The Wiccan Diaries

Chapter 11 – Halsey




I brought the Codex to the festival; it felt sort of sacrilegious to do so, but once I got there, I realized it was more than just a religious festival. I had been reading up on everything Rome and Italy.

For instance, there was this big celebration, Carnival, that happened in Rome and also Venice; people wore masks and partied the night away. Brazil did something similar. And even in the States, they had Mardi Gras.

Festa de’ Noantri was much more pious. It involved carrying a Madonna around to various churches, followed by a procession of the devout––which in Rome was quite a few.

There were also lights, games, music, and fireworks. Ballard said it would go on for weeks.

The way he described it, I thought I might need a mask. “Just come,” he said.

When I got there, Lia decided to stop being annoying, and actually acknowledged me warmly. “Don’t be fooled,” said Ballard. He was wearing a pair of loose-fitting dark grey shorts and a finely woven, light blue shirt, that showed off his muscles. He was deeply tanned. “She still wants to know what we’re doing, but she’s changing tack. Don’t let her lull you into giving something away.”

“I wish there were something to give away,” I said. I brought out the Codex. He and I had both been taking turns with it; anytime we made a new discovery we e-mailed the other. It seemed like all I was doing these days was driving back and forth between my apartment and the motorcycle shop in Trastevere.

We were parked between two stalls, sitting on a pair of crates. I could smell roast porchetta turning in a spit, it drew crowds. There was still some time before night.

There was still one thing that was bothering me, however. How to word it?

I could see Ballard concentrating on the Codex; he was looking at a page full of symbols, saying, “It’s some kind of clue,” looking for where we could turn to next; it had been slow going and our leads were nil, when I asked him what Succo del Gatto meant. He had a long neck in his hand. I could hear the gold foil crinkle.


“What do you mean?” he said, which was a very curious response.

“Seeing as how, together, we probably buy up half the Succo del Gattos produced in Rome,” I said, letting the words trail off. Was there something to all this?

I remembered the taxicab I hailed when I got here. “The driver had a whole ice chest full of them; it was actually pretty weird,” I said, watching as his brow furrowed. Was it something in the Codex? He continued to ignore me.

“The reason I mention it––I’ve been here a couple of weeks now, and the only time I ever see them is when I’m hanging around with you.”

I mentioned the vending machine down the hall, in my apartment. “And zip. It’s like they’re only here, in Trastevere.”

He definitely didn’t meet my eye.

“I bet, whoever that guy was, he probably lives around here,” I said. “Otherwise, where did he get all the Succo del Gatti?”

“‘Cat Juice.’”

“Pardon?”

“Succo del Gatto,” said Ballard, “it means ‘Cat Juice.’ It’s like the caryatids you see.”

I didn’t know what he meant by that.

“I forget. I keep thinking you live around here,” said Ballard. He spoke deliberately. “Rome is old and it has a lot of sculptures.”

“Obviously,” I said, nodding my head.

“If you’ve seen all the cats?” he said. I nodded for him to continue. “Well, some of the stone carvings in the architecture show off the family felidae: cats. In fact, I don’t know if you saw, but above a portion of the Wall surrounding us––” he meant the Aurelian Wall, and I had noticed “––there is a shield with a lion. The lion is very big here and also Venice.”

“How come?” I asked.

He just shrugged. “I think it has something to do with royalty or something. I don’t know. Look.” He pointed to the Codex.

I stopped him. “The thing is,” I said, “you, your family, run, like, a motorcycle shop, right?”

“What’s your point?” he said.

“Just that I notice you all ride Ducatis.”

“It’s Ducatisti, plural,” said Ballard. “Why does it matter if we run a motorcycle shop or not?”

“I saw Lia’s jacket,” I said.

He closed the book.

“Go on.”

“It’s just that, I saw what was written on her jacket. Is, if you get me? It’s the same thing that’s on Gaven’s, Paolo’s, all of theirs.”

“Except for mine,” he said.

“No, you don’t have one,” I said. He didn’t; Ballard didn’t have one of the leather jackets I saw them all wear that had the patches on them.

“And?” he said.

