"Very well. You see, a discorporation/reincorporation spell is difficult to perform, and to do so while carrying another person is... well, there are few among the Sisterhood who could pull it off successfully."

"And few outside the Sisterhood?"

"Let"s just say it would be a formidable undertaking for any pract.i.tioner of the Art, whether white or black."

"Is it within the capabilities of a fella named Pardee, do you think?"

There was a tired-sounding sigh in Morris"s ear. "Quite possibly. The Sisterhood has not had any direct contact with this man since Libby"s encounter some years back, but we do keep an eye on the other side"s "rising stars," as it were."

"More like "falling stars," isn"t it?"

"All depends on one"s point of view, I imagine, but I get your meaning," Ellie said. "We don"t know a great deal about this Pardee, but reports are that he has been gaining a great deal of magical power, source unknown, over the last few years. It is not unreasonable to posit that he would now have the ability to carry out Libby"s abduction, under the conditions you"ve described."

"The question is, why? All the other recent attacks on the Sisterhood, that we know about, have been murder attempts, whether successful or not."

"That"s true. It"s difficult to say with any degree of certainty what Pardee has in mind, a.s.suming he"s the one responsible-although, I suppose..."

"You suppose what?" Morris asked.

"I don"t want to upset you, Quincey. But it"s possible that his defeat at Libby"s hands years ago may have festered into a desire to take her life in a... more prolonged and painful fashion."

"Yeah," Morris said tightly. "That had kinda occurred to me, too. But why now? If he"s been some kind of a magical heavyweight for a while, why make a move on Libby now?"

"I wish I had an answer for you, Quincey, I really do."

"s.h.i.t." Morris ma.s.saged the bridge of his nose between two fingers. "I a.s.sume Colleen has also told you about the Walpurgis Night business."

"She did. Libby was incorrect, by the way. The Sisterhood was not unaware of the confluence of Walpurgis Night with the full moon this year. Some of us were keeping our eyes open, but we weren"t really worried about anything very serious transpiring."

"Libby said the last time this happened was 1939. Seems to me that something pretty d.a.m.n serious transpired back then."

"I think the start of World War Two that year was probably something of a coincidence."

"You just said "think," "probably," and "something." That"s three qualifiers in one sentence, Ellie."

There was silence on the line for several seconds. Finally, Eleanor Robb said, "You"re quite right. I was hedging. In truth, I am somewhat concerned. But the world is not on the brink of war today, as it was in Thirty-Nine. I think the Left-Hand Path"s capabilities for mischief are fairly limited, the G.o.ddess be thanked."

"Colleen also told you that Libby and I picked up a rumor in Cleveland that something big is planned for the revels this year, right?"

"Yes, but that could just be big talk to draw a large attendance to the one in, where was it, Iowa?"

"Idaho. Walter Grobius"s estate in Idaho."

"Well, Walpurgis Night is mostly just a big party night for the people of the black. It"s one of two nights a year they can crawl out of the shadows and feel-"

"What did you say?"

"I said, the eve of the Feast of St. Walpurgia and Halloween are the two nights of the year-"

"No, something about shadows."

"It was just a metaphor, Quincey. I was trying to-"

"Quiet! Just give me a second, will you?

Whether insulted or not, Eleanor Robb kept silent. Morris heard again the voice of his friend, John Wesley Hester: "Some blokes in Baghdad found out recently that the Book of Shadows is missing." Then he heard John saying, "You know what kind of stuff"s supposed to be in that b.l.o.o.d.y thing. Imagine an adept of the Left-Hand Path with that book, along with all the magical power gained from those nasty kiddie sacrifices you"ve been talking about."

Then he heard his own voice, in Frank"s bar in Cleveland, talking about Walpurgis Night taking place during the time of the full moon: "It"s like a perfect storm of the occult."

Into the phone, Morris said, "Forgive my rudeness just now, Ellie, but something popped into my head, and I wanted to get a look at it before it disappeared again."

"And did you?"

"Yeah, I did. Listen, Ellie-if you"re not sitting down right now, maybe you should."

"Why"s that, Quincey?"

"Because I"m about to upset you."

The next morning, after a mostly sleepless night, Morris heard from Fenton.

"Looks like we finally caught a break," he told Morris.

"Good, we could f.u.c.king use one. What happened?"

"While I was brushing my teeth this morning, I remembered that at the last reunion I attended, a college buddy of mine said he"d gone into the Air Force not long after graduation. Officer Candidate School, and all that. Told me he was one of the top guys in the Idaho Air National Guard, now. Well, I got him on the phone, and he"s still there. In fact, he"s been moving up pretty good-Deputy Commander of the whole f.u.c.kin" air wing."

"I guess that"s good," Morris said, "but I"m not sure I see exactly how, unless you can get him to drop a few tons of bombs on Grobius"s place out there and call it a training exercise."

"No, can"t do that. But there"s more than one kind of training exercise, and Charlie is willing to send one of their reconnaissance aircraft over the place, with its cameras running."

Morris sat up straighten "Okay, that is good news. Maybe we"ll learn what the h.e.l.l Grobius and his pet wizard have in mind for tomorrow night. Wait, though. s.h.i.t!"

"What"s wrong?"

"If Grobius and his boys figure out that they"re under surveillance, they might decide to cut their losses and close down operations. That would probably include disposing of all potential witnesses, including Libby."

