The Devil Dances (18 page)

I stopped and looked at her as a bad feeling gathered somewhere beneath my breastbone.

“Good to see you up, you lazy ox,” Vivian said cheerily as she brought me over a mug of tea. “It’s Earl Grey the way you like it, one milk, three sugars.”

I cleared my throat and rubbed the grit from my eyes. “Uh… thanks. You look chipper this morning,” I said, both jealously and a little sarcastically, then made a show of clearing my throat. This early, I sounded a little like James Earl Jones with a frog in his throat. This early, Vivian normally looked like hell… a little like me, actually.

Vivian’s eyebrow bounced up. “Chipper?”

I sipped the hot tea—which was, incidentally, just the way I liked it. I looked her over—her pristine hair and dress, her plain, pretty, makeup-less face. “I feel like I have a Stepford Wife now.”

Vivian glared at me and I winced internally. I thought for certain she would hit me, or put me in my place (which, admittedly, I deserved for that comment) but then her face broke and she laughed. It wasn’t a Vivian laugh. Vivian has a deep, full donkey laugh I always thought was more cute than annoying. This one was high and crystalline, pitched perfectly with no hint of sarcasm. The bad feeling under my breastbone intensified.

“He’s a bear in the morning, isn’t he?” Mary said as she rinsed her hands in the sink.

“Do you see what I have to put up with?” Vivian said to Mary in a half-mocking way, throwing the comment over one shoulder.

“Bears like honey. Feed him more honey, Vivian.”

The two girls laughed at that like it was a shared private joke between them.

That worried me. A lot. Since when had Mary, with her Sight, her black cap, and plain, almost homely face, become Vivian’s best girlfriend? She wasn’t even Vivian’s type. Vivian, when she made friends, liked bitchy, beautiful chicks who knew what they wanted out of life. Her roster of close friends included musicians, tattoo-artists, swingers, and goths. If a person wasn’t a challenge to get to know, at least according to her brother, Josh, they weren’t worth his sister’s time.

I went to sit out on the front porch while Vivian and Mary served a gigantic Pennsylvania Dutch breakfast to the menfolk who were just starting to wander in from the fields. I put my feet up on the railing, drank my tea, and just wondered what the hell I was supposed to do with her, short of dragging her away from the colony that was changing her.

When my phone rang, I welcomed the distraction. It was Morgana.

“Nick, Anton and I have some theories…”

“It’s an Old One,” I said, cutting her off.

She was quiet on the other end of the line for too long.

“Morgana?”

“I’m here.”

I sensed the tension in her voice. “You’re okay with demons and angels, but
this
catches you out of left field?” I tried to make it sound funny, but it wasn’t funny, and both of us knew it.

“Frankly… yes. The whole theory of the Old Ones is just that: a theory. It’s metaphysical mumbo-jumbo that pagans toking reefer in college talk about.”

“Not anymore. It’s real. It’s here. I just have to figure out what it is. And then figure out a way of sending it back to wherever it came from.”

I filled her in on the events of the last few days, and what my dad had told me. I also sent her the pics I had taken. When I was done, she said, “Anton and I will refine our search. We’ll try and get a list of names of known Old Ones that fit the style of that altar. I’m sure it won’t be hard. It’s very distinct.”

I nodded. “Get that to me ASAP.”

“We’re not your personal Wikipedia, Nick.”

I grimaced. “Get that to me ASAP,
please,
Morgana. It’s very important to me. I’ll owe you one, a big one.”

“You sound worried.”

“I think… no, I
know
that altar, this thing… is influencing Vivian in some way. It’s hurting her.”

I half expected Morgana to make some snide comment about that, or about Vivian in general, but she surprised me. “I’ll try and get that to you as soon as I can, then.”

“Thanks. I didn’t think… you know, that you’d be much concerned about her.”

