15
Raiding the Treasures of the Popes of Rome
Logistilla stood. “We have lingered over our repast long enough. Let us withdraw to the drawing room.”
We followed my sister to a drawing room decorated with overstuffed Victorian furniture upholstered in deep blue velvet. The place smelled of pungent musk. Logistilla chased off several large beasts to make room for us all to sit. She gestured imperiously. A marmoset scurried over and poured a deep red port into our tall fluted glasses.
She took out a long cigarette, placed it in a long black holder, and murmured. “Look at that. Now we can smoke and drink port after dinner just like the men used to.” She glanced at the rest of us and gave a throaty chuckle, “Even if there isn’t a real man here.”
“I didn’t hear that!” Mephisto said cheerfully. He walked up to Logistilla and snapped her cigarette in half. “Besides, don’t you know that nobody smokes anymore. Smoking is evil, nowadays. Right up there with murder and loitering. Or did loitering go out of style?”
“Oh, pooh!” murmured Logistilla, but she did not take out another one.
Mab pulled out his notebook, “All this talk about horses reminded me of something. You guys never told me the whole scoop about that Vatican caper. This is as good a time as any, considering that we really shouldn’t try to sail out of here until the tide comes in. So, tell me about it. Who stole what?”
We all began talking at once, but Mephisto shouted over Logistilla and me.
“Oh, it was great!” he cried. “We broke in just before dawn, there was a huge commotion. First, Gregor walked out with the ring. Then, I stole the sphere. Miranda carried off St. George’s lance. You may have seen it; Daddy keeps it by the fireplace. It’s all black and twirly with gold edges? No? Anyway, Titus was supposed get something, I don’t remember what, but after he dropped the fake dead body of Pope Gregory, he got too busy killing the guards. Ulysses . . . no, he wasn’t born yet. Erasmus took the Shroud of Turin. Cornelius stole the Ark of the Covenant—only he opened it, the dope. Too bad about that. Daddy got the scepter made from a piece of the true cross. Theo rescued the spear of Joseph of Arimathea. With Theo, it’s always a rescue. He never steals. And, who’s left?” Our hostess glared at him. “Oh, yeah. Logistilla held the horses.”
“What a night it was!” I cried, recalling our wild escape ride across the sky.
“Held Xanthus, Pyrois, Aethon, and Phlegon I will thank you to remember,” huffed Logistilla. To Mab, she said, “They left me holding the horses, while they got all the glory and the goodies. Then, they never let me live it down. After that, any time we planned to do anything, it was always ‘Oh, we can’t rely on Logistilla, she’s only good for holding horses.’ Or, ‘Here’s some horses to hold, Sister Dear, you excel at that.’ The ingrates!”
“You made your getaway on the Horses of the Sun?” Mab cried aghast. “Where was the sun that day? On vacation? Do you know those horses are relatives of mine? Nephews, I guess you’d call ’em.”
“It was dark, silly.” Mephisto spoke despite his mouth being full of banana bread.
“But what about the other side of the earth? Ah, never mind . . . why did you need horses at all?” Mab asked. “Why didn’t you just take . . . ” He flipped through his notebook. “ . . . the Staff of Transportation?”
“The travel staff was new.” I chose a candy from a box of bonbons offered by the marmoset. “Father made it while we were in Italy. It had never touched the earth of the British Isles, so it could not bring us there. Instead, Father sent Mephisto to capture and harness the Horses of the Sun.”
“It was a royal pain,” Logistilla complained, gesturing with her wine glass. “We could only take with us what we could carry by horseback. I had to winnow my childhood, my whole youthful life, down to two saddlebags.”
“Back up a step.” Mab held up a hand. “You were living in Italy? Last I heard, your family fled Milan and ended up in England.”
“You mean the famous ignominious retreat after they were betrayed by Uncle Antonio?” With a wave of her hand, Logistilla dismissed events that happened well before her birth as ancient history. “That was in 1499; this was 1623.”
I jumped in. “After that, we moved to Scotland, though we spent much of our time in London. In 1589, we moved back to Italy, this time as private citizens. The Spanish were ruling Milan then.” I recalled how strange it had been to see their unfamiliar faces living in our old castello.
“What was that all about?” Mab scribbled as he talked. “I mean, why did you go?”
“I’m not sure of the details, but it had something to do with the internal squabbles of the Orbis Suleimani. Father was constantly sending Titus and Cornelius to and fro on errands related to these matters. They had been born during our stay in Scotland; this was their first time in Italy.”
