“I said I’d listen, but I don’t see the point.”
“Stay with me, Mr. Dollar. Perhaps you’ll be more interested if I tell you that not only was Portugee Jake a noted shot and a man with, what was called at the time, “a vast catalogue of vices,” he was also known far and wide as an exceptional horseman.”
“Ah,” I said. “Horseman.”
“Just so. In any case, Portugee Jake disappeared during the Great Fire of 1906, and although he does not surface again in the histories, I can tell you that a large portion of the assets he collected in San Francisco eventually made their way into the portfolio of a man named Cyrus Van Leydeken—“the Major” as everyone called him, owing to apparent service at the siege of Fort Canosa in the Spanish-American War. Major Van Leydeken went into the arms business, but instead of building his business in San Francisco, he chose instead to head south to the small but growing municipality of San Judas.”
“Was this Major Van Whatsit guy by any chance an expert horseman, too?”
Gustibus nodded. “He certainly owned them and cared about them a great deal. One of his horses nearly won the Preakness, and his studs created much of the Bay Area’s prize stock. He built a large mansion on several hundred acres of rolling hills in what is now Atherton Park and became one of the founders of the modern city of San Judas.
“Then, in the 1930s, Van Leydeken died—or so we are told. His son, who had apparently been overseas, arrived to take up the family concern. His name was Jasper Van Leydeken, and the resemblance to his father as a young man was said to be uncanny. The second Van Leydeken spread the family fortune into many other areas, including the early foundations of the aerospace industry—what would someday earn the area the name of “Silicon Valley.” Late in his life, apparently, the son also began a partnership with something called the Vald Family Trust—a name I’m sure you recognize.”
“Oh, yeah.”
“When Van Leydeken was gone, the company was administered by lawyers for both families until eventually Kenneth Vald stepped in. One of the businesses he built was Vald Credit, as you probably know, since VC Inc. continues to dominate the local economy to this day.”
“So what you’re telling me is that my least favorite demon, Eligor the Horseman, has been here in this area since the nineteenth century. Okay, I get it. But what does it mean to me?”
“It means you’re asking many of the right questions, but you have to think bigger. And longer.” He paused. “I myself wonder why Eligor found San Jude such a pleasant base of operations. He has several other identities and fortunes in other parts of the world, but he has spent a great deal of his earthly time here. It might be something as simple as enjoying the mild California weather—he certainly spent a great deal of the Renaissance in Italy’s similar climate—but I suspect there is more to it than that. What it is that drew him and others here, though, I still can’t say.”
I was trying to wrap my head around all this, but I have to admit it was making me feel stupider rather than smarter. “Okay, but what . . . ?”
“What does it have to do with you? I am coming to that, Mr. Dollar. Patience. First, let’s put a few more names on the table. I am told that the matter of this upstart Third Way has occupied Heaven’s attention lately. As William Blake wrote, ‘A robin redbreast in a cage, Puts all Heaven in a rage.’ Well so, apparently, does building a new cage for the robins that your employers consider to be their personal property, because Heaven is, quite plainly, in a rage. Well, most of Heaven. But it is those few who are not who interest us.” He poured himself a glass of water, but didn’t drink. “The reason, I suspect, that you are still struggling to get answers is that you are too close to the problem.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning that you must distance yourself, both historically and in other ways, to truly understand the situation. At the moment you fear one enemy even more than Eligor—isn’t that true?”
This guy seemed to know everything. “I guess that’s fair to say.”
“One of the very ephors who judges your behavior. An angel of high standing—a Principality, in fact.”
He was good, that was pretty clear, or at least his sources were. “Yeah. And I suppose you can name that angel in three notes or less.”
“I believe I can. Anaita, Angel of Moisture.”
A sudden superstitious reflex made me pause, as if naming her might cause her to appear. “Go on.” It felt more than a little crazy to have this odd man I’d never met before today telling me things about my own life, things no ordinary person should know. It was a bit like opening a fortune cookie to read, “Your boss will send you on a business trip to Houston, your youngest child needs dental work, and on Thursday you will receive a tax refund check for three hundred and forty dollars.”
“Here again,” he said, “you do not have the necessary perspective. What do you know of this particular angel?”
“Not much,” I admitted. “She’s powerful. She’s old.”
“Here is something else to consider.” Gustibus finally took a very small and precise sip of water. “She was not always an angel.”
“What? You mean she used to be an ordinary person? A mortal?”
Gustibus shook his head. “That I couldn’t say. But long before she was considered an angel, she was a goddess.”
“A goddess? You’re kidding, right? You mean like Pele, the Volcano Queen, or something? What the hell does that even mean?”
“The world of the immortals is more complicated than you can imagine. She’s had many names, but Anaita—or Anahit, or Anahita—was her name when she was a goddess, too. The ancient Persians revered her.”
I had to get up for a second to walk around. Bad enough I had an important angel trying to kill me, but a goddess? “How does someone get promoted from goddess to angel? Is that even a promotion?”
Gustibus puffed out his thin cheeks and then sucked them back in again. He did it a couple of more times, and I was just wondering if I was about to hear his mating call when I realized he was laughing. “Oh, I like that, Mr. Dollar. Very good. I don’t know exactly how it came about, but I can assure you that the entity known as Anaita of the Third Sphere was once known as Anahit, Goddess of Moisture and Fertility. That was several thousand years ago, of course. I’m sure you know that many of the great lords of Hell were once considered gods or goddesses, but how this Anaita ‘changed teams’, if you’ll forgive the analogy, is a story still undiscovered, although I very much hope to unravel it someday.”
“Okay, so I’m in even worse shape than I thought. I’m not sure this does me a lot of good.”
“You were being patient, Mr. Dollar. Please keep listening. Whether she is goddess or angel is not so much the issue—she is what she is. But it does point up the fact that you are dealing with immortals or near-immortals, and you must stop thinking in the same human way.”
“I’m pretty certain I used to be human myself. That might have something to do with it.”
He waved his long hand, dismissing my remark. “I’m sure. But you need to think about these unanswered questions, because at least one of them may help you with your most pressing problem. The first two questions—who wanted this Third Way? And why? And here’s another, just as important: If Anaita and Eligor collaborated to open this new territory (and if they hadn’t there would be no feather and no horn to concern you) how was that collaboration arranged? Remember, these beings are the equivalent of high government ministers of two warring nations, except their respective masters have been at war for uncountable millennia. They cannot simply drop in to each other’s offices for a chat. In fact, if they were even seen in the same general location, it would be cause for gossip and speculation among both immortals and mortals alike.”
“You’re saying that whatever deal they made . . . it probably didn’t happen right off the bat.”
“Exactly, Mr. Dollar. Whoever made the first overture would have moved with incredible caution. What if he or she misjudged the other? Making bargains with the enemy is a capital offense for both parties. And here’s another question whose answer might help with our earlier queries—who seems to be in charge of this Third Way?”