Trick or Treat Part 11

Mrs Dawson patted my hand. 'And you declined?'

'Very firmly.'

'Good. You do not need a partner. The reason Dion chuckled is that we have both noticed that your Daniel is a very modest person.'

'Chap doesn't know he's handsome,' said the Professor.

'He must have had a very good mother,' added Mrs Dawson.

'Sylvia, would you take Nox for a moment? Touch of cramp,' said the Professor as he stood up and stretched. Mrs Dawson accepted Nox and, even more unusual, Nox accepted her.

'Shall we leave Daniel with Meroe?' he asked.

'No, no, dear, we need to talk to her, and she will want to talk too, once she is over this fit of tears. There, see, she is already sitting up and wiping her face. If you would like an errand, perhaps you can return the beautiful kitten to her throne, and bring me back a nice soft towel, some drinking water, and another of your lovely handkerchiefs? I do so approve of your choice of linen, you know. Cats mostly dislike human emotion,' she explained.

Professor Dion allowed Nox to ascend into his arms, where she nestled, looking unbearably poised and disdainful as she was borne away.

127.

Just as he left, Meroe sobbed, caught her breath, and sobbed again. She scrubbed her hands across her eyes and dried her face on her shawl. Daniel kissed her on the cheek. He helped her stand and conducted her over to the temple. She sagged down next to me, shivering as though she was cold. Mrs Dawson wrapped the Glasgow rug around her, tucking it in at the edges so that she looked like the survivor of a less than successful Highland battle. Culloden, say. Daniel sat on her other side. I caught his eye. He shrugged fluidly.

'I should know?' he said. 'I was just sitting there, suddenly my arms are full of weeping witch. How do you feel, Meroe?' he asked a little anxiously. If Meroe had thought him importunate, he might spend the next few years in a fetching green skin, croaking in the impluvium. In which event I would be happy to kiss him human again, of course.

'Better,' she said thickly. Daniel looked relieved.

'Good. Ah, now here is Dion with a clean hankie and a nice fluffy towel. Wash your face, my dear, dry it, and have a good long drink of water. Crying dries one out so much,' said Mrs Dawson in a tone which indicated that she knew precisely how much dehydration was caused by tears. She must have cried a lot of them over her dead husband-by all accounts she had loved him dearly. And here she was looking placidly pleased with Professor Monk. Humans.

Meroe did as she was told. The water washed off handfuls of rose petals which had fallen on her as she cried. She drank thirstily. Then she shook herself.

'I need to tell you what has been happening,' she informed us.

'Well yes, dear, I think you do,' replied Mrs Dawson. 'We have all been caught up in it, whatever it is.'

'The trouble is, I am not at all sure what is going on.' Meroe dabbed at her eyes again. 'All I know is that since Barnabas has come to town, there has been unauthorised and dangerous magic happening. When I was a young witch we did our surveying and asking by nice, safe scrying in water or crystal-though even that presents some dangers to the inexperienced. These followers of Barnabas are taking huge risks. Some of his ritual workings have to do with altered states of consciousness and shamanic journeys.'

'Which were usually induced by fasting and drumming and drugs,' said the Professor.

'Yes. In the US, they use peyote as a ritual poison. In the East they use a concoction of various herbs. I believe that Barnabas is supplying them with mandrake roots, and I know that Barnabas has been researching recipes to open the inner eye.'

'Why?' I asked.

Daniel echoed my question: 'Why now and here?'

'Because he is seeking treasure,' said Meroe. 'We were on the beach when he said he had conjured some.'

'You were on a beach?' asked Daniel, sounding puzzled.

'Williamstown, specifically,' I told him. 'There was a magical mob scene and Barnabas got mugged by men in balaclavas-just when he had found this jewelled plate. Meroe thinks he palmed it.'

'Legerdemain, always a useful skill,' commented the Professor.

'Mugged? Were you hurt?' asked Daniel anxiously.

'No, just tumbled over and scared,' I a.s.sured him.

'So, you believe that the Barnabas witches are taking dangerous substances,' pursued Professor Dion. It is hard to deflect a cla.s.sicist: they have to learn Greek verb mutations and that produces a mind of sprung steel.

129.

'I do,' said Meroe.

'Then how did it get out into the general populace?' he asked. 'And who is singing the soul cake song?'

'That I do not know,' she said.

'Someone needs the money,' I reasoned. 'Everyone needs money. There are clubbers out there who will try anything once. And it looks like you only have to try this stuff once. Perhaps Barnabas is financing his treasure hunt with drug dealing.'

'That is what I am afraid of,' said Meroe on a shuddering breath.

'But it isn't your doing,' said Mrs Dawson.

'Doesn't matter,' said Daniel. 'I know this one. A bad Christian-he's just a bad man. A bad Jew-he's a sign that all Jews are bad.'