“Nick, let me be clear about something,” she said in a low, somber voice. It was her professional teacher’s voice, the one she used when she was teaching novices in the Craft. “I don’t hate Vivian. Frankly, I don’t even really know her. I only know what Emily has told me about her and what vibes I get off her. All I know in my heart is that she’s not someone who should learn to utilize the Craft. Some people make good witches, like you. Some make bad witches. For Vivian, this is like putting a flamethrower in the hands of an angry infant. And that’s all I’m going to say on the matter.”

I nodded. “Good enough.”

“So, tell me what you’re planning to do once you know what we’re dealing with.”

“Destroy the altar, for starters. Problem is, I can’t get near it to destroy it. Hell, my
dad
can’t get near it, that’s how powerful it is. I mean, Morgana, it’s a god.”

“That makes sense, seeing how the Lucifers, whatever else they are, are
still
creatures of God. But maybe you can spin that to your advantage.”

“How do you mean?”

“Nick, it’s a god that was defeated at one point in the far past. By God, the being that created your bloodline. That means it has vulnerabilities.” She thought a long moment. “Maybe you’ve already got the tools available to you.”

I sat forward. “I’m listening.”

“During the original battle that put away all the other gods, your grandfather was some big, hotshot warrior, right?”

“A general, yeah.”

“Well, what weapons did your grandfather use? Has your father ever told you that?”

“He’s talked about the Morning Star,” I said, and then realized she might not know what that was. “It’s the bident, the sign of my father’s house. You know, the fancy two-pronged staff? Except everyone today thinks it’s a pitchfork the Devil has, but it’s really a warrior’s weapon. My dad uses it to drag souls to Hell.” I knew enough of my family’s history to know that the Morning Star was originally a weapon of God’s, and that long before the Fall, He had bequeathed it to His most beloved archangel, Lucifer. It had His blood on it, which was the reason the members of the Lucifer line could judge souls with it.

I imagined Morgana nodding. “Maybe you can get the bident from your dad. If it defeated the god once, it could probably do it again.”

I thought about that. “Dad’s not going to just hand it over.”

“Think of it as a contingency plan, then. Let me get to work looking over these books, find out more about this thing. Maybe there’s another way.”

I nodded. “Thanks, Morgana.” After I hit END, I looked over the picturesque front yard with its white picket fence, the dusty dirt road meandering beyond, and the green and golden fields in the hazy, sun-baked distance. It all looked so idyllic and picturesque, like something you’d find on a motivational poster about teamwork or perseverance. It almost felt obscene that an ancient god of bloodshed, terror, and sexual violation could exist here, or that if Morgana failed me, I might need to beg, borrow or steal my dad’s pitchfork in order to defeat it.

Yep. The fun never ends in my life.

The kickoff of the Swartzcopf Rumspringa surprised me, frankly.

I had read enough about Amish life to make me believe that courting only happened after a long, somber church service on a Wednesday evening. According to my friend Jacob, after the church meeting ended, a young man approached a young woman and asked to drive her back to her home in the young man’s buggy. There they held hands and talked in the coach house for a while, until the lights went out in the house, signaling the end of their “date”. From there, the young woman decided if she wanted to marry the young man. No bed courtship was involved—but then, things were sometimes done differently, even among members of the same Ordnung. In that way, the Pennsylvanian Swartzcopf Ordnung was its own strange beast.

When I asked Abraham about it that night, the two of us standing on the edges of the town square where dozens of paper lanterns had been hung, he said that the Swartzcopf here were so small in number that bed courtship was being encouraged after the night’s festivities. I had a feeling there would be many marriages after tonight, and in nine months, many new Swartzcopf.

Vivian had asked me to wear one of the men’s black suits. I really wasn’t a suit kind of guy, but because she’d asked—begged, really—I’d given in. So there I stood, among all the other nervous young studs in their own dark suits and hats, some kicking stones and tugging on clothes, waiting for my girl to arrive. Abraham walked the crowd, nodding encouragement or offering sage advice to the group of young, unmarried men who had never known companionship past Rosie Palm and her five sisters.

