By NyteMan
Chapter 3
"Hi again, Gran," said Gabriel, standing once again in the door to Gran's house. "Mind if I pick your brain for a while?" He felt very nervous standing there, knowing that he was about to force her to recall painful events again.
It was as if Gran seemed to detect the hesitation that Gabriel was exuding, and wordlessly smiled lightly and stood aside for him to come in. "Now you take a load off, sit down." Gran picked up a tray and put it down in front of him on a coffee table. "I was just about to have a glass of iced tea and read for a while. Care to join me?" Gabriel nodded his assent and Gran began to pour the cool liquid into tall tumbler-type glasses.
Gabriel was silent while she poured, and the silence made her nervous enough that she spilled a little bit off the side of one glass, the brown liquid splashing onto the tray and spattering onto the table a bit. "Oh, no...let me get something to wipe this up - "
"Allow me, Gran," said Gabriel, taking the pitcher from her and setting it down as she hurried out to the kitchen to get a towel. Gabriel watched her as he poured the tea. Rebecca Knight was a very strong woman, to have gotten through the death of her husband, her only son and his beautiful wife; not to mention being able to let go as Gabriel went out into the world to live his life, a life she didn't totally understand but respected as his choice. Rebecca Wright should have been the heiress of some major family in New Orleans, but chose to marry the man she loved, a man with a curse. And she had never done anything to change things after the people she loved were gone.
"Gabriel? Are you all right, boy?" Gran was staring at him.
"Sorry, Gran, just a little lost in thought, you know?" Gran came and sat down next to him, mopping up the spill with the towel she'd retrieved.
"Gran, I have to ask you something I've never asked you before. I know it's hard for you, but I need to know about how Granddaddy died." Gabriel face flushed with emotion as Gran subtly but painfully paused in her movement. She quickly kept the towel moving, but it was obvious to Gabriel that she knew he had caught the reaction.
"Well, certainly, dear. It's odd that you asked that." Gran picked up the towel and set it aside, the table dried to her satisfaction. "I just had a dream about it last night. I suppose that's why I'm so jumpy today." Gran sighed. "I haven't dreamed about that in years. Must have been something I ate before bed..."
"Gran, YOU dreamed about it last night?" A thought occurred to Gabriel, and he steeled himself to ask Gran yet another painful question. "Let me ask you some questions, then..." Gabriel pulled out a sheaf of paper on which he had recorded this latest dream. Gran looked at him with an odd expression but said nothing.
"Okay, this dream you had - did it start with you playing with my daddy as a baby? He was in a playpen and you were both outside the house, on the front steps?" Gran turned white as Gabriel said this, but nodded her affirmation.
"Yes, boy! Oh, don't you know how to surprise an old woman!" Gran almost chuckled lightly, and probably would have had not the topic been so personally traumatic. Gabriel smiled, and Gran smiled back. This is going to be okay, thought Gabriel.
"So Granddaddy did fall off the roof of this house? What was he doing, working on the roof shingles or something?"
"Yes, he was up there fixing them. You know how those afternoon thunderstorms get around here in June or so...and we wanted to make sure things stayed dry! He was up there fixing them with his friend Erich, and - "
"Erich? Who was Erich?" Gabriel remembered the other man on the roof looking down at his grandfather's limp body in the dream.
"Oh, Erich Preiss, dear. He was a good friend of your grandfather's..."
"PREISS?" Gabriel's mouth was hanging open. Is it possible? No, of course not, this was 50-some years ago, there's no way that Preiss could have... But Gabriel knew better. He may only have just finished his second Schattenjäger case, but he knew better. He only hoped that Grace had found something to help him.
"Uh...excuse me. Are you open?...uh...never mind." A customer at St. George's Books popped his head through the door, saw the mess on the floor, and popped it right back out.
Damn, thought Gabriel. A couple years ago I would have treated that guy like the king of Mardi Gras. Now I can't even be bothered with customers... Gabriel was searching through St. George's books with the same fervor and disregard for organization that had made Grace's anger rise a few days ago.
"Shit...don't have the same resources here that we do in Rittersberg..."Gabriel was searching for anything that might explain the link between the dreams and the presence of another Preiss. He flipped through the few occult books that his store contained, but eventually threw up his hands. "Nothing...guess I'm gonna have to call Gracie."
He stood up and walked over to the phone, which was next to the cash register on the counter. Gabriel felt his pockets, looking for the small address book that contained the number for Schloß Ritter. "What the..." he started; the book was not in his pocket.
He looked down at the counter, wondering if he had set it down there before he began to ransack the store for information - nothing. He opened a drawer, wondering if he had set it there so he'd remember where it was later. "Boy, that was a great plan," he muttered to himself as he closed the drawer after a futile search. His eyes wandered back to the mess of books on the floor. "Must have fallen out of my pocket..."
