In Obscura

In Obscura

By Kay Reindl

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2011 © Kay Reindl

Cover Copyright 2011 © Kay Reindl

Smashwords edition, license notes:

This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

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CHAPTER ONE

We are fumbling in the dark here, among strange mysteries, but one cannot help wondering whether it might have been among the spiritually dissatisfied in England, who perhaps heard in Bruno’s ‘Egyptian’ message some hint of relief, that the strains of the Magic Flute were first breathed upon the air.

"Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition," Dame Frances Amelia Yates (1899-1981)

When the hushed whispers came, they sounded green.

Madeleine squeezed her eyes shut and covered her ears. The sounds brushed against her skin like leaves. Panicked, she opened her eyes.

The room had been her home for many months. It was easy to let her gaze sweep across these things she knew so well and she focused on the items, slowing down her breath and her sight.

The rickety wooden stool, the seat burnished from use. A flat rusty nail stuck out at an angle from one leg, evidence of Pierre’s misguided attempt to repair it.

The rope of red wool that hung over the door. The only bright spot of color in the room, it moved over her like the round waves of the ocean. The rough wool held in place the pungent herbs – bay leaves and aloe – that protected this place. Even the herbs had felt the effects of the siege and were limp and brown.

And the multi-colored blanket, given to her when they found out who she was. They’d created it by hand, on the time-worn loom. The women did this in secrecy, away from their husbands. Their job was to spin the yarn but they saw the power of the loom, and only they could harness it.

She let her eyes roam across the blanket’s surface, seeing the woven seams, the colors and fabrics placed so deliberately together by the women who believed in her. But even the beauty and precision of the blanket couldn’t shut out her other sense. She saw Pierre’s muffled gasp and tasted the knife as it slid into his belly. She fought the tears as the purple of his death washed over her. She remembered him smiling crookedly, reassuring her even though she smelled how scared he was.

She felt herself sliding back into the seam of a better time, her father’s arms around her waist as he lifted her up in the air. She saw the small farm, the black pony her father had bought her as a surprise.

The tears slid from beneath her closed eyelids as the pain of her separation from her father rose in her, choking her, just as horrific now as it was all that time ago.

The hollow sound of the old bell jerked her back into the present. Jacques rang it furiously, as if he was trying to send the sound up to God. As if even God could help them now. Every chime sent wavy lines like snakes through her body. She ignored the shivery sensation as she shoved her meager belongings into the battered valise. It would be time to go soon. She tasted it.

The footsteps sounded black as they clumped up the stairs. They were coming. She needed to hurry. From beneath her thin mattress of straw she pulled the Book, wincing as the binding cocked. She wrapped it in chamois and slid it into the valise.

The intruders paused outside her door. She stood, not breathing, the valise clutched to her chest, seeing her frightened, shallow breath, purple in the frigid air. When the men murmured, all she could hear was needles and silk.

The hopelessness that threatened to engulf her was a pinpoint of pale blue, growing wider each second, threatening to blind her if she didn’t move.

Feet shuffling almost soundlessly across the dusty floor, she edged towards the window, shoving aside the arras, once a rusty brown but now shot through with charcoal. Acrid tongues of smoke climbed through the open window but she didn’t cough; the smoke sounded like mice. The intruders outside her door were all but forgotten as she stared down into the end of the world.

She was so well protected that she hadn’t known that the intruders had come in wave after wave, bringing deadly trebuchets to shell the castle.

She hadn’t heard the knights on their sturdy horses as they overwhelmed her defenders, men and women who gave up everything to protect her.

To protect her Book, she amended, trying to think through her fear. It was for what she wrote, and how she wrote it. She had believed that the intruders thought they were coming for treasure. But those conferring outside her doorway had been the only green she’d heard. Their green carried a cast of knowledge. They knew about her Book. She closed her eyes. She was trapped here until the men moved on and Jacques could come and get her out. That moment, when she could have left, was gone now. Her hands shook, the valise falling to the floor with a thump. The colors swirled in their mad way and she felt the familiar stab of fear. How would she ever corral the colors? How would they allow themselves to be controlled by someone as meager as she?

She swayed with the rhythm of the colors, screamed in her mind to God. But God couldn’t control the colors any more than she could. Even God felt hopeless in the midst of their power. So she gave herself up to them, as if she’d just discovered that was the key.

Because each time, she had to discover this anew. It always took a little piece of her and a little piece of God.

The colors whipped wildly around her and through her and above her, faster and faster until they compressed into the blackest pinprick of night, a wildly gesticulating, undulating spark that harnessed the power of the colors. And then suddenly, she was in control. She became a part of the universe and the black point obeyed her.

The men moved off, back down the stairs, back the way they came. They wouldn’t remember going. They would say the castle had been deserted. She opened her eyes, her vision blurry, her stomach queasy, wanting to cry because of what this would cost her.

