Alexandra Sokoloff - Book of Shadows

Garrett sat, and in all his experience as a cop, all the weirdest places he’d been, he couldn’t remember ever feeling so out of place and uncomfortable. He had the distinct sense that that was the point.

Tanith smiled at him, dark eyes shining, and answered his thought. “I’m sorry. Not exactly your style, is it? But it is more private.” She sat back in her own chair and crossed those endless legs.

Garrett cleared his throat. “I’m a little out of my league with this magic stuff. You were a great help the other night and I was hoping you might be willing to clear some things up for me.”

Her smile died as she stared across the table at him. “I’m more than willing to do whatever it takes to help catch the real killer.”

“I appreciate that,” he said without expression, while thinking: She’s covering for this kid. Why?

Aloud he said, “Are you familiar with this design, or what it means?” He took his notebook from a coat pocket and drew the pattern of three triangles, pushed it to the center of the table between them.

She looked down at the drawing and frowned. “It’s a sigil: a symbol used in ritual magic. This is the sigil of the demon Choronzon.”

Garrett felt an electric thrill, the feeling of puzzle pieces falling together. “Choronzon,” he repeated carefully. “So what would it mean to have this—sigil—written somewhere?”

She looked disturbed. “It depends on where it was written. But it would probably mean that someone was trying to summon the demon. Writing the sigil is a way of calling it.”

It wasn’t written, it was carved into Erin Carmody’s body. The memory made his skin crawl. But that wasn’t information he was willing to share.

He shook his head in real bewilderment. “Why would anyone want to summon a demon?”

A dozen conflicting feelings passed over her face, like the rippling of water on a lake. “To use its power. To make it do your bidding,” she answered.

For a moment he could only stare at her. She actually believes all this.

He shifted in his chair. “This is probably a stupid question, but why would a demon do anything a—human—wanted?”

“It wouldn’t,” she said. “You would have to bind it.” Before he could ask, she answered, “Not with ropes. With a spell.”

This is totally insane, he thought, and forced a neutral tone. “And then it would do what you wanted it to?”

Again, that conflicted look. “If you were a powerful enough magician to control it.”

It was probably the weirdest conversation he’d ever had in his life. “It sounds kind of risky.” Not to mention batshit crazy .

“You are right about that,” she said flatly.

“Are demons stupid enough to let that happen?”

She looked at him in the wash of candlelight. “The demon would have its own agenda, of course.” She sighed, and answered his unspoken question. “Since they have no corporeal form themselves, demons can only do their work through human agents. And they covet our life. Demons are drawn to human life. They envy us desperately.”

A phrase from the Crowley text popped into Garrett’s mind: It craves to become real.

“That’s how they’re able to be lured,” Tanith said, as if she’d heard him. “Of course, arrogance has something to do with it. Thinking they’re too powerful to be bound.”

She glanced at his face and leaned forward slightly, startling him. “Detective Garrett, you might be more comfortable with this conversation if you thought of it as a metaphor.”

“Did I look uncomfortable?”

“Just a bit,” she said drily.

Once a Catholic, always a Catholic, he thought. But the idea of wanting to summon a personification of evil was incomprehensible to him.

“Do you think of demons as metaphors?” he asked her.

She narrowed her eyes. “We’re not talking about me. Why do you want to know about Choronzon?” she said, with obvious tension in her voice.

He ignored the question. “Do you do that kind of thing—summoning demons?”

A strange look flickered over her face in the candlelight. “Regardless of what you may have seen in the movies, witches don’t have anything to do with demons.” She pushed back her chair.

Afraid he’d lost her, he half rose and said quickly, “I’m sorry, this is all new to me.”

She stared at him across the table, and then relented, sinking back into her seat. “I understand that.”

He grappled with his thoughts. “How many demons are there, exactly?”

She looked bleak. “Legions.”

He felt a twinge at the ancient word. “So what do you know about this one… Choronzon?”

She paused before she spoke. “Choronzon is not one of the host of more well-known Solomonic demons. He’s in a class by himself. He was made famous—relatively speaking—by the magician Aleister Crowley.”

Garrett kept his face still and wrote on his pad. “Aleister Crowley,” he repeated, with no expression. “Can you tell me about him?”

She looked at him stonily in the orange light. “You know of him.”

He blinked. “Why would you say that?”

She glanced at his pad and he realized she had been aware of what he wrote all along. “You spelled his name correctly. It’s not a common spelling. In fact, Crowley made it up himself.”

“I’ve only seen the name,” Garrett said stiffly, annoyed at being caught. “Jason Moncrief had quite a few books by this Crowley on his shelf.”

She looked amused. “What a surprise.”

“What do you mean? Do you know Jason Moncrief?” he demanded, perhaps jumping the gun.

She frowned. “No. I know the type.”

He felt a twinge of disappointment—and anger. She’s lying. Unless … He glanced out toward the shop. “Do you have any employees helping you here?”

“No. I work alone.”

And I doubt you’d not remember Jason Moncrief buying a set of books on Crowley. I doubt you miss much of anything at all. But he kept those thoughts to himself. Don’t confront her. Not yet. Better to see what else she might let slip.

“You said this magician, Crowley, made the demon—Choronzon—famous. Can you tell me about that?”

She studied him warily. “What do you need to know?”

“Everything.”

Her eyes held on his face… and Garrett suddenly found it hard to move. Then she got up and left the room, pushing the velvet drape aside. Garrett sat in the flickering dark of the velvet room, his heart beating faster than it had any right to. After a prolonged moment, she returned carrying several large volumes and he felt himself breathe again.

She sat back in her chair and opened a book, turned it toward him to show him a black-and-white portrait of a man with a handsome but dissolute face and burning, compelling eyes. “Crowley was an early twentieth-century magician and author of numerous occult books on spiritualism and magick practices. He was a Cambridge graduate, a chess master, a voracious drug user and voracious bisexual, and some say a British spy. His father was an English gentleman and a preacher, but from an early age Aleister Crowley sought what he called ‘Satan’s side.’ He had a lifelong obsession with the nature of evil and with Satan particularly. At first he joined and studied with a group of magicians called the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, but when he began studying the demonic system known as Abra-Melin, a higher magician in the Golden Dawn accused him of dabbling in malignant forces beyond his control. So Crowley left the Order and founded his own magical order: Astrum Argentium, the Silver Star. And at some point…” She paused, her face going blank for a moment. “Crowley started to go off the deep end, indulging in sexual sadism and fetishism, abusing absinthe and other drugs. He was infamous for orgiastic parties and bizarre sexual exploits, and became known as ‘the Great Beast,’ ‘the Wickedest Man in the World,’ and even ‘Antichrist.’ ”