“And their first time carrying staffs!” Mephisto piped in.
“Titus and Cornelius.” Mab made a note and then looked up. “Where was everyone else?”
“Theo stayed behind in England for much of this period, fighting under the Earl of Essex. Erasmus married an Italian girl, a merchant’s daughter. When she died in childbirth a few years later, he and his surviving children returned to England, where he participated in the king’s translation project, helping to create what later became known as the King James Bible. I was with Father, of course,” I finished.
Mab scribbled down what I had said and counted my brothers quickly, tapping each name with his pencil as he muttered it. “Where were you, Harebrain?”
“Here and there,” Mephisto gestured airily. “I was in Germany, learning a new trade.”
“But you went to Italy . . . ” Mab glanced down again “ . . . by 1623?”
Mephisto tilted his head thoughtfully. “Well, I went back to England and hung out with the School of the Night for a while . . . or were those the guys who hunted Miranda? Mainly, I practiced gathering . . . stuff. Then, the Spanish Ambassador stole something from me and sent it to Rome. I wanted it back, so I went to Italy.”
“What was it?” asked Mab.
Mephisto squinted. He frowned. He rubbed his temples, concentrating. Finally, he shrugged. “Don’t remember.”
I sighed. Sometimes, Mephisto’s memory losses seemed far too convenient.
“Okay, so Mr. Prospero sets up house in Milan and remarries?” Mab asked.
“That’s right,” Logistilla nodded. “Gregor and I were born in 1593.”
Mab did some quick addition. “Hold on! This makes no sense! Gregor was born in 1593 and pope by 1623? The College of Cardinals confirmed a thirty-year-old man as pope?”
Logistilla put down her wine glass. “The whole adventure began in 1618, when Gregor and I were about twenty-five. We were visiting our mother’s family in Rome, and we happened to be the only ones present when a cardinal collapsed and died. Alexander Ludovisi, I believe it was. As a lark, Gregor asked me to use my staff—Papa had only recently lent us use of our staffs for the first time—to make him look like the cardinal. Only, once he was the cardinal, he turned out to be a natural. Within two or three years, they made him pope.
“Gregor made a pretty good pope, actually,” she continued. “Most of the popes back then were as corrupt as the devil, carousing and wenching and taking bribes as fast as the money poured in. Gregor was devout. He refused to take bribes and cleared the cardinals’ mistresses out of the Vatican. He’d been pope about two years when Papa discovered there was still a great deal of true magic in the hands of the Catholics.
“Father was outraged to learn the Church was doing so well against his darling Protestants because they had magic on their side,” Logistilla continued. “By then, the whole family had turned Protestant, with the exception of Gregor and myself. And I’ve never been a great believer. So, when Papa asked us to break the power of the Catholic Church once and for all, by stealing their enchanted talismans, we agreed.”
“Even Pope Gregor agreed?” Mab asked.
“He was called Pope Gregory XV. Well, he was young then—despite wearing an elderly man’s body—and tired of the effort of being pope. Also, he was disillusioned by the lack of piety among the church officials. Gregor thought he was doing the faithful a favor by removing power from the hands of the criminals who were milking them in the name of Our Lord.”
“He thought the magic was harming the Catholics,” I explained. “He’s a little like Theo that way. In fact, Theo probably got his ideas from Gregor. He was a strange fellow, Gregor. For all his love of the Catholic Church, he had the soul of a Puritan.”
Logistilla drew herself up, frowning severely. “Do not malign my dearly departed twin!” She turned to Mab, pouting again. “Gregie-Poo was a pussycat and don’t you let my icicle of a sister convince you otherwise.”
“Er, as you say, ma’am.” Mab lowered the brim of his fedora. Remembering that he should not be wearing a hat while sitting at a lady’s table, he quickly took it off and laid it on a chair beside him.
Sipping my wine, I recalled our daring escape that long-ago night in 1623, the wind whipping by as we clung to each other in our chariot pulled by the sons of Zephyrus. Stars sparkled overhead. As the Horses of the Sun mounted higher, the constellations swayed and danced, as if we had entered some higher realm, where Orion and Cassiopeia were living entities. That night was the end of an era for us. It was the night we left Italy for the final time.
Arriving home in Scotland after the raid, we freed our godly steeds, sending them back to their bright master, then stumbled laughing, windburnt, and exhilarated, into the Hound and Eagle Pub. Cornelius went upstairs to lie down and rest his eyes—back then we still expected his sight to return presently—while the rest of us gathered in the common room. Excitement still crackled in the air. Easygoing Theo got into a fistfight. Mephisto left with two barmaids, and normally rowdy Titus relaxed by the fire, spent from his battle with the guards. Only Father remained silent. He sat by the bar watching his children, the furrow in his brow deepening.
