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6
Jack found her just where her frantic call had said she’d be—hiding in the rear of the Book Corner in Pe
“Thank God!” she said when she saw him. She fell against him, clutching and clinging like a drowning sailor.
“What’s wrong? What’s happened?”
Her call had been mostly incoherent, something like, Come get me, please come get me, I’m at Pe
He’d rushed downtown.
“It’s Eddie,” she gasped and began to sob.
Aw, shit. Had something happened? Had they found him?
“He’s not hurt, is he?”
“I almost wish he were. This is worse. Eddie belongs to the Order!”
Jack stood stu
“No way. It can’t—”
“It’s true! I saw the brand on his back! Just like we saw on Mister Sumter’s when we were kids, remember? Well, Eddie’s got one too! He’s a member!”
“Don’t you think he would have said something?”
She shook her head. “First off, we’re not all that close. He’s helped me out with certain professional matters, and making me hard to find, but we don’t sit down for regular heart-to-hearts. Besides, you know as well as I how secretive the Order is.”
“Not so secretive that he didn’t keep his shirt on.”
“I don’t think it even occurred to him. I think he must always work out shirtless and he took it off without thinking.”
“How did he explain it?”
“He didn’t. I didn’t give him a chance. I panicked and ran. Parked his car at Newark Airport, then called him and left a message where it was. I withdrew as much as I could from an ATM and took a train here.” She gripped the front of Jack’s shirt. “Do you think he’s been keeping tabs on me for the Order?”
Jack considered that, then shook his head.
“No. Whoever’s been out to get you lately didn’t know who you were or where you lived. If it is the Order after you—and I’m pretty damn sure it is—I doubt very much they have any inkling that Eddie’s your brother. You’re a Myers, he’s a Co
She shook her head. “It’s never come up. He doesn’t seem to want to talk about anything related to what we’re after—doesn’t seem to want to know about it. It’s all too strange for him. But Jack, I can’t go back there. I can’t live with a member of the Order, even if he’s my brother. Not after what we know and what we suspect.”
“Eddie wouldn’t hurt a fly.”
“But what if they co
Maybe she had a point.
“All right, I’ll rent you a hotel—”
“No hotel—please! I won’t feel safe there. The two of us are up to our necks in this and we need to work on it together if we’re to find any answers.” She looked up at him, eyes pleading. “Let me stay with you. Please? I know that’s probably like asking you to jab a sharp stick in your eye, but you’ll hardly know I’m there. I won’t be in the way. I’ll sleep on the floor. I’ll—”
He held up his hands. “Whoa. Stop. Enough. Sheesh.”
Jabbing a sharp stick in his eye . . . yeah, that pretty much nailed it.
“I don’t do roommates, Weez.”
Well, except maybe for Gia, but only Gia, and she’d never stayed more than one night, so that didn’t count.
“But I need to feel safe, Jack. I can’t go full focus if I’m always looking over my shoulder. You make me feel safe. Please? If not for anything else, for old times’ sake, then?”
Jack hated to hear her beg, but it was “old times’ sake” that was holding him back. He didn’t want to find her in his bed again.
She must have read his mind. “Hey, if you’re worried about a replay of the other night, that was just momentary insanity. You made it clear you’re in a relationship, and even if you weren’t—never happen again.” She sighed and looked up at him with big, dark, frightened eyes. “But I need to feel safe again, Jack. I really do.”
His turn to sigh. “Okay. But just for a while. Until we get this thing straightened out.”
She hugged him. “Thank-you-thank-you-thank-you!”
He hoped this wasn’t a mistake.
And somehow he’d have to find a way to break it to Gia that another woman was moving in with him.
7
Weezy turned from Jack’s front room window where she’d been staring down at the street three floors below. He’d assured her they hadn’t been followed from Pe
Now she stared at the front room itself—again. Not a good place for a claustrophobe. She couldn’t get over how cluttered it was with . . . stuff. The furniture was fine old golden oak Victorian, but most people would consider everything else junk. A Shmoo clock? A Daddy Warbucks lamp? Membership certificates of organizations led by long defunct and mostly forgotten pulp-fiction heroes?
But then, even as a kid, Jack had always seemed to be just a little bit off the beat, just a little out of step. Not an Asperger’s sort of thing, more like the title of the Stan Getz song, “Desifinado”: out of tune. Most people never noticed back then. On the surface he’d been a normal, BMX-riding, Atari-playing kid. But Weezy had noticed, because she’d been out of tune too, even more so. That was why they’d been such fast friends. Working at old Mr. Rosen’s junk shop had only exacerbated Jack’s retro tendencies, introducing him to a gallimaufry of artifacts from other eras, ones he’d found more interesting, more simpatico than his own.
The room was Jack, Jack was the room. Off-kilter, out of step, a fortress of solitude from the goings-on outside. She felt safe here. The quadruple bolt system on his door—top, bottom, and both sides—didn’t hurt, but Jack himself was the main reason. A massive firewall.
She certainly needed one. Because out there her brother had joined the Septimus Order.
The phone Jack had given her the other day began to ring. Again. She ignored it.
Jack picked it up and looked at its screen.
“Eddie again.”
“Don’t answer.”
Jack hit the talk button and thrust it into her hand.
“He’s probably worried sick. You need to talk to him at least once.”
Weezy hesitated, then reluctantly put the phone to her ear.
“Hello?”
“Weezy, thank God! Where are you? What happened? I came upstairs and you were—”
“You belong to the Order, Eddie. Why?”
“What?”
“Why did you join the Order?”
“Because they asked me.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because I know you think there’s something sinister about them, but they’re just like any fraternal order. No different from the Masons or the Elks.”
“You really believe that?”
“Of course I do—”
“They branded you, Eddie!”
“Just a ritual. They numbed it up beforehand. And really, Weez, the contacts, the networking I’ve had access to, it’s been great for business.”
“Good-bye, Eddie. I’m alive and well and that’s all I’m telling you.”
She cut the call.
“Eddie, of all people,” she said. “He was always scared of the Lodge. Remember the Lodge?”
Jack nodded from where he sat and sipped a beer. He’d offered her one but she’d accepted a bottle of seltzer instead.
“How can I forget. I used to cut its grass.”
She could picture the two-story stucco cube sitting on the rise on the Old Town side of Quaker Lake. On the surface, Johnson, New Jersey, seemed the last place the Ancient Fraternal Septimus Order would set one of its Lodges. But when you learned how old the town really was, and how closely the Order was associated with the Pine Barrens, it made perfect sense.