A Vision in Velvet: A Witchcraft Mystery (20 page)

One of Conrad’s friends was taking part in the Oscar search while also continuing to collect signatures for a reprieve for Ms. Quercus. She was an unkempt young woman with tangled red hair and incongruously beautiful straight, white teeth—showing obvious orthodontia. Last night, during the ride in the ambulance, I realized I had no idea if Conrad had family, and if so, how to
contact them. How could I know so little about someone I cared about?
Friendship fail.

I asked her if she knew anything about all of Conrad’s visitors in the hospital.

“We’re his family,” she said as she handed the clipboard to Bart for his signature. “We gutterpunks are all the family Conrad’s got.”

“A rotten tree is a danger to the community,” Bart said to the young woman, handing her back the clipboard.

“But it still provides a home—”

“A ‘home’ to whom?” Bart interrupted. There was no vagueness to him now as he fixed the young woman with a stare.

She took a step back. “Not to, uh, ‘whom,’ but to birds and squirrels and . . . never mind. Everyone’s entitled to their own opinion. I’m gonna move along now. . . . ’Bye, everybody.”

After she left, Bart looked a bit chagrined. “I didn’t mean to chase her out. It’s just . . .”

“No worries,” said Sierra, passing a plate of blueberry muffins to Bart. He took one with a nod of thanks. “The young people have their minds set on saving that tree, as though there aren’t hundreds of others in the park that could use some looking after. There’s no particular logic to it, but it gives them something to work toward.”

Bart just nodded and ate his muffin in silence. His occasional flashes of temper, followed by sullenness, weren’t going to go very far in helping Bart find romance, I thought to myself. But then, perhaps true love would see beyond the obvious.

“Oh my
Lord
,” said Susan Rogers as she burst through the door. “I just heard the news! That darling little oinker is
lost
? How could that
be
?”

“Oh, Susan, it’s
awful
!” Bronwyn responded in kind. “Can you even imagine such a thing?”

Several of the other women joined in, with much clucking and
tsk
ing and shaking of heads.

“What happened?” asked one apparently well-meaning woman who had actually come into Aunt Cora’s Closet in search of clothing, not a pig. She got an earful about Oscar before I could intervene.

“May I help you find something?” I asked.

“I hope so. My son’s graduating from college—he had to go to summer school, so he’s a little late, but that’s not the point. . . .” She let out a loud breath. “Even though I’ve moved on, I want my ex-husband to . . . um . . .”

“See how great you’re doing?” ventured Bronwyn.

“Eat off his own arm in a jealous rage?” suggested Maya.

The woman laughed. “Exactly. I can’t afford anything special new, so I was thinking maybe vintage . . . ?”

“You’ve come to just the place!” Susan jumped in before any of us actual staff had a chance to respond. “Now, let’s see. . . . You look about my size, maybe a little more voluptuous. You simply must play up that impressive cleavage—or is that inappropriate for a son’s graduation? Depends on what he’s graduating from, I suppose. . . . Have you seen the designer dresses over on the rack in front of the window? You know, Calvin Klein dresses don’t look like much on the hanger, but you should try them on. Oh, here, let me show you!” She tucked her hand under the woman’s arm and started to lead her around the store, as on a tour.

Bronwyn, Maya, and I exchanged amused glances.

It was typical of Susan to step in and help a customer, but she wasn’t the only one who felt the impulse. Several of the coven sisters did the same when they were in the store, and it wasn’t unusual to see customers helping one another find just the right belt or a hat that would finish off an outfit. The communal dressing room was more often than not the scene of dress swapping and
encouraging words among women who had previously been strangers to one another. I couldn’t take much credit for it: It was something about the magic of the shop and all the good energy within it.

And speaking of magical energy . . . I had a question for Bart. I grabbed him for a moment when he was alone.

“Bart, did you ever talk to a man named Aidan Rhodes about your . . . problem?”

He turned beet red, and when he spoke, his voice was so low I had to lean toward him to hear. “You promised me your discretion.”

“Yes, of course.” I looked around the shop; no one was paying us any attention. “I don’t think anyone’s listening.”

“You’d be surprised. The walls have ears.”

