“Um-hmm. Callister Rood, but he was more than a yard-hand. He was the family apprentice necromancer.”

  “That’s some job title,” Fanshawe tried to jest, but it didn’t come off.

  Abbie’s voice lowered, either as if she were playing her description up for drama’s sake, or she was genuinely unsettled. “It was in this very house that they solicited the devil.”

  The devil, Fanshawe thought. But the notion of devil-worship, and even the name—the devil—was so hokey he had to smile.

  Abbie’s smile had disappeared. “They practiced their witchcraft in secret. Years went by, but the town never knew.”

  “Well, someone must’ve known—”

  “Of course, but a lot of time went by before anyone found out. Evanore was the one who got caught first.” She leaned closer against the bar, her voice nearly fluttering. “She and the coven were all condemned to death.”

  “Evanore but not her father?” Fanshawe asked logically. “Why didn’t Jacob get nabbed too?”

  “Jacob was abroad in England at the time, and Callister Rood had gone with him. But when they returned, his daughter had already been executed and buried.”

  “But Jacob must’ve been into witchcraft even more than her. I didn’t see any books in your display about her, only Jacob.”

  Abbie stepped away, as if to separate herself from something that had fazed her. She began to arrange the fruit cups in the service bar. “Jacob Wraxall was the most notorious heretic of his day. But that shows you how smart he was. Nobody suspected him until much later, after so much damage had already been done.” Finally, her grin returned. “You’re staying in his room, by the way.”

  Fanshawe gave a start after the words registered. “You’re kidding me.”

  “Nope,” but then she winced. “I’m sorry I mentioned it—sometimes I get a little carried away with this stuff. But no one’s ever complained about the room, Stew—it’s the best one in the house. I mean…if it bothers you, I’d be happy to put you somewhere else—”

  “No, no, that’s not it. I don’t believe in ghosts or anything like that. The room is great, but there’s just something…odd, knowing whose it was…” Suddenly the most gruesome possibilities occurred to him; he looked up, sheepish. “Please don’t tell me he boiled cats and made blood-sacrifices up there.”

  “Nope. The only thing that went on in that room was…” She turned quickly to clean more glasses in the triple-sink, and yet again the image of her slammed into Fanshawe’s senses. She pumped the soiled glasses up and down on two pointed brushes sticking up from the sink. This activity, of course, caused her to lean over, highlighting her cleavage.

  Fanshawe repressed an audible sign; he had to force his eyes anywhere but on her. He knew she wasn’t doing it on purpose.

  Then his attention snapped back on. “Wait—what? The only thing that went on in that room was? You never finished.”

  She smiled, aloof, tossing a shoulder as she plunged two more glasses into the sink. “It’s nothing, Stew. I shouldn’t be talking about it—”

  “Come on,” he urged, almost raising his voice. “You can’t start to say something, then stop. It’s not fair.”

  She poured him another shot, then whispered. “My father would kill me if he knew I was telling you all this.”

  “Why? All you’re doing is talking up the witch motif. You even told me the sign out front was your father’s idea.”

  “He’d just get really pissed at me. Some people are turned off by that sort of stuff. I don’t want my father thinking I’m scaring off guests.”

  Fanshawe couldn’t imagine why he even cared, but— “Abbie, I’m the one who asked.”

  She stood upright at the sink, her hands wet. “All right. You want to know what Wraxall did in that room? I’ll tell you.” She tapped a foot. “No one would’ve suspected in a million years, because Wraxall regularly attended church—”

  “But I thought all witches and warlocks did that. If they didn’t, then they’d be suspected instantly.”

  “Exactly. But Wraxall was also a bigwig in the town. He built the roads, he built the first schoolhouse, he loaned money to farmers. Everybody loved him. Only his diary revealed was what really going on in that room upstairs.”

  Fanshawe stared. “Abbie? Are you going to tell me, or do I have to guess?”

  Now she seemed outright uncomfortable. She let out a long sigh. “There was…quite of bit of…you know…”

  “No. I don’t know. That’s why I asked ten minutes ago.”

