Chapter 58: Bona Fidos
In Which Cassandra receives some visitors, some of whom we have seen before
Lydia Palmer squinted up at the stars just beginning to twinkle in the twilight sky and wrinkled her nose at the night air. “Arthur?” she called back into the house. “Do you think you might leave me the car tonight?”
The vicar was standing in front of the mirror by the front door of the vicarage in the process of threading the collar into his clerical shirt – the grey shirt he wore for informal occasions. “Tonight?” he called back. “Tonight's the Men's darts tournament. They're expecting me.” He was only a passable dartsman, but he enjoyed the sport and the men on his congregation's team liked to have him bless the darts before the game. Not that he'd ever pray for victory, that would be unsportsmanlike, not to mention theologically dubious; but he'd ask the Lord's Blessing on all present that they might exercise their skills and enjoy an evening of pleasant fellowship.
“I know,” Lydia said. “I was thinking I could drop you off at the Woggle's Crown. I think I might be needing the car this evening.”
There had once been a time when her husband would chuckle, “You and your premonitions,” but he had come to respect these whims of hers. After all, he liked to say, sometimes a premonition could be the Holy Spirit giving one a nudge. He came out onto the front porch behind her and gave her a hug. “As you wish, dear,” the Vicar said. “I can get one of the lads to give me a ride home.”
The Vicar finished dressing as his wife navigated their venerable two-door Mini out of their narrow driveway and into the street in front of the vicarage. He climbed into the passenger's side and they drove off to the tavern.
The Woggle's Crown took its name from the ring of standing stones which once adorned the top of Tor Togwogmagog, where Redemption Castle now stood. Few people remembered the etymology, though; the name had passed into folk memory while the memory of the circle had faded away. The public house bearing that name, where the tournament was to occur, stood less than a dozen blocks or so from the vicarage, and not terribly far to walk. Nevertheless, Lydia put her hand on her husband's shoulder before she let him out in front of the pub. “You will get a ride, won't you?' 'she said.
Vicar Palmer did not believe in werewolves, and even if he did, the next full moon was a couple weeks away. Still, it never hurt to be cautious; especially after what happened to poor Pastor Shepherd. And he didn't like to worry Lydia. “If I need you to pick me up, I will call you,” he assured her, giving her a peck on the cheek. “I will call you regardless to let you know.”
She waited as he paused at the door to hold it open for one of his parishioners on the darts team. He gave her a parting wave, and as soon as he was safely inside, she drove off.
She did not drive home directly. There were strange influences in the air that night, a sense of gathering magic, and she wanted to see if she could sense where they were going. Even with the windows rolled down, the car's steel frame made magic lines harder to detect, but the act of traveling gave her a better sense of how they varied in intensity. It was a trade-off. Everything seemed ordinary, as far as she could tell. Had the Holy Spirit given her a false alarm after all? Lydia smiled to think how Albert would scold her for that impiety. No, a premonition did not always mean what one thought it meant, but it was always significant.
As she turned around to head back towards the vicarage, she noticed a gathering of parked cars in a weed-infested parking lot next to a vacant factory. The lot was usually empty at this time of the evening. Coming closer, she saw a group of people milling about by the cars, as if waiting for something. The hairs on the back of Lydia's neck pricked up. Some of them were wearing silver collars, like those of the Reavers Pack. They were wolves. And they just happened to be congregating next to the unofficial border to the Little Kingston District, the boundary Grandma Simms set to protect her neighborhood from wolves and other maleficent forces.
Lydia decided she ought to swing by Strephon's house, just to make sure things were all right.
* * * * * *
Devon was taking his sweet time in returning to the house, and Cassandra was starting to worry. So she fell back on her mother's advice: When in doubt, make a pot of tea. It gives you something to do, and when it's finished you can drink the tea. She felt a slight qualm about raiding Strephon's pantry without his permission, but then she remembered the reason why she was alone in his house and concluded that it served him right.
She and Cecily were halfway through their first cup when a rap came at the front door.
“Is that Devon?” Cassandra said.
“Can't be,” Cecily said. “Devon never knocks. He says he doesn't believe in knocking.”
Cassandra headed towards the door. “Remember, Devon told us not to let anyone in,” Cecily warned her.
