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Chapter Eleven

Hiram dawdled by the truck, to the visible annoyance of his son. It was still relatively early Saturday morning. They stood beside the Double-A, parked on the street in front of Diana Artemis’s house.

“We could try to find her phone number,” Michael suggested. “Assuming she has a telephone.”

“I’m being silly, aren’t I?” Hiram felt embarrassed and nervous. He wanted to see the widow again, and desperately. What might this be doing to his charms?

Hiram stuck his hand in his pocket and gripped his heliotropius. “Michael, tell me a lie.”

Michael looked at him skeptically. “I love Moab with all my heart and soul.”

The bloodstone remained cool, unmoved. “Another one.”

“I’m certain that Jimmy Udall is in Greece, on the island of Mykonos, enjoying the sun.”

Again, his bloodstone did nothing. Hiram removed it from his pocket. He handed the heliotropius to Michael. “Son, I’m not concerned about you lying to me about seeing that movie in Lehi.”

Michael waited and squinted. “What am I supposed to feel?”

“It’s like a pinch.” Hiram frowned. “It’s not working.”

“Right.” Michael shook his head. “Your magic rock isn’t pinching me.” His son caught himself. “Okay, that came out a little sharper than I intended. So, what’s the problem?”

“I had that big meal yesterday, that steak, which was a luxury I didn’t need. It could be that.” Hiram waited for his son to react to the lie. “Feel anything?”

Michael wrinkled his nose. “Not a thing. Sorry, Pap. Am I letting you down?”

“It’s probably fine.” Hiram could hardly admit to himself what he was feeling, and he certainly didn’t want to discuss it. “Let’s go talk to the widow. If it was Sunday, she might be out. She said she was Catholic, right? And I think maybe she has a slight French accent.”

“I thought I heard one.” Michael passed the heliotropius back to Hiram, who stuck it in his pocket. This time, his son went first, down the path beside the house.

Hiram knew a French accent when he heard one. He and Yas Yazzie had avoided the red lights and ladies of the evening during their time overseas. Other doughboys had fallen into infidelity, but not them.

But there had been a woman, a French woman, and like Diana, she had been a young widow. The Kaiser’s war machine made widows and orphans; it created despair and fear. For that matter, the English and the French and the Americans had created widows and orphans right back.

Hiram stopped walking. He smelled perfume, Monique’s perfume, and her shy smiles. Such pretty dark hair, like Diana’s, it had fallen in ringlets down her pale face, smudged with dirt. Wars were dusty, muddy, bloody things, and they darkened faces as well as souls.

Monique had been with them, those last mad days, when they’d raced through the trenches, untangled themselves from the barbed wire, and smelled the gas and the corpses. Through that hellscape, she’d been with them, until the very end. She’d wept over Yas’s body, in the burned-out church, ancient enough itself, though the chambers below the basement were far older, pre-dating Rome.

Hiram hadn’t cried. It was unmanly to cry, especially in front of a woman. He had done so later, when he was alone. Monique had looked at him with tears tracking down the dirt on her face.

He hadn’t lost himself completely to her beauty, but he had certainly noticed it.

“Pap?” His son’s voice came from a great distance.

Hiram smelled the spicy smell, garlic or mustard, fried in sugar. Maybe, he was remembering Monique cooking for them, a small piece of beef, going bad, in onions and butter.

Michael caught him before he fell, and Hiram didn’t—quite—lose consciousness.

He leaned back against the fence.

A big woman in a house coat and big slippers—Hausschuhe, that was the German word—appeared, coming around the front of the house. She had her hair in curls, covered, like Elmina had worn hers.

Hiram found a verse of Matthew running through his head. And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.

“You, sir, are you okay?” the woman in the Hausschuhe asked.

Another voice answered. “Yes, Edna, this is Hiram Woolley and his son. They’ve come to see me.”

“Easy, Pap,” Michael said.