  “Quite a bit of incest went on in that room for quite a while.”

  Fanshawe blinked. Seconds ticked by. “Oh, you mean with Evanore.”

  “Uh-hmm. Pretty icky stuff, and it didn’t end until Wraxall was well into his seventies, and, well…” She caught herself, then stepped away. “Be right back, I forgot the bar towels.”

  She disappeared into a side door.

  Fanshawe chuckled, shaking his head. The old Keep A Jackass In Suspense Routine. He couldn’t figure her. Any other time he’d suspect that she was only trying to spark to his sense of curiosity, and was embellishing detail for the sake of it. But—

  I don’t think so. I can always tell when I’m being played.

  Another scarlet shooter sat before him, which he’d scarcely noticed. He sipped it this time, thinking. Incest. Terrific. At least Wraxall was a bigger pervert than I am, but that was hardly a consolation.

  Through the window, full darkness welled. Beyond, dim wedges of light from streetlamps cut Back Street up in a fuzzed luminescence. Fanshawe saw undefined figures wander into and out of the light, like content specters. Some were holding hands. When was the last time I was doing that?

  He didn’t answer himself; the realization was too dismal. The normal people are out there…

  Where am I?

  So much for sipping his drink; what remained went down in a gulp. When he looked back up, his eyes found the mirror again; in the reflection, behind his shoulder, he saw a face disappear. Had someone been standing behind the bar entrance, peeking in? Fanshawe thought so, and he turned.

  It looked like Mr. Baxter, he thought.

  But why would Mr. Baxter be frowning into his own bar?

  No one stood in the entrance when Fanshawe turned. A shadow fluttered, or seemed to. “Mr. Bax—” he began, but then shrugged it off.

  “I’m back.”

  He traversed on his stool to find Abbie hanging up towels. “I forgot to ask. Would you like to see a menu?”

  “No,” Fanshawe said good-naturedly. “I want you to finish saying what you were saying about Jacob Wraxall.”

  She opened a menu before him. “The Lexington-Concord soup is out of this world, or try the Valley Forge Pan-Seared Crabcakes. I’ve never had better, and I’m not just saying that ’cos my father owns the place.”

  Fanshawe closed the menu. What does Valley Forge have to do with a friggin’ crabcake? “It all sounds great, Abbie, but all I want is for you to finish what you were saying.”

  She was a fragrant dervish behind the bar. Now her back was to him again, but she returned an instant later, to place a third Witch Blood Shooter before him.

  Fanshawe laughed to himself. “Trying to make me forget the topic won’t work.”

  She grinned. “What topic is that, Stew?” and the she turned again, to lean over a reach-in. Fanshawe’s next words were lost; he was staring at her rump in the tight jeans.

  He took a deep breath and looked away. “Jacob Wraxall’s room. Incest.”

  “Hmm?”

  “The tone of your voice implied that things other than incest took place in that room. Worse things.”

  The act was over. She leaned again the service bar, facing him, and pursed her lips. “You really want to know, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s gross, Stew. It’s lousy bar talk.”

  “I love lousy bar talk—I’m from Manhattan.”

  She slumped. “I just told you that Wraxall and his daughter had incestuous relations well into Wraxall’s seventies. It’s not that hard to figure out.”

  He thought back to the grim portrait in the other room; in it, Wraxall appeared to be in his fifties while Evanore looked more like late-teens. And the old warlock was doing it till his seventies… That’s a long time for a guy to be hobknobbing with his daughter.

  Then—Moron!—the answer snapped into his mind. It dismayed him how someone so instantaneously analytical could be so thick-witted when it came to the plainly obvious.

  “They had…children?” he said more than asked.

  “How did you ever guess?” she shrilled, amused, then the amusement leveled off to stolidness. “They had a lot of babies.”

  “Well, then, what happened to the family line?”

  The amusement drained fully. “The Wraxall family line died when Wraxall himself died, in 1675.”

  Fanshawe leaned forward, piqued. Suddenly, this morbid curiosity overpowered his attraction. “What do you mean? If the line died with him, then what happened…,” and the rest of his query melted like wax on a hearth.