I chewed my bottom lip, wondering how to proceed. He helped me.

“You’re wondering what it means; what they have written on the backs of their jackets,” he said.

“Actually,” I said; I chewed my lip some more. I had already bothered to translate it.

He saw and understood.

“If Ducatisti is the plural of Ducati,” I said, “and Succo (‘juice’) del (‘of the’) Gatto (‘cat’) means ‘Juice of the Cat,’ then gatto means cat; which means,” I said... hating how it pained him, “that if I swap the o for an i, I should get the plural of cat. Which is gatti. Or ‘cats,’ right?” He nodded, glumly.

Lia walked by and gave us the beady eye. “Don’t say it,” said Ballard.

“‘I Gatti,’” I said, reading the back of her open jacket, “‘the Cats.’”

He groaned deplorably.

“But that isn’t what’s bothering me,” I said. If I was going to do this, I may as well do it completely, thoroughly. “What’s bothering me is how you can be so calm––”

“Halls,” he said.

“Discussing all of this. Magic; I mean, it’s a lot to take in. Yet you handle it so calmly. It’s almost like––”

“Don’t. Please,” he said.

“Like you’ve heard it before. Like you believe it.”

“Don’t you!?” he said. He got to his feet; the book fell. He caught it with his amazing reflexes.

“I bet, if I were to ask you to win me a prize, you could do it every time,” I said.

The stalls were full of trick games: ring tosses, knock down the bottles, shoot the bull’s-eyes.

“Just because I’m good at stuff,” he said.

“Don’t walk away from me,” I said. I got up and came over to him. The fireworks were getting ready to start. They let off a few to get everyone’s attention. It was quite a sight: the bangs and the streaks; some flew up so high they created a mushroom cloud of stars. Nobody could hear us; we were totally alone.

“I’m not completely stupid. I’ve been reading that book,” I said. “The things it talks about. Bad choice of words. All I’m saying is, I really hope you’ll learn to trust me, because I really want to be your friend. If you’re, you know...”

“I’m not,” he said.

“Because I’ve been sitting here trying to think how your uncle Risky may have heard about it all. He wasn’t..., was he? Because, otherwise, how would he know about my mom and dad? Ballard?”

He looked away. “Please don’t ignore me,” I said. I was pushing him to his limits, I knew that. I didn’t care.

I saw his hand grip the book; the tendons stood out against the flesh. “Don’t be upset,” I prodded.

“You don’t get it, Halls.”

“I want to. Help me to understand, Ballard.”

When I next saw his eyes, they were anguished; his hair was in his eyes and they were hurting. My protective instincts took over, but he held me back. “I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you,” he said.

Satisfied that I was going to get what I wanted, I listened.

“It’s like this,” he said, and then let out an exasperated breath. I didn’t know why that bothered me so much, but it did. Before I could think about it, he continued.

“I feel like one of those lesser known works, you know the type? There is Moses or whoever, decked out, and behold the blurry schlubs with no arms and legs. The afterthoughts, surrounding him.”

What did this mean? I knew there was a Michelangelo Moses that Michelangelo sculpted. The fact that Ballard said blurry schlubs, had me laughing, though.

“He did the Ten Commandments, right?”

“What?”

“Moses,” I said.

Maybe it was my old headmistress trying to get me psychoanalyzed, but I couldn’t help deconstructing everything Ballard said. Moses was a leader and he brought the law. He was Moses. Bold words.

What Ballard was talking about was not having any arms and legs. Like in a nightmare where someone ran but couldn’t move. Or their teeth fell out. I was sure this all meant something. The only question was what?

“Why do you feel this way? Is it all of them?” I said. I did a perfunctory thing with my arms. I would let him choose who or what I meant by that. What them had Ballard in such evil spirits?

“It’s like that race. They hold it every year. Do you know why?” he said.

Then I remembered: “Hey! They let you in it!” Was it Gaven? Was he jealous of Gaven? “Why?” I asked.