“I just want to see who it is,” Cassandra said, but out of prudence she made a detour to the sitting room's fireplace and grabbed a poker. Cecily followed her lead and took the cinder-shovel. Thus armed, the two proceeded more cautiously towards the front door.
Cassandra wished there were some convenient way to look at the outside without opening the door. She could peek from behind the curtain through one of the windows on either side of the door, but whoever was out there would likely notice. If only Strephon had a peep hole or something.
As that thought flitted through her head, a window did open up – not in the door, exactly, but a couple inches in front of it, which gave her a clear view of the porch and the visitors standing upon it. It must be another of Strephon's enchantments, Cassandra decided, and she wondered if it was activated by proximity to the door or if it was her conscious wish that opened it. She would have to ask Strephon later.
There were three people on the porch: a burly man with an unkempt beard and an incongruous clerical collar, a slim woman with long hair which looked silvery in the porch light, and a darker-haired woman with a tattoo of a wolf on her face.
“What's keeping him,” the silver-haired woman grumbled. “I'd like to get this over.”
“He's confined to a wheelchair,” the man replied. “It probably takes him a while to get around.”
“He's Fae,” the woman with the tattoo said. “He can get around as quickly as he likes. He just wants us to wait.”
The tattoo reminded Cassandra of something Strephon had told her. Yes, the woman must be Miss Cooper, the fairy who had fallen in love with a werewolf. And if all three of the visitors were wolves, she could guess that the shaggy padre must be...
“Why, Reverend Shepherd!” another person said coming up behind the three. “I didn't expect to see you here! You might not remember me; I'm Lydia Palmer, Vicar Palmer's wife. I think we met at an ecumenical gathering Arthur and I attended some years back.”
“Ah, Mrs. Palmer.” Shepherd shook her hand politely as the silver-haired girl growled impatiently.
Cassandra motioned to Cecily to keep silent, then opened the door a bit; just enough to look through and still be able to slam it shut if needed. “Hello?” she said, gripping the poker more tightly, but keeping it hidden behind the door. “May I help you?”
“Hello, Cassandra,” Mrs. Palmer said. “Is Strephon in?”
“I'm afraid he's out for the evening. I don't know when he'll be back.”
Miss Cooper cursed and Mrs. Palmer looked fretful. “I was afraid that might be the case,” Mrs. Palmer said. “When I saw your lights on, I thought he might not have left yet.”
“Well, that was a waste of a trip!” the silver-haired girl grumbled.
“Hold on, Luna,” Shepherd said. “Please, Miss True... I believe that is your name, isn't it? May we come in just for a minute or two? There is something we need to talk about.”
Cassandra hesitated. Even apart from Devon's warning, she wasn't sure if she ought to invite a stranger into Strephon's home without his permission. He would call it Taking A Liberty. She glanced at Cecily, who made a face and shook her head. If Cecily was urging caution, she needed to be cautious.
“Forgive me for butting in,” Mrs. Palmer said, poking her head around Shepherd's shoulder, “but there are several wolves in this neighborhood – other wolves, I mean, begging your pardon – I noticed them while I was driving home, and I strongly think they are on their way here.”
“Oh, and you can tell a wolf by looking at one?” Miss Cooper sniffed.
“Can you tell a witch?”
Cassandra decided. “Come on in,” she said, opening the door.
“Are you sure about this?” Cecily muttered, still clutching her shovel as Cassandra escorted the visitors into the foyer.
Cassandra didn't have a good answer for that, so she said, “Pull up some more chairs and I'll find the rest of Strephon's tea things.”
The bearded parson sat down in one of the chairs Cecily brought closer to the divan. “Thank you for letting us in. I am Abel Shepherd. I run a street mission down on Foxglove Avenue.”
“I know. Strephon told me a bit about you.”
“Then you know I'm a werewolf.”
“Wait, what?” Cecily said.
“Strephon seems to think that you're trustworthy,” Cassandra said. “And Mrs. Palmer vouches for you.”
The Vicar's wife blushed. “Well. I'm happy to be able to confirm your bona fides. Or perhaps I should say, bona FIDOS.” She guiltily put her hand to her lips to hide her smile.