Then she felt soothing shapes move over her body and knew Jacques was here. With a trembling hand, she picked up her valise and hesitated, pulling out the Book. As it always did, it opened to the last blank page. As she watched, the blank white page dissolved into the most recent incarnation of the colors. She bit her lip, knowing she had to go but needing to write. She closed the Book again. She’d write later. She could just give the Book to Jacques. It was that they were after. She’d give it to him, he’d give it to the Order, and she could go back home. Couldn’t she? She sank down onto the thin mattress, choking back the sobs, knowing that the Book wasn’t finished and might never be. And that it would be her failing. The door opened. Jacques, his handsome, smooth face smeared with soot and blood, held a sword in one hand and stretched the other hand towards her. He took a step into the room.

Chere? His voice was harsh from battle.

She squared her shoulders and shoved the Book back into the valise. She had to be strong now. She knew that.

Jacques smiled, crossing the room in two steps to put his arms around her, to comfort her. She wrapped her arms around his waist, burying her face in the rough fabric of his tunic, drawing strength from him. She felt a wave of love for this selfless man who had protected her physically and loved her like a daughter. And she felt foolish contemplating running back home. She owed it to them to finish the Book. They moved quickly down the narrow, winding staircase. Thick smoke clogged the stairwell and she coughed, clutching the valise protectively.

They’re burning the books, she said in a hushed voice.

When Jacques glanced at her, she said, The fire from the books is sharper.

Jacques helped her down the last few steps. The stone floor was hot underfoot, as if the castle were burning from the ground up.

We had to give them something, he said in answer. She felt that cold wave of fear glide over her again. She was terrified of leaving the castle but Jacques pulled her along, not giving her a moment to consider this fortress that had been her home and had saved her life.

The cold wind whipped around them, swirling like the colors. The smoke turned the night skies gray and as ash fell she could see, down below, the fires and the fighting. Hatefully, the smoke sounded like singing.

She could see the world from up here. It was black and scorched and screaming in pain. The world was over. The Book didn’t matter. There would be no world to preserve. The faithful would die.

She felt the valise slip from her fingers. Jacques grabbed it and knelt down, taking her shoulders in his big rough hands. His face was a grim mask.

Chere, you are the first and the last. The beginning and the end. Do you understand?

She cried in big gulping sobs, her tears whipped away by the wind. She fumbled for the valise, tearing it open, shoving the Book at Jacques. Please... I can’t...

Jacques didn’t take the Book and she let it fall to the sodden ground, splayed open face-first.

Jacques shook her, angry. The book exists because of you. It can’t continue to exist without you.

She looked into his eyes to see the hurt and the disappointment but also the fear and the understanding. She drew a shuddering breath and he released her. She knelt down and gathered up the Book, smoothing its pages back into place, wrapping it again and putting it into the valise. The Book was all the good and all the bad, all that she didn’t want to remember and all that she’d die if she forgot. She loved it, she hated it, and she needed it. The moment had passed. She marveled that, in the midst of the siege, he’d allowed her doubt to exist so that she could bind it up again and put it away.

As if reading her mind, he stood.

We go down the other way, north – he pointed to distant mountain peaks, shrouded in fog. There are caves for us to hide in and safety once we’re over the mountain. We’ll move quickly and the weather will turn worse. You’ll be very tired, chere, but we have to go as fast as we can.

As he took her hand, she looked back once again, surveying her ruined world through the crenellations of a castle that would soon be overrun and burned. She allowed Jacques to lead her down the steep hillside, the valise thumping against her hip.

The sounds of battle began to fade. She felt the impossibly black pinprick of power swoop down on her, growing larger and larger until it enveloped her and Jacques, allowing them to slip into the night. Safe.

Magnus Wynter leaned back in his smooth leather chair, perusing the list that had been delivered: three pages, double-spaced. Over one hundred names. It was a daunting list until Wynter reminded himself that all he had to do was wait until dusk had fallen and hand the list to Shelley.

Wynter put the list down, deliberately not concentrating on the names. Not wanting to choose, because it wouldn’t mean anything. He sat motionless, eyes on the slim black second hand of the clock as it moved towards sundown. As soon as the hand reached twelve, Wynter stood. He folded the papers and touched the intercom button on the desk.

Is she ready?

Just now, Sir, came the muted response.

Wynter nodded, though the movement was lost on the person on the other end. He released the intercom button. His hand shook. Just once.

He opened the back door and went down the narrow stairs, into a bunker. It was harshly lit, utilitarian, not polished and smooth. Shelley hadn’t cared about the décor, only that she be underneath what she called the city madness.

Wynter approached the door at the end of the hall. A Body-By-Jake guard, dressed casually except for the Sig at his hip, nodded crisply and pulled the door open. Wynter mentally squared his shoulders and entered.