He smiled at my train of thought bouncing off the tracks. “You would think they would let me join, wouldn’t you?” he said. “But no. It’s Bal’s just a kid, or some other crap. I tell you, I’ve had it. Risky didn’t think I was too young!” He stuck his finger in the air. “Check this out,” he said. He opened the book to a spot. “It’s dog-eared.”


I looked what he was pointing at. It was open to that page full of symbols. He pointed.

“This is the Greek symbol for change,” he said. He traced the triangle with his finger. “It’s called delta. I did a little digging on the computer, and it has a lot of uses today. Architectural plans mostly.”

He was pointing to a triangle.



“Whenever the architect makes changes he numbers them and puts in the delta symbol for change. But look.”

I saw. Not the way Becks did, but I did see.

“The delta’s within a circle,” said Ballard. “It’s like, wasn’t that double pentacle symbol thing within a circle.”



“The glyphs,” I said. The magic symbols that had circled the pentacle. The pentacle had been repeated, so that there were two pentacles. One inside the next.

“First of all,” said Ballard. “It’s a circle. You realize what this means?”

“No.”

He smiled enigmatically. “I admit, I’m reaching, but this is a magic book, which, by the way, you also seem to be okay with.”

“From a school of magic here,” I said, pointing at myself, and cocking my head. “Why is the circle such a big deal?”

“Because,” said Ballard. “Circle. Magic.”

“A magic circle,” I said. “So what, exactly?”

“That’s where you do incantations from. Sorry. Workings.”

“Okay.”

He pointed, our earlier confrontation forgotten. “So if this is a triangle and is change,” said Ballard, indicating the delta symbol, “then, this, a circle, is theta.”

“What is theta?” I said. Though I immediately thought about fraternities.

“It’s Greek. My parents are in Greece, so no duh, I don’t know why I didn’t recognize this earlier.”

“It’s a big book,” I said, gesturing for him to continue.

“Theta is part of the Greek alphabet; it’s the eighth letter. It also happens to be the ninth number. Number nine.” He drew a big number 9 in the air. “Obviously, I tried to go looking for what a delta and a theta symbol, combined, meant. But you can’t enter in a triangle inside a circle and search for it on Yahoo. However.” And I sensed that he was getting to his point. “When I entered the words delta and theta, I got all kinds of interesting things.”

I just realized that the fireworks were still going; it was nighttime and Ballard’s eyes would light up with jets of light. We were standing like two people lost in conversation.

“The circle sign used to mean death,” he said. “It was like a warning. ‘Be careful. If you go down here, you could die.’ They used a theta to denote that. And in Egypt, if you put a dot in the center of the circle––”

“Oh my god,” I said; I had just realized that there was one.

He nodded, his finger tapping the center of the image.



“That stands for the sun,” he said.

“So it’s a sun inside of change,” I said.

“Precisely,” he said.



“And it means death.”

He nodded.

* * *

Lia was tapping her foot. That was the first indication that we were not alone. The second was the square had emptied; the vendors were locking up their stalls for the night. Ballard and I had spent our time looking for the meaning of the symbol in the magic book. Whoever had drawn it seemed to take for granted his or her reader would automatically know what it meant. What we needed was a key to unlocking the Codex (“Like a Rosetta stone, even if it’s just a person with firsthand knowledge,” I said. “This Foucart person, for instance. You see all the scrawls and scratchings-out? The book is covered in annotations. Here’s one.” I read: “‘Whoever that bastard priest was, his transcription from the Glagolitic leaves much to be desired.’” Ballard did um face.) Lia really was tapping away. “I’m going to figure it out,” she said. She honed in on the magic book. I closed it. “Suit yourself,” she said; but she seemed to look like she relished the challenge. I was almost tempted to ask for her help, but I had promised Ballard I wouldn’t. I was beginning to realize just how much he liked to do things for himself. Ballard would probably never ask for directions, much less something so impossible as help. But Lia was standing there.

“We get it. We notice you,” said Ballard, irritated, and then laughed. She soured immediately.

“I just wanted to let you know that we are leaving, if you care to tag along?” she said.

My eyes lit up. Lia. Inviting us somewhere?

“I’m in,” I said. Ballard just shook his head.