The next day, Father took back our staffs and commissioned Mephisto to carve statues for Logistilla and Gregor, who did not yet have them. It was some time before we saw our staffs again.
Mab finished scribbling down Mephisto’s accounts of who stole what and looked up. “Okay, there’s the scepter with the piece of the True Cross, the Ark, the lance of St. George, the spear of Joseph of Arimathea . . . that’s the same weapon as the Spear of Longinus, right? The ring? That would be Solomon’s Ring, the original Seal of Solomon. I’d heard somewhere it used to belong to the Pope.”
“That’s where the tradition of kissing the Pope’s ring came from,” said Logistilla. “Only a human being could bear to kiss that ring. It was the Pope’s way of testing whether or not he was being beguiled by a demon.”
“And the sphere?” asked Mab. “Would that be Merlin’s globe or John Dee’s?”
“They are one and the same,” I replied.
“Worse and worse! Dangerous object, that. Said to be one of the few seeing glasses capable of looking into truly vile places.”
“Mr. Dee once told Father that the angels he communed with warned him never to look anywhere infernal,” said Logistilla.
“Good advice,” Mab growled. “Where’s all this magical garbage now?”
“The lance, the scepter, and the shroud are at the mansion,” I said. “Cornelius still has the Ark—we thought it only fitting considering the high price he paid to get it. The spear was later built into Theo’s staff. Father used to have the Seal of Solomon, too, but I’m under the impression something happened to it.”
Mab nodded. “It was one of the two pieces Ulysses kept the time he stole the Warden. What happened to the sphere?”
“I broke it during the original raid,” Mephisto said sadly. “I had to throw it at some guys who wanted to kill me. But it was great!” His face lit up. “It exploded in a huge mushroom of fire!”
Mab looked at Mephisto with an odd expression on his face. “I heard a rumor about that sphere once,” he began, but Mephisto interrupted him, speaking rapidly.
“There were lots of rumors about the sphere, and most were wrong. But, it’s gone now. So, it doesn’t matter. Oh, well. Too bad.”
Mab eyed Mephisto thoughtfully, but he did not voice his original thought. “I gather Cornelius did something similar when he opened the Ark. Foiling his attackers, I mean.”
“The guards who attacked him were transformed into dust,” I replied. “Only, he himself looked too soon, as he was covering it. That’s how he lost his sight.”
“Bad business, the Ark,” said Mab.
Logistilla arched her perfectly formed eyebrows and looked at Mab with new interest. As Logistilla raised her glass to her lips, our eyes met. Her lip curled up slightly. To Mab, she said, “You seem surprisingly sensible for one of your kind. There’s a question I’ve always wanted to ask a spirit who talked sensibly. Who was Christ Jesus really? I know what we Prosperos believe, but then, we’re all Protestants now. What do the spirits believe?”
Mab sat back and scratched at his stubble. “Opinions differ, Madam Logistilla. No one seems to know for sure. Or, if they do, they aren’t telling. Some say he was the son of a wrathful sky god named Jehovah. Some say he was Lucifer’s son. Some say Adonai’s. Some think he was a stranger, from Outside, or a renegade from the universe of Muspell. But, I think that’s pure conjecture. Personally, though, I doubt all of the above.”
“Oh? Why?” Logistilla asked. I listened, curious. It was not a topic Mab and I had ever discussed.
“Simple. Devils don’t give you something for nothing, and this Christ guy did. Angels don’t break the law, creating miracles and all that. As for the tribal sky god theory, the old deities are no longer powerful enough to keep mentions of their works from being edited by—well, the guys you called the Orbis Suleimani. Mithra and Jove have been relegated to fairytales. Christ Jesus has not. As for who Christ actually was? I have my own opinion.”
“Ah, the Orbis Suleimani, or the Boys’ Club, as it should be called.” Logistilla sniffed. “I’ve never understood why Father would not let us women join. Even their splinter group, the Freemasons, don’t allow women. Or didn’t last time I checked. Things are changing so quickly, these days.”
Mephisto said. “Father did not create the organization, Dopeyhead! He was just a member. Solomon started the organization. Hence the name: ‘the Circle of Solomon.’”
Mab frowned suspiciously, “You know, that’s probably where Mr. Prospero stole his magical tomes from.”