'A bad woman degrades the whole female race,' said Mrs Dawson. 'Isn't that just like a woman?'

'And a bad witch,' said Meroe, 'brings down oppression on all witches.'

Then there really didn't seem to be a lot else to say. We stared at the roses. They were very pretty. But not informative.

CHAPTER TEN.

Finally Meroe said, 'Well, I can't get out of it any longer. I have to go and talk to Barnabas.'

'Like some company?' I asked as casually as I could. Suddenly I wanted to be out of my lovely garden, away from the white-clad people I could hear scuffling in the alley below, and especially away from the dead man who thought that he could fly. I wondered if he had, just at the last minute, realised that he was falling to his death. 'I might tag along too, if you want me,' offered Daniel. 'In about an hour? Jonesy and his co-ey will be popping up to have a chat any moment, I can tell.'

'All right,' Meroe replied, getting to her feet as if she was very old and wrapping her shawl about her shoulders. 'I'll go and change my clothes, make some preparations. Talk to Belladonna.'

'And Sylvia and I shall remain here for liaison purposes,' Professor Monk told me. 'Do take care, won't you?'

'We shall,' said Meroe grimly.

Daniel and I had only been in my apartment for long enough to put on the kettle when the doorbell sounded and 130.

131.

Jonesy and Miller came in. They wanted tea. I supplied it. The Mouse Police, who had been napping on the sofa, removed themselves to the balcony. They were allowed upstairs at weekends. And, like Jason, they didn't seem to take to cops. There were probably warrants out for both Heckle and Jekyll for mouse-molesting, rat-murder and fish-theft. Horatio can take any company as it comes. They did not seem to notice the animals, anyway.

Both looked tired and grimy. Both leaned their elbows on the table and sucked up good lapsang souchong as though the day wasn't expected to bring them anything more pleasant. Which it probably wasn't, at that.

'SOCO say your alley's a biological sink,' grinned Jones.

'Certainly is,' I agreed, topping up the tea cups. 'Would you like a biscuit, perhaps, or a piece of cake?'

'Not for me,' said Miller hastily. Oops. Not tactful, Corinna.

'How about something out of a packet?' asked Daniel.

'There's some of those Dutch ginger bikkies in the tin,' I remembered. 'Trudi gave them to me.'

'Thanks,' said Miller, engulfing three when Daniel produced them. 'No offence, ma'am.'

'None taken,' I said. 'Have the scene of crime people found anything interesting?'

'Not so far as I know,' responded Miller. 'They don't tell us a lot. Ever since all them b.l.o.o.d.y forensic TV programs got so popular, they've been getting above themselves, SOCO have. Think they're CSI Miami. But we've interviewed all the witnesses and it's clear this bloke was alone. No one pushed him.'

'So, it's an accident,' said Daniel hopefully.

'Not if someone sold him the fairy dust,' said Jones. 'And I'm old enough to remember this happening before, eh, Daniel?'

'Don't look at me,' he protested.

Jones sucked up more tea and I resupplied him and his mate.

'The Summer of Love,' he p.r.o.nounced with slow relish. 'Only time I ever saw people who thought they could fly was when Timothy Leary brought in LSD. I reckon that's what it is.'

'Acid?' asked Daniel. 'There's always some around, of course. Tiny little doses on blotting paper.'

'This,' said Miller, 'wasn't a tiny little dose. When you went out at nine, the bloke must have been on the roof. You didn't see or hear anything, Daniel?'

'No. I went out the front door into Flinders Lane and straight down towards the station to get the croissants. He must have fallen when I was away and I came in through the front door when I came back. Missed all the excitement- which is good, as I don't like excitement.'

'See anyone around?' asked Jones casually.

'Not that sort of person, no,' replied Daniel. This was clearly a coded conversation.

'Too much to hope,' remarked Miller. 'Ah, there goes the blood-wagon.'

I heard an ambulance crunch and turn, just where the wider-than-usual wheel base always impacts on a slightly raised paving stone.

'We've finished with your alley,' Miller told me politely. 'Body's gone now.'

'Oh, thank you,' I said. There was no way that I was going out there until a heavy shower of rain had fallen and removed the blood and organic material. I am not cut out for crime scenes. I cherish my ignorance of autopsies. The Mouse Police would just have to do without their tuna sc.r.a.ps.

'Do we know who the bloke was?' asked Daniel.

133.

'Yeah, respectable citizen,' said Jones, as though reading from a card. 'No warrants, no criminal record. Wallet and driving licence in his pocket. Allan Morris. Worked for Treasury. Married with two small children. Well, gotta go,' he said, levering himself to his feet. 'Least the widow will be over the poached egg stage by now. Thanks for the tea,' he added, and took himself and his mate away.

'Poached egg?' I asked Daniel.

