The Summoner: (40 page)

Grey had been thinking of Nya, but Viktor’s insinuating tone returned his attention to the conversation.

Viktor’s eyes crinkled. “I’d like to refuse fewer requests. For that to happen I’d need assistance.”

“Are you offering me a job?”

“I’ve seen your capabilities first-hand. Your skill-set and international background will be extremely useful. And,” he said, quieter, “your courage is without question.”

“Are we talking full-time?”

“Certainly.”

“And you can afford to pay me?”

“I’ll double your government salary.”

Grey could only gape.

Viktor spread his hands. “Take as long as you need to think about it.”

“I accept.”

Viktor smiled.

“I don’t know what to say, except thank you. I don’t think the government will be asking me back.”

“The assignments will be in various locations around the world. I trust that, given your past employment, travel won’t be an issue?”

Grey looked out the window, in the direction from which he’d just left Nya. “Will I be able to be based here?”

“Of course. The job requires travel, not nomadism.” Viktor offered his hand, and Grey took it. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve a bit of sleep to catch up on.”

Grey opened the door, but paused in the doorway. “Professor, there’s something I need to get off my chest.”

“Of course.”

“What about my experience with the
N’anga
?”

“I don’t understand.”

“I heard your explanation. But I,” he looked away, and then back. “I couldn’t cross that line. And I wasn’t drugged.”

“But don’t you see—he enthralled you as well. You
believed
. As you saw more and more apparent impossibilities, you convinced yourself of their reality. At the end, your own mind refused to let you cross that line of blood. “A man thinketh, and therefore he is.””

“But when I was in that pit,” Grey said, his voice husky, “I felt something in there with me. I understand what we just discussed, but it was more than that. I felt it weighing down on me, clutching at my chest—I think if that boy hadn’t intervened when he did… I think I was going to die.”

“Fear can incapacitate, Grey. It can even kill. You believed in the
N’anga’s
power so strongly that your fear overcame you. You fell from the plane, but someone opened your parachute before you succumbed.”

The
N’anga
was dead, but Grey still felt exposed, as if a hole had been opened in his defenses which none of his training could help combat. “Still, when he drew the first line in blood, back in the passageway—how did he know I wouldn’t be able to cross it?”

“That was the source of his power. The possibility you might not succumb to his Juju never crossed his mind. His belief becomes his victims’ self-doubt and, consequently, their belief. Your reality becomes what you believe it to be. Children believe there are monsters in closets; to them, there are. When adults are presented with convincing evidence, we are as children. Humankind has merely probed the surface of the mind’s capabilities. Some have dug deeper than others.”

Grey moved to the window. “You said something else once, when we were just starting this investigation. You said there’s another explanation for Juju, for the babalawos. You said maybe it’s real.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Grey saw Viktor take a long drink from his glass, and a strange expression, a roiling cloud of darkness and mystery, overtook his face. Grey wasn’t sure what the expression signified, or if Viktor’s mind hadn’t perhaps wandered elsewhere. Whatever it was, it passed as quickly as it came.

“Does the discovery of the quantum particle signify the death of God?” Viktor said. “Absolutely not. Is it possible that babalawos can work unexplainable deeds apart from their ability to mentally coerce? That their hand waving and secret ingredients and prayers to Orisas have real power? Anything is possible. But I presented to you what I believe happened. We know he used artifice on some level, with the altar. He just needed you to believe.”

“Or maybe something did happen in that pit,” Grey said. “Maybe he summoned Esu, and he came.”

“Do you believe that?”

“I don’t think so. But even after your explanation… it’s hard to think I could’ve been taken like that.”

“Then he still has power over you.”

Grey pushed away from the window. “I suppose we’ll be having more of these conversations.”

“I suppose we will indeed.”

THE END

AUTHOR’S NOTE

T
he house at which I stayed in Harare during the writing of parts of this novel was originally purchased in 1980 for 35,000 Zim dollars. The house was in the beautiful northern suburbs, and in 1980 the Zim dollar was roughly equivalent to the British pound. By the time of the first draft of this novel (December 2005), a pint of milk cost 50,000 Zim dollars. When I returned to Harare in December 2008, a pint of milk cost 3 billion Zim dollars. Today, the Zim dollar is no longer in existence, and without access to foreign currency, a pint of milk is unattainable in Zimbabwe. Moreover, please remember that the genesis of the troubles in Zimbabwe is a very complex matter. This novel is a fictional snapshot of present day Zimbabwe, and does not seek to address the region’s troubled history or the myriad other components that have led to the unfortunate state in which the country is in today.

Finally, this is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events, is entirely coincidental. Please remember that the Yoruba religion, in its various names and incarnations, is an ancient religion, and should be given the same respect and weight (whatever those may be for each reader) as would any other religion. I met many wonderful practitioners of Yoruba religion during the writing of this novel, and there was no disrespect intended to Yoruba religion or any of its practitioners.

Acknowledgments

E
ndless thanks to my esteemed editor, Richard Marek, for his wise counsel and mad skills; to my brilliant fact-checker and grammarian, Rusty Dalferes; to James Luis of Pura Vida Entertainment, story teller extraordinaire, for his incisive comments; to my invaluable first readers, JWall, LB, Julie A., Deborah J., Matt& Mel, and McLemore; to mom and dad and grandma and the brothers for unconditional love and support; to my gracious hosts in Harare and to everyone else in Zimbabwe who provided support and research for this novel; and finally, to Shihan, a great man and teacher, and the person people are really talking about when they say
I wouldn’t want to meet
him
in a dark alley
.

About the Author

L
ayton Green divides his times between Miami, Atlanta and New Orleans, and might also be spotted in the corner of a dark and smoky café in Prague, researching the next Dominic Grey novel. You can also find him at
www.laytongreen.com.