“Father would never steal books!” Logistilla said, appalled.
“Why not?” Mephisto shrugged. “He stole stuff from the Vatican, didn’t he?”
I frowned, recalling Antonio’s taunt the day we lost Milan. “ . . . in the old records you left behind in your haste to rob us of our sacred library.” By us, had Uncle Antonio meant the Orbis Suleimani?
If so, why did Father claim—well, imply—the books were rightfully his? Could this ownership dispute have had something to do with the division in the Orbis Suleimani? For the first time, I found myself curious about the split in their organization. Mephisto had probably once known what had caused it, but it was unlikely he remembered today. The Orbis Suleimani had tossed him out long ago, for not being able to keep track of their business or their secrets.
“There may be a good deal about Father you don’t know,” I murmured. Theo and Ferdinand’s claims regarding Father’s trustworthiness clamored for my attention. Dutifully, I ignored them.
Logistilla gestured, and tiny furry hands served us bowls of sherbet.
“Miranda, why are you here?” she asked. “Mephisto, I can understand, he’s probably short of funds. Stupid thing to do, big brother, lose your staff. You, however, my sister; what would pull you out of your cocoon?”
“Something has happened to Father.”
Logistilla laughed out loud. “Oh, dear, you are going to have to do better than that!”
“You don’t believe her?” Mab asked, outraged.
“No, certainly not. Nothing rattles Papa. Besides, if something had, why would she come to me? Unless he’d been transformed into a newt. Has Papa been transformed into a newt, Miranda? Perhaps, if you stopped dawdling on this Sibyl business, you would be able to turn him back yourself, without my help. Or is transmogrification not one of the precious Gifts of the Sibyl?”
“Transmogrification is not a Gift of the Sibyl, as you well know, Sister,” I replied through clenched teeth.
Mephisto, who had been frowning angrily down at his hands, now raised his head and shouted at Logistilla. “He is too in trouble. He’s in Hell!”
Logistilla sat motionless, shocked. What little color she possessed slowly drained away from her pale face. Her bottom lip trembled.
“Father unleashed an enemy he could not control,” I said. “He left a note asking the rest of the family be informed of the danger.”
Logistilla recovered quickly. “Left the note to you, Miranda, did he?” she asked scathingly. “Well, you always were his favorite. There was little enough the rest of us could do to get his attention.”
“He just left a note, Logistilla.” I was growing bored with her constant accusations of favoritism. “I happened to be the one who found it.”
“So . . . how did it happen? Where did our faultless paterfamilias go wrong?”
“We don’t know,” Mab replied. “We’re trying to track that down now.”
“Papa didn’t tell his perfect Miranda what he was up to?” Her eyebrows arched, and her lips formed a moue of amusement. “Who would have thought? I assume Cornelius and Erasmus must know. They’re thick as thieves with the Boys’ Club, and all Father’s dastardly doings.”
“Which dastardly doings would those be?” Mab reached for his pencil.
“It’s just a turn of phrase,” Logistilla responded primly.
Pencil in hand now, Mab asked, “How about you? When’s the last time you talked to Mr. Prospero?”
“Me? Oh, Papa comes by now and again. I’m helping him with certain . . . work.” Logistilla eyes sparkled maliciously. “But, I’d prefer not to talk about that. If Papa hasn’t told his precious Miranda all about it, there must be some reason he doesn’t want her to know.”
Mephisto had been pouring wine back and forth between three sizes of tall fluted crystal glasses, his face intent. Now, he lowered the glass in his hand. “Do you really think Daddy does it on purpose? The secrecy thing, I mean? I thought it was second nature to him, sort of like protective camouflaging in moths. You know, over the generations, moths change to blend in with new backgrounds, but it’s not like they do it on purpose. I think Daddy’s like that, don’t you?”
“I blame that Antonio person,” Logistilla replied, sniffing.
“Uncle Antonio? The Great Betrayer? Or was he the cool uncle who used to take me whoring?” He tipped his head back thoughtfully, as if he were trying to recall the misty past.
“Probably one and the same, from what I’ve heard. I never met Uncle Antonio, or Uncle Galeazzo and Uncle Ludovico, for that matter—they all died before I was born.” Logistilla gave Mephisto and me an arch glance. “But none of Papa’s brothers sound like real winners to me. Face it, this Antonio person betrayed Papa when he was young and vulnerable, and Papa’s never gotten over it. Papa’s spent his whole life worrying some family member might up and betray him at any moment. That’s why he’s so close mouthed with us. He doesn’t trust us! His own children, and after all we do for him!”