“Are you nervous?” he asked me when he saw I was tugging on the too-short sleeves of my borrowed blue Swartzcopf shirt, and to my surprise, I found I was.

Vivian suddenly appeared. She’d worn one of the women’s long black dresses and white aprons, and like the other young, courting women, she’d worn a white bonnet, the sign of the unmarried virgin. I walked up to her and she linked her arm through mine. “You look beautiful, Viv,” I told her.

She blushed sweetly and said, “Thanks, Nick. You look really handsome, yourself. Just like a prince.”

We definitely stuck out less as we followed the other couples into the town center. Abraham stood at a pulpit and delivered a brief sermon about the responsibilities of adulthood, the power of family and community, and the goodliness of upholding traditional Swartzcopf values in the face of a changing and increasingly Godless nation. Honestly, I felt a little odd—and somewhat long in the tooth—to be standing there amidst a sea of sixteen-year-old virgins hoping to get laid for the first time, but Vivian seemed to agree with the advice that Abraham was offering the young, courting couples, and she nodded her head at appropriate times along with the others.

Mary and the other women had laid out a buffet of meat pies and sweets. After Abraham concluded his sermon, the couples migrated to the tables, and I watched as the young men built platters of food for their young women. Confused, I looked over at Vivian. She stood beside me, looking prim in her dark dress, and said, “Now you’re supposed to bring me dinner. That’s what Mary told me. It’s kind of a test to see if the boy can figure out what his girl likes.”

“Ah.” I worked my way down the buffet table, adding a little bit of everything to Vivian’s plate. Well, everything but the Brussels sprout casserole. Vivian liked just about everything imaginable but Brussels sprouts.

She was smiling when I led her to one of the long picnic benches and we sat down side by side. Another couple sat across the table from us, the girl carefully looking over her suitor’s choices, nodding her head or shaking it with disapproval. The young boy looked worried.

“Does it meet with madam’s approval?” I asked Vivian.

She smacked me on the shoulder. “You’re supposed to take this seriously!”

I laughed. “You’re right, and I apologize.”

She looked over my offering carefully before beginning to eat. I was proud to have made the proper choices. “How did your parents meet, Nick?” she asked between bites.

I felt a little jarred by her question.

She saw my surprised expression and said, “I just mean… it seems so unusual. How did he… you know… choose her?”

“They met in college,” I told her. “My father was teaching a class in theology and my mother fell in love with him. But I don’t know why he was there, if it was just to teach or to find someone. Her, specifically.”

“You never asked him?”

“No.” The truth was, I had never really wanted to know. It was easier for me to believe it was all some kind of dark happenstance. I liked thinking that more than believing something like their meeting was pre-destined or pre-arranged, or that fate or God had had a hand in it. I preferred a God who sometimes lost control of His Creation to one who deliberately allowed evil things to happen in this world.

“You’re lucky,” Vivian said, picking at some of my choices. “I’ve always wondered… you know, who my father was.
What
he was. But I was a teen pregnancy. After I was born, my mom just left me. I know her name, and where she lives, but I’ve never gone to see her. I guess I’m afraid to find out.”

I realized I had a perfect opening to tell Vivian the truth. I opened my mouth, but again, what came out was, “Sometimes it’s better not to know.”

“Do you believe that, Nick?”

“Yes, Vivian. I do.”

She gave me sympathetic eyes and touched my hand. “I guess maybe in your case, that’s true.”

I was so lost in my own miserable thoughts that I almost didn’t recognize the shrill, musical squeal of a fiddle. The sound of it jerked my attention away from my own worries. A pair of Swartzcopf men had assumed Abraham’s place at the pulpit. Unlike him, though, they were both seated in cane-backed chairs, one playing a fiddle, the other a flute, neither without some great skill. I was surprised because, as far as I was aware, the only musical instruments that Jacob was allowed in his Ordnung was a harmonica, and only to keep the youth in tune for church choirs while they sang a cappella. He said playing more complicated instruments was on par with self-expression, which called unnecessary attention to the individual.