Four and Twenty Blackbirds

But he'd gotten my interest up, so I reminded him I'd first take some tea before retiring.

"Oh good." He smiled even bigger. "I so much wanted to show you the birth record we found."

"Birth record?"

"Yes, for the little girl. But do come on back to the kitchen and I'll fill you in."

We followed the bouncy man past the sanctuary and down a hall until we reached a set of wooden double doors. "A few of us still reside in the old monk's quarters," Marcus explained. "It's rather like a dormitory back here. I apologize for the state of disrepair, but four-hundred-year-old buildings don't care to be remodeled for plumbing and electricity. We're working on getting it brought up to date right now, but you'll need to be careful. There's scaffolding and tools everywhere you turn. I hate to see it done, really. I honestly feel like we're gutting the place, but the present pipes and electrics were installed in the 1930s, and they're rusting and rotting out the walls. It's the ocean air, I suppose. Wreaks havoc on them. Best thing we can do for the place now is to tear it all out and start fresh."

"This church is four hundred years old?" I asked, disliking the quiet clip of our feet down the empty corridor. At least I prayed it was empty. Merely knowing its age made me want to close my eyes and be led through it. I'd seen enough ghosts for one evening.

"What? Oh, well, not really. Well, part of it is. The original structure was built not long after the Castillo, but it burned a time or two and was put together again. But back here, where the housing is—most of it is original. This was a mission, you see."

"It's bigger than it looks outside."

"Oh yes, yes it is. Quite large. We're backed up against the sea wall, sort of. You only see the very front from the street. Come this way—the kitchen is over here."

The kitchen was enormous. Its ceiling must have cleared twelve feet, and the interior appeared to have been cut from one single block of rough, light stone. A large, half-oval niche in the wall staked out a fireplace so expansive that it could have cooked my car, and the floors were flat stones held together with a brownish grout. Elderly appliances, not one of which could have digitally displayed the time, sat against the walls and on the counters. The most advanced piece of equipment I saw was an avocado green coffeemaker next to a chipped porcelain sink filled with empty white mugs.

In short, it looked exactly like it had been built four hundred years ago and was remodeled in the 1930s.

Marcus lit a burner on the gas stove and filled a teapot, setting it atop the flame. "Hold on a moment," he said, setting two mugs down before us on the table beside the old fireplace. "Let me go get the papers. It's very exciting. I think we might have a lead!"

With that, he skipped from the room, returning just in time to pull the kettle. While we waited for our tea to steep and fiddled with the sugar, Marcus removed the contents of a manila envelope and carefully laid them out before us.

"Here we are," he squeaked. "You're not going to believe this. We wouldn't have found it at all, except for the courthouse in Sebring has put all its records into a computer. We sent out feelers as far south as the Everglades, and a lucky thing we did. Look here." He withdrew a black-and-white photocopy and set it between me and Harry. "I think we found them, I really think we did."

The copy was not a very good or clear one, but it was sufficient. What we saw before us was a deed made out to Avery Dufresne. The exact location of the property was listed as a set of numbers I didn't understand.

Marcus was more than happy to clarify. "It's out there near Sebring, in the middle of the swamp where they've put the state park. Whoever is trying to raise John Gray may be there yet. This is just one acre in the middle of nowhere, on what's technically government land. But it's mostly dense cypress swamp that's virtually unnavigable. I'll bet they could safely hide several people there—maybe even a small coven."

I fiddled with the photocopy, staring down at the formal scrawl of Avery's name which had surely been put there by a bored public official. No, it was not Avery's hand. Down below, on the line marked for a signature, there was a large solid X.

"He couldn't read or write," I said, though to hear it aloud was strange.

Marcus shook his head. "He could read some, at least. And there's some evidence he may have learned to write later on. It's hard to do research on much of anything if you're illiterate, and from what we can tell, this man did loads of research."

"Research?" I pulled the second sheet of paper out from underneath the first. My hands were shaking and it was almost hard to read but I forced my fingers still and stared at the page. "What was he trying to research?"

"Eternal life," Marcus breathed. "Some seek it through God, others take a less reputable path. Avery was trying to re-create a potion that John Gray had told him about, but some of the ingredients he needed are hard to get your hands on this far from the Congo."

