Chain of Souls (Salem VI) (14 page)

John wanted to argue, but he sensed it would do no good. "What did you mean when you said they thought the body would bring me?"

"You have the blood."

"What blood are you talking about?"

"You are John Andrews, descended from Rebecca Nurse on one side and Ann Putnam on the other. I know who you are. I know everything about you."

John stared straight ahead, not liking what he was hearing. "What's that supposed to mean, that you know everything about me?"

"We have studied you."

John felt his temper beginning to fray, but also a cold fear spreading in his stomach. "Who the hell is
we?"

"All in good time." Faust paused but only for a second. "You sensed him there, didn't you?"

"Who, Andrew Card? I sensed something, but I don't know if it was Card I sensed," John said. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Faust's head was turned toward him. The priest was studying him the way a scientist might observe a lab rat.

"It's not a sin that you sensed the body. That part of your blood talks to you as much as the other side."

Unable to concentrate on the road, John swerved again. Another driver honked. He pulled back into his lane and desperately tried to make his mind focus on driving but his brain was riveted on the fact that the DNA from the Putman side of his family meant that at least in some degree the Coven was alive and well and functioning inside him.

"You have freewill, John," the priest went on. "Nothing about your ancestry can force you to side with evil. The fact that you have not done so and yet at the same time that you have a sensitivity to the workings of the Coven makes you a powerful foe. They fear you. They fear you even more because they know what you did to the leaders of the Salem Coven."

John gripped the wheel and stared straight ahead. "So who are you and why were you waiting there in the parking lot?"

"As I said before, explaining exactly who I am will take some time. It's a complicated story. As for why I was there, I felt the same pull you felt, and since I assumed you would be drawn there just as I was, I assumed further that there might be an attempt to kidnap or kill you."

"If they wanted to kill me, why didn't they just come to my house and shoot me?"

"There is something powerful that protects your house. They would never attempt to harm you there."

John glanced at Faust. Was he talking about the spirit of Rebecca Nurse? Even though Rebecca had fallen silent and invisible since the night she'd entered his body and together they killed the leaders of the Coven, he wondered if it was possible that some aspect of Rebecca Nurse still protected the house. He wondered moreover how Faust knew so much about all of this. "They could have killed me at my office."

Faust shook his head. "The Coven has operated for over three hundred years without anyone else knowing they exist. There aren't even rumors about them, are there?"

John shook his head. Faust was right. Until he'd encountered the Coven on his own, he'd never had any inkling that such a thing could exist. He had discovered it quite by accident when he started to investigate the reasons the Boston area had so many young people who ran away from home and were never heard from again. The disappearances were a story he and Amy had just started digging into about the time Rebecca Nurse first appeared to him. Initially the sight of Rebecca's spirit made him question his sanity, and at the same time he'd had no clue that blood sacrifices by Satan worshippers could have been the cause of the disappearances.

John shook his head. Little by little the constant awareness that he was marked for death was wearing him down, making him feel like he was getting closer and closer to the end of his rope. "So if they knew I was coming, why didn't they just hide in the cellar at the House of the Seven Gables and kill me there?"

Faust nodded. "They were perhaps supposed to do just that, but the Coven makes mistakes, just like everyone else. I'm assuming those two people were late getting here."

John looked at him. "So I'm still alive only because of a mistake and a murderous priest?"

Faust pointed ahead, indicating that John should keep his eyes on the road. "Something like that," he said.

SARAH ANDREWS OPENED HER EYES AND SAW
muted sunlight coming through the curtains. She sat up, and as she did, realized the plastic handcuffs had been removed from her wrists. It was the first time they had been free since she had been brought here. Moving tentatively she swung her feet out of bed and found them free of restraints, as well.

She stood, and feeling the chill in the room, reached for the robe that lay on a chair and pulled it on before walking to the window. A recognizable heaviness in her head and limbs told her drugs were still in her system. The feeling was becoming strangely familiar, and she wondered what that meant and what the drugs were and what impact they were having.

She still retained enough self-awareness to know her reactions no longer felt normal. She had been kidnapped, and she was pretty sure she had been taken to a foreign country—England judging from the accents of the people who had brought her food and walked her to the bathroom—but unlike her first days here she no longer felt a sense of fear or panic. Instead she felt a gentle lethargy, a lack of caring much about anything.

She turned and looked at the room. It was large, had high ceilings and billowy curtains over the large windows, and was filled with lovely antiques. The floors were covered with oriental rugs, the chairs and couches upholstered in lovely English chintz. Taken all together, the setting was what she would expect to find in a perfect English country house or perhaps a luxury hotel.

When she pulled aside the gauzy curtains and gazed down from her window, she could see large formal gardens bounded by a stone wall. Along the wall itself, rose bushes sat covered with burlap against the possibility of frost damage, and in the center of the garden the perennial beds had been heavily mulched for winter. Beyond the wall lush green meadows ran to the top of a distant hill.

