Summoning the Night (Arcadia Bell #2)(51)

Lon glanced at his watch. “Not eleven yet.”

I knocked three times in quick succession. A mini caduceus and a piece of red ochre chalk were both stashed in my jacket pocket. Inside Lon’s was his loaded short-barreled Lupara. I could see the outline bulging through the worn denim. So could everyone else if they took a second look—which was the point, Lon said.

After a few moments, a metal square opened in the center of the door, revealing a grimy security window and a pasty face peering through slender iron bars.

“Yes?” A tinny voice floated through a small old speaker beneath the window.

“We’re here for the service,” Lon replied.

The face leaned closer to the window. Eyes roamed over Lon’s f*ck-you countenance, then flicked to my skunk-striped hair and tight jeans. That must have been enough to persuade him that we weren’t officials from an esoteric organization coming to bust them, because we were let inside, no questions asked.

A small foyer was crowded with a motley assortment of templegoers. Goth kids mingled with old-money elderly Californians dressed in expensive cruise wear. All of them were speaking in hushed library voices, and most of them were Earthbound. Everyone looked up when we stepped inside. Cigarette smoke mingled with a cloying incense that was drifting in from the entrance to the main temple. The rain outside was churning it all into a foul-smelling stew.

We stood frozen in place for a moment, wondering what to do next. The man who’d let us inside tapped my shoulder, looking slightly oddball in a plaid dinner jacket and mismatched bow tie, with deep frown lines etched into his face and loose chicken-wattle skin drooping below his chin. He asked us if it was our first time attending. After we confirmed that it was, he instructed us to take seats inside.

We parted a beaded curtain and entered the main temple area. It was surprisingly spacious inside . . . wood floors, high walls lined with built-in bookshelves—the old school library, likely. The windows had been blacked out with thick coats of paint.

Mismatched furniture filled the center of the room. A collection of yard-sale loveseats, patio furniture, and armchairs that had seen better days were set in three rows facing the opposite wall. Lon and I claimed a stained love seat at the end of the back row.

Two sets of stairs hugged the front wall, both leading to separate loft areas. Between the stairs, a large marble sculpture stood—a winged, naked man with the head of a lion and a snake winding around the length of his body. Zodiac signs were carved into his skin. He held a set of keys in his hand.

“Leontocephalous?” Lon whispered, nodding toward the sculpture. I nodded in confirmation. An obscure Roman god associated with the Mithras mysteries. His keys were thought to open doors to other planes, Æthyric and otherwise. Two lighted metal torches were set into wall holders on either side of him.

The mood of the room was reverent and quiet, cut with a thin whisper of impending danger. You could see it in the way people held themselves, formal and wary, their eyes darting defensively as if they were hunters in the wild expecting to be attacked by a pack of wolves at any moment.

I grew up in an esoteric organization, so I had plenty of experience attending similar ceremonial functions. But they were never held in places as shabby and depressing as this. I thought about those local superlice outbreaks and found myself scratching under my clothes before I realized what I was doing.

Right before eleven, the remainder of the congregation filed inside and occupied the remaining seats. Someone dimmed the lights. Two altar girls lit torches on either side of the room. They wore long, red pioneer dresses, and their hair was braided and pinned to their heads. They could’ve been satanic stand-ins for the girls on Little House on the Prairie.

“If anything goes wrong, you banish it, you hear?” Lon whispered.

“Nothing’s going to happen,” I assured him. The Silent Temple put on this little freak show every week. Hopefully their casualty rate was low. “Wait until the ceremony’s over before you go shooting a hole in the ceiling,” I suggested, sneaking a quick scratch under my sleeve. Lice made me think of roaches, and that made me think of the cannery. I shuddered.

Epic, dark opera boomed over speakers near the altar. From Wagner’s Ring cycle. I was pretty sure that was the equivalent of playing Eye of the Tiger at a wrestling match. The altar girls finished with their task and stood sentinel at the bottom of each set of stairs, their handheld torches held above their heads.

Two figures descended, one from either staircase. The first was a wiry boy, maybe early twenties. He wore a black T-shirt and matching pants, and had one too many pointy facial piercings. His booming voice didn’t match his thin body as he announced the second figure descending the second set of stairs—

Frater Merrin.

“I’ll be damned,” Lon mumbled, tensing up as the man greeted the congregation. Guess Frater Merrin really was his old Frater Karras. Ten points for Jupe’s not so useless horror movie trivia.

The magician looked to be in his sixties. He was extremely short, balding like a monk, and dressed in standard gray ritual robes, with a hood lying against his back and zipper at his throat. Bare toes peeked out below the hem. Dark, pouchy circles gathered under mismatched eyes that swept across the congregation. He nodded occasionally at those who waved or called out to him.

“Welcome, Sisters and Brothers, to the Morella Silent Temple,” he announced, holding out his arms while ambling by the front row. “For those of you who are first-timers, I hope you are enlightened by what you’ll witness today. For those of you returning, I hope your faith will be renewed.