House of Six

Chapter 4

Soon they were back at John’s house gathered around the breakfast table drinking a fresh pot of coffee. John was hunched over with his elbows on the table and his head cradled in his hands. He leaned forward and stared at the worn and scarred mahogany.

“They broke in and stole the three boxes. It had to be because of the drawing and the Elizabeth Turner letters. I’m certain of it.”

“Weren’t there a lot of other documents in those boxes beside those letters?”

“Yes, but everything else was straightforward. I mean, they might have wanted the Hawthorne journal, as well, but nothing was like the Elizabeth Turner letters. They were so cryptic.

“Is there any chance the library would have made copies?”

Suddenly John looked up at her and then he slapped his hand hard on the tabletop. “God, what an ass I am!” He jammed his hand in his pocket and came out with his cell phone. “I forgot I’d taken a picture of the letter and the drawing.” He clicked on his photo file and started paging through to the most recent pictures. “I didn’t think I was supposed to photograph anything, but Joe D’Angelo left me alone, so I took a couple shots.”

He found the photos, then stood and hurried upstairs to his desk where he woke up his computer and plugged in the phone. A couple of moments later all three of them were looking at a large image of the drawings he had photographed.

Faust squinted hard at the drawing of the house and the lines that came from it, running outward from each of the gables. Then he looked at the map of the world drawn below.

“What is it?” Amy asked.

Faust shook his head. “I think it’s part of a map.”

“Where would the rest of the map be?” John asked. “I have no idea.”

“What’s it a map of?”

Faust was quiet, and then he shook his head again. “Sorry, I don’t know.” He took a sip of his coffee and turned away from the computer. “What I do know is you need to get over to England as quickly as possible. I don’t know what the Coven is planning or why this map was so important to them, but we can’t allow any more time to pass. We need to move.”

Amy stiffened. “Wait a minute. We have no idea what we’re doing. If we go over there, we don’t know who or what we’re facing. I think it’s crazy to just rush in.”

Faust spun toward her; his face suddenly twisted with anger. “And if you don’t rush in, John’s daughter is liable to die!” He jerked his thumb toward John. “Ask him if he’s willing wait any longer!”

“Amy,” John said. “I have no choice. I must go.” “No, you don’t,” Amy shot back. “Not like this!”

The sound of the doorbell made all three of their heads turn toward the staircase. “Who could that be?” Amy asked. “No idea,” John said as he reached into his belt for his

.45. He went quickly down the stairs and tiptoed over to stand just to the side of the door. “Who’s there?” he asked.

“My name is Lisa Giles.”

“What do you want?” he asked, glancing over his shoulder in time to see Amy and Faust coming down the stairs then heading back toward the kitchen.

“I’m sorry to disturb you, but I’d like to talk to you, Mr. Andrews.”

“About?”

“About what I think is our common problem?”

John’s heart started to beat faster. “What problem is that?” he asked, then held his breath, half expecting bullets to start coming through the door, but not expecting the next words. “The Coven,” Lisa Giles said in a faint voice.

John looked back at Amy and Father Faust, raising his eyebrows in question. Amy shrugged, and they both stepped out of sight. John paused, and then holding the pistol down by his leg, he reached over and opened the door.

For a second nothing happened, and then a woman stepped into the opening. She was small and slightly built, late forties or early fifties, John thought, with curly brown hair, big glasses, and nervous, birdlike movements. Her gaze quickly dropped from his face to his hands. Her eyes widened when she saw the gun. “I’m not a threat, Mr. Andrews.” She nodded. “I assume you are Mr. Andrews?”

John nodded and closed the door behind her, turning the deadbolt as he did. “You said we have a common problem.” Lisa Giles stiffened as Amy and Father Faust stepped out from where they had been hiding around the corner. Faust had unbuttoned his coat, and his Roman collar was visible.

Lisa Giles scowled.

“I didn’t know you had one of them here,” she said. “I’ll come back another time.” She turned and reached for the doorknob.

