Night Film(138)

“I’m sorry. I don’t even know what the number is. The paper’s been here forever. No one knows where it came from. Come back tomorrow and we’ll try—”

I grabbed the phone, pressed redial, pacing, my heart pounding with every unanswered ring.

It can’t end like this, not with my daughter vulnerable to some dark hell I’d unwittingly unleashed on her. As I silently repeated this, I realized with a wave of sickened understanding that Cordova must have chanted the very same thing when he’d learned Ashley had run over the devil’s bridge.

This truth I’d been chasing, slowly it was becoming my own.

Suddenly, the ringing stopped. There was a click on the line.

I thought for a moment it had gone dead, but then I heard faint wheezing.

“Hello?” The connection was full of static. “Anyone there?”

“Who’s calling?”

The voice was a prehistoric gasp. If it was a man, woman, or creature—I had no idea.

Cleo, frowning, grabbed the phone.

“Hello?”

She cleared her throat, her eyes widening in surprise.

“Yes. This is Cleopatra at Enchantments in New York City. I hope it’s not too late to be calling. We have the grimmest situation.”

She fell silent, seemingly being reprimanded, but then she smiled at me, relieved, and hurried back to the table.

“I understand. Yes, ma’am. Thank you. If you want to check the stove I’ll wait.” Cleo paused, taking a deep breath, staring at the black figurine. After a minute, in a bland, clinical voice, she succinctly explained the situation.

“And the inverse shadow is totally misbehaving,” she added.

She fell silent, listening, her face grave.

After ten minutes or so, she put a hand over the receiver.

“Go to the bookshelf,” she whispered. “See if you can find a book called Symbols of Black Alchemy Animal and Mineral. Should be on the top shelf.” She listened for a moment, frowning. “Green cover.”

I raced to the back. It took me just a minute to find it, a thick hardback by C.T. Jaybird Fellows. I yanked it down, carrying it back to the table.

“We need to identify the animal before she can help,” Cleo whispered.

I flipped open the book, scanning the musty pages, the drawings of animals discolored, the type old-fashioned and faded.

Dragon. Heart. Liver. Deer.

“I understand.” Cleo squinted at the figurine. “Fins, a tail with a small suction on the end. Like something between a snake and a fish.”

Pig. Goat. Tiger. Worm.

“Look up leviathan,” Cleo whispered heatedly.

Owl. Pillar. Pine Tree. Leviathan.

The colored picture on the page for leviathan was nearly identical to the figurine. It had the same leering face, the distended tongue.

“That’s what it is,” announced Cleo happily into the phone, sliding the book toward herself, gazing down at the entry. “Out loud?” She cleared her throat. “ ‘The leviathan is a primordial sea serpent and one of the Dukes of Hell,’ ” she read. “ ‘Dante designated the creature the incarnation of total evil. Saint Thomas Aquinas described him as one of the Seven Deadly Sins, envy—the monstrous craving for that which you don’t have. In the Middle East, he represents chaos. In Satanism, he’s a demon of the inferno, which can be harnessed by the witch or warlock and discharged into the natural world for destructive means.’ ”

She paused, listening.

“Let me ask him.” She eyed me. “How many children did you see with this?”

“Two.”

“Did they have anything linking them? Did they go to the same school, have the same hobby, were they distantly related by blood? Anything like that?”

I couldn’t answer. My mind was spinning. Because I’d suddenly recalled Morgan Devold’s house, when his daughter, wearing that cherry-covered nightgown, had tiptoed after me down the drive. She’d been holding something in her fist, something small and black. It was this figurine.

“No,” I said. “There were three. Three children.”

“What did they have in common?”

I rubbed my eyes, trying to calm down, to think.

“They were between four and six years old. They had contact with a certain woman. The one who laid down the killing curse on our shoes. Ashley.” I’d said this, really only considering Devold’s daughter and the deaf child at Henry Street. But then the conclusion of my own words hit me: That meant Sam had encountered Ashley.

But that was impossible.

Cynthia never allowed Sam to talk to strangers. Yet she’d found me at the Reservoir. It wasn’t so vast a leap, then, that she’d found my child.

“How did they act?” Cleo asked. “Any strange behaviors? Whispering? Twitching or tics? Trancelike countenances? Any talk of death or violence?”

I couldn’t answer her. The horror of what I’d unknowingly done made me feel as if the room were caving in on me.

I’d brought the Cordovas right to Sam.

It’s a tapeworm that’s eaten its own tail. There’s no end to it. All it will do is wrap around your heart and squeeze all the blood out.

“Hello?” Cleo prompted.

Why in hell didn’t I turn away when I had the chance?