The little restaurant struck me as exotic, having a filthy floor and obviously dirty tables, but the happiest waiters and waitresses as well as clientele.

I was hypnotized by New Orleans, hypnotized by Merrick, though she was saying nothing; but little did I know that stranger things were yet to come.

In a dream, we went back to Oak Haven, to bathe and to change for the wake. There was a young woman there, a good member of the Talamasca whom I shall not name for obvious reasons, who assisted Merrick and saw to it that she was turned out beautifully in a new navy blue dress and broad-brimmed straw hat. Aaron himself gave a quick buffing to her patent leather shoes. Merrick had a rosary with her and a Catholic prayer book with a pearl cover. But before she would have us return to New Orleans, she wanted to show us the contents of the bundle she had taken from the old woman's room.

We were in the library, where I first met Merrick only a short time before. The Motherhouse was at supper, so we had the room entirely to ourselves, with no special request.

When she unwrapped the sheeting, I was astonished to see an ancient book or codex, with brilliant illustrations on its wooden cover, a thing in tatters, which Merrick handled as carefully as she could.

"This is my book from Great Nananne," she said, looking at the thick volume with obvious respect. She let Aaron lift the book in its swaddling to the table under the light.

Now vellum or parchment is the strongest material ever invented for books, and this one was clearly so old that it would never have survived had it been written on anything else. Indeed, the wooden cover was all but in pieces. Merrick herself took the initiative to move it to the side so that the title page of the book could be read. It was in Latin, and I translated it as instantly as any member of the Talamasca could do.

HEREIN LIE ALL SECRETS

OF THE MAGICAL ARTS

AS TAUGHT TO HAM,

SON OF NOAH,

BY THE WATCHERS

AND PASSED DOWN TO HIS ONLY SON,

Mesran

Carefully lifting this page, which was bound as all the others were by three different ties of leather thong, Merrick revealed the first of many pages of magic spells, written in faded but clearly visible and very crowded Latin script. It was as old a book of magic as I have ever beheld, and of course its claim—the claim of its title page—was to the very earliest of all black magic ever known since the time of The Flood.