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standing amid the roiling waters.
     
    *   *   *
     
    Darius Marlowe was being swept into a fugue state in spite of himself. He stood among the congregation of the Starry Wisdom, in their robes of purple and black, and watched the pointed shadows of hoods leaping and retracting on the carved stone walls of the temple like dark gray flames as their bodies swayed to the rhythm of the chant. It was a good bit of theater, an effective piece of hypnosis: the air heavy with the swirling strata of incense, the flickering flames, and the deep droning music of the chant rising and falling, ebbing and flowing, echoing in the vaulted peak of the chamber above and stirring the water in the stone basin on the altar below. Brine from Revere Beach, to which had been added a phial of blessed rainwater from the bath of Saint Jeremy. One ingredient remained to kindle consciousness in that water, and though Darius knew he should be slipping covertly away from the throng while their eyes were closed and their ears were immersed in the music, he couldn’t resist waiting and watching for the moment when Samira would make her contribution.
    It was a small thing, given willingly, but it thrilled him to witness it each time.
    And there she was, stepping forward, guided by the gentle hand of the Reverend Proctor like a vassal helping a princess to step onto the running board of an opulent carriage on her way to a wedding. She stepped onto the stone dais, her simple white tunic blazing and reflecting the candlelight which the other robes absorbed, her skin flushed, black hair shining with perspiration. She held her hand above the basin, index finger extended, and though Darius couldn’t see it through the throng, he could almost hear the hinges of the slender instrument case creaking open as the reverend lifted the lid on purple velvet and glowing steel. Darius had assisted at the altar often enough in the days when he’d been in the reverend’s favor to know every beat in the rhythm of the rite.
    Today a younger man, barely a teen, stepped up and held the virgin’s wrist steady. It was a gentle grip, and mostly ceremonial. Samira Fanan, favored church daughter, keeper of keys, and tower librarian, had the resolve to keep her own hand quite steady without aid.
    Proctor touched the tip of the gleaming lancet to the blue flame of a Lengian letter inked on his brow, the A that marked his pineal gland, and then reached over the basin and inserted the tip of the instrument into the pad of Samira’s finger.
    Darius lingered, shifting his focus from the ruby drops that swelled and dripped into the bowl of brine and holy water to the flicker of pain that rippled across her features with the transience of the tiny waves that presently stirred the waters.
    Then he remembered his objective, and roused himself from the paralysis of fascination. He had already retreated to the back of the room while fading his own voice out of the chant. Now he stepped around a marble column and exited into the vestibule while all eyes were fixed on the bleeding finger.
    In the women’s changing room he slid the wooden box out of Samira’s cubbyhole and rifled through it hastily, resisting the urge to examine her undergarments, seizing on the metallic clatter of her key ring. It was customary for the congregation to wear nothing under their robes, to allow the ethereal currents to enter their pores and stir the vortices of their subtle anatomy, their astral bodies.
    Darius knew that none of that really mattered as long as the spells remained broken. The human larynx had long ago devolved into an inferior instrument for the overtones the chants required. Nothing was being stirred in that chamber but imagination. Beneath the black cotton of his robe, he had remained dressed in his street clothes, and now he touched his cell phone in his back pocket. He folded his fingers tight around the keys to keep them from jingling as he passed through the curtains of the changing room