Luna rolled her eyes at the pun and Miss Cooper growled. Wolves clearly didn't like to be compared to canis familiaris. It was probably a situation where a wolf could get away with calling another wolf “dawg”, but they objected to an outsider doing so. Reverend Shepherd tactfully overlooked the faux paw and changed the subject.
“Mister Bellman came to see me yesterday,” Shepherd continued, “and he mentioned a friend of his...”
“Acquaintance,” Miss Cooper said.
“An acquaintance who was looking for a friend who had gone missing. I knew the friend in question, but at the time I didn't feel I could divulge her confidence. I've since talked to her, and because I think her story is relevant to the other matters Mister Bellman discussed with me, I asked her to come and speak with him.”
“Yeah, yeah,” the silver-haired girl said. “Listen, I came back to see Ferner again, and I agreed to talk to this Bellman guy. I just want to get this over with. I don't want to run into any of the Reaver Pack, and the hexes that Jamaican witch put on this neighborhood make my teeth ache. I just want to tell my story and get out of here.”
“My name is Luna Oswell,” she continued, “and yes, I am a wolf. I used to run with the Reaver Pack back when Del Reeves was in charge. He was a good leader, and treated us well. We weren't the biggest pack in town, but by and large the other wolves respected us. While I was with the Reavers, I met Ferner here.” She nodded towards Miss Cooper, who acknowledged with a curt grunt. “She's a Fae, but she can change into a wolf at will and she enjoyed running with our pack. We became friends. And then we became closer. Everything was fine. Until Blanka came.”
“Lukas Bianka,” Shepherd explained.
“Decency League guy?” Cecily gaped.
“Biggest pervert in town,” Miss Cooper scowled.
“He joined the Reaver Pack and right away he started suggesting things, making himself indispensable; moving up the Pack hierarchy until he was Del's lieutenant. And as he was doing so, he was gathering up his own squad of lieutenants: young bloods who were loyal only to him. And then Ferner left.”
Miss Cooper fidgeted. “I didn't want to. I was called back to the Faerie Realm. My family disapproved of me 'Going Native.' As if none of them ever spent a decade or two living among mortals. They brought the matter up before the Queen. I admit the Queen was more sympathetic than I thought she'd be, but she still ruled that if I would not obey my family in this, I would be banished from the Faerie Court and lose all right to Faerie hospitality until such time as I relented. Which was fine with me because I was sick to the teeth of all the stupid Faerie intrigues. They said I would have to live in the Mortal World alone, but I knew I wouldn't be alone because I have you.” She grew sullen again. “Except that they tricked me. More time had passed here than I realized, and by the time I got back, you were gone.”
“I stayed as long as I could,” Luna said quietly. “I knew you'd come back to me, but I didn't know when. It was while you were gone that Del was killed and Blanka took over. He said that a rival pack had killed Del, but no one believed it. A lot of the males backed Blanka, and the ones who might have challenged him had met with 'accidents' or had already left the pack. Almost immediately, Blanka began changing things: rearranging the pack according to Alpha hierarchy, with of course his supporters at the top. Del used to be pretty relaxed about who slept with whom, but Blanka decided that the highest-ranking males would have their pick of the females, and that as the pack's Alpha, he would mate with any female he desired.”
“The droit du seigneur,” Mrs. Palmer remarked.
“I thought that the 'Alpha Male' theory of wolf society had been discredited,” Cassandra said. “I remember reading somewhere that the scientist who developed it based it off a flawed study of wolves in captivity which didn't reflect wolves in the wild, and that he repudiated it.”
“The scientists might have repudiated Alpha Male Theory, but the Alpha Males still like it just fine,” Cooper said. “The perverts.”
“Blanka also decreed that females could only mate with males and could not choose their own mates,” Luna continued. “I almost left right there. I would have, if Ferner had been with me; maybe joined another pack, maybe gone off on our own, maybe even challenged Blanka ourselves. But most of my friends had either already left the pack, or were too afraid.”
Luna reached for one of the teacups and wrinkled her nose at it. “You got anything stronger?” Cassandra looked helpless; she wasn't sure where Strephon kept his spirits. “Never mind.”
Luna dashed down a slug of orange pekoe before she went on. “Then one evening it was my turn for him to screw. Like I said, he treated us like his personal harem.”