Shelley sat at the black desk, tapping on a MacBook Pro. Shelley was compensated in state-of-the-art personal electronics. Anytime a new model came out, anytime there was a new processor, Shelley had to have it. Wynter hoped the technology industry could keep up with Shelley’s demands. Otherwise, she would become unhappy. And nobody who had ever seen her unhappy wanted to see that again.

Shelley turned to look at him. If Wynter didn’t know better, he’d think that Shelley was a highly functional executive. She certainly dressed like it, in dark tailored business suits. She was thin and understandably pale, given where she spent her days. Everything about her was always in place. Her dark hair was always up and her horn-rimmed glasses made her look (and feel, she said) like she was Joan Crawford’s secretary at a big publishing house in some romantic Fifties comedy. Shelley claimed that the look helped with her work but since she dealt only with Wynter and never left the bunker except to go home, Wynter didn’t believe it. And it wasn’t as if Shelley needed to be more intimidating.

Good e-mail? Wynter asked. Shelley was the only person Wynter would make small talk with.

Shelley turned and shrugged. Twitter fight. Stupid people.

Wynter nodded as if he understood. He sat and handed her the folded papers. Shelley unfolded it and perused the names. When she squinted through her glasses at Wynter, she was unhappy. Wynter was taken aback momentarily, until he forced himself to remember that Shelley was always unhappy when he handed her a list.

Whatever I get is going to be rough.

Do your best, Shelley, he said, neutral.

I always do my best. But this isn’t an accurate science, Magnus.

Wynter wanted to strangle her, but he had to handle her carefully. The sun had just gone down. Maybe he should have given her a few more minutes. But if he’d done that, she wouldn’t be as sharp. He would put up with the anger if it got results.

Shelley carefully smoothed each piece of paper and set them on the desk, one by one. She pulled her well-worn legal pad from her desk, uncapped her Mont Blanc. Shelley liked really nice pens, too.

The light? Wynter asked.

She shook her head. Leave it on.

Wynter’s skin prickled at the closeness and the intensity as he felt the atmosphere shrink around him, enclosing him and Shelley.

He heard rather than saw her writing, the scrape of the expensive pen moving rapidly across the rough paper. Shelley’s other hand moved down the list, touching each name.

Shelley closed her eyes and Wynter heard the familiar ping ping ping, the tinnitus that accompanied Shelley’s magic. He tried popping his eardrums, regretting that he’d forgotten the chewing gum. The pressure grew, the pings got louder, and Shelley’s pen flew across the paper.

Just when he was certain he couldn’t stand it anymore, Shelley slumped back in her chair, spent. The pinging stopped and Wynter’s ears popped. He put his head down to recover. When he looked up, Shelley was staring blankly at the legal pad.

Shelley?

I got twelve pages, she said.

Twelve pages in what felt like thirty seconds.

There’s a lot out there, Magnus. She was worried. Shit’s flying around, all unsettled. What’s going on?

Wynter stood, came over to her. I don’t know. I’m hoping this will help us find out.

He carefully took the legal pad from her limp hand and skimmed the hastily scrawled pages. He saw snatches of sentences, paragraphs, quotes, cartoons. This time, Shelley saw the names on the list as pictures. Some were meticulously sketched, others hastily scrawled. She saw animals, people, airplanes and constellations. Wynter would have to translate the pictures back into names before he could begin. It would take him forever to put it all together.

Shelley looked at him, knowing this. Her expression was apologetic.

Don’t worry, Shelley. I’ll figure it out, he said, suddenly mindful of how much this took out of her.

I thought I’d be able to see more, she replied.

Once enveloped in her magic, Shelley always thought she could see more. Wynter had had only a taste, compared to Shelley, of that world. And he’d felt invincible. He could only imagine how she felt when she was in the well, in the center, commanding the threads of the universe.

As he turned the last page, he saw it.

In the midst of all the Mont Blanc’s scrawl was a perfectly rendered castle. The execution was meticulous, the detail that of a Dore engraving.

However, what made the castle stand out wasn’t just the detail. It was that the castle, amidst the lamp-black squiggles, was green.

Wynter felt his skin crawl. He hadn’t seen this in centuries. It was so ancient he’d forced himself to forget, even though it was why he was doing all of this.

Shelley, what about this green castle? he asked.

She glanced at it, as if she’d never seen it before. I don’t know... I just saw this swirling black thing, and that came out.

What does it mean? Whose name?

Shelley looked back at the list, then closed her eyes as her finger trailed down the names. Shelley’s finger stopped and she opened her eyes.

Jordan Cole. But I don’t see –

You tasted green, Shelley, he said quietly.

Shelley set down the Mont Blanc and looked at her index finger. It was stained green.

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CHAPTER TWO

I could be a licensed private investigator in six weeks.