“You see, Bal Lard?” She pronounced both syllables, driving him crazy. “You’ll have to teach him to be more risky,” she said to me. “He doesn’t do anything without first thinking it through and drawing maps and such. He has a game plan for everything. Including––well...”

“Piss off.”

I thought differently. It would be fun to hang with a member of the female species. Lia’s eyes were alight with mischievous pleasure. She put her arm around me; I was suddenly being steered toward our bikes. Well, her big, thrashing super hog, and my, well...

The Risky jibe had not escaped me.

“Don’t worry,” Lia said. “When it comes to my brother, you have to know how to get him to do what you want.” She turned around: “Ballard! Mush!” she shouted.

“He follows you like a puppy dog,” she said.

“It really isn’t like that,” I said.

“Can you follow me?”

Interesting question, I thought. “I guess,” I said.

“Good,” she said spritely, swinging her leg, in her black leather pants, over her fire-red racing bike. My mount was less stellar. I started up my Vespa and put on my riding helmet. “Where to?” I asked.

Her visored helmet turned to me; I imagined it would have been winking, if I could have seen her face. She revved her engine: not loud, just a growling, keeping things in reserve.

I looked behind me. Ballard was trotting to keep pace. He waved his hand, like Go, just go, and I did, I went, sure he knew where we were headed. Lia rode fast.

It was all I could do to keep up.

Her red taillight hypnotized me. It was like one of those overexposed pictures of downtown traffic, except I had to concentrate on the walls flying past us.

She looked behind, occasionally, making sure I was with her, then decelerated. I pulled adjacent.

She looked to me like a preying mantis, visored as she was; then her wrist flicked. The front end of her motorcycle rose above my head; she shot forward, popping a wheelie.

I had never seen a girl do anything like that before. I didn’t think I could have arrived with any less fanfare. She dropped the nose and hit the brakes, directly into a crowd of guys, all of whom cheered. Then I pulled up.

I watched Lia bask. I couldn’t tell if it was bitchiness, or she couldn’t help herself. Her drug was their adulation. I watched them worship her. Every guy there was into her. I hung my head with my feet down. She took her helmet off like a shampoo commercial; her satin black hair cascading down her back absolutely perfectly. Should I just leave?

It felt like she rode on my plainness to make herself look better. It sucked.

She didn’t even look back. She just went in with the guys. It was like I had been forgotten or something. I could hear Ballard’s voice in my head, telling me I told you so.


I looked back for him. He was trotting into sight.

That was fast.

He stopped, just before he got to me, like he was listening to something; like something disturbed him. “Weird,” he said, and then walked up and held my handlebars while I put the kickstand down. We were in front of what looked like a bar.

Uh-oh. I didn’t think I was old enough to drink. Lia must’ve been twenty-one. No wonder she bossed Ballard around so much. I took off my helmet.

“Why does it feel like you just got socked in the gut? Oh right. Lia,” said Ballard. “You just got Lia’d.”

It was an expression?

“Does she do that often?” I asked, trying and not managing to keep the hurt out of my voice.

“Just for her special friends,” said Ballard, sardonically, putting the word in quotes. I had never felt closer to him.

“I should introduce her to my friend Becca,” I said. “They could bitch it out for bitch of the year. Bitch of the Century. Super Bitch!” I apologized. “Sorry. She can be...”

“Thoughtless is, I think, the word you are looking for. Come on.”

“I can’t go in there,” I said; it looked like he was going to make me go anyway. “You don’t understand. It might get violent.” I did a series of fist punches. “See?” I said.

He laughed again. He had a little hitch in it that was adorkable. I got Lia’d. Maybe that was like a rite of passage or something.

“Or something,” he said. “You can just leave your helmet on the handlebar. You don’t even need to take the key.”

“What d’you mean?”

He looked, I thought, significantly, when he said, “No one––no one would be fool enough to come around here, who doesn’t belong.”

“Right. Six Nine Guys.”

“Pardon?”

“I have this thing. All Lia’s––” dismissive wave “––well, they’re like super tall, right?”

“Six Nine Guys. I like that,” he laughed.

“I guess this is like their hangout or something?”

