Tess Gerritsen - The Mephisto Club

CONTENTS

To Neil and Mary

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Every book is a challenge to write, a seemingly impossible mountain to climb. No matter how difficult the writing may be, I have the comfort of knowing that wonderful colleagues and friends stand by me. Many thanks to my incomparable agent, Meg Ruley, and the team at Jane Rotrosen Agency. Your guidance has been the star Ive steered by. Thanks also to my amazing editor, Linda Marrow, who can make any writer shine, to Gina Centrello, for her enthusiasm through the years, and to Gilly Hailparn for all her kind attention. And across the pond, Selina Walker at Transworld has been my unflagging cheerleader.

Finally, I must thank the one person whos been with me the longest. My husband Jacob knows just how difficult it is to be married to a writer. Yet hes still here.

And destroy all the spirits of the reprobate, and the children of the Watchers, because they have wronged mankind.

The Book of Enoch X:15, ancient Jewish text, 2nd century B.C.

ONE

They looked like the perfect family.

This was what the boy thought as he stood beside his fathers open grave, as he listened to the hired minister read platitudes from the Bible. Only a small group had gathered on that warm and buggy June day to mourn the passing of Montague Saul, no more than a dozen people, many of whom the boy had just met. For the past six months, he had been away at boarding school, and today he was seeing some of these people for the very first time. Most of them did not interest him in the least.

But his uncles familythey interested him very much. They were worth studying.

Dr. Peter Saul looked very much like his dead brother Montague, slender and cerebral in owlish glasses, brown hair thinning toward inevitable baldness. His wife, Amy, had a round, sweet face, and she kept darting anxious looks at her fifteen-year-old nephew, as though aching to wrap her arms around him and smother him with a hug. Their son, Teddy, was ten years old, all skinny arms and legs. A little clone of Peter Saul, right down to the same owlish glasses.

Finally, there was the daughter, Lily. Sixteen years old.

Tendrils of her hair had come loose from the ponytail and now clung to her face in the heat. She looked uncomfortable in her black dress, and she kept shifting coltishly back and forth, as though preparing to bolt. As though shed rather be anywhere than in this cemetery, waving away buzzing insects.

They look so normal, so average, the boy thought. So different from me. Then Lilys gaze suddenly met his, and he felt a tremor of surprise. Of mutual recognition. In that instant, he could almost feel her gaze penetrating the darkest fissures of his brain, examining all the secret places that no one else had ever seen. That hed never allowed them to see.

Disquieted, he looked away. Focused, instead, on the other people standing around the grave: His fathers housekeeper. The attorney. The two next-door neighbors. Mere acquaintances who were here out of a sense of propriety, not affection. They knew Montague Saul only as the quiet scholar whod recently returned from Cyprus, who spent his days fussing over books and maps and little pieces of pottery. They did not really know the man. Just as they did not really know his son.

At last the service ended, and the gathering moved toward the boy, like an amoeba preparing to engulf him in sympathy, to tell him how sorry they were that hed lost his father. And so soon after moving to the United States.

At least you have family here to help you, said the minister.

Family? Yes, I suppose these people are my family, the boy thought, as little Teddy shyly approached, urged forward by his mother.

Youre going to be my brother now, said Teddy.

Am I?

Mom has your room all ready for you. Its right next to mine.

But Im staying here. In my fathers house.

Bewildered, Teddy looked at his mother. Isnt he coming home with us?

Amy Saul quickly said, You really cant live all by yourself, dear. Youre only fifteen. Maybe youll like it so much in Purity, youll want to stay with us.

My schools in Connecticut.

Yes, but the school years over now. In September, if you want to return to your boarding school, of course you can. But for the summer, youll come home with us.

I wont be alone here. My mother will come for me.

There was a long silence. Amy and Peter looked at each other, and the boy could guess what they were thinking. His mother abandoned him ages ago.

She is coming for me, he insisted.

Uncle Peter said, gently, Well talk about it later, son.

In the night, the boy laid awake in his bed, in his fathers town house, listening to the voices of his aunt and uncle murmuring downstairs in the study. The same study where Montague Saul had labored these past months to translate his fragile little scraps of papyrus. The same study where, five days ago, hed had a stroke and collapsed at his desk. Those people should not be in there, among his fathers precious things. They were invaders in his house.

Hes still just a boy, Peter. He needs a family.

We cant exactly drag him back to Purity if he doesnt want to come with us.

When youre only fifteen, you have no choice in the matter. Adults have to make the decisions.

The boy rose from bed and slipped out of his room. He crept halfway down the stairs to listen in on the conversation.

And really, how many adults has he known? Your brother didnt exactly qualify. He was so wrapped up in his old mummy linens, he probably never noticed there was a child underfoot.

Thats not fair, Amy. My brother was a good man.

Good, but clueless. I cant imagine what kind of woman would dream of having a child with him. And then she leaves the boy behind for Monty to raise? I dont understand any woman whod do that.

Monty didnt do such a bad job raising him. The boys getting top marks in school.

Thats your measurement for what makes a good father? The fact that the boy gets top marks?

Hes also a poised young man. Look how well he held up at the service.

Hes numb, Peter. Did you see a single emotion on his face today?

Monty was like that, too.

Cold-blooded, you mean?

No, intellectual. Logical.

But underneath it all, you know that boy has got to be hurting. It makes me want to cry, how much he needs his mother right now. How he keeps insisting shell come back for him, when we know she wont.

We dont know that.

Weve never even met the woman! Monty just writes us from Cairo one day, to tell us he has a brand-new son. For all we know, he plucked him up from the reeds, like baby Moses.

The boy heard the floor creak above him, and he glanced toward the top of the stairs. He was startled to see his cousin Lily staring down at him over the banister. She was watching him, studying him, as if he were some exotic creature shed never before encountered and she was trying to decide if he was dangerous.

Oh! said Aunt Amy. Youre up!

His aunt and uncle had just come out of the study, and they were standing at the bottom of the stairs, looking up at him. Looking a little dismayed, too, at the possibility that he had overheard their entire conversation.

Are you feeling all right, dear? said Amy.

Yes, Auntie.

Its so late. Maybe you should go back to bed now?

But he didnt move. He paused on the stairs for a moment, wondering what it would be like to live with these people. What he might learn from them. It would make the summer interesting, until his mother came for him.