As Gabriel was picking up the mess he'd made, looking for the address book as he went, he came across a book that was familiar to him: it was the Rada Drum code book that Grace had found for him during the Voodoo Murders case. A small piece of thin cardboard was sticking out of it - a business card? Curious, Gabriel pulled it out of the book and saw a familiar name:
Magentia Moonbeam
Spirit Guide for Those Who Seek Answers
"You don't suppose..." Gabriel made his way back over the phone and made a call.
"Why, Mr. Knight! What a pleasant surprise!" Magentia Moonbeam was her normal resplendent self in her colorful voodooienne's garb. She wore a filmy, multi-layered and multicolored ankle-length skirt, a bright yellow blouse open to the waist with a pink and blue tie-dyed tank top underneath, and a multi-colored scarf held her hair in place. She gestured to the now familiar high-backed chair next to the crystal ball and across from the gilded cage that held her beloved serpent friend.
"So, how've you and Grimwald been, Magentia?" Gabe smiled, a bit uneasily but much less so than the first time he'd been in her shop. He'd seen a lot of different magic since then, and was much more accepting of it. Besides, Magentia's pleasant Kansas accent was a friendly departure from the harsh German accents he was getting used to.
"We've been fine, Mr. Knight...may I call you Gabriel?" Magentia set down a tray with a pitcher of iced tea and two glasses, along with a small bowl containing lemon wedges. "Care for some?"
"Please!" Gabriel had been in Germany so long that he was unaccustomed to the heat and humidity of his native New Orleans. "And yes, call me Gabriel."
"Now," Magentia said, sitting across from him. "What seems to be troubling you, seeker?" She fell back into her "spiritual advisor" role very quickly, Gabriel noted.
"Well, it's not a personal thing, exactly, though it kind of is..."
Gabriel looked at Magentia sheepishly, then remembered that she was probably one of the most open people to what he wanted to talk about.
"Is there any way for... say... if someone wanted to get hold of their ancestors, and I'm not talking about a seance, here, how would they do it?" Gabriel blushed a bit. He wasn't quite sure what he was trying to say, which made it very hard to clarify. "Let me explain." he started.
He poured out the whole story of what had happened in the past few days, leaving out any reference to the mutilation killings.
"...My goodness, Gabriel," remarked Magentia, her eyes now at a peak of openness after hearing the story. "You say this talisman was humming? May I see it?"
Gabriel hesitated momentarily, but took the talisman from around his neck and handed it to Magentia. The voodooienne took it and ran her pale fingers over it, not looking at it but staring off into the void.
"This is a strong force, Gabriel. You are fortunate to have this; it has protected you well and will continue to. I sense that it feels frustration at your inability to delve into its depths, but appreciation that you are trying to do so." Magentia continued to study it as Gabriel sat back.
Its frustration? Its appreciation? She makes it sound like the thing is alive... Gabriel smirked a bit.
Magentia handed it back to Gabriel, then sat back in her chair. "So," she asked, matter-of-factly, "have you ever seen the other one?"
"Uh...other one?"
"That's right, Gracie. She asked me if I'd ever seen the 'other one', like there's two of these things!" Gabriel was jabbering into the phone like a monkey, his excitement about this case at a peak. "How come there's no record of there being two of them? Have you found anything in any of the journals about another Schattenjäger talisman?"
"No, nothing!" Grace was much more dubious of the prospect of another Schattenjäger talisman than Gabriel was. "Did your psychic friend tell you anything else?"
"Gracie, she's not a psychic friend. She helped me a lot with the Voodoo Murders investigation - she knows what she's talking about!" Gabriel took a deep breath - he knew he needed to calm down, but the idea of another Schattenjäger talisman was too great!
"Okay, Gabriel, I believe you and her. What exactly did she say?" Grace took a deep breath herself...not so much to calm down, but more to prepare herself to sort through what Gabriel was about to tell her to find the facts.
"Well, she asks if me if I've ever seen the other one. I say 'Other one?' And she says 'Yes, this talisman obviously has a twin.' She could feel it, she said, as if part of it was somewhere else. " Gabriel swallowed. "That was all she could say about it. She said she didn't know any more than that."
"I don't know..." started Grace. "Why don't any of the journals mention a twin to the talisman? I mean, you'd think that somewhere in the 700 years we know of Schattenjäger history that there'd be mention of it somewhere."
"You're right, you would think that. Maybe we're the first to discover it?" Gabriel scratched his head. "I mean, for a long time the talisman was gone, and the other times it was well protected, so maybe no one ever let a genuine psychic get hold of it like I did."
"Good point. Well, I'll go over the early stuff again, and if I find anything I'll let you know." Grace sighed lightly. "So when you coming back to Germany?"
"I've got a couple more things to find out in town, and then I'll be back." Gabriel smiled. "Talk to you later, Gracie. Thanks." He clicked the Hang button on his phone and slipped it into a pocket.
Okay. Gotta find Grandpa's book, whatever that is, and figure out if there's a connection between this Erich Preiss and Herr Preiss in Germany. Gabriel sighed. Not too hard... he smiled and walked back out to the store floor.