Hiram sank until he sat on the gravel, feeling the rough rock under his palms. He clung to his consciousness. He couldn’t pass out in front of Diana.

“What is the trouble with him?” Edna asked from her back steps.

“Just a little faint,” Diana answered. “He fasts too much.”

Edna laughed. “A man should respect his own appetite. Especially if he’s a working man.”

Hiram opened his eyes. Diana crouched in front of him, and her beauty hurt. Why had she never re-married? Why hadn’t Hiram? Why hadn’t he found a nice Lehi woman to take care of him? No, he’d have taken care of her, and done a better job of it than his father ever had.

Hiram would keep her safe from sickness and disease. He’d failed with his mother, he’d failed with his wife, but he wouldn’t fail Diana.

“Sorry.” He blinked. “I’m a little light-headed.”

“I should have told you to wear this against your skin.” Diana drew near, and he felt the heat from her body, a soft hand on his head, and then she pushed the silver cross from his breast pocket into his hand. He hadn’t felt her grab it. “Say your charm, Hiram. You know, your prayer. Your faith is strong.”

Embarrassment caught Hiram for a moment, but then he remembered she was a cunning woman. He slurred his charm. “I conjure me by the sun and the moon, and by the gospel of this day delivered to Rupert, Giles, Cornelius, and John, that I rise and fall no more.”

He felt better. He couldn’t smell the spice and the sweetness, only the soft fragrance of the woman in front of him. Michael fanned him with his own hat.

Out of habit, and not a little vanity, Hiram smoothed what was left of his hair.

Edna had come down as well and she stood over them. “Well, his color is coming back.”

“In the summertime, red is better than white,” Michael said. “In the winter, white is his natural shade. How are you feeling, Pap?”

He looked into Diana’s pretty green eyes. “We apologize if you don’t see clients on Saturday. We should have called.”

“And look, she’s fixed you up, just like that,” the woman said. “Diana is a godsend. She cleared up my arthritis, so I can quilt again. ‘God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform; He plants His footsteps in the sea and rides upon the storm.’”

Hiram climbed to his feet. “Well, Mrs. Artemis, it seems the powers of Uranus were not quite enough for me. Though I didn’t pass out.”

“I do have something else that might help,” Diana said.

Edna reached out a hand, perhaps to touch him, and then withdrew it. “I’ll put some tea on. Tea will fix anything. Or would you prefer coffee?”

“I’d like some water,” Hiram took his hat from Michael and held it. “I’m sorry I caused you any concern, Mrs. Artemis.”

“Let’s get you into my house,” she said. “It’s the best time of day, cool, but not too cold. This desert does like to change its temperatures.”

Michael found a joke. “The weather in Utah changes more often than some of my friends change their underwear.”

Edna wailed laughter. Diana smirked.

Hiram shook his head. “Michael.”

“We know about underwear and boys,” Edna said. “I raised three sons and a husband.” She walked back up her steps and into her house.

Hiram kept a grip on his son as they walked down the path and into Diana’s cottage at the back of the yard. Once in the parlor, he took his place on the couch. His pride was hurt, and he had to let that go.

Or his craft might not work again.

Though his charm against falling sickness had worked. Or had that, after all, been the Uranus cross?

“I won’t apologize again,” Hiram said, “though I want to.”

“We have greater concerns than that.” Diana sat in a chair, while Michael took up his stool. “I heard about Lloyd Preece.”

“Already?” Shock was evident in Michael’s voice.

“Small town,” Hiram murmured.

“And when a pillar in a small town is removed, everything tilts immediately.” Diana sighed.

“Mrs. Artemis…” Michael started.

She held up a hand. “Diana. Please. And if you refer to me as the widow Artemis, you’ll break my heart, young man.”

Michael colored. “Never that.”

Hiram’s eyes went to Diana’s legs. She wasn’t wearing stockings, and he saw one shapely leg, and one made of wood, falling to a simple black shoe. The craftsmanship was excellent, smooth as a natural limb, and an excellent match to her flesh leg. He wondered how far that wood went up to meet flesh.