“Hold, witch!” Faust cried, his voice cracking like a whip.

John looked at the priest in amazement then froze when he saw Faust’s gun. It was aimed at the woman. John swore he could see Faust tightening his finger on the trigger.

He held up his hand. “Are you crazy? No!”

Without even thinking about what he was about to do he stepped sideways, blocking Faust’s clear shot, and he closed his eyes and tensed, waiting for the impact of a bullet.

A second passed, then two. When John opened his eyes, what he saw next shocked him even more than the sight of Faust’s gun. Amy had stepped right behind Faust and had a large chef’s knife she must have snatched from the knife block in the kitchen held tight to Faust’s throat. John could see the handle of a second knife in Amy’s left hand that was prodding the priest in the kidney.

“Drop the gun,” Amy hissed.

Faust’s eyes were white with shock and fear. “You don’t know what you’re doing,” he snarled. “She’s, our enemy!”

“Don’t move, and don’t say another word. Just drop the gun.”

Faust’s face twisted with helpless fury, but he did as Amy commanded. His gun clattered to the floor.

“Now kick it toward John,” Amy snapped. Faust hesitated, then did as she ordered. “John, pick up the gun,” Amy said.

For a second John didn’t move, he gaped at her open mouthed. She was acting different from the woman he thought he knew.

“John!” Amy snapped.

He snapped out of his trance, went over, and picked up Faust’s gun. Once he did, Amy took the knives away and shoved Faust forward.

With a blade no longer at his throat, Faust recovered. He looked at John, his expression filled with incomprehension. “I saved your life, and you treat me like this!”

“You were going to shoot this woman!” John shouted back. “What were you thinking?”

“She’s a witch!”

Behind Faust Amy nodded. “Yes, she is, and you’re a member of ODX, aren’t you?”

John held up a hand for silence, and then he looked between Faust and Lisa Giles, who hadn’t said a word since Faust pulled his gun. Unlike Faust, who was full of wild emotions, Lisa Giles seemed understandably shaken yet remarkably calm. She was such a small, mousy woman; he was amazed she wasn’t a trembling wreck.

“Are you one of them?” he asked her,“I’m not sure what you mean,”

Giles said. “I am a witch, but I am not part of the Salem Coven. They are my enemy,

just as they are yours.”

John turned to Faust. “What is ODX?”

Faust pressed his lips together and glared at John. “The group that saved your life,” he said.

“You’ve heard of Opus Dei, haven’t you, John?” Amy asked.

“Aren’t those the guy’s Dan Brown wrote that great thriller years ago?”

“Yes, but the real Opus Dei isn’t as controversial as Brown made them sound; however, there’s an offshoot of Opus Dei called ODX, which is far more radical.”

“We believe the world is engaged in a titanic struggle between good and evil,” Faust interrupted. “If you think it’s radical to battle the Devil, then yes, we’re radical.”

“But that’s not all you battle, is it?” Amy shot back. “You believe that all other religions besides Christianity pose an equal threat, don’t you?”

John shook his head. “Father Faust told us that his group is allied with all the other religions.”

“It’s a lie,” Amy said. “Isn’t it, Father Faust?”

Faust’s eyes were going back and forth between John and Amy. Finally, he settled on John. “This woman,” jerking his head toward Lisa Giles, “is a Wiccan. Wiccans use magic,” he said, pronouncing the word as if magic was something unimaginably filthy and evil. “They believe in a bunch of spirits, including their horned god—and if he isn’t the Devil, what is he?” Faust was nodding as he spoke. “The Wiccans are the Devil’s agents.”

Lisa Giles cleared her throat. “May I say something?” she asked in what struck John as a remarkably calm tone given the moments earlier Faust had been preparing to shoot her.

“Go ahead.”

“I am a witch, and I am a member of a local coven of thirteen witches.”

On hearing this Faust recoiled, as if proximity would somehow stain his soul.

Giles went on. “It is true we believe in a number of spirits, and it is also true that we attempt to work magic.”

