Chain of Souls (Salem VI) (8 page)

"Then what about Card? Was he one of them, too? And if he was, why did he string me along and want me to believe he was a cop?"

"We don't know the answer. Maybe we never will."

John threw his hands in the air, unable to contain his frustration. "So what do we do? How do we start to fight? How do we get a clue to where Sarah is?"

"Baby steps. You're going to go upstairs and get into your jogging clothes. You're going to go out and walk or jog for at least an hour. You're not doing yourself or Sarah any good in your current state. You need to get your brain clear. You understand that, right?"

John blinked at her and after a few seconds he nodded, grateful to have somebody telling him what to do. He stood slowly and went upstairs and came down a couple minutes later in his running pants and a sweatshirt.

"I'll be right here when you get back," Amy said.

John nodded and stumbled out the door. He jogged a couple very slow blocks to warm up and then started picking up speed. After fifteen minutes he felt heat and oxygen and blood coursing through his body, and he began to feel better. He began pushing hard, not exactly consciously, but imagining he could outrun the guilt and sadness that had nearly paralyzed him and that he could catch the rage he imagined was someplace ahead. He knew his rage was something he desperately needed, a weapon against the weight of fear and uncertainty.

He ran harder and harder, sucking the cold air deep in his lungs, blowing out what was left of his hangover, feeling stronger and faster as he went. Gradually, and then more and more, he felt it, his rage starting to boil up from his guts. It was almost like when Rebecca Nurse's spirit had come into him down in the Coven's underground lair. Rage was power, the denial of fear, the willingness to take risks, the ability to receive pain and endure it so that he could inflict even more on his enemies.

The Coven had told him they had Sarah, and they told him to stop. Stop doing what? Stop restarting the
Salem News?
Stop trying to find Jessica Lodge? It didn't matter what they wanted him to stop. He needed the mouthpiece of a newspaper to fight the Coven when the time came to fight them in print, and he needed to find Jessica Lodge because she had so many of the answers he needed. The Coven might have Sarah, but there was nothing he could do to save her without information and leverage. He knew what the Coven did to the people it captured. Obeying them wasn't an option because it wasn't going to help Sarah.

Finally understanding what he had to do, he turned for home.

BACK IN HIS HOUSE, JOHN WENT OVER TO AMY
and took her in his arms. Holding her tight to his chest, he said, "Thank you for kicking me out of my despondency. For a while there I couldn't think. I couldn't do anything. I was just stuck."

Amy pulled away from him and looked up. "You've taken a huge blow. I don't have a child, but I think I understand what this means to you. But I also know you're a fighter." She smiled. "You're as good a fighter as I've ever seen, good enough to save my life when I didn't think there was anything that could save me. I just want you to know that I'm with you for whatever it takes to get Sarah back, even up to and including a trip to England to get Jessica or whatever else you decide. I've got your back."

John closed his eyes as he felt a hot tear starting to work its way out of the corner of his eye. It felt so extraordinary to have somebody he could depend on, somebody he could
really
depend on. "Thank you," he finally managed, his voice hoarse.

They stayed that way for a long time, and when he finally loosened his embrace and stepped away from her, he had a fresh sense of purpose surging inside. "What are you thinking?" she asked. "Starting to have a plan?"

He nodded. "It's sort of a process of elimination." He held up one finger. "I sorely wish Rebecca Nurse was still here, but she's not. No amount of wishing can bring her back, so I have to give up hope from that quarter."

He held up a second finger. "Of the people we know, there's simply no way to know who we can and can't trust. There just isn't, so we don't trust anybody."

He held up a third finger. "We have no idea where they have taken Sarah. We don't know if she's in Salem, or if she's even in Massachusetts. Heck, we don't even know if she's in the United States."

He held up a fourth finger. "So, in the absence of any living people who can help us, and having no clue where they've taken Sarah, where do we turn? If we can't go forward, we have to go backward. We know some of my ancestors were fighting the Coven exactly the way we are, and I would bet my life we could trust them. Of course we can't talk to them, so we just have to find out if there are any messages or guides or clues they might have left behind that we haven't already found. We have to hope there's something in the past that can help us figure out what the Coven might have done with her."

"So you're heading upstairs?"

He nodded. "The library for starters. I'll go through the house with a fine-toothed comb."

"I'll start on the downstairs," Amy offered. "It'll go faster."

"Deal," John said, recalling that Amy had been the one who found the message from his relative, Captain John Andrews, hidden in the picture frame that held the portrait of Rebecca Nurse. That message had been hugely important in helping them understand that the Coven had been operating in Salem for over three hundred years and all that time had been making blood sacrifices to Satan and hunting down and killing anyone who seemed to take too much interest in their activities. Thinking about that now, and remembering that his own ancestors hadn't been able to trust the people around them any more than he could today, made him feel less alone.

He went upstairs to the home office that had once been the library of Captain John Bancroft Andrews and several of his other sea captain ancestors who had helped make the Andrews family such a success in early Salem. Through his friendship with Nathaniel Hawthorne and also through discoveries made on his own sea voyages, Captain John Bancroft Andrews, like John today, had become deeply concerned about the Salem Coven and its murderous activities. However, unlike his modern day namesake, Captain Andrews had apparently never been able to tap the power of the spirits of the dead to actually fight and kill members of the Coven.

