Animal Behavior (8 page)

“Not this time, buddy,” Alex said to him. “I’ll be right
back.”

Down in the truck, Alex typed the address into his GPS and
followed the directions until he found himself in the warehouse district. The
streets were nearly empty at this time on a Sunday night. Pulling up to his
destination, he grimaced at the sign painted on the curtained front window. It
was the outline of a hand with a star painted near the pinky finger and a
crescent moon near the thumb. The sign read, Miss Desdemona Lustre, Palmistry,
Tarot, Psychic Readings.

The storefront looked dark and Alex nearly pulled away from
the curb and drove home. Uneasiness twisted in his gut, but curiosity drove him
out