She could see no other houses, but when she put her head against the glass and looked out to the right she could make out the roof of what looked like a barn with a riding ring and paddock. To the left she could see a swimming pool, also covered for winter, and a cabana, and beyond it a tennis court. Wherever she was, the setting seemed completely idyllic, the kind of spot that under any normal circumstances she would have wanted to be.

She knew she was a prisoner, of course, but that realization brought no sense of fear or anxiety or anger, perhaps because she felt so delightfully unintimidated and unthreatened. Also, there seemed to be no pressure, nothing she needed to do, at least she couldn't think of anything. Her job, for years the most important thing in her life, had retreated into the background. For some reason, just as she felt no anxiety about her safety, she felt no worry about her job or about her extended absence from it. In short, she was aware of the fact that she didn't seem to be able to summon the energy to care about much of anything.

She stood looking out the window for a time, her mind empty of further thoughts. In addition to not thinking about work, she did not think about Boston, or her friends. She didn't wonder whether she'd been declared missing or whether her father and the police were searching for her, or even why people had gone to the trouble to bring her here.

After she had been standing at the window long enough to lose track of time, she heard a noise outside her room, the unmistakable
ting
as pieces of fine china knocked softly together. Then came a soft knock. "Come in," she said, her voice rough and soft from long disuse.

A second later the door opened and a maid wearing a black uniform with white apron and cuffs pushed in a cart loaded with a teakettle, a basket of rolls and breads, a covered platter of scrambled eggs and bacon, a small pitcher of orange juice, a half grapefruit, and a vase of flowers. She wheeled the cart over to a table with two chairs beside one of the windows.

"Breakfast, madam," she said.

"Thank you," Sarah answered.

The maid gave a formal nod and walked out of the room.

Sarah looked at her breakfast for several moments and finally summoned the energy to walk over and sit down at the table. She was neither hungry nor thirsty but she knew she had to eat something in order to keep up her strength. She picked up a slice of orange with her fingers and put it in her mouth.

A second later she heard another knock at her door. "May I come in?" a woman's voice said.

"Yes."

A second later Jessica Lodge put her head in the door. "Good morning, my dear."

Sarah looked at her. "Good morning." She had known Jessica Lodge for years from events at the paper. She knew Jessica owned the paper, and she knew her father had always been very fond of her. She also knew that in the last phone conversation she'd had with her father, he had hinted that Jessica had done something very wrong, but he hadn't told her what it was. In any case, she no longer cared what it might be.

"How are you feeling this morning?" Jessica asked.

"Okay, I guess."

"Good." Jessica gave her a warm smile that suggested she very much hoped it was true. "I know the past days have been very difficult for you," she went on. "I apologize for taking you the way we did and for keeping you here against your will."

"Why did you do it?" Sarah asked, trying to mobilize her intellect enough to actually give a damn.

"Because there are many things I need to teach you."

"Where are we?"

"Cornwall, England."

Sarah nodded, trying to understand how she had come to be so far from Boston with only the vaguest memory of traveling here. "What do you want to teach me?"

"Things that relate to your ancestors and your abilities, my dear."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"I know. Many things have been held back from you, things you will come to understand. Things that will change the way you look at the world."

Sarah shook her head. It was so much work to try and follow the conversation. "How will I look at the world?"

"There is a small group of us who understand the true nature of power in the world. Your heritage makes it possible for you to be one of that group, and we would like you to join us. However I need to educate you slowly and carefully because much of what I have to tell you will be very difficult to take in. It's going to contradict a lot of the things you have always thought of as true." Jessica smiled again.

Sarah tried to understand what Jessica was talking about. "You make it sound like it's pretty unusual. I'm twenty-eight years old," Sarah said, realizing she was having a hard time putting complex sentences together. Just having this simple conversation was a struggle. "I'm no child. What can be so strange you can't just tell me?"

Jessica smiled again. "I'm going to rock your world, as they say, but I'm going to do it bit by bit so I don't blow your mind." She seemed so delighted at her phrases. "Don't I sound hip?" she asked with a laugh.

Jessica pointed to Sarah's breakfast cart. "You must eat up, my dear. Then take a shower and get dressed. I'll come back upstairs to fetch you in an hour or so, and we'll go into the garden and begin your lessons. Does that sound like a good plan?"

Sarah poured some tea into her cup and took a sip. She nodded, thinking that going along with Jessica's suggestions sounded like the most splendid idea in the world.

FATHER FAUST FINISHED HIS LAST BITE OF IRISH
stew, took a bit of bread and wiped the last of the gravy from the bowl, and then dabbed his lips with a napkin. "Thank you. That was a fabulous meal. I am in your debt."

Amy smiled at him. "You saved John's life today. I think it's just about the least we can do to express our appreciation."

Faust nodded and smiled, took a sip of wine, and settled back in his chair. John thought he looked incredibly relaxed for someone who a few hours earlier had killed two people and disposed of their bodies in an airport parking lot. If Faust was a priest, as he claimed, John didn't know how an apparent lack of reflection on having taken human lives could go hand in hand with vows. He tried to think back on whether Faust had even said grace at the beginning of the meal, but he couldn't remember.