Chapter 10: Summary Judgment

Saturn entered Scorpio's influence. A few weeks after Delgado discovered Becket's corpse, sensations both familiar and unnerving woke him from his midnight slumber like a blast of foul air from an open window. Jolted awake, his skin crawling and his hairs on end, he threw off the covers and left the bed. He didn't bother flipping on a light. He slunk into a spare room and all but tore the curtain aside, then frowned at the sky.

The night was clear and quiet, and a few winking jets crossed the heavens towards LaGuardia Airport. His practiced eye identified Scorpius, the snaking constellation with the bright star Antares at its head. Another pinpoint of light seemed to be caught in the scorpion's deadly claws. To be sure, he got his glasses and bent over his reflecting telescope by the window. After adjusting the direction and focus, he beheld what looked like a flying saucer, or a glowing orb sliced through by a disc of light—Saturn, wearing her rings.

It shouldn't matter, not anymore. His college years and the Midnight Hours at the Masonic Temple were ancient history. Yet the night was unnaturally still; he couldn't remember a Bronx night this quiet.

When his doorbell rang, he nearly jumped out of his skin.

The doorbell rang again.

Khan. Delgado raced back to his bedroom and got his Glock pistol from the drawer by his bed. He hadn't carried it since his transfer from criminal court to civil many years ago. It felt unusually heavy in his hand—and lethal—but he hurried to his front door.

Christine was such an unexpected visitor on his doorstep in the middle of the night that he thought he was still dreaming. When he opened the door, she smiled at him repentantly.

He could only stare.

"Sorry to wake you," she whispered. "I don't have your phone number and didn't know how else to contact you. I couldn't trust the mail. I have information about your friend Mr. Khan."

"Uh..." He struggled to focus despite the radio static in his brain. "Yes. Come in, come in. Bienvenida." He hid the gun in his bathrobe pocket before moving aside.

She glided into the house and rewarded him with a chaste kiss on his cheek. He re-locked the door as she appraised his dark foyer and his late mother's furniture.

He still hadn't turned on any lights. The moonlight transformed her blonde tresses into tinsel and her deep blue eyes into glowing sapphires. A fantasy crossed his mind, of ending the night with her upstairs in his bed, calling his name in shivered whispers as he nailed her into next week—but her presence here, on the very night Saturn entered Scorpio, was inadvisable.

But he didn't want to dismiss her. Not yet.

"No one knows I'm here," she said. "The neighborhood's asleep. And I took the bus to the library and walked from there." She pulled a paper from her purse and passed it to him. "I thought you'd want help finding Mr. Khan, so I hired a private investigator. That's a short list of Khan's recent phone numbers and addresses. The P.I.'s still working to confirm that Khan's the one who tipped off the Post."

"And the investigator gave you my address as well?" he asked as he held the paper by a window to catch the moonlight. His glasses were in his pocket with the Glock, but he made out a comprehensive list that included sources and dates of activity.

"No, I found that myself. Just searched the city's registrar." Her lips curled in a playful smile. "You signed your mortgage the same way you sign your court orders."

"Oh." To him, she seemed remarkably at home standing in his dark foyer. "Christine, you have the useful mind of a judge's wife."

Oh, hell. Was his compliment chauvinist? Definitely presumptuous.

Even in the weak light, he saw her blush and lower her eyes.

"Sorry. I… I'm a little, um…" He cleared his throat. "Still half-asleep. D-Do you mind… could you stay awhile? Have some coffee?" His heart hammered in his chest. He hoped to Heaven that she would accept; he prayed to God for her to leave. His mind still itched as though crawling with ants. This was not the night for romance.

"Maybe I should," she said, checking her watch. "The next bus doesn't leave for another forty minutes anyway, and it only took me like ten to walk from the library."

"Don't even think of taking another bus at this hour," he said as he led her to the kitchen and finally turned on the light. "I'll drive."

"I just figured this way no one would know I was here."

"Good thinking, but don't forget your own safety." Feeling more relaxed now that they weren't in the dark, he filled the coffee machine reservoir and opened the cabinet for a fresh filter. "So how much do I owe this private investigator?"

