"There where the faith was, it will be broken.
The enemies will feed upon the enemies:
The sky to rain fire, it will burn, interrupted.
Enterprise by night. Chiefs will make quarrels."
- Nostradamus 28 June 1558
There was nothing ordinary about Jancy Hall. She was too attractive to be called plain, too plain to be called beautiful. But now, with two days to Christmas, 1862, life was no longer as simple as beauty. First, she'd fallen in love-with a magician-and, as a result of that love, those blue eyes of hers, blue as the bluest sky any poet ever rapturized over, were now supposed to possess special powers. "China Blue" Chester Cronklin called her eyes. Chester was Jancy's best friend. He longed to be more, but settled for friendship.
Having grown up with Jancy in an orphanage just outside Washington, D. C., he knew that she was capable of making unhappy children like him want to be as carefree as she was. He'd fallen in love with her when he was ten. And the only special gift he'd ever seen that she possessed was the ability to change the lives of everyone she met. He never imagined she would grow up to change the lives of so many other people, or that the changes she would bring about would lead to death for some, salvation for many more. But that was later.
Now, two days before Christmas, the war on and 1862 drawing to a close, while most people in Washington were interested in what the New Year would bring, Chester's thought was of the moment. Would the new man who had caught Jancy's eye take her away from him? Cutting deep into the dirt streets of the city, Jancy's four-wheeler raised a storm of dust as she rode through a maze of roads bursting with calls from fish stalls and beggars to the more spacious streets where the frantic shouting gave way to the measured marching of the infantry. Driving on, she rode off to more conventionally commercial streets, where the clanking of sabers and the stomping of galloping hooves signaled the approach of squads of cavalry.
Once her carriage reached Pennsylvania Avenue, Jancy's path led her past a large brick building where she began looking for a signal from Chester. Standing on the front steps of the War Department, Chester Cronklin wore gray tweeds that were easily visible against the army blue of the soldiers who guarded the building. He waved at Jancy as she went by, reaffirming that he was playing his part in whatever Machiavellian schemes she and her magician lover had concocted. Chester knew that Jancy had always dreamed of sharing love and adventure. Funny, he thought, how she now had herself entangled in both.
Strolling across the White House lawn, President Lincoln was making one of his twice or thrice daily trips over to the War Department to read the latest dispatches from the front. For all his trepidations, Chester couldn't help smiling. The President had to cross the lawn to get his information. Jancy didn't have to walk a step for telegraphic help. She now claimed to have a "gift of seeing" which allowed her mind to envision what was happening on the battlefields.
From their days at the orphanage, Chester knew Jancy couldn't even read the top line of an eye chart, let alone see what was happening miles away. But a couple of weeks ago, she had reportedly done exactly that. At a gathering of wealthy socialites, she had "seen" General Burnside of the Fourth being defeated by the South at Fredericksburg. The next day, the price of gold had gone up 34 percent, and those who had received her inside information made a fortune buying the precious metal before patriotic faith diminished and the value of the Union's paper money lessened.
As the President made his entrance through the side door of the War Department, Chester's superior appeared at the front entrance. The older man with the Ichabod walk was Professor Jordan, known around the department as "a person of genius." As such, he had been secretly assigned as a one-man division to investigate the use of the occult and supernatural to subvert the war effort. While operating alone provided the secrecy needed, it was now time to solicit help. He needed someone to assist him in determining how Jancy Hall could have gained access to front line dispatches, the surveillance of which he knew to be flawless. The Professor's obvious choice had been Chester Cronklin.
In his hand the Professor held a piece of leather which he had retrieved earlier, while riding south along the telegraph lines that paralleled the railroad tracks leading into the city. There, on the back of one of the support poles, he had spotted a fine wire that rundown the post, out of view. Climbing the pole, he was in a position to see that the insulation on the main wire had been cut and that the fine wire he had spotted had been used to connect the two sides of the split in order to maintain a continuous link. Someone was tapping the wire. After removing the temporary leather insulation covering the wire, he found the hide to be improperly skinned, showing numerous cuts and slash marks which had aged into black wavy lines.
Jancy's coach continued to barrel down Pennsylvania Avenue with her horses circling the curve of ground where the Washington Monument was being erected and where thousands of cattle were waiting to be slaughtered into army beef. Looking up toward the hill to where the unfinished dome of the Capitol was exposing its bare ribs, Jancy spotted the man she'd fallen in love with, the man she had met at last summer's Firefly Festival down by the Potomac when thousands of fireflies were released from their cages. The sky had been filled with the winking lights of fireflies ready to mate, but Jancy's eye was more grounded.
She had caught sight of a most handsome man. His name, she discovered, was Tonio de Aldo. He was a magician and, in her own way, so was Jancy. She persuaded Tonio to make her part of his act. Soon he was making her disappear nightly before crowds applauding as much for her beauty as for his ability to make her disappear-as she clung so ably onto that back panel of the box over which he had waved his "magic" wand.
Then one night, Jancy came upon Tonio alone in his dressing room, looking at a photograph of his dead mother, surrounded by seven candles. It was that night that need for revenge for his mother's death became Jancy's obsession as much as his own obsession. His revenge became her revenge. For her, there was no better feeling than knowing that their two souls shared a single desire. The night, two days before Christmas, in the pre-holiday chill, Tonio stood on the north side of the Capitol, signaling Jancy that he was ready. He had loaded his wagon with kegs of gunpowder and kerosene he had secretly purchased from the supply camp stationed there. All seemed to be proceeding as planned. But as often happens in life, bright plans fall into the shadow of trouble.