“Expulsion!”
His voice rose impatiently. “Consider yourself fortunate, Miss Cassidy! We could call the police.”
“But—you didn’t have a warrant! Isn’t there some kind of appeal, can’t I—”
“There’s also the matter of missed classes—I haven’t seen you in my class for over a month, and there have been complaints from your other teachers as well.
“I think,” he said, putting a hand on my shoulder and starting to steer me toward the door, “I think that it will be best for all concerned if you are removed from the University immediately. We could have you arrested, you know: it wouldn’t be at all difficult to obtain a search warrant. But at the Divine we prefer to deal with these things in our own way. You have had an unfortunate influence on some very promising students, Miss Cassidy. Enough is enough.” He pushed me into the hall.
“You bastard. Where the hell are you taking her?” I looked over my shoulder to see Annie staring after me in a rage.
Balthazar Warnick shook his head. “I’m sorry, Annie. It’s not just that she broke school policy. Drug possession is against the law—”
“The law! This has nothing to do with the law, and you know it, you—”
Professor Warnick pulled the door shut behind us.
“Are you going to expel her, too?” I demanded. “Are you going to expel everyone who’s here tonight?”
“Not unless they interfere.” Balthazar Warnick tugged at a greying forelock. He was breathing heavily, and his face was flushed. “Katherine Cassidy. Come with me, please.”
His hand shot into his trouser pocket and withdrew an old-fashioned key ring.
“Where are we going?”
He said nothing, only kept his hand on my shoulder and guided me down the corridor, up a small flight of stairs and through a narrow hall, up another stairway and finally into a wide passage carpeted with thick oriental rugs woven in somber hues of black and crimson. We were in a part of the Orphic Lodge I’d never seen. The sounds of urgent voices died. I could hear nothing but our echoing footsteps and the falsely cheerful jangle of Professor Warnick’s keys.
“This way, if you will.”
Professor Warnick dropped his hand and walked briskly down the hall. I walked beside him, resigned to whatever horror was in store for me. It seemed futile to try to run. And in truth, at that moment I was more afraid of being alone than of anything else. There was something about the passage that reminded me of that darkly ornate upstairs corridor at Garvey House: the same queer aura of readiness and neglect, the same brooding strangeness that was not assuaged by the gleaming brass fixtures and resiny smell of cedar. The passage was lined with doors, but unlike those in other parts of the lodge, they were all closed.
And now we were nearing the end of the corridor. There was a heavy oaken door with a brass handle, a little brass plaque that read Please Knock.
“Here,” murmured Professor Warnick.
I stopped and shook my head. “No. I mean, no. I’m not going in there.”
Professor Warnick slid a key into the lock, turned it, and listened for the clicking of hidden tumblers.
“I didn’t do anything,” I pleaded. “I mean, everyone keeps some pot in their rooms, you can’t just—”
“This isn’t about your drugs,” he said, grasping the doorknob. “It’s—”
“No!” I cried; but at that moment the door creaked open.
“—it’s just my study,” said Professor Warnick gently, raising an eyebrow. “Please, come inside.”
I went inside.
It was a large room, very dark until Balthazar switched on a tall floor lamp. A fringed maroon paisley throw had been tossed over the shade, and its rosy glow did a lot to make the place look less threatening, more like an eccentric scholar’s homely lair. Bookshelves lined the walls, full of flaking leather volumes and curling manuscripts, sheaves of computer printouts and encyclopedias and something that looked very much like papyrus.
“I won’t keep you very long, Katherine. Have a seat.”
I remained standing. Balthazar had crossed to the far wall, a wall taken up by an enormous bay window with many small, mullioned panes. On the window’s wide sill there was a small brightly colored model of the solar system. Balthazar stared at it thoughtfully. The orbs representing the planets were enameled in bright, almost violent, colors—scarlet, cyan, Tyrian purple—and embellished with odd symbols and curlicues. The sun was sheathed in gold with a network of black wires across its surface. After a moment he picked up the orrery and stared at it, brow furrowed.
“It is changing,” he murmured.
Balthazar raised the model to his face and poked one of the glowing beads with a finger—the ball that was enameled emerald green and blue, the orb that was third from the sun. It turned languidly, a marble in slow motion. With a sigh Balthazar pinched it between his thumb and forefinger.
“Worlds within worlds,” he began, and stopped.
In his hand the planets in their shining orbits trembled. A thin sound filled the air. The hair on the back of my neck prickled. A sound like shattering crystal; a sound I had heard before.
Balthazar’s eyes widened and he raised the orrery, as he had done with the sistrum all those weeks before. In the air before him the globes began to spin: slowly at first, but more and more quickly, until it seemed he was beset by a cloud of bees. Tendrils of grey smoke rose from their blurred circuits. Balthazar’s ruddy face grew pale.
“No,” he whispered, then grimaced in pain. He swore and snatched his hands from the model, as though it burned his fingers; but instead of falling the orrery remained in the air before him. With a crackling sound, flames erupted from the dizzying vortex. Professor Warnick fell back against the window.
“No!—”
There was a roar, a sound as though somewhere miles beneath us the earth was collapsing. The floor lamp swayed perilously back and forth before it crashed to the floor, plunging the room into darkness—save where the orrery burned in the empty air. Its brightness terrified me: as though waves of liquid flame poured forth from some depthless fiery sea. Yet the flaming globe gave off no heat. And while the roar continued it was muted now, a pervasive vibration that made my bones and blood hum.
“Get back, Katherine!”
The orrery candled into a single glowing mass, not the warm gold of any fire I have ever seen but a blinding silvery white, with a black core. It pulsed like a swimming medusa, and then suddenly, soundlessly, its dark heart exploded outward. I was staring at a spherical void, a black hole crowned by a fiery white corona. At its center glowed a bloody-looking crescent. Dark liquid streamed from it onto the floor.
“Professor Warnick!” I cried. I could barely see him behind the luminous apparition, but I lunged across the room, knocking aside a chair as I tried to reach him. “Professor Warnick, can you hear me?”
“Stay back—don’t come near—”
His voice sounded faint and thin; it might have been the sound of branches scraping at the window. Behind the dazzling crescent he was all but invisible, enveloped by the black heart of that flaming mass.
“Get away—” His voice echoed faintly. “—warn them—!”
An anguished shout came from behind the glowing sigil, then a scraping sound, a sort of gnawing. My boots grew unbearably hot, as though I’d been kicking at live coals. Balthazar’s voice grew fainter still, and more desperate, as frantically I tried to get closer to the pulsing spectral orb. But it was futile: like trying to force my way through a wall of flame.