Richard kept walking, but he knew what Gal meant.
They had entered a haunted place, and the haunting was not merely human. It was something else and something more. "A marsh," Richard said. He looked down at the book and turned a page, and the mist parted to allow the moonlight access. Like blood running across the flat rock, moonlight illuminated the paths of truth between and under de Lainree's writings.
Richard stopped and pointed. "There. The werewolf fell into a marsh ... the wife saw it struggling, sinking, howling ... and when it went under, she sowed the marsh with her and her husbands lifetime savings: a handful of silver coins."
"How poetic," Gal said, but he sounded hungry.
"I'm tired," Richard said. He sat on the damp ground and dipped his head, closing the book at last. The spell of course faded quickly, and he felt the usual sense of relief at its passing. Magic had never been easy for him. "I'm exhausted. I need to rest, and you ... you ... "
Gal placed his coat around his brothers shoulders. "I'll dig," he said.
* * *
The werewolf had been preserved by the peaty ground. Much of it had reverted to the man upon death, but here and there patches of fur remained, and its lower jaw still sprouted fearsome teeth that were chipped with use. Gal had a whole body to choose from.
When he finally had the small sample to send, he drew shapes in the damp ground with his shovel and placed the werewolf's finger inside. And then he cast his spells, started chanting, and submitted himself to the Memory once again.
* * *
Both brothers woke up at daybreak. The mist was gone, the sun was up. And the moor felt just as haunted and alien as ever.
* * *
Baltimore, Maryland — 1997
KATE CORRIGAN CALLED Abe and filled him in on Blake, London, and the possibility of Abby Paris being more of a mystery than they thought. Abe listened and responded at all the appropriate places, but when Kate severed the connection, he sat staring at his satellite phone, blinking slowly and trying to digest what he had just heard. He had pulled off the freeway to answer the phone, and he watched the cars going by, taking people from here to there, the past to the future, and none of them really knowing anything about the world around them. He often envied them that.
He threw the phone onto the passenger seat and shook his head. The more he thought about what Kate had said, the more worried he became. He knew Abby better than anyone, yet still she was an enigma, and some of what Kate said could well be true. Perhaps that was part of what drew him to her so powerfully: she was as mysterious as he. Now that she was missing, and this stuff about a mad old scientist and magician had surfaced, he was more worried about her than ever.
Especially as she had killed her own kind. He had no concept of how that would make her feel.
But Abe was unconvinced by the Benedict Blake idea. It all seemed too easily explained and logical, whereas what was happening in the world right now was the return of mystery.
He sat by the freeway and thought things through, but whichever way he went he came up against a wall. Abby's disappearance did not surprise him — he had always thought that she would run one day — but its timing did. While not as involved as Abe or the others, she had seemed committed to the BPRD and the cause it furthered. To abandon it in what might well be its hour of need ... that did not seem like Abby. It did not seem right.