He tried to swallow, but his mouth had become a desert. Her dress was blue, this one with flowers that appeared to be lilacs.

He shifted his gaze to her face with some effort. This dress plunged in an uncomfortable way. “We have questions about Lloyd’s knife.”

“Can I get a piece of paper?” Michael asked. “I can sketch what I saw.”

Diana provided him with a notebook. Michael had to pass over many pages to get to a blank sheet. He drew a rough picture of the weapon. “This isn’t Lloyd’s knife, though. It’s Gudmund Gudmundson’s. We ran into him at the sheriff’s office.”

“I’m familiar with Gudmund’s knife,” Diana said. “It was created to harness the powers of Jupiter.”

“Did you make the knife for him?” Michael asked. “Or inscribe the signs?”

“No.” She pointed at one of the signs, a circle quartered by a cross, with smaller circles at the tip of each arm of the cross. “This means Jupiter.”

“I don’t remember that one from reading my horoscope in the newspaper.” Michael grinned, maybe to show he didn’t really read his horoscope in the newspaper, or maybe to show there was a limit to how seriously he was taking this whole conversation.

“First of all,” Diana said, “Jupiter isn’t one of the twelve houses of the Zodiac, so you wouldn’t see it in the newspaper, in any case. But secondly, this is not the sort of symbol you see in the newspaper. This is called the ‘Seal’ or ‘Character’ of Jupiter, and it’s only used in serious magic.”

“Not for reading the future?” Michael’s grin didn’t falter.

“Not for trying to decipher in which way the stars and planets will influence the future,” Diana said slowly. “Instead, a knife such as this is used to draw the power of the stars and planets to the wielder’s aid.”

“To what end?” Hiram asked.

“To the ends of Jupiter,” she said. “Power and prosperity.”

“It hasn’t worked that well for Gudmundson, then,” Michael said. “He’s a handyman, while his buddy Lloyd Preece got rich. Maybe the bishop’s dagger is broken.”

“Maybe,” Hiram demurred. “What’s the other sign?”

“This one, you might see in a newspaper.” The image was of two parallel, jagged lines. “This is the symbol of the sign Aquarius. This knife was crafted to channel the power of Jupiter to the benefit of its wielder, a person born when Jupiter was in the constellation Aquarius.”

“When would that have been?” Michael asked.

Diana leaned back. Hiram had a hard time listening to her words, her face was so interesting. “Jupiter travels around the ecliptic at the rate of approximately one sign per year, not counting periods when it is retrograde. Without consulting an ephemeris…I think in about 1914, and before that, 1902.”

“Gudmundson could be thirty-three,” Michael said. “That all seems to fit. He says he got it in Salt Lake, along with another one, that Lloyd carried. They were up there together. Found them in a curio shop.”

“It could be,” Diana said. “I could consult with the spirits.”

A knock, and Edna came in, carrying a tray, with a tall glass of water and a complete tea service, including a little kettle. She set it on the table. “Here you go, my friends. I’ll be in the house if you need me.”

“Thank you, Edna.”

The woman retreated.

Diana stood and closed the drapes. Only a dim light was left, until she took three candles, marked with more astrological symbols. “Michael, could you move the tray? There’s a table near the door. We’ll get to the refreshments in a minute.”

Michael took care of the water and the tea.

Diana left and returned with a glass orb and a sterling silver stand, with more signs carved into the metal. She placed the crystal ball on the table and adjusted the candles.

Hiram tried to ignore the bad feeling in his belly.

Michael’s eyes were bright, expectant.

Hiram prayed silently for protection, touching his chi-rho medallion. But would the Lord Divine provide him shelter in his current state?

Diana closed her eyes and put her hands over the clear crystal of the ball. The candles were still for a moment, and then they flickered. “Spirits. From the east, from the west, from the north, to the south. Show me the truth of Lloyd Preece’s murder.”