“Or something,” he said again.

Adorkable. Definitely adorkable.

Music swelled from the open doors. We walked past the fifty or so high-priced motorcycles all shining in a row. Had Ballard worked on all of them?

“It’s her idea of keeping me out of trouble. Which may explain that little stunt just now.”

“Then, by that rationale, she thinks I’m trouble,” I said.

He did sorry face.

“She’s really pissing me off!” I said.

A sign over the door said, Watch your back. I didn’t need to be told. I felt Lia’s dagger in my spine. What the H? “What is this place, anyway?” I was irritated, pissy.

He pointed to a crude engraving in the stonework. I was getting pretty used to secret symbols everywhere. If you were going to Rome, you had to. It was probably the history of persecution and religious fervor; if anyone stood for anything, it had to be in secret. I wanted to know what they stood for, because right now I didn’t have a fair opinion of them. I Gatti.

Ballard explained. “It’s called a heptagram...” he said. I ran my finger across it. “Your basic seven-sided star.”

“What does it mean?” I asked.

“Search me,” he said. “Come on.”

I followed after him into the club––for a club it was.

It didn’t take an outsider necessarily to feel that way. Being popular could be a lonely place. In a strange way, it prepared me for being unpopular. Even when I was in, at St. Martley’s, I knew it wasn’t because of who I was.

The sign over the bar said LA LUNA BLU, in neon blue lights.

I got the sense that Ballard and I were unwelcome.

Maybe that was Lia’s point. Though what I had done to deserve her ire was beyond me. I looked for her at the bar. She was leaning against it, talking to the bartender, who cleaned a glass out with a rag. Her eyes were made up to look dark. I could see them through the mirror behind the bar. When they looked at me, they had none of their previous warmth. It was almost like she hated me.

“How...? What...?” I said, practically to myself.

It was then that I noticed every other eye was staring at me as well. This level of hostility was unknown to me. I didn’t know what I had done to deserve it. Ballard seemed completely immune.

“Is this typical?” I asked of him.

Lia smiled: it was sly and calculating and I didn’t like it. The rest of the Riders and their dates, were drinking the Succo del Gatti, or else playing pool, or feeding coins into the jukebox. But, of course, that was before Ballard and I had entered into The Blue Moon.

It was a rough looking joint. I remembered how my guidebook had said Romans detested public displays of drunkenness. Maybe Lia’s false fa?ade had finally cracked. Like I was seeing her for the first time or something. Why did she dislike me so much? That wasn’t even strong enough a word. I was going to get my answer.

Reflexively, I grabbed Ballard, who still seemed ambivalent to the amount of stares that we were getting, and dragged him over to Lia. But before we could get there, he was steering me toward Gaven. Lia looked away but I kept my eyes on her. She was going to get a beat down in my jour––diary tonight.

The rest of the little gang went back to what they were doing. Part of me was shaking my head. I wanted to rip her face off. Two-faced something-or-other.

Gaven, of course, was the six nine-yish of all the Six Nine Guys; and therefore, their leader.

The biggest and dumbest is the biggest and dumbest, I thought in a bad mood.

But it was hard to be upset when I was in his presence. He had this way about him, of making you feel calm, content, at peace. One. Too bad his girlfriend needed to chill.

He was playing darts, when we got to him.

Next, the inexplicable happened.

Two members of his posse practically jumped us. They put their arms out like we couldn’t pass. Ballard, still holding my arm, said, “I need to speak to him.” I put up only token resistance. Ballard’s hand was rough, calloused, but also warm, safe; I would probably have bruises tomorrow. I think he thought I might actually attack his sister. It would go something like this:

Halsey to Lia: “Bitch.”

Lia to Halsey: “Bring it.”

“It’s been brought!” I slap her face off. Pow wow.

The scenario played through my mind as we waited. Gaven whispered to his men. It looked like hard work. He motioned.

“Gee,” I said, not bothering to keep my voice down. I couldn’t help it. Lia had upset me really a lot. Ballard finally let me go. He whispered something into Gaven’s ear.

