"He didn't know much, did he?" Finnegan said.
"Enough. A thread to pull. I want our people on this girl." Varley had known that her first name was Amy. It was a start.
Starkes entered the break room, put a short stack of papers on the table in front of Father Paul. "Just got these faxed. Not much on Varley. Pretty much stuff we know already."
"Thanks. Rotate those on surveillance. Everyone else should grab some shut-eye."
"Right." Starkes left.
Father Paul flipped through the faxed pages. Not much to work with. Varley was twenty-one years old, a college dropout. He'd drifted from one radical cause to another, looking to fit in someplace and stick it to the man. The definition of "The Man" seemed to shift as the wind blew. Corporations, the U.S. government, oil companies... and now the Vatican. Fighting the good fight against magical oppression. Didn't these people realize that Father Paul and his people fought twenty-four/seven to keep the world from plunging into chaos?
A simple thank-you would've been nice.
No. Stupid to think that. People like him and Finnegan and the rest labored in anonymity, and that's how it should be. The world didn't need to know what went bump in the night.
Something in Varley's file caught Father Paul's attention. The kid had dropped out of college right after a semester abroad in London. A transitional period, one cause to another. Father Paul sifted the information in front of him, but he couldn't find what he wanted, so he flipped open his cell phone and called the direct number to his support team back at headquarters. They said they'd have the additional information within thirty minutes. Father Paul sent Finnegan out to the van for his notebook computer. The big man brought it in, and Father Paul booted up. Twenty-three minutes later, he had the information he wanted.
Varley had attended university at a minor school in South London called St. Sebastian's. The school was unremarkable in every way except for a minor professor of folklore, who, unbeknownst to the rest of the faculty and student body, was high councilman of the Society.
So a young Varley had been recruited by Professor Jackson Fay, one of the most powerful warlocks in the past century.
Father Paul sighed, lit a cigarette. "Great."
Starkes stuck his head back into the break room. "Surveillance has picked up Cabbot. Location Beta."
Father Paul stood, gathered the loose papers quickly, and tucked them under his arms. "Find Finnegan and tell him to meet me at the van."
"You want me to gather everyone else?"
"No. Tell Finnegan if he's not in the van in ninety seconds, I'm leaving his ass here."