  “What happened to all those babies?” She crossed her arms just under her breasts and in a voice almost gravel-rough said, “Nobody knew for sure until after Jacob’s death, when they found his diary but…from time to time over the years, Evanore would disappear. So when the townsfolk asked Jacob where she was, he’d say she was traveling.”

  “I’m not scoring high marks for perceptiveness today, but I’ll take a wild guess and say she probably wasn’t really traveling.”

  “No. She wasn’t. She was in the house the whole time for…nine months at a time, if you catch my drift.”

  “So none of the townspeople would ever know she was pregnant,” Fanshawe reflected. Then the rest kicked in. “Oh, don’t tell me—”

  “Right again, Stew. Evanore wasn’t traveling, she was pregnant, with babies sired by her own father, but the babies were never seen by anyone, ever. Not to spoil your night completely but—hey—you asked.”

  “That I did.” He knew he had the rest, but he needed to hear her say it. For this, he merely looked at her in morose beseechment.

  “It wasn’t cats Jacob was sacrificing for his occult rituals.”

  Fanshawe downed his drink as he went pale at the bar. “On that note…could I have another shot, please?”

  ««—»»

  Fanshawe spent the next hour avoiding all conversion relative to Jacob Wraxall, witchcraft, warlocks, and the like. Instead he made small talk, which was much nicer, and unique because only then did it occur to him that he hadn’t sat in a bar in a long time, much less talked to a woman who wasn’t either his wife or someone connected to one of his businesses. He learned that Abbie had grown up in Haver-Towne, had attended a local community college for a certificate in hotel management, and, after spending a year in Nashua—”I thought I’d test the water in a small city before plunging headfirst into a big one, like New York”—she’d opted out of a shot at the glitzy metropolitan hotel bizz and decided to stay right where she was at. “I’ve never been much of a carrot-chaser,” she’d said. “A lot of people spend their whole lives wanting things they don’t need.” Why leave when she was happy here? “Better to help run my father’s place, which he’ll pass on to me some day.” In truth, she’d never even been to New York, and had never felt a desire to see it or any other big metropolis. “Slow-paced, peaceful, no rat-race—I know myself enough to realize that’s the only kind of life I really want to live,” she’d said. “So what if the money’s crummy?” His fetishist’s attraction notwithstanding, Fanshawe discovered that not only did he admire her for her polar-opposite ideals, but he envied her. Look what lots of money and the big city did for me, he thought. I’m a super-rich clinical pervert in recovery. I lost my marriage and even went to jail. What a great guy, huh? What a winner. He knew she’d be disgusted to know the truth. Billionaire or not, her father would throw him out of the hotel.

  But he also learned that not only was she unmarried now, she’d never been married. No kids. She’d had a few inert flings in Nashua, but the only serious relationships she’d had had been with local men who’d turned out to be “a bunch of crud-heads and moochers who didn’t want to work a job.” Instead, she’d accepted her slow-paced, simple life in her home town, figuring “whatever happens, happens, and whatever that might be, it’s a great life and a beautiful world.”

  Fanshawe could see in her eyes that she meant it. There was something shockingly refreshing about that.

  But what am I really thinking?

  He didn’t know. He felt weird in a way he couldn’t identify. Perhaps it was the alcohol—he rarely drank, and the only reason he was doing it here was because of the circumstance. This is the first time I’ve been away from people in—damn—I can’t remember when. His professional life involved his being constantly surrounded by underlings or other financial whizzes. His front office bosses had objected to no end when he’d told them he was going off on a long vacation by himself, as though he were some volatile political figure with enemies around every corner waiting to pick him off. His personal manager, Arthur Middoth, had practically had a panic attack. “Stew, please, a guy like you can’t just drop everything and go for a road trip. Lemme get’cha our best driver and a good vehicle,” the man had suggested with some angst in his voice. “I have a car, Artie, a bunch of them, and I don’t need a driver. I want to go by myself—that’s the whole idea.” Artie pushed his fingers worriedly through his hair, even though he didn’t have much. “Well then lemme send a couple of our guys in a second car.” “A couple of our guys?” Fanshawe laughed. “I’m not a mafia don, Artie. I just need to get away for a while, six months, maybe a year,” and then he’d added, “Period.” What could any of them say? Fanshawe owned them in a sense. Nevertheless, he felt skewed now, his insides diced up and shuffled around like something in a wok. First time out of the office and I don’t know which end is up. Then he looked back at Abbie.

