“It was very interesting,” he said. He took out his wallet.
“No charge,” she said. “I didn’t even finish.”
“I got my money’s worth. I was mainly here for the information about Wraxall anyway.”
“Just like Karswell…”
He smiled. “Yeah, just like Karswell,” then he gave her a $100 bill. “Keep the change.”
She sighed in relief. “Thanks, that’s—wow—that’s very generous.”
They both went outside into the sun.
“I’ll come back again,” Fanshawe said, “when things are better for you.”
She laughed. “Yeah, when I’ve got lights. But these days all you have to do is listen to the news people talk about the recession to think it’ll never get better.”
“Well, I happen to know some things about capitalism and the free-market system. It’s cyclic, it has to be. We have to go through the lows to get to the highs.” He shook her hand, preparing to leave.
“I don’t know why but…you’re pretty inspiring,” she said with a smile, and after she shook his hand, she turned it in her own palm. She raised it to look at. “Just as I thought: a quad-bifurcation. Curious.”
“That’s not a disease, is it?”
“No. It means that you will give to and take from the same—”
Fanshawe was instantly confused. “Give to and take—”
“—in a way that’s, well, connected to something of a recent revelatory note.”
He didn’t have a clue what she meant; nevertheless, he thought: The looking-glass?
Her fingertip traced lower on his palm. Her eyebrows shot up. “Oh, dear…”
“What?” he said with some force.
“Here goes. The best news all day. Your riches will increase a thousandfold.”
I’m a billionaire already, honey, he thought. That’s enough for me. The remark seemed ridiculous yet, somehow, she didn’t. He took his hand away, more interested in his questions than his fortune. What immediately came to mind was the pedestaled ball on the hill, and how little he knew about it.
“If I can keep you another minute, do you have any idea what that bronze or copper ball is near the cemetery on Witches Hill? Abbie Baxter called it was a Gazing Ball to make wishes with but, at least to me, it looks very occult.”
“That’s because it is very occult,” Letitia told him. “It’s a totem that originated with the Druids and then got picked up by Satanic necromancers in the Middle Ages. No one really knows what their purpose is, because sorcerers were good at keeping secrets. A lot of the historians think it’s the Druid version of a Magic Circle.”
“And do I understand correctly that Wraxall went all the way to England—”
“Yes,” she interrupted, “to buy it from an infamous sorcerer named Septimus Wilsonne. You can think of him as the Mack-Daddy of warlocks back in those times.”
Fanshawe pushed his hair back, frustrated. “Between Wraxall and Callister Rood, you’d think that one of them would’ve written about it in their diaries.”
“Well, it’s mentioned a few times, but no one explained exactly what it was.” For some reason, Letitia shivered as if at a chill in spite of the ample heat outside. “What you have to understand about witches and warlocks is that they went to great pains—and sometime would even die—to keep their secrets. And speaking of secrets, that was one of the most curious parts about Callister’s diary. Several times he mentioned ‘The Two Secrets,’ which I think had something to do with a ritual that Wraxall was planning in the future.”
“The Two Secrets,” Fanshawe droned. He’d read precisely of that in Wraxall’s second diary last night. …and grant’d what It was I most ask’d in mine Mind - yes! - the second of ye Two Secrets, Wraxall had written, information supposedly given to him by the spirit of a dead warlock. He cringed to tell Letitia this, but if he did, then he’d be admitting the liberties he’d taken at the inn. “But since warlocks were so good at keeping secrets, as you’ve just said, no one knows what these Two Secrets were,” he said more than asked.
“You got that right. My guess is it has something to do with the last ritual we know Wraxall was preparing for.”
“What’s that?”—he paused—“er, let me guess! The bones of his daughter?”
Again, Letitia seemed impressed with his insight. “Yeah, that’s exactly what I was going to say. So the Baxters told you the whole story?”
“Everything they know themselves, I guess. I know that Wraxall and Rood dug up Evanore’s bones 666 days after she was buried.”
“Right, and you and I both know what he was going to do with them—”
“Witch-water,” Fanshawe intoned.
“Sure, but that’s the $64,000 question. Witch-water had many uses, not just looking-glasses. Rood’s diary does say that the key to the Two Secrets was written down on parchment by Wraxall himself before he died.”
“Where’s the parchment—no! Don’t tell me. No one knows.”
“Not a soul. Wraxall hid it, either that or it simply got lost or confiscated by the court.”
Fanshawe’s brain started ticking.
“Anyway,” she went on, “I have a feeling that the Two Secrets have to do with Evanore’s witch-water and the Gazing Ball too.”
“Your psychic inclination, huh?” Fanshawe asked, not knowing if he was serious.
“Yeah.”
He knew it was time to leave but, still, his questions nagged at him. Leave her alone, he thought. Shit, I just reminded her of her dead baby. The last thing she wants to do is answer more of my kooky questions. However, he remembered Evanore’s hallucinatory remark in the wax museum, and he’d just seen the word a little while ago in Rood’s diary. Bad taste or not, he had to ask: “What does the word bridle have to do in an occult context?”
“Oh, I forgot to tell you. I said that the Gazing Ball originated with the Druids—well, that’s what they called it. A bridle.”
Fanshawe wondered. “A bridle… I’d always thought that a bridle was something on a horse.”
“That’s right. It’s a strap that helps the rider guide the horse into a particular direction. But in an occult context? Think of it as an object that helps guide a warlock or witch into a particular direction, a direction that ultimately serves the Devil’s interest.”
Fanshawe looked back at her but didn’t seem to see her.
“I better go now,” she said, happily looking at the $100 bill he’d given her. “Maybe they’ll let me pay part of my power bill.”
“Wait,” he said. Without thinking, he was taking out his checkbook. Nor did he seem to be consciously impelled to say, “I’ll pay your entire electric bill and any late fees—”
“What?” she said. She winced.
“In exchange for information. What’s wrong with that?” He leaned against the door and wrote her name on the check, then signed his name. “I want to know one more thing.”
“And you’re gonna pay my whole power bill?” she almost gasped.
“Yes. I’m well off, but you already know that. And I’m also a very curious person when something suddenly interests me.”
“The occult? Wraxall? Sorcery?”
He nodded. “How much is your power bill, the total?”
“It’s eight hundred bucks! You can’t possibly—”
Fanshawe made out the check for a thousand, and gave it to her.