“Then shouldn’t we be running away?” Carmel asks. “And why is he feeding him then?”
“Not everyone in the Order is convinced. They respect the old ways, and that includes the original warrior bloodline. They’ll stand with you, if you swear to uphold the old tradition.”
“And if I won’t?”
Gideon says nothing. We’ve reached the dining room, which isn’t really any bigger than the other rooms. There is, of course, a fireplace in it, and a chandelier glints below the high ceiling, reflecting the yellow flame. There are at least a dozen people sitting at a table, being waited on by some more of the Fembot-like junior members. Jestine is nowhere to be seen. She’s probably hidden away under guard, like a treasure. When we walk in, everyone stands. Burke is among them and manages to look like he’s seated at the head, even though the table is round.
The man closest to me holds out his hand and smiles. I shake it and he introduces himself as Ian Hindley. He’s got thinning brown hair and a mustache. His smile seems genuine, and I wonder if he’s a sympathizer. As I go along, shaking hands and hearing names, I can’t tell which of them want to see me dead now from which of them will just want to later.
I’m seated beside Burke, and the food arrives almost immediately. Steak medallions and some kind of blackberry sauce. All of a sudden I’m inundated with small talk. Someone even asks me about school. I thought I would be too tense to eat. But when I look down, my plate is empty.
Their conversation is so nice, so pleasant, that I don’t notice right away when it turns to tradition. The subject comes on slow and easy in my ears. Their words about the morality of the athame, and the intent of its creation, vibrate through like the buzzing of bees. It’s interesting. It’s another perspective. It’s reasonable. If I swear to it, they’ll stand behind me. If I swear to it, Anna stays in Hell.
My eyes start to wander around the table, across their laughing and smiling faces, over their eerily similar clothes. Gideon is talking amiably with them. So is Thomas, and even Carmel, their eyes lightly glazed. To my right, Burke sits, and the weight of his stare hasn’t left my profile.
“They think they’ve got me,” I say, turning to him. “But you know better, don’t you?”
All at once the table falls silent. Like they hadn’t really been having their own conversations at all.
Burke makes a pretty good show of looking around with regret.
“I had hoped that meeting the Order, and hearing your purpose, would keep you from making this mistake,” he says.
“Don’t do it,” says a feminine voice, and I look across the table to see the ash-haired woman who walked with me earlier, whose name I now know to be Mary Ann Cotton. “Don’t profane yourself, or the Biodag Dubh.” Oh, Mary Ann. Me and the Beedak Doo are just fine.
“This is a nice little cult you’ve got here, Burke,” I say.
“We are a sacred Order,” he corrects me.
“No. You’re a cult. A buttoned-up, prissy British cult, but you’re still a cult.” I turn to the rest of them and draw the athame out of my pocket, out of its sheath, letting them see the firelight reflect along the blade. “This is mine,” I say over the top of their creepy sighs. “It was my father’s before me, and his father’s before that. You want it back? I want a door to the other side, to free someone who doesn’t belong there.”
It’s so quiet that I can hear Gideon and Thomas push up their glasses. Then Burke says, “We can’t just take the athame back,” and when Dr. Clements protests, making one last plea for the old bloodline, he holds up his hand and squashes it. “The Biodag Dubh will forever serve your blood. Until that blood is extinguished.”
In the corner of my eye, I see Carmel’s hand grip her chair, always ready to bludgeon something.
“This isn’t the way,” Gideon says. “You can’t just murder the warrior.”
“You have no right to speak, Mr. Palmer,” says a member with close-cut black hair. He’s the youngest, probably the newest. “You haven’t been of the Order for decades.”
“Be that as it may,” Gideon goes on. “You can’t tell me that none of the rest of you don’t feel the same. The bloodline has existed for thousands of years. And you’re going to snuff it out, just because Colin says so?”
There’s a ripple effect of people looking back and forth at each other, Thomas, Carmel, and me included.
“He’s right,” says Dr. Clements. “Our will doesn’t matter.”