  He wanted to say something but couldn’t. Their eyes locked, and several moments passed, but those several moments seemed to Fanshawe like full minutes.

  Abbie grinned again. The grin couldn’t have been more full of a joy of life. “What?”

  Fanshawe felt like someone speaking in a cavern. “Can-can I take you out to dinner when you get off work?”

  Her pause seemed like shock. “I can’t. I have to close tonight; we stay open till two when we have a convention.”

  “Oh.” He’d had no previous idea that he was going to ask her out. Idiot. What was I thinking? I’m fifteen years older than her probably, maybe twenty. I’m the OPPOSITE of her. He struggled for something to say next, but then—

  An uproar poured into the bar with no warning; Fanshawe turned, startled. The professors, he realized. At once the bar was filled with mostly long-haired, bearded men ranging from their fifties to their seventies. Where earlier they’d been wearing suits, now they wore jeans and T-shirts, and the T-shirts were all emblazoned with prints of dour faces, presumably philosophers. The men lined up at the bar, ordering drinks in chaos, waving dollars bills in their hands. They’re like spring-breakers, Fanshawe thought, only…old. But one thing he didn’t like was loud groups.

  And he was embarrassed. Abbie had turned him down.

  Part of himself was oddly impressed, because she already knew he was rich. But still…

  It was past ten already, and his fatigue from the long drive was taking its toll. “This is a little rowdy for me,” he tried to tell her.

  “Huh?” She was juggling bottles for squawking customers, pouring two drinks at once. “Not to be born is best!” someone howled; then someone responded, “Sophocles!”

  “I’ve got to go,” he attempted again. “Can you just put my drinks on my room bill?”

  “They were on the house,” she raised her voice over the revel, smiling as she was now operating several bar taps simultaneously.

  Fanshawe got nudged by a bearded gray-hair whose T-shirt read TRANSCEND YOURSELF! and showed a print of St. Augustine. “Pardon my Dasein,” the man said, then barked to Abbie. “A Witch’s Moon Lager, please!” Pardon my WHAT? Fanshawe wondered, aggravated. He left twenty on the bar as a tip, looked once more to Abbie, and saw that she was swamped with demanding customers. “See ya later,” he spoke up, waving, then slipped out of his seat. She hadn’t heard him. I can’t even say goodnight to her it’s so damn crowded. How can somebody as successful as me have karma this bad? As he was shouldering his way out, he noticed two attractive women chatting with some of the professors, long-legged, vivaciously breasted. Their eyes glittered in a mild buzz. It took a moment to realize he’d seen them before, but in running apparel, not evening dresses. Harvard and Yale, he recognized. Tan legs shined; the slopes of their breasts visible in their gowns seemed to flash at him. What flashed next was the image of them nearly naked as they lay hidden on the hillock; but he pulled away, just as some drunk yelled, “The human self is the only thing that can be known and therefore verified!” and someone responded “Bullshit! There is no objective basis for truth!”

  This is some weird party, Fanshawe thought. Finally, he broke out of the crowd under the bar transom, almost desperate now to flee the sudden tide of raucous drinkers. He turned toward the elevator, but before he could stride away—

  “Wha—”

  A hand grabbed his arm with some insistence; he turned around to see that Abbie had trotted after him. Her face was beaming as more drunk professors shouted objections behind her. “I’ll be right there!” she yelled to them, then turned back to Fanshawe. “You didn’t give me time to finish before all those old eggheads barged in. Day after tomorrow, I get off at seven. There’s a great Thai place on the next block.”

  Fanshawe was subtly rocked. She hadn’t turned him down after all. “That’s great. Seven o’clock it is, day after tomorrow.”