"Don"t sweat it, man. Charlie tells me the plane"ll be at fifty thousand feet-maybe higher, depending on the cloud cover. And it"ll be over Grobius"s place and gone before anyone even notices it"s there. With the kinds of cameras and s.h.i.t they"ve got today, apparently one pa.s.s is all you need to get a whole bunch of good pictures of anything on the ground bigger than a gopher."

"Okay, then. Not bad, Fenton. Not bad, at all. But the sooner we get this done, the better. When"s your pal gonna send the plane over?"

"What time is it now?"

"About eight forty-seven, Eastern."

"It"s already airborne."

"Have you got it, Ellie?"

"It"s loading now. My Internet connection is kind of slow, so this may take a minute."

Morris sat in front of his laptop, the mouse in one hand, his phone in the other. After a short wait, he heard Ellie Robb"s voice again.

"Yes, all right. I"ve got it."

"I"m sending another one, now. It can be loading while we talk."

"I"m looking, Quincey, but I"m not sure what it is I"m seeing. I"m not trained in aerial photo interpretation, you know."

"Me, neither," Morris told her. "But, fortunately, I just spent twenty minutes on the phone with an Air Force tech sergeant who is. He worked with me, and I"ll work with you. What does the image look like?"

"Well, clearly it"s a stretch of land. Most of it looks like it"s been landscaped, but some of it appears to be wild. I also see what I suppose are buildings-one large one, more or less in the center, and several smaller ones, in different places around the area."

"Anything else?"

"I don"t know-there are some other things s.p.a.ced between the buildings, at what look like regular intervals. They"re just dots in the photo, although one them appears a tad larger than the rest."

"All right, good. As I"m sure you"ve figured out, Ellie, you"re looking at an aerial photo, taken by a military aircraft, of the Coeur d"Alene estate of one Walter Grobius, reclusive zillionaire."

"That"s all very well, Quincey, but this is the best the Air Force can do-"

"It"s not. They"ve got state-of-the-art magnification equipment, as well as computer programs that can fill in the gaps, based on mathematical probability. Or something like that. Go to the next photo, please, while I send you a third one."

"All right, it"s loading."

Half a minute or so later, Eleanor Robb said, "Okay, I can tell that it"s the same image, but blown up. Quite an improvement."

"Good. So, what are you looking at now?"

"Well, the buildings are much clearer. The big one looks to be a house, quite a large one. The others appear to be outbuildings."

"What about the dots?"

"Hmmm. They look like excavations of some sort. Similar in size, if I"m any judge, and evenly s.p.a.ced around the grounds."

"Okay. Now, what about the thing you described as the bigger dot?"

"I can see now that it"s some kind of structure, not one of the excavations. Hard to say how big it is, but it"s smaller than the outbuildings, I can tell that much."

"All right, then," Morris said. "I"m sending the third photo, which is an even better enlargement. Once it loads, tell me what you see."

"Will do."

Morris clicked "Send," and waited. Thirty seconds went by, but he did not hear from Eleanor Robb. He waited another half minute before speaking.

"Ellie? What"s wrong? Didn"t it load?"

"No, Quincey. It loaded fine." Morris thought there was an odd note in Eleanor Robb"s voice.

There was more silence on the line. "Ellie? h.e.l.lo?"

She cleared her throat before speaking. "The smaller excavations are fire pits, of a very particular kind. I"ve seen these before, but never more than one at a time. I have never even imagined, wait... twenty-five of them in one place."

"What are they for, Ellie?"

"They are used in conjurations-black magic rituals for calling up demons."

"So, someone is planning to call up twenty demons at once, you think?"

"Perhaps... but probably not."

"Why do you say that?"

"That thing in the middle of it all. Quincey, it"s an altar. The most elaborate, complex black altar I have ever seen. And for those of the Left-Hand Path, altars are places of sacrifice."

"Sure, Ellie, but Catholics do the same thing. Episcopalians too, I guess."

"True, but those sacrifices are purely symbolic. In black magic, the sacrifices are very real, and invariably b.l.o.o.d.y. Usually, it"s some kind of animal. But not always. The sacrifice is designed to please the Infernal Powers. The bigger and more important the sacrifice, the greater the favor to be gained from the other side, and hence the more power present in the conjuration. And having multiple rituals going on at once would further increase that power."

"All right, Ellie. Given what you"re looking at, give me your best guess as to what these people intend."

Silence.

"Ellie?"

Still silence.

"Ellie? Are you there?"

"Quincey I can only come to one reasonable conclusion, and it hurts my head just to have the thought in there. It"s just... inconceivable-except the evidence is right in front of me that someone has actually conceived it, and intends to carry it out. Or try to."

"I need to hear you say it, Ellie. Carry what out?"

"A conjuration that will, G.o.ddess save us, bring Satan himself to Earth."

Chapter 23.

Walpurgis Eve It is not known for certain either when or why Walpurgis Night became the night of the Witches" Sabbath. Its name derives from Saint Walpurga, whose feast day occurs on May 1. There is nothing sinister about the reputation of this good and pious woman, who in her lifetime was known for speaking out against witchcraft and sorcery. Some say the date was first chosen because it is the mirror of Halloween, being exactly six months away from that other night held sacred by followers of the Left-Hand Path.

Reports that the night of April 30 was being used for revels in worship of the Evil One began to surface in the Middle Ages, although some scholars claim this dark observance goes back to the Roman Empire. The first Walpurgis Night revels probably took place on The Brocken, the name given to the highest peak of the Germany"s Hartz Mountains, although they have also been known to occur in other places throughout Western and Central Europe and, more recently, North America.