John thought about that as he paused in the doorway of his library, taking in the large bay window that overlooked the dark waters of Salem harbor, windows from which his ancestors had been able to look down on their own clipper ships. He had grown up thinking he had to be in some ways weaker, certainly less intrepid than his forbearers who had gone to sea generation after generation in wooden ships that seemed incredibly small and frail considering the distances they traveled and the savage seas they encountered. He wondered how those old sea captains would view him if they could see the way he had destroyed the leaders of the Coven, and he felt a small flutter of pride that he had acquitted himself in a manner that might give those tough old men something to smile about. At least he hoped that might be the case.

He shook off his reverie and focused on the old Hepple-white mahogany table that stood in the bay window. On top of the table rested a clutter of things from a wide mix of generations: his computer and keyboard; a sextant once used to navigate his family's ships; the leather bound ship's log of the
Formosa,
perhaps the most famous of his family's many clipper ships; his grandfather's binoculars; an oosik, which was the penile bone of a walrus and had been collected by some enterprising ancestor with a good sense of humor; a wooden model of the
Singapore,
another of his family's ships.

The rest of the room was just as cluttered. A folding Chinese screen stood in one corner; another table held John's own hockey and sailing trophies. The Federal period desk held a stack of unpaid bills, unfiled brokerage and bank statements, and a general confusion of personal documents. The bookshelves sagged with books he had bought and read as well as his aunt's and grandfather's books and numerous leather-bound volumes from the 1800s and even several boxes of old letters and other unbound scraps of writing.

For the next five hours he went through the room, starting to the right of the doorway and working his way around, inch by inch; checking each square of molding and each piece of furniture for hidden compartments; looking to see if ancient messages had been glued to the underside of tables; running his fingers around the edges of the Chinese screen as he felt for bumps or irregularities beneath the fabric.

At his desk he removed each drawer, looked inside and all around the sides and bottoms, felt the sides of the desk for any hint of a panel that might move, then lay on his back, slid underneath, and looked at the bottom. When he finished he did the same thing to the Hepplewhite table, but found it as empty of hidden messages as the desk.

He felt along the sides of the fireplace, pushing each slight protuberance in the carved mantel, listening hopefully for the muted click that might indicate that a hidden panel had opened. When he finally came to the bookshelves, he took each old book, opened it to look for notes written inside the cover, then went through the pages to see if a slip of paper had been carefully inserted somewhere.

He was halfway through when Amy came into the room. "Nothing downstairs, I'm afraid. I checked every piece of furniture and every single painting, but I came up empty handed. Anything up here?" she asked.

John shook his head. "Totally dry, so far."

"Can I help?"

John nodded at the old Andrews family Bible where it lay on the lowest shelf. "You might want to tackle that old beast. I was saving it for last."

The Bible was large, bound with embossed leather, and held together with a metal clasp. Inside, in addition to the Bible itself were blank pages in which births, deaths, and marriages of the Andrews clan had been recorded for over one hundred fifty years. As Amy carried the Bible over to the desk, unfastened the clasp, and laid it open, John went back to the other books.

Coming to a section of ancient leather-bound books that had been owned by Captain John Bancroft Andrews, he saw a line of old classics, like
Robinson Crusoe, The Aeneid, The Odyssey, A Pilgrim's Progress, Don Quixote, Pamela,
and
Paradise Lost.
Because the books were old and valuable, he took each one off the shelf with care and turned the pages slowly and gently.

The work was tedious and slow. He had gone through all of the books but one and as he started to page through
Paradise Lost,
he began to think there was nothing in the house worth finding, but then a small notation opposite line 422 of Book I caught his eye. It was unusual not so much because of what it said but because there had been no other marginal jotting in any of the other books. Feeling a flutter of excitement, he brought the book over by the window and squinted down at the faded writing.

"Amy, come over here," he said softly.

When she looked over his shoulder at the writing, he glanced at her. "What does that say?"

"I think it says 'Asthoreth/Astarte equals Elizabeth Turner.'"

"You ever heard of Asthoreth/Astarte?"

"Asthoreth and Astarte are sort of synonymous names for a Phoenician goddess who was kind of a sinful love goddess."

He turned all the way around and gaped at her. "How do you know
that?"

"Too much college, I guess. Some of my totally unessential and useless knowledge."

"Why is this name in
Paradise Lost?"

Amy picked up the book and read for a few moments. "Because apparently Asthoreth was one of the twelve most powerful angels who united with Satan to oppose God."

"So who is Elizabeth Turner?"

Amy went over to John's computer and started an Internet search. After a few minutes of typing, she turned away from the screen. "The best historic local hit is Elizabeth Turner, wife of Captain John Turner."

John snapped his fingers, recognizing the name. "He's the guy who built the first part of what is now known as the House of the Seven Gables."

John picked up
Paradise Lost
again and finished paging through the book. The notation mentioning Asthoreth/Astarte and Elizabeth Turner seemed to be the only writing he could find. He rubbed his eyes. "This is pretty damn vague. We don't know who wrote this or why they wrote it or when it was done. We don't know whether it means something important or nothing at all. How can we know whether this has anything to do with the Coven?

"Why can't Rebecca Nurse's spirit just appear and make it easier?"

Amy glanced up from the family Bible where she was still going through all the pages. She shrugged, having no answer to offer.

John nodded, amazed yet again at how much he missed Rebecca Nurse, then went back to work, going through the last few books on the shelf but not finding any other marginal notations. He looked up, feeling a mounting sense of desperation as he realized just how much he had been counting on finding some new set of clues that could tell him something, anything about where to start looking for his daughter.