"Nothing." She leaned on his counter. "A guy I know paid."

"Wha—" He cleared his throat again. It was very dry. "Why is he doing me this favor?"

"Actually, he didn't do it for you. I just told him that Mr. Khan might have information about… about the Post article. He did it as a favor for me."

Jealousy hit him so hard and so sudden that his hand shook as he measured the coffee grounds. "This wouldn't be the same muchacho donating money to your organization, would it?"

"We're old friends, Erik. He wants to support my career in whatever way he can. His brother had some bad press, so he already had a resource."

He scowled at the coffee can.

She touched his arm, sending sweet shivers down his spine. "I just wanted to help."

"I know." He sighed. "Thank you. I do appreciate the list." He finished preparing the machine and turned it on. "Coffee will be ready in a few minutes. Cream and sugar?"

"Both. And may I use your bathroom while we wait?"

"Estás en tu casa," he replied, smiling. "It's upstairs to the left. Shall I show you?"

She was already heading for the stairs. "Don't worry, I'll find it."

So he sat in his kitchen, wearing his slippers and his spectacles and reading Christine's list while the gurgling coffee filled the room with its alluring aroma. Faint light already painted the sky outside his kitchen window. An early-rising sparrow tuned up for a solitary song.

"Hey, it's almost morning," he called to her. "Why not stay for breakfast?"

"No, don't trouble yourself."

Her voice didn't come from the bathroom. He jerked as though sliced by a cold razor. He hadn't closed the door to his spare bedroom, and he hadn't closed the curtain after stargazing. With the full moon, she'd see everything in that room.

His heart in his throat, he took the stairs two at a time and flew down the hall.

He found her standing in the center of the spare room, staring at the enormous black-and-white portrait on the wall. The pale pre-dawn fell on the photograph and danced over the young bride and her mantilla as though she were alive. Christine's fingers tightened over her locket as she studied the other woman; the graceful curve of her jaw, the noble slope of her nose, and the modest arc of her brows and her smile.

Delgado held his breath. As long as her attention stayed focused on the portrait, she wouldn't notice anything else about the room. He might even be able to coax her downstairs for breakfast before—

"Erik, what is all this?" Her eyes had already wandered to his mother's console table beneath the picture. The only furniture in the room. The swelling light fell upon the tabletop and his hoard of white roses and candle stubs—and his brazier, still offering a pool of fine ashes.

"Um… Coffee's ready," he said. "Can I make you some eggs?"

She stepped backwards and released her locket as she noticed the markings etched deep into his parquet floor, surrounding her in a large circle. Dawn broke, and the sun's red, traitorous rays illuminated the runes that Delgado had engraved inside the ring: the astronomical glyphs for the sun and planets, the zodiac, the cardinal directions, the pentagrams, and the medieval incantations that he'd learned long before studying law.

Christine bit her lip and turned to him with such confusion and suffering in her dear eyes that his heart screamed in his chest. He'd never been more disgusted with himself.

"Black magic," she whispered in a toneless voice. One hand covered her stomach as though she were sick. "That—It's actually true?"

He swallowed. Better to lie to her. The truth would frighten her away forever.

… But he didn't have it in him. "Christine, I'm sorry… so sorry—"

"God, Erik!" Her face crumpled in grief. "An actual sorcerer?! It's all true then? Devil worship? Hypnotism?"

What? "No, no. None of that—"

"And my feelings—You did this!—Controlled my mind—and the inappropriate dreams…"

He blinked. Inappropriate dreams? "I can't even control my own feelings. I never imagined controlling yours. And if I could master other's minds, do you think I'd let them see me as I am?"

She retreated from the circle as though it were a swarm of rats. "All this time—I was only under your spell!"

He turned her shoulders as she tried to leave the room. "You've got that backwards! It's you, Christine… you bewitch me. No matter my authority in court, I'm utterly powerless—"

She stormed down the hallway, and he followed.

"Wait! Listen! I swear to God I have no control over the living—I mean, except for being a judge."

"Then what is that?" she swept her arm back towards the terrible room.