Jordan Cole tried to ignore Chet Somerville and the fact that, once again, he was surfing Craigslist instead of working. She was in the data entry zone. Her fingers flew across the keyboard as she entered the words and numbers that meant nothing to her. It was the best kind of automatic pilot.

The wall creaked and she heard the sound of breaking plastic. Jordan made a mistake and had to backspace in Excel.

She turned. Chet was draped over her cubicle wall.

You’re breaking my cube, she said.

He straightened up. Sorry. So what do you think?

Jordan realized he wasn’t going to let her go back to her data entry. He was bored, and he was on Ritalin. Or was it Concerta? She couldn’t remember. Which was ironic, because of Chet’s attention deficit disorder. That meant he had to bother her about every five seconds. He took a lot of breaks and drank a lot of coffee. Chet was also the thinnest live person she had ever seen. Hell, if the drugs worked that well, maybe she should get in on that action.

Unfortunately for Jordan, she hadn’t had the chance to scope out her cube neighbors before she took the job five years ago. She loved being in her own head, working for four hours, taking lunch, and then working for four more hours. Lather, rinse, repeat. She’d gotten used to it, and she hated to have it interrupted.

She had decorated her cube with what she called her talismans, and she looked at them now, as Chet blathered on. The vintage Flying Nun figure. A multi-colored yarn God’s eye she’d made when she was eight. Nick Nolte’s mug-shot. The small blue and yellow lava lamp. A LOLCat she’d printed out from the Internet. The cat’s large gray eyes stared into the camera and superimposed on the photo, the cat was saying, I can haz Cthulhu? A yellow Elvis Presley envelope, with the King’s photo, and a message: He touched my life, too.

As Jordan surveyed her kitsch kingdom, she wondered, not for the first time, if her whole ‘ironic distance’ thing was too much. Maybe she needed one thing that was actually sincere.

So. What do you think? Should I give private investigation a shot?

Chet wasn’t giving up.

Because Jordan worked in the center of the building, she had to look at the clock, and not out a window, to check the time. The enormous white industrial clock, with its uninspiring black hands, claimed the time was five fifty-five. She saved her work and picked up her bag. Chet had robbed her of five minutes of Zen.

Yeah, Chet. Give it a shot.

Hey, we still got five minutes. You’re leaving?

I’ve got a workshop. Jordan winced when she saw Chet’s eyes light up. She’d broken the cardinal rule. She’d shared. She had managed to avoid going to lunch with Chet and the rest of the data entry gang for as long as she’d been here. She would take her book of the week and her iPod, crank up The Jam, and read for an hour. They’d learned not to bother her. But Chet seemed to have taken it as his personal mission to get to know her. And now she’d given him information. Stupid, stupid her.

Gosh, so you wanna be an actress then? Chet asked. Jordan slung her bag over her shoulder.

No, I want to be the next David Mamet, she lied. Chet nodded like he knew who David Mamet was.

David Mamet. Right. Wow, huh? And here I thought you wanted to work data entry your whole life.

You’ve only got four minutes left, Chet. Finish your quota today?

That was mean, but it had turned into that kind of day.

Just about, Chet said. It’s what he always said and every week there he was, in Riva’s office, with his myriad reasons for why he hadn’t met his quota. Luckily for Chet, everybody else in the department made up for him.

Just as she swept by his desk... So, you wanna go out for coffee sometime?

Jordan pretended to be looking for her cellphone. Coffee? Why didn’t he just say So, you wanna sleep together sometime? She pretended she hadn’t heard him and made it to the elevator, grabbing the door before it closed.

Jordan leaned against the back of the elevator, spent. The week had been exhausting so far. She’d heard a rumor (Chet had told her) that the department head, Riva Hanley, was looking to promote someone to data supervisor and that she, Jordan, was on Riva’s short list.

But Jordan didn’t want to be on Riva’s short list. She liked her space. She liked the automatic work her fingers and her brain did. She didn’t want to have to deal with people, give them orders, encourage or inspire them.

She’d already gotten three other job offers this year, from different departments. All the jobs were on the executive track. They paid far better than her lowly data entry job. There were better benefits, and the opportunity to actually make something of herself and grow towards a career.

But that was Francie talking. Jordan’s sister was all about upward mobility. She thought it would solve all Jordan’s problems, which Jordan found hilarious. First of all, she liked her job. And secondly, she didn’t have any problems that needed solving. She liked her problems. They were hers, and she got to deal with them however she wanted.

This job, combined with the money from her dad, made for a fairly comfortable, if undemanding, life. And since she was quick and accurate, she never had to stay past six to finish up her work. This gave her time to take workshops.

The elevator dinged and stopped on the busiest floor, Legal. As industrial and corporate as Jordan’s floor was, Legal was worse. It was as if the entire floor had been dunked in a