'The eyes widen with the sudden shock,' he explained gently. 'They don't mean to be callous. It's the job. Now, make another pot of that tea, shall we? And I'm going to have a shower and put on some clean clothes. I feel like I've been wearing these since last week.'

'I feel the same,' I said. 'Bags first shower.'

I beat him to the bathroom by a short half-head and washed myself vigorously with pine-plantation soap, a clean and bracing scent which Daniel also selected when I yielded him the shower. We might not have known what we were doing, but at least we would smell clean.

For her encounter with Barnabas Meroe had dressed not in deep black, which I had expected, but in a drape of fiery red silk with soup-plate sized suns emblazoned on it in gold thread. Huge gold rings hung from her ears. A necklace with the gold reserves of a small European duchy-Mecklenburg-Strelitz, say-encircled her brow and gold coins jingled on her wrists, her neck and around her waist. Meroe was armed against the darkness with pure bright gold. She gleamed.

Feeling very dim ourselves, Daniel and I followed her out into the street, where she summoned a taxi with a flick of the fingers and had us driven to Parkville.

We found that Barnabas and his followers had been accommodated in one block of an undistinguished set of flats built for visiting academics, undoubtedly designed to prod them into either going home or leasing a real house. Nostalgia hit me on the stairs. As a first year accounting student at Melbourne University I had babysat there for a charming American law professor whose child only ate lightly cooked hamburger mince. And thrived on it, as I remembered. The doors were just as ill-fitting as ever and the stairs uneven. Barnabas's search for treasure might have something to do with his living standards. Still, weren't witches supposed to be outdoor creatures, strongly linked to nature and the Powers? Possibly not this one.

Meroe did not knock but thumped the door with her fist and, when it opened, swept in without pause. We followed in her magnificent wake.

The flat was small and crammed with people. Barnabas sat, like Father Christmas, in the big chair by the fire with a couple of girls on his lap. His lap was quite commodious. He saw Meroe, leapt to his feet (spilling both young women, who rolled quite easily, like puppies, onto the floor) and held out both arms.

'Meroe!' he roared. 'Come to me, my sweet witch!'

Meroe threw herself at him, grabbed him around the neck, and swung, both feet off the ground, until he had to bend down. Then she bit his ear. Hard. He grimaced.

Daniel and I looked at each other. Probably better not to intervene, we thought, could be this is some strange Rumanian way of greeting another witch... cultural differences, tolerance, etc. Besides, Meroe looked quite prepared to bite us, too.

On the other hand the victim did appear to be bleeding. The girls sat up. Barnabas was forced to his knees and Meroe came down with him, not releasing her bulldog grip until he was quite under control.

135.

'What are you doing?' she yelled. Her coa.r.s.e black hair lashed his eyes. Blood ran down his neck. 'You profane the ceremonies! You dare to spit in the face of the G.o.ddess!'

I was, at this moment, not watching the main event but scanning the room for something less b.l.o.o.d.y to look at. Was this, indeed, that law professor's very flat? I could not remember the number. And all of these buildings looked alike. I thus surprised a gorgeous man wearing an expression of such gleeful malice that I might have gasped, except that I did not want to draw his attention onto me or my lover. He was very good-looking, perhaps forty with hair as short and plush as a black cat and dark, unfathomable eyes. His chest was bare, with beautifully well defined muscles and little rings in his nipples and belly b.u.t.ton. And Meroe's punishment of Barnabas was tickling his fancy, and it was not a nice fancy. Daniel had followed my gaze-he also has no taste for blood sports-and he waded into the mob and drew the man out by the hand.

'Well, well, Rocky, I wondered where you had got to,' he said affably, just loud enough to be heard. 'When did you get out of jail?'

'Daniel,' said Rocky, with little or no pleasure in seeing an old friend again. 'The name is Cypress. Remember that. And this is my mate Cedar.'

A pale youth-no, must have been twenty-five, but as languid as a Gilbertian aesthete-leaned on Cypress's chest and cooed at him. He was beautiful. Cedar was, however, the wrong name. It ought to have been jasmine. Or wisteria. Or even better, ivy, a clinging vine. Cedar's expression, when he looked at Cypress, was one of complete devotion. Cedar had the most beautiful dark brown eyes, like a labrador dog. Cypress went on speaking to Daniel: 'I never expected to see you here. You came with the b.i.t.c.h?'

'Yes, but unless you want me to regale good old Barnabas with highlights of your career, I shouldn't use that term again,' said Daniel, very quietly.

'She bites like a b.i.t.c.h,' said Cypress, and laughed. He was very pretty. But pretty isn't everything. 'All right-' he raised his free hand to ward off revelation-'I won't say it again if she's a pet of yours. I got into Wicca in jail. The others were dumb. Turned Christian. No one ever believes that. But show a parole board a sincere commitment to New Age beliefs and they buy it. Some of them. Some of the time, anyway. There's this big festival so I came along. Lots of magic,' he said hungrily.