“See!” Faust shot back. “I told you. These people are dangerous. Magic is the Devil’s work.”

“Every good lie has as much truth in it as possible,” Lisa Giles went on, ignoring Faust. “There really are people from all the world religions who have united in the struggle against the Satanists, but ODX is not part of that group.”

“Don’t listen to her,” Faust growled.

“I would think you would agree that the use of magic is not inherently evil,” Giles went on, speaking to John.

“Why?”

“Because you have used magic.”

John looked at Amy and shook his head. “That’s not really true about me using magic,” he said, turning back to Lisa Giles. “Something happened to me one time, and I don’t even know what to call it.”

Lisa Giles smiled, and again John found her calmness remarkable. “Call it whatever you wish. We would call what happened through you to be magic, and in fact it is our belief that you are one of the most powerful magic users on the planet.”

John shook his head. “There’s no way.”

“No, John,” Amy said, her voice firm. “I was there that night. I saw what you did in the catacombs, and I told Lisa. That’s why she’s come to speak with you.”

Giles glanced at Amy then back to John. “We believe it’s vital for you to learn to understand your gift and, if you can, to learn to control it.”

“The point is I can’t control it,” John shot back.

“How do you know?” Lisa Giles insisted. “Do you have any idea what triggers magic and what it really is?”

John shook his head.

“Don’t listen to her! Some things are not meant to be controlled,” Faust shouted.

John turned to look at the priest. “Some things are triggered by the presence of evil,” Faust went on. “Think about it! Your Putnam blood makes it possible for you to sense evil, just like a hunting dog can smell a pheasant.”

John closed his eyes and shook his head and felt like Faust’s words placed a terrible weight on his shoulders. He wanted to deny them, but he knew they were true. “What did you expect me to do?”

“To fight the Coven!” Faust shouted

“But if I have some kind of power, but I can’t control it, what good am I going to be to anybody?”

Lisa Giles cleared her throat again. “Why don’t you ask your friend, Father Faust, what was supposed to happen to you in this struggle against the Devil?”

John turned to Faust. “Well?”

Faust raised his chin, and his expression became cold. “If you are truly a magic user, as we also suspect, then in some part of your soul, whether you realize it or not, you are allied with the Devil.”

John started to shake his head.

“Deny it all you want,” Faust continued. “Mankind is not meant to use magic. It is the stuff of evil and ungodliness. Those who use magic are to be destroyed.”

“So, if I had agreed to help you, I was supposed to die in the process?”

“You are a magic user.”

“And you are a sick sonofabitch, Father Faust,” John said.

“Now that you know he intended for you to die, what do you want to do with him?” Giles asked.

John looked at the small woman. Whatever it was about her that just moments ago had struck him as mousy and weak had disappeared, and she now seemed tough-minded and decisive, a woman accustomed to being in charge. “What do you mean by that?”

“If you let him go, he and his associates will try and kill you.”

John turned and gazed at Faust for a long moment. The priest said nothing, and he took the man’s silence as an indication that what Giles was saying was correct. Faust would indeed try to kill him; he would try to kill all of them. He glanced at Amy, who was still holding both knives and who looked as if she would instantly kill the priest if John gave the word.

“Would you really be stupid enough to try and kill me before I fight the Coven? If they’re holding my daughter, it doesn’t seem like I have any choice where that’s concerned.”

Still Faust refused to speak.

“So, what was your plan? You’d get me to attack the Coven and wait to see whether I won or got killed, and then you and your ODX friends would kill whoever survived? In other words, you saved my life yesterday only so you could make sure when I died I would do you good?”

Faust’s mouth twitched, and a flicker of uncertainty seemed to pass across his face. Faust held his gaze but said nothing.

“Still,” John went on, “no matter what your reasons, you did save my life, so in turn I’m going to save yours by letting you go. Get out of here. If I see you again, I’ll do the same thing to you I did to the Coven leaders. I’m going to learn how to control that power, and I guarantee I’ll use it on you.”

“Think carefully,” Giles began.

John cut her off. “I have.”