Love Charms (18 page)

“Oh,
yes!” The woman’s voice was unmistakable. The crowd parted like the Red Sea as
Dita moved toward her. The woman snatched the jar of honey from Annie’s hand
and held it up to the light as if she were looking at gold. “Perfect! Lovely!
Thank you, dear.”

Annie
pursed her lips and put a hand on each hip. She had to speak loudly to be heard
over the music. “Eric doesn’t live with Virgil!”

Dita
raised her eyebrows. “I never said he did. Would you like a drink?”

“No…thanks.”
Annie shook her head, eyeing the older woman. “Why didn’t you just give me
Eric’s address?”

“I
didn’t know if he wanted you to have it,” Dita confessed with a smile. “Would
you mind running down to the bar to get me a drink? I’m simply parched!”

Annie
rolled her eyes. “I’m sure one of your…followers…would be happy to do it.” She
glanced around at the throng of onlookers, who were quietly watching them both.
“I just want to know where Eric is. Tell me and I’ll go.”

“Now
dearest…” Dita put her arm around Annie’s shoulders and steered her toward the
stairwell. “I’ll tell you everything you want to know. Just be a love and run
down to the bar and ask the white-haired gentleman back there for a Black
Death.”

“A…what?”
Annie frowned at the older woman. If that was a drink, it was one she had never
heard of.

“A
Black Death,” Dita repeated clearly. “And if he tries to make it with vodka, be
sure to tell him you want the real thing.”

Annie
shook her head and sighed as she tromped her way back down the stairs. She
found herself standing dutifully at the bar, waiting in line for a drink. Just
like a good little girl. Her face burned and she looked down at the glass in
the bartender’s hand, her mood darkening as she moved to the front of the line.

“Can
I have a Black Death, please?” Annie asked the white-haired bartender. She had
made sure she was in his line, just like Dita had directed. He lifted the hood
covering his snowy head and raised his eyebrows at her. All the bartenders were
dressed in black robes with hoods, probably to accentuate the whole River Styx
theme, she mused, as the old man stood and blinked at her.

“Sure
thing.” A martini glass was up on the bar before Annie could even blink and she
saw him take the cap off a dark-colored bottle of vodka.

“Oh,
wait—” She smiled apologetically and placed her hand over the rim of the
glass. “Dita told me to tell you, if you started to make it with vodka, that
she wanted the real thing. I’m sorry. Does that mean anything to you?”

“Dita?”
His eyebrows rose further and he put the cap back onto the bottle. “Indeed.
Does it mean anything to you?”

Annie
shook her head, giving him a puzzled look as he lifted the gate at the end of
the bar and stepped out from behind.

“If
you want the real thing, you must pay your passage.”

“Passage?”
Annie sighed. Of course she would end up getting stuck with the bill. “I don’t
suppose Dita has a tab running here?”

The
old man smiled, easing his hood back slightly. “Those unlucky souls who come
without coin are denied, I’m afraid.”

Unlucky
souls?
See a penny, pick it up, and all the day, you’ll have good luck.
Annie opened her hand, still closed around the penny Herman had placed there.
She had forgotten about it entirely.

“Ah…yes.”
The man plucked the coin from her palm and Annie only saw a brief glimpse, but
it didn’t look like a penny to her. No longer a small copper thing, it seemed
to glimmer gold in the blue light from above as he held it up to briefly
inspect it before putting it into a pocket in his robe. “Follow me,” he
directed, waving her toward a door next to the bar that swung on its hinges as
they walked through. The corridor was dimly lit, and Annie took a few hesitant
steps and then stopped.

“Excuse
me,” Annie called. “Where exactly are we going? All I wanted was a mixed
drink…”

The
old man stopped and took something off a hook on the wall, handing it to her.
“Put this on.” It was a black robe, like his.

“Look…”
Annie frowned at the material filling her hands. “I’ve had a really weird day,
and it just seems to be getting weirder. All I want—”

“Do
you seek the Black Death?” His voice seemed deeper back here. Was there an
echo? Glancing back toward the door, Annie could hear the pounding sound of the
music and remembered Dita’s request. “I’ll tell you everything you want to
know.” That’s what she had said.
Okay, Eric, whatever I need to do to find
you.

“I…guess
so.”

He
gave her a curt nod. “Then you must come as the others, hooded and veiled. Only
death knows the secret of eternal beauty.”

Annie
frowned, shrugging on the robe and pulling it together in front of her. The
hood was large and fell into her eyes, and she had to push it back.

“Follow
me.” They were traveling down the corridor again. She followed when he made a
sharp left and took her down a steep flight of cement stairs that turned
halfway down to the right again.
Great, I’m following some guy into the
basement of a bar, and I’m probably going to end up on the front page of the
newspaper tomorrow as the victim of some grisly axe murder.

Annie
checked her intuition and discovered that she wasn’t afraid of the old man.
There was definitely something strange about all of this, but she didn’t think
he was going to hurt her. The door at the bottom of the stairs led into another
long, dimly lit corridor. This passageway was much wider than the one upstairs.

She
remembered Herman telling her this was once a distillery as they passed the
rows of barrels lining the basement walls. When the hooded man stopped at the
door and turned to her, Annie gasped and took a step back, her heart pounding.
He didn’t look at her. Instead, he reached for something around his neck and
pulled a skeleton key hanging on a leather thong over his head.

He
looked at her, and asked, “Who are we?”

Stunned,
Annie stared back at him, not sure what to say. He repeated the question. His
tone wasn’t threatening. It was just a simple question. “Who are we?”

She
was about to say she didn’t know when she saw the characters carved over the
door: Γαψρηελ.