"It's a mistake," he groaned. "I'll pay for eternity… Oh, my Portia, if only you could release me from this loathsome—"

"That's not an answer!"

He closed his eyes. "It's a Circle of Power. It's used for… for summoning."

"Oh, my God!" She covered her face with her hands and ran down the stairs.

"Wait! Wait, let me explain!" He followed on her heels. "Delay judgement until I state my case! I've always given you that courtesy."

He seized her arm when they reached the front door, and she cowered with wide eyes, afraid he would strike her. Delgado thought he might throw up.

"Please, listen to me," he cried. "What you just saw, that isn't who I am anymore."

"I don't even know you!" She pried her arm from his grasp, turned the lock, and flung open the door. "And now I know what happened to Joe Becket!"

The door slammed in his face.

He opened it again, but with her black suit, she was virtually invisible. "Christine!" he shouted, not caring about the neighbors. "Christine, come back!" He could hear the tears in his own voice. "Please come back!"

She was gone.

But while he ran into the dark street, visions of her passed before his eyes. Here and there in the shadows, he thought he caught the play of sunrise on her hair, on her pale throat, on her slender, curling fingers.

"Christine!"

His wide eyes blinked and strained. He held his breath. Any minute he hoped to hear her returning footsteps. He waited, cemented to the sidewalk like a stone gargoyle gaping from a rooftop. In the sickening stillness, he could hear cars passing on the expressway. A distant siren. A crying infant.

A light came on in his neighbor's house, and Delgado reluctantly retreated indoors. Before closing the door, he cast a final glance at the last place he'd seen her.

He couldn't bring himself to turn the lock.

The kitchen light was still on, the lone sparrow continued its melancholy song outside the window, and the room smelled of dark roast coffee. Delgado poured a cup with clumsy, leaden limbs, and sank into the chair at his kitchen table. Christine's list still lay on his late mother's tablecloth: cornflowers on a cream-colored backdrop. Their surreal color reminded him of the blue-eyed beauty who'd just been in the room. Of the joy in those eyes when she'd come to his court for the Albrizzio hearing. Of the languid desire in those eyes after kissing him so thoroughly. Nothing on Earth was more divine.

Out of habit, he interlaced his fingers and rested them on his lips—which only reminded him of how transported he'd felt kissing Christine.

He lifted his mug with trembling fingers, held it motionless before his mouth. This bitterness wouldn't do! She was gone. Nothing he could do would bring her back, though he'd happily lay down his life, sell his soul (if he hasn't lost it already), even forfeit his judicial appointment. Because what good was power if he couldn't have what he wanted? What good public respect, if she disdained? What good his love for justice, if he couldn't also love her?

In a single evening, his life had lost all meaning.

Ugly Erik, hissed a voice.

Delgado started, and hot coffee bit his knuckles. He turned around, taking in his quiet kitchen. He was alone. His refrigerator hummed. Or was that only in his mind?

Freak, what would your mother say?

He dropped the mug onto the table and covered his ears. His entire body was vibrating, or maybe he was just shaking. Too late, he thought of retreating to the safety of his circle of power. Before he could move, more voices joined the first.

Sinner!

Hypocrite!

LYING JUDGE!

Their shrieks filled his mind; male voices, female voices, some elderly, some only children. Like Becket, they were all dead. With his hands still covering his ears, Delgado thrashed around his kitchen, babbling nonsense at the voices in his head.

Distorted face to match his twisted heart!

Not fit to hold a candle to her!

Maniacal laughter boiled up from the judge's throat, growing louder with his anger and despair. Soon he both cried and cackled as he writhed on the floor like a blind worm.

Darkness bled from his mouth and filled the room. It doused the lights and plunged him once again into night. The voices continued clamoring. His mind slipped. He laughed and sobbed as the darkness grew and seeped out of his house. It blanketed the neighborhood. Eclipsed the setting moon and the rising sun. Soon it spread over the entire Bronx, from the Hudson to the East River and from Westchester County to Manhattan. Early commuters stopped in panic as their headlights suddenly went out, along with the streetlights and traffic lights.

Delgado knew nothing. He had passed out on his kitchen floor.