Gaven looked at me stonily. Ordinarily, it would have been the last straw. But then he got this look of concern on his face. “Are you sure?” he said.

Ballard nodded.

“Halsey, I need you and Ballard to stay at the bar,” he said. “It’s the safest place.” Then he whistled loudly, using two of his fingers. The bar got quiet immediately. Ballard was dragging me over to the bar, but I found my footing, and shook him off.

“What? Is there something out there?” I said, when he wouldn’t let me go. “Something’s out there?” My tone got all different. “What is it?”

“Never mind, just come on,” he said.

What did Ballard know about Somethings Out There?

Gaven, meanwhile, seemed to be rounding up the troops. They listened deferentially to him, Lia among them. She was zipping up her jacket. Serious business. I lost her in the press of bodies, heading for the door.


“What’s going on?” I whispered. “Ballard?”

But he was gritting his teeth. “Like I’m not old enough,” he said. “I’ll show ’em.”

He grabbed two Succo del Gatti from underneath the bar, popping them open, barehanded.

“Wouldn’t even know about it, if it weren’t for me.”

“Know about what?” I said.

“It’s nothing.”

“You’re doing it again,” I said.

“What?”

“Keeping secrets. Not letting me in on things.”

“You want to know? I got a feeling. All right? Sounds weird, I know,” he said. I heard the engines kick into life. “In case you missed it, Lia threw that little jab at me about Risky.”

“I didn’t miss it, Ballard... I just thought, I shouldn’t bring it up, if maybe you had.”

I smiled. He did not.

“I miss absolutely nothing. Ever. I’m perfect in every way,” he said. And then did the Ballard laugh.

“So what if you like to make plans and stuff. You’re helping me, aren’t you?” I said. “I wouldn’t be half as far, if, well, you know, you hadn’t been helping me.”

“Yeah, but what have we done? What have we found out? Nothing,” he said. “Last night I got all up in Lia’s business. I told her I wasn’t some kid anymore and she should stop trying to treat me like I’m her little brother, or something. I’m fifteen,” he said like it was the oldest thing in the world. “‘I’m old enough; I want in,’ I told her, trying to make her tell me what she and them got up to. It’s a little bit more than just having a fancy for macho penis implants on wheels. ‘I know you’re up to something,’ I said, parroting her favorite line. ‘Tell me, is all.’”

“And did she?” I asked.

“Sort of.”

“What d’you mean?”

“Do you know who Emmanuela Skarborough is? Of course not. Why would you?” He got off his stool. I watched as the bartender cleaned something filthy out with a rag.

With the bartender’s permission, Ballard went behind the bar. I saw him dig around. Then he produced newspaper after newspaper. Some of them were so beer stained and cobwebby it was disgusting.

Why did I have déjà vu suddenly? He was plopping them down in front of me. Then I realized: it was exactly like the minicab ride, my first day here. Right down to the Succo del Gatti.

“She’s a reporter. It pays to have a pair of eyes on the inside. I’ll tell you what I mean,” he said.

The headlines were all in Italian, but there was no missing those words again: omicidio, occulto, misterioso. My breathing picked up despite the fact we were in a well-lit place with lots of muscly guys to protect me, Ballard among them. He wiped his hair back from his forehead and admired his handiwork.

“Lia finally told me what I Gatti has been doing,” he said. “Are you ready for this? They drive around all night, finger quote, ‘protecting the city.’ Crazy, huh?”

“What do all of these say?” I asked. I wanted details. Who knows? Maybe this has something to do with that thing that attacked me, I thought.

“Did you hear me? They’re, like, I dunno, vigilantes, or something.” He got all excited.

I couldn’t help smiling. I remembered how ineffectual the carabinieri (the police) had been.

“We have something called the vigili urbani, city policeman, who patrol––it’s not unlike the night watch. But Lia says they aren’t enough to stop what’s coming. She was all Nostradamus. Anyway,” he said. “I spent today reading these articles. Lia told me Emma was working on it too; she works with the local paper. She’s our cousin.”

He pointed to the picture of a woman: Emmanuela Skarborough.

A reporter.

“Is she I Gatti?” I asked, interested.

