Haunted Air

"What's the matter?" Bellitto said. "Cat got your tongue?"

Jack forced a laugh. "How typically unoriginal. You haven't a clue as to who I am or what I'm up to. And you never will. Your time is finished, Eli. Time for a new generation to take over. Step aside or die."

"Never! The Ceremony is mine! I don't know how you found out about it, but no Joh

Joh

But this Ceremony he was ranting about... Jack had a sick feeling it might involve killing children. If he was right, maybe he could turn it on its head to give Bellitto a swift kick in his already cut-up balls.

"The old original recipe Ceremony might be yours, Eli, but I've done my own variation on it. The Ceremony, Version two-point-oh, is all mine."

"What?" An uncertain note here. "What are you talking about?"

"I've reversed the Ceremony, Eli."

"I don't understand."

"I can bring them back."

"What? Nonsense! That's impossible!"

"Is it? That was me in the store on Sunday trying to buy the Roger Rabbit key ring."

"You? But... but why would you want it?"

"Not me. I didn't want it. Tara wanted it."

"Who?"

"Tara Portman." Jack swore he heard a sharp intake of breath on the other end. "You remember her, don't you. The pretty little nine-year-old blonde you snatched by the Kensington riding stables back in eighty-eight." Jack fought to keep the growing rage out of his voice. Had to sound cool, play it like someone as sick as the guy on the other end of the line. "She's back, and she wanted her key ring. So I went and got it for her. Tara's back, Eli. And is she ever pissed."

With that Jack broke the co

Chew on that for the rest of the night, scumbag.

15

"Slow down." Eli said, peering through the passenger window into the growing darkness. "It's just a little ways ahead. Number seven-thirty-five."

Adrian had the wheel of Eli's Mercedes, a black 1990 sedan. Despite its age its mileage was low. Eli used it infrequently and only for short trips. He preferred this old classic for its room and comfort and lines. The new models held no appeal for him.

Eli's wounds were feeling much better tonight, but not well enough to drive. Moving his leg back and forth to work the brake and gas pedals would flare his pain, so he'd given Adrian the keys. Adrian was still having some trouble with his knee, but fortunately it was his left that had been injured, so he could still drive.

Just as well that Eli had a physical excuse for not driving, for he wasn't up to it emotionally either. Not tonight. Too rattled, too distracted... why, in his present mood, he might very well drive into oncoming traffic without realizing until it was too late.

But he couldn't let Adrian and Strauss see his unease, his uncertainty. He had never been in a situation like this, and found this inexplicable turn of events almost overwhelming. Everything had been going so well for so long, and now...

Initially he'd been delighted to make contact with his attacker, the mysterious "Jack." He'd called with the intention of shaking him up, of letting him know that he hadn't got away clean with his vicious, underhanded act, that he was being hunted and would be found.

Instead, it had been Eli who had been left shaken.

The man knew that he'd abducted Tara Portman, knew that the key ring had been hers. How? He didn't believe for a second that the Ceremony could be reversed, and yet... how did the man know about Tara?

The questions had plagued Eli until he'd given into a yearning to return to the house where the Portman child had died. Just for a look...

"I still think this is a lousy, stupid idea," said Strauss from where he slouched in the rear seat. "Lousy because this whole deal could be a trick to get us to come back to this place, which we're doing. And stupid because Tara Portman ain't back and she ain't never coming back. Did we or did we not cut up her heart and eat it? No way that kid is back and looking for her key ring."

Eli winced at Strauss's casual mention of these Ceremony details. They were never to be spoken.

"First of all," Eli said, "we are not going back to Dmitri's house, we are simply driving by. Just another car passing on the street. As for the other matter, I fully agree that Tara Portman ca

"Easy," Strauss said, the edge still on his voice. He leaned forward and jutted his head over the back of the front seat. His breath reeked of garlic. "Somebody talked."

"No one talked," Eli said. "I've spoken to our other members, all ten of them, since this afternoon. No one has been kidnapped and tortured into a confession. Everyone is fine and looking forward to the next Ceremony. And think about it: If someone did talk, why talk about Tara Portman? Why not last year's lamb, or the year before? Tara Portman was ages ago."

"Perhaps," Adrian said. He'd been strangely silent all day. "But she was the first lamb we sacrificed in Dmitri's house."

"You're right," Eli said. "And oddly enough, I found myself thinking about Tara Portman just the other night."

That was why he'd been so shocked when the stranger had mentioned her name. It had to be a coincidence, but what a strange one.

"Really?" Adrian said. "Out of so many lambs, why her?"

"I've been asking myself that same question since my talk with our attacker this afternoon."

"Maybe it was because this mystery man tried to buy the key ring."

"No, that wasn't it. At the time I'd forgotten who that key ring belonged to. To tell the truth, I doubt I could match many of the little souvenirs in that cabinet to their original owners. And besides, I'd thought of Tara Portman days before."

"When?" Strauss said.

"Friday night."

He remembered he'd been reading in bed, deep into Proust's Remembrance of Things Past, and feeling drowsy, vhen suddenly she leaped into his mind. The briefest flash of her face, calm in the repose of deep anesthesia, and then her thin pale etherized body, still and supine on the table, awaiting the caress of Eli's knife. As quickly as the memories had come, they fled. Eli had written them off as random reminiscences, triggered perhaps by Proust's prose.

"There's the house now," Adrian said.

They lapsed into silence as they glided past Menelaus Manor. The lights were on. Who was home?

With a pang of melancholy Eli experienced a Proustian moment, caught up in a swirl of memories of Dmitri Menelaus, the brilliant, driven, tortured man he had brought into the Circle back in the eighties.

Dmitri had started off as just another customer in Eli's shop, but soon proved himself a man with a co

But then came whispers that fired his imagination, tales of an old stone keep in an obscure alpine pass in Romania, an ancient fortress that once had housed unspeakable evil. No one could give him the exact location of the pass, but by collecting and comparing notes based on the whispers, Dmitri narrowed his search to an area where these tales appeared to converge. He followed old trails through steep gorges, fully expecting this search to end as had so many others over the years, in despair and disappointment.