“The
Order of Gabriel,” Annie breathed, her eyes wide. The old man gave a nod,
turned, and put the key into the lock. She stumbled after him, amazed at how
quickly he was walking now. The dark hood kept falling into her eyes, and she
had to push it back to see where they were going. They weren’t alone down here,
she was sure of it. She could hear the sounds of people talking and faint
laughter. Was it an echo from upstairs? On her left was a doorway and she
caught a shadowy glimpse of two figures locked together in an embrace. They
were kissing—were they kissing?
Are you sure?

“What
do we protect?” the old man asked, turning to face her again as they came to
another locked door.

Annie
glanced over her shoulder, her head still filled with the shadowy vision of the
couple. What were they doing—really?

“What
do we protect?” He repeated the question and Annie turned to him, glancing over
the door. There was the symbol again, the same one Herman had tattooed on his
upper arm.

“The
Order of Gabriel…” She swallowed as she met his rheumy eyes. They were sunk
deep into his skull. She remembered Herman’s words, and continued. “The Order
of Gabriel protected…the secret of life and death.”

The
old man gave another nod and unlocked the second door with his skeleton key.
This corridor stretched longer than the last, and now Annie was sure she could
hear people. There were moans of pleasure—or pain—she wasn’t sure
which, coming from the rooms on either side of the hallway, and the high sound
of laughter. She strained to catch a glimpse as they passed, but with her hood
falling over her eyes and the pace the old man had set, she couldn’t see much.
Each image was just a brief impression—a shadowy, hooded figure bending
over the writhing, nude body of a woman; a man bound and gagged, hanging from
the ceiling, his fingertips brushing the floor. A pulsing red glow emanated
from one room along with a smell of something sickly sweet, like garlic gone
sour.

“What
is the secret?” The old man turned and asked her the question, the key poised
at the lock. He assumed she knew the answer, since she had known all the
others.
Thanks, Herman
. The coincidence was too eerie and Annie
shivered.

“Death
is not the end.” Annie’s words were lost as someone down the hall screamed.

Her
eyes widened as she followed the hooded figure through the door and into a
small, sparse room. The light here didn’t come from dim bulbs, as in the
corridor, but rather from a fire burning low in the corner of the little room.
The man added wood to the stove and then turned to a cabinet that looked to
Annie as if it had been carved out of ivory. It was a gleaming, bone white, and
the skull and crossbones carved into the front seemed to grin at her as he used
the same key to unlock it.

Pushing
his hood back off his head so he could work, the old man pulled open the
black-velvet-lined cabinet. In the center, like a dull jewel, was a vial of
thick, black liquid. If it weren’t encased in glass, it would have been
camouflaged entirely by its dark surroundings. Annie watched as the man opened
the vial to reveal an eyedropper fastened in its lid. He worked quickly, but
carefully, retrieving a corked tube from several laying on one of the wooden
counters. He put one drop of the viscous black fluid into the empty glass tube
before corking it and putting it into his pocket. When he had replaced the vial
and locked the cabinet, he turned to Annie.

“What
is that?” she asked, nodding at the tube he had slipped it into his pocket.

“Black
Death.” He opened the door, expecting her to follow, and she did, as quickly as
she could. This time, she kept her hood on and didn’t look to either side as
they made their way through the doors. He took her robe and hung it on a hook
before they headed back up the cement stairs. The noise of the bar seemed to
vibrate under her feet as they emerged into the blue, hazy light of the Styx.

The
old man didn’t speak as he filled a martini glass with something clear from a
nozzle.
Tonic water?
Annie wondered. When he slipped the tube from his
pocket and uncorked it, she thought she could smell that too-sweet odor from
the basement again. In the little room downstairs, she had thought the liquid
in the vial was thick and sticky, like molasses. But now it ran down the side
of the tube as quick as black mercury, falling into the martini glass without
leaving any residue on the side of the vial.

“The
Black Death…” Annie stared as the entire drink turned dark before her eyes.

“Yes.”
The old man held the glass out to her and gave her a nod. “You sought the
secret and it was revealed to you.”

She
didn’t feel as if anything had been revealed. As a matter of fact, she was more
confused than ever. Annie took the glass from him and was surprised at how cold
even the stem of it was in her hand. “Well…thank you.”

“Only
death knows the secret to eternal beauty.” The voice in her ear belonged to
Eric, she was sure of it, and she whirled toward it, nearly spilling the
hard-won drink in her hand. There was no one there at all. She glanced back at
the old man and he winked at her, moving to serve another customer.

What
does that mean?
She
stared into the black depths of the drink in her hand. Only death knows the
secret to eternal beauty. The old man had said that to her, too, before she had
put on the dark robe and hood.

Annie
stared into the glass, seeing a dark reflection of herself. There was an image
shimmering there, and she recognized it as she did when looking at pictures of
herself as a child. In this vision, she was an old woman, her face careworn,
her smile lost in laugh lines, the familiar high cheekbones making her cheeks
look slightly sunken. She was looking at her own face, years into the future,
her physical beauty having faded long before.

“You’re
still beautiful.” It was Eric again, and it startled her out of her vision. He
wasn’t there, and yet she could have sworn the voice was real. She could almost
feel the heat of his lips pressed right to her ear!

Only
death knows the secret to eternal beauty.

Annie
understood, suddenly, and the realization brought tears to her eyes. Her
physical beauty would fade, over time, but the light burning in her that had
caught Eric’s attention that night in the kitchen never would. He had seen her,
fully, without ever even looking at her physical form. He had seen the woman
inside of her, the woman she was becoming, the woman she wanted to be, the one
beyond her physical body.

I
want to grow old with Eric
,
she thought, blinking back her tears.
He’s the man I want to be with when my
hair is white, when we have grandchildren coming to visit and stories to tell
about the old days.
The feeling was so strong in her that it was an ache,
and she found herself even more determined to do whatever it took to find him
again.