“Um . . . okay. But—”

“Lily, the dress looks perfect on her, but it needs some alteration,” said Susan, interrupting our discussion. She was right; the customer stood smiling in front of the three-way mirror, admiring herself in a simple emerald green sheath that fell too far below the knees, topped by a gold brocade jacket that hung too low on her arms. “Do you think it could be done by next weekend?”

“Let me take a look,” I said, grabbing my wrist pincushion from behind the counter. “As long as it’s nothing too drastic . . .”

Only later, while I was kneeling at my customer’s feet and pinning up the hem, did I realize that I’d never gotten an answer from Bart about whether or not he knew Aidan.

* * *

Late in the afternoon, the bell on the front door tinkled and I heard several squeaks and a quick little scream.

A huge black dog trotted into the shop.

He didn’t seem aggressive; nor was he made nervous by all the people and activity. Rather, he appeared almost
preternaturally calm and focused as he passed through the crowd to come stand near the register—near me.

“Oh, look at the sweet little thing,” said Bronwyn as she came out from behind her herbal stand and stroked the dog’s anvil-sized head.

“He might be sweet, but he’s sure not little,” muttered Maya, who was wrapping up a young woman’s purchase of an orange crocheted jacket.

“Wait,” I said as realization dawned. “I think I know that dog.”

The tag on the collar read Boye, but there was no phone or license number listed. Normally I know better than to gaze into the eyes of a dog—especially one of this size, which could do serious damage if it so chose. But this animal’s eyes were different. There was something about it. . . . I had met this dog before.

And unless I missed my guess, this was no ordinary canine.

After asking everyone in the shop if they knew where the dog came from, Bronwyn checked outside on the street. Nothing. The animal just sat by the counter, as though waiting patiently for something.

“I’m going to bring him upstairs,” I said. “He might be hungry.”

“Want me to call the shelter?” asked Maya. “I know the receptionist there by name by now, since I’ve called so many times about Oscar, and then Miss Nelly.”

I was pretty sure no one would have filed a claim for this particular missing pet, but just in case I was wrong, I thanked Maya for thinking of it as I called for the dog to follow me. It trotted right past me, toenails clicking on the wood floor, through the drapes that hung over the access to the back room.

He stopped at the bottom of the stairs and looked over his big black shoulder, as though asking permission. I nodded and he ran up the stairs.

By the time I reached the second-floor landing, there was a man sitting on the top step outside my locked apartment door. Sleek black hair and sooty eyes, olive skin, very buff. Unsmiling. Wary.

“I take it Aidan sent you?” I said.

He nodded. I had met this man—and this dog—a couple of months after I first arrived in San Francisco, when I was investigating the disappearance of a child involving a terrible demon called La Llorona. The adult sister of a long-ago missing girl, Katherine, had a strange assistant and a big black dog. I had never seen the man and the dog in the same room, and there was something extraordinarily intelligent about the dog and unusually loyal about the man. I hadn’t been sure, but I’d suspected that the rather taciturn assistant might be a familiar when in his canine form.

I remembered he wasn’t much of a talker.

“Thank you, but I’m not in need of a familiar,” I began, my stomach clenching, as usual, at the thought of Oscar. “I already have one.”

“Yes, ma’am.” He spoke with an accent I couldn’t quite place—I was betting Eastern Europe.

“Then why are you here?”

“Just following orders, ma’am.”

“Please, call me Lily.” His “ma’ams” made me feel like we were in the army. “And it really is very nice of you to come here, but this is my place, and I don’t much cotton to Aidan ordering me around.”

Still with the staring.

I sighed. Clearly this wasn’t going to be easy. Like so many things with supernatural folks, there was protocol involved, a series of unspoken rules and methods that I almost always managed to bungle.

From downstairs, I could hear Maya come into the back room. Might as well deal with this in the privacy of my apartment.

I stepped around the man, unlocked my door, and went inside. He followed.

“Your name’s Boye?”

He nodded.

“I’m Lily.”

“I remember.”

“How is Katherine?”

“She is much improved. You were a great help to her, ma’am. I am very grateful.”