"The Congo?"

"Well, I don't know if it was the Congo, exactly, but you understand what I mean. To work the magic, he needed a wide assortment of plants and animal viscera. Since it was an African recipe, some of the ingredients were tough to come by, and Avery had to resort to some substitutions. I think he headed south seeking a comparable climate in hopes that the flora and fauna might be similar to what he required. If it weren't for the fact that Mae wouldn't go, I've often thought Avery might have found his way back to the Dark Continent."

"Not a bad theory," I admitted, scanning the second document. "But I can imagine that the recipe would have to be quite specific. What's this one? Is it the birth certificate you mentioned?"

Marcus hesitated. "Yes. I mean no. Something like that. That record is mostly interesting because it tells us that he still had at least his wife with him for a while after he came here. She was pregnant, and she had a difficult labor. Avery took her out of the swamp and to the nearest church a few miles away. The nuns cared for her, and this is a record of their visit. They paid for her medical care with three white chickens. This is the receipt, with a note of explanation."

"There was a child?" Harry took the paper from me and read it for himself. "I didn't know there was a child. Was it a boy or a girl?"

"It doesn't say." Marcus shrugged. "What does it matter?"

"What if that child was the beginning of the coven that's at work now? Hey, what if . . . well, what year was this—here it is. 1898. This child would be about Eliza's age, were he still alive. Do you think this guy might be Eliza's contact down here? It would certainly make sense, they would be what—cousins? Something like that."

"That's a reasonable thought," Marcus agreed.

I'd only barely heard them talking, and I didn't realize that Harry was asking the question of me. He repeated it, and I still didn't answer. "Eden, do you think this child might be Eliza's pen pal?"

I said, mostly to myself, "It was a girl."

Both men offered me blank, perplexed stares. "How on earth do you know that?" Harry asked, his eyes scanning the paper again. "It doesn't say that on here. It only says that the woman gave birth."

"It was a girl," I insisted quietly. "And they named her Miabella."

They went quiet. "How do you know?"

"She was his pretty one. That's Italian, though, isn't it? I wonder where he heard it."

I stood and went to the teapot Marcus had set back on the cool burner, looking more to avoid them than to pour another cup. They let me stand without protest, but talked behind me in lower tones as if I'd left the room or I couldn't hear them.

"Harry, is she—I mean, is Eden—is she like the rest of them?"

"I think so. If she says it was a girl, we may as well believe her."

"But a name? I don't see how she . . . unless she's considerably stronger than the rest of them, I don't see how she could possibly know that. Even the other one, the girl on the other side of the family—the poor little thing who died . . ."

"I don't think it's just that she's stronger. I think it's more than that. I think . . . no, I'm not sure enough to say it."

"Say it anyway."

"If this girl, Miabella, is still there and in contact with Eliza, then maybe—"

Without turning around, I cut him off. I rallied every ounce of energy I had remaining and shaped it into my next words, trying to sound ordinary. Trying to sound rational and confident. Not altogether failing, but not succeeding as well as I would have liked, either.

"It's not her. Whoever it is that's been sending mysterious potions to my batty old aunt, it's not that baby. She's dead. She's been dead for years." I reached for the teapot, but when I extended my hands they were badly quivering, so I pulled them back and crossed them against my chest. I stayed there, facing the stove, probably looking somewhat stupid to the two men behind me.

"Eden, are you all right?" Harry asked it, and I heard a chair scoot away from the table.

"Yes," I lied. "I'm fine. Don't worry about me. I'm just, I'm just not feeling well. Still. I mean, from sleeping . . . from sleeping in the car. And my stomach was upset anyway when we started."

"Would you like to go lie down?" Marcus's voice.

Behind him I heard Harry whisper a sentence or two that contained the word "poisoned." Oh yes, the draught of sickly drink. Now that they mentioned it, I had felt strange ever since first I sipped it. Somehow I managed to disagree, though I didn't care enough to argue. Eliza's brew was no poison. It was something more . . . helpful. I hoped.

"Would you like to lie down?" Marcus asked again.