Miss Cooper mouthed the words “Rip his lungs out!”
“I was at his place, waiting for... I was waiting. When he got a visitor. Blanka shoved me off into another room so he could talk. At first I could only hear a faint conversation, but as I listened more closely, it became clearer. The visitor had a dark, oily voice that dripped menace. I couldn't smell him from where I was, but I didn't like the sound of him. He was talking to Blanka about some kind of a deal, offering him these enchanted collars that would give his pack immunity to silver. They would also bind the wearers to Blanka's will. This was obviously something the two of them had been discussing for some time. Blanka wanted to nail down some specifics about the price and from there the conversation became harder to follow.
“I opened the door just a crack, to get a peek, and maybe a hint of what the visitor smelled like. He was just on his way out the door, and he was handing a small, round object to Blanka, but just for a moment, I saw his face, and his eyes met mine. It's funny; I can't clearly remember exactly what he looked like. Just a sense of immense power, and a suggestion that there should have been horns on his head. Not that I saw horns, mind you; just that they wouldn't have been out of place. You know, like those masks they sell the tourists. And he had this amused expression on his face, like he knew I was eavesdropping but that I was completely inconsequential and that he would deal with me in due time. And he would deal with me, of that I was certain.”
Luna sighed. “I was scared. I couldn't think straight. All I knew was that I didn't want to spend a single night in Blanka's bed or under his roof or in his pack. While Blanka was putting things away, I climbed out his window and ran home as quickly as human legs could take me. I remembered McIverson, you know McIverson, Ferner; he was one of the older wolves who left the pack about the time Blanka took over. I had heard McIverson was staying at the Foxglove Mission. So I threw some things into a bag and went to the mission. That was where I met Abel. He promised to shelter me as long as necessary, and he arranged to move me to another city where I'd be safe.”
“I'm afraid I had no way of contacting Miss Cooper when she returned or even knowing she was back until Mister Bellman told me about her,” Shepherd explained.
“I looked all over for her,” Cooper said. “I never thought of asking at any churches. Faeries... well, we're not usually welcome in churches.”
Luna squeezed her hand and the irritation which had vexed her face since Cassandra had first seen her melted away. “Not important. We're together now. That's all that matters.”
“Can you tell me any more about Bianka's visitor? The stranger who gave him the silver collars?”
Luna shook her head. “I wish I could. I want to think he seemed familiar, like I'd seen a picture of him before, but I just can't remember.”
An idea struck Cassandra. “The round object he gave Bianka...” She opened the end table next to the divan and removed the purple paperweight Strephon had placed inside it. “Did it look anything like this?”
Luna took the stone from Cassandra's hand and examined it. “It was about this size and shape,” she said, “but it was silver, not stone. Oh, and it might have had markings on it. I wasn't close enough to see.”
“Damn. I was hoping for a positive I.D. Still, it's another point for Strephon's paperweight theory.”
“May I have a look?” Mrs. Palmer asked. Cassandra passed the stone on to her “Hm. This is interesting.”
“I was told it was a talisman of protection,” Cassandra said.
“No... it's not that,” Mrs. Palmer said. “If you want my guess, I'd say it's an anchor.”
“An anchor?”
“Yes. Some forms of ritual magic use drawn circles and pentacles and geometric patterns to align and focus thaumaturgical energies. Usually an object is placed at each point of the pattern to anchor it. Sometimes it's a candle, sometimes just a convergence of lines, but sometimes it is a stone or an artifact enchanted for this specific purpose. I think this is what you have here.”
Cassandra took it back. It felt warm to the touch, much warmer than it did the day before, and she thought she saw a glimmer of light from deep inside. “It wasn't warm like this before,” she said.
“It's probably reacting to the ambient magical energies,” Mrs. Palmer said. “They have been unusually high this evening. I wonder... Could somebody be in the process of casting a spell? A really large, powerful spell?”
She was interrupted by another knock at the door. “Who is it this time?” Cassandra grumbled.
“It's not Devon,” Cecily said. “Maybe Strephon forgot his keys.”
Cassandra went to the door again. This time she didn't hesitate when she saw who was outside. She opened the door right away.
“Glad to see you're awake,” Grandma Simms said. “We got trouble comin' and I'm just two steps ahead of the storm.”