“She must be. It’s like the family business. Except I don’t get to play. Except wait. That’s not true. I do get to play. I get to work in the grease shop. The other, not so important, family business,” he said, dissatisfied. The smolder came back into his eyes. “Only, get this. I’m not so dumb, right?”

“What did you find?” I asked.

“It’s just a matter of connecting the dots,” he said.

We stopped for a moment, giving I Gatti the chance to blast past the entrance to La Luna Blu. They would be racing around like maniacs all night on their motorcycles. Vigilantes. It explained a lot.

“Is that why Lia is all pissed off at me?” I asked, suddenly cognizant of what was going on. “She thinks I’m a bad influence on you, doesn’t she?”

“What do you mean?”

“Please, Ballard. She hates me.”

He shook his head. “Things have been weird for a while. This was like, I dunno, Vesuvius, or something. It was only a matter of time before Lia blew her top.”

I didn’t like the analogy. “And I can’t read this,” I said. “You’re going to have to translate it for me.” I turned the paper around so he could read it.

“All it says is––well, not all–– What it says, is there is someone creeping around, killing a bunch of people. That’s why Gaven always insists you ride home with someone, when it gets late at night.”

I remembered this kindness and it stultified some of my paranoia.

Maybe I was being catty.

“Anything else?”

“Just the interesting parts,” he said annoyingly.

“And those are?”

“You have beautiful eyes,” he said. It was only a statement. At least, I hoped it was.

“Ballard...”

“Well, she’s kind of well-read, is my cous. Kind of a ruckmaker.”

“I think you mean, muckraker,” I said.

“Right. Where was I? So anyway, she’s a writer. You kinda hafta sift through her professional b.s. she uses, to get at what she’s really trying to say. If you know what I mean.”

“No doubt, homie. What up?”

“Word. So this article is the newest one. She calls him ‘the Exsanguinator.’”

“And what is that?”

“It’s like this thing. It’s like, a medical term or something. It means all the blood’s been drained. An exsanguinator would be someone who drains blood. He’s simply been doing it while they’re still alive. You can see the problem?

“Now, she makes a couple of interesting leaps...” he went on.

“Her artistic license?”

“That. The first is–– Here, I’ll read it–– ‘...dumping the bodies, as opposed to randomly killing them.’ What she means is he, this asino Exsanguinator, is bleeding them so dry, the Questura doesn’t find any signs of violence around the so-called scene of the crime. No blood. My cousin thinks he’s killing them elsewhere. But does she?”

“You’re very interesting. Please continue.”

“Because, if he was killing them there, at the crime scene, there would be a struggle.”

“One would think,” I said.

“In which the blood––well, you know.”

“It would go all over the place,” I said.

“Exactly. So no blood means he’s killing them somewhere else and then when playtime is over he chucks them out the back of a moving van. Whatever.”

“Point number two?” I asked, taking a sip of aperitif.


“What does he do with the blood?” said Ballard.

“What does he do with the blood?” I asked.

“He’s not leaving any of it to be found. The blood must be the thing. The blood is the thing. It’s the reason. So we know that about him. He likes the blood. What else?”

He scanned the article. It was a pleasure watching him work. “Ah. The well-read bit.”

“Explain it to me,” I said.

“Well, first there is the whole issue of the Questura, which is the police, who seem to think something is going on regarding the occult. When they see something they interpret as blood worship I’m sure they freak out and regard it as devil practices, especially here. We’re in Catholic City.

“Where my cousin veers off though, is perhaps realizing you can have the, uh, supernatural, without involving the angels against Him. There is evil in our hearts without having to look for the Devil.”

Blood... blood, I thought...

“She uses the story of Elizabeth Báthory to prove the point. There was a woman who believed in blood. By coating herself in the blood of her victims, the good Countess hoped to exsanguinate herself all the way to Immortality. She thought their blood would keep her young and beautiful forever. So she bathed in it.”

“I take it she was a real person, because a lot of this sounds far-fetched?” I said.

“Whatever’s out there killing doesn’t seem to think so,” said Ballard. “And, yes, she was. The next point... is how do you draw blood?”