I frowned, not liking what Logistilla was implying. “Father is far older and wiser than we, Logistilla. We should not question his purposes.”
“Older and wiser, my foot! Papa is much closer in age to you, Miranda, than you and Mephisto are to me,” Logistilla replied. “After all, how old could Papa have been when you were born? Thirty? Fifty? He didn’t become immortal until after you brought him the Water of Life, right?”
“Didn’t Mr. Prospero have the magic of the . . . ” Mab flipped through his notes, “Staff of Decay at his disposal? Can’t that be used to keep a person young, as well as to age them? Or did I get that wrong?”
“It can make you young,” Logistilla replied slowly, “but it can’t heal illnesses and wounds, the way the Water of Life can. Erasmus experimented at one point with trying to keep people young using his staff alone. After a few uses, they became fragile and weak. It could extend life ten years, twenty years, maybe thirty, but not longer.
“Even so, Papa’s brothers and sister were still alive when Mephisto was young, and we know Papa wasn’t using his magic to preserve them! You know how niggardly he is when it comes to sharing immortality. So, we have a pretty good idea of how old he was.
“But, back to my point, Miranda, you were born one hundred and thirty-five years before Gregor and me, and Mephisto, here . . . ” She fluttered her long narrow hand in his direction. “Mephisto’s a hundred and seventeen years older than we. I certainly don’t venerate the two of you based on your greater age,” she concluded.
“Maybe you should,” Mephisto replied. “I could do with some venerating. It’s a bit stuffy in here.”
Logistilla chuckled, and Mab snorted, shaking his head in disgust. I chewed my candy in silence. My sister’s math was correct. Father was closer to me in age than I was to her, and yet, somehow he had seemed ancient with wisdom, even when I was a child, in a manner my brothers and I had never achieved. I wondered why. Was Father different from us in some fundamental way? Or was my great admiration for him proof of Theo’s perfidious theory?
“So, tell me about our new enemies,” said Logistilla.
“Three demons called the Three Shadowed Ones. They are after our staffs. So far, they have gotten Mephisto’s and Gregor’s,” I said.
“The Three Shadowed Ones? Not the very same who hounded us after . . . ” She frowned. “The incident involving equines of which I refuse to speak?”
“Yes. Do you remember them?”
“Quite well.” Something about the way she spoke disturbed me. Before I could respond, Logistilla turned to address Mephisto. “You mean it was this enemy of Papa’s who stole your staff?”
Mephisto turned his head away and sniffed pointedly.
“They can’t be far away.” Mab looked around suspiciously. “They sicced a human servant on us on our way here, and some two-bit spirit big mouth claims they’ve cast some kind of doom over your family so that you’ll all be dead by Twelfth Night, or something.”
“Really?” Logistilla stiffened. “That’s disturbing!”
“I wouldn’t worry about it too much, Madam Logistilla. Low level spirits like that are notorious liars; but, on the other hand, it never hurts to be careful. Here’s a list of precautions you might want to take.” Mab began scribbling rapidly.
I asked carefully, “I know spirits exaggerate, Mab, but do they predict doom upon a particular date if there is nothing to it?”
“Well . . . ” Mab scratched his head; his gray-black hair stuck out all awry. “That’s a good question. The general answer is: sure, they are always predicting the end of the world on such and such a day. Problem is, ‘such and such a day’ is usually well in the future at the time of the prediction. Twelfth Night, on the other hand, is less than three weeks away. That kind of prediction usually has some teeth behind it. It suggests that these Three Shadowy Creeps are up to something no good.”
“That’s . . . disturbing,” Logistilla mused. My sister suddenly whipped her head around to face me. “Gregor’s? Did you say they have Gregor’s staff?”
“Yeah.” Mephisto put his hands on his hips.
“But it was buried with his body!” Her voice rose.
“Well, they have it now,” I replied. “They used it to attack the mansion.”
I sipped my wine. How had the Three Shadowed Ones come to have access to Gregor’s coffin? The more I thought about it, the more the Ouija board’s last message troubled me. If Gregor’s body was “No Longer” in Elgin, Illinois, what had become of it? Had Father moved the grave? If so, for what reason? And why had Ferdinand climbed out of Hell to find himself in the same town where Gregor was, or had been, buried? A number of possibilities came to mind, none of them pleasing.