The drapes, covering the window, stirred. Was that wind? Or had souls come to them in the room?

Hiram closed his eyes. He didn’t want to see anything in that crystal ball, and he didn’t want any spirit to fix its unseen gaze on him or his son.

“I see something,” Michael whispered. “In the orb. The candle flames, maybe, or a face. I can’t…I can’t tell.”

Diana let out a breath. “Two knives, two men, two good men, in a barren land. Lloyd, is that you?”

Hiram prayed Lloyd wasn’t there, that he’d found peace in the arms of God. But little Jimmy Udall hadn’t found peace. Would Lloyd?

“Treasures,” Diana murmured. “Treasures and greed, evil in the hearts of men.”

Hiram couldn’t help it; he opened his eyes. Two candles had gone out and their wicks smoked, perfuming the room with a sweet, waxy smell. He’d rather just smell Diana.

A fly buzzed through the room. The name of the demon he’d trapped in the caverns of the Kimball Mine came to his mind unbidden. He didn’t let it form in his head; names were powerful things.

The last candle went out. Diana sat back in her chair. “Well, my friends, the spirits didn’t tell me anything, unfortunately. There is greed involved, but that doesn’t require much imagination. It wasn’t a crime of passion that took Lloyd from us.”

“Money is a better motivation, I guess,” Michael said. “Though you said something, Mrs. Artemis. Sorry, but Diana isn’t coming out of my mouth too easily. You said Jupiter was in Aquarius. I don’t get how a planet can go through a constellation, when the constellations are much, much farther away. And…it spends a year in a constellation? And what’s the ecliptic?”

Diana laughed, stood, and opened the drapes. She swept her crystal ball up, took it back to her bedroom, came back, and retrieved the candles. The beaded curtains clicked each time she passed. Once her things were put away, she set the tea service back on the round table. “I do have a book you could borrow, Michael. You have to promise to give it back. Losing even one volume from my little library would be a sorrow I couldn’t bear. And remember, I’ve buried a husband.”

“Thank you,” Michael said.

Diana snapped her fingers. “I almost forgot. Do wear the cross against your skin, Hiram, but I have something else for your falling sickness. I know you eschew tea, but I have a special blend of herbs—chamomile, passionflower, and valerian root—which should help you. I will give them to you gratis, since the Uranus cross wasn’t as effective as we hoped.”

She rummaged around in her room and gave him a small, fragrant mesh bag. “Steep this three times in hot water. Adding your falling sickness prayer wouldn’t be a bad idea. Drink it in the morning. I’ll continue to seek guidance from the spirit world.”

They chatted more, drank water and tea, and then said their goodbyes.

Hiram and Michael walked back to the truck, both quiet. They stood under the big cottonwood in Edna’s front lawn while Hiram took a length of twine from his toolbox and threaded it through the Uranus cross, knotting the string and then putting the cross over his head, under his shirt, against his skin. The shade was welcome protection against the sun already heating up the air.

“I really did see something in the crystal ball.” Michael held the borrowed book against his side. “And I have to admit, when you told me you were a cunning man, I figured you’d do stuff like what we just did.”

Hiram thought for a long time. “That felt like a parlor trick, Michael. I don’t think Diana is a witch, but she might be a bit too modern for me.” But was the widow looking into a crystal ball really any different from Hiram looking into a peepstone?

“She did seem to understand the whole Jupiter knife thing.”

Hiram nodded. “But I don’t see any reason why the knives matter. I think someone just killed Lloyd for some perfectly ordinary reason, and used his own knife to do it, because that was the weapon at hand.”

Michael laughed. “Well, if you married her, I’m not sure I could call her Mother. If Freud is right, I’d have quite an issue there.”

“I’ve heard strange things about Freud.” Hiram decided not to ask for more details. “Let’s get something to eat. And some hot water. I’d like to try the tea.”


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