I wished I could take more credit for having helped, but the fact is I sort of muddled my way through figuring out what had happened with La Llorona
and the missing children. But if I had been instrumental in relieving Katherine’s mind, so much the better. And I remembered I
had
been able to tell her an important fact about her mother, so at least some good had come from it.

As I crossed into the kitchen, another thing dawned on me. Katherine wasn’t a witch, which was one reason I’d doubted my assessment of the dog/assistant familiar when I met them. Unless . . . “How did you come to be with Katherine? Did Aidan send you to her?”

Another slight inclination of his sleek dark head.

Huh
. Just when I was about to throttle Aidan, I found out something like this. He wasn’t such a monster, at least not all the time. He had done what he could to protect Katherine from La Llorona. Just as he had given me Oscar, to help and protect me in this surprisingly murderous City by the Bay.

“Could I get you a drink?” I asked. “Or something to eat?”

He didn’t answer, but I noticed his gaze wandered to the loaf of fresh-baked bread I had made the other night when I wasn’t able to sleep.

“I was thinking I’d make some toast with jam—homemade preserves, homemade bread,” I said. “Maybe some peanut butter. It would be rude to refuse.”

I headed into the kitchen and Boye trailed me obediently. I sliced a couple thick slabs of bread and put them into the toaster, then brought butter, preserves, and peanut butter out of a refrigerator stuffed with supplies for spells: Louisiana swamp water, fresh gizzards, fresh herbs and resins. Back in the pre-Oscar days, my fridge had been surprisingly free of edibles, given over instead to casting ingredients. But ever since that little porker had come into my life, I kept it chock-full of food as well.

Sadness wafted over me again. It really was funny: After struggling against having a familiar at all, and certainly wary of the attachment to Aidan that Oscar’s presence implied, I would never have guessed I would yearn for him so. But that was the way with life: You rarely knew what you were missing until it stumbled into your realm . . . and then back out again.

Boye waited, shifting silently from one foot to another, until I told him to take a seat at the kitchen table. I brought down two floral-painted china plates that I had picked up at a garage sale and set them on the counter. When the toast popped up, I buttered the thick slices, put one on his plate and the other on mine, and joined him at the table. He placed a huge gob of peanut butter and apricot preserves on his toast and downed the whole thing in about two bites.

“Sorry,” he said. “Force of habit. I have appalling table manners, I know.”

I smiled and shook my head. “You’re fine. Don’t worry about it. Would you like another piece?”

“Truth? I’d love one. I’ll put it in, though, ma’am. You relax.”

“Nonsense. You’re my guest.” He continued to rise. “Sit.”

He sat.

“So . . . how does it work?” I asked as I sliced another
two hunks off the loaf and put them in the toaster. “Are you a human who shifts to a dog, or the other way around . . . or not actually human at all?”

He stared at me a long moment, blinking.

“Didn’t Aidan tell you I’m a witch? It’s not like you have to keep any of this sort of thing secret around me.”

“I’m both.”

“But your natural form . . . ?”

“As you see.”

“Man, then.”

More staring. I had the distinct impression I wasn’t going to get much more out of him. Either he was a different creature entirely from Oscar, who had his given form but morphed into a potbellied pig; or perhaps he was so old and had been living his double life for so long he truly had forgotten. Or maybe he just wasn’t willing to tell me. I was used to that last, at least. Oscar treated me as though I was on a need-to-know basis, and in his estimation I generally did
not
need to know.

So maybe playing one’s cards close to one’s chest was just a familiar thing.

“So Aidan told you to watch over me?” I asked as I slid the plate with buttered toast on the table in front of him.

He nodded, added more peanut butter and preserves, and dug into the fragrant slabs.

“I appreciate that,” I said, “and you’re welcome to stay here for a bit if you have to make it look good for Aidan, but I’ll be getting my old familiar back soon, and he’s the jealous type, so it will have to be temporary.”

Boye stared at me again, crumbs decorating his otherwise handsome mouth and a dab of apricot preserves glistening on his chin. “Aidan says I’m your familiar.”

“I already
have
a familiar.”

His dark eyes shifted as he looked around the apartment.

“He’s not here exactly at this very moment,” I said. “But he’s my familiar and I don’t need another.”