Logistilla lifted her glass to her dark red lips and sipped. Her expression became calm again. “My island’s been invaded three times in the last month. Twice by a dark shape who fled when my pets went out to meet him. Once by men who are now part of my retinue. I have no way of telling whether the incidents are related. Oh, and one other thing: Both times the dark shape came, my staff gave off a flash of green light of its own accord. It’s never done that before. It was the oddest thing.”
“Did the dark shape have red eyes, red like fresh blood?” Mab asked. Logistilla nodded. “That was the incubus Seir of the Shadows. He’s one of the Three. He’s after your staff. You better watch out, ma’am; one of their number is a shapechanger.” Mab gestured toward the sleeping beasts littered about the room.
Logistilla threw back her head and laughed again. “Do you hear that, my pet?” she asked, addressing the pit bull. “They’re worried about a shapechanger! Here! On St. Dismas!” She let out a long, throaty chuckle. Shaking her head, she added, “No worry there! My pets would notice a stranger in their midst immediately. They’re much smarter than ordinary beasts, you know. A shapechanger, you say? Not Theo’s old shapechanger, is it? What was his name?”
“José the Red?” Mephisto offered.
“Osae,” Mab corrected him. “Yeah, the very same.”
“Really! How very peculiar.” She turned toward me. “I assume you’ve reached all the others. I can’t imagine you’d bother getting around to me until the end.”
“Hardly. I’ve seen you, Theo, and Mephisto here.”
“Yes, of course, your dear Theo.” She laughed harshly. “Not quite the dashing figure he once was, is he? What a pitiful waste of flesh.”
“I sent Cornelius a letter,” I replied, refusing to rise to her bait. I had never made a secret of the fact that Theo was my favorite. “Have you seen any of the others?”
“Oh, Cornelius,” she snorted. “I wouldn’t trust him as far as . . . but no matter. The others? Erasmus throws a New Year’s Eve party every year. Care to go? I’ll give you my invitation. And Mephisto came by a few months ago with the sob story about losing his staff. Taken by demons of Hell, was it? Really, Mephisto, you should be more careful whom you take to bed. Why don’t you tie them up or turn them into goats while you are sleeping? It would be safer that way. Other than Mephisto, Erasmus, and Cornelius? I haven’t seen anyone in years.”
Logistilla lifted her wine glass again, holding it up between herself and the chandelier. As she stared into the swirling red liquid, she asked, “Have you heard anything from Ulysses or Titus?”
“I thought Titus was living in the Okefenokee Swamp with his children,” Mephisto spouted. “At least, until recently.”
That was news to me. I had not known Titus had children. Until two years ago, he had sent me a birthday card every year. They always arrived the day before my birthday, like clockwork. However, he had never mentioned children, or even a new wife.
“Titus is such a fuddy-duddy these days,” Logistilla scoffed. “He probably sat down somewhere a year or so back and hasn’t bothered to get up. Pah! And he was such a dashing figure in his youth!”
“It’s ’cause he’s so big,” Mephisto offered cheerily. “Makes it hard to move!”
“So, you haven’t seen Ulysses?” Logistilla asked again.
“What is the trouble with Cornelius?” I returned to her earlier topic. Last I had heard, Logistilla and Cornelius had been on the best of terms. She could never have held the title to her Russian estates through the Communist regimes without help from the Staff of Persuasion. What had caused their recent falling out?
Logistilla lowered her glass and pursed her lips. “Perhaps I shouldn’t say.”
I did not intend to give her the satisfaction of seeing me beg. I waited. She obliged me.
“Doesn’t it strike you as peculiar,” she said, glancing nervously over her shoulder before leaning forward in a conspiratorial manner, “that Theo has kept this latest resolution of his, right up through growing into an old man? I mean, how many such resolutions has Theo ever kept before?”
She had me. I bit. “What does this have to do with Cornelius?”
“It’s just that the day we met to try and summon up Gregor’s spirit, the day Theo made his rash vow?” Her eyes gleamed spitefully as she reveled in my discomfort.
“Yes?” I tried to keep impatience from my voice.
“I thought I saw . . . I could be wrong, I realize. I could be misinterpreting . . . ” She glanced over her shoulder again and leaned closer, dropping her voice. “And to tell you the truth, I had forgotten about it until speaking with you today.”
“What did you see, Logistilla?”
“Just after the ritual ended, just before Theo made his speech?” Logistilla whispered. “I saw Cornelius holding the Staff of Persuasion in front of Theo’s eyes—you know, his staff that hypnotizes and makes people obey?—I could not hear his words, but I could see the movement of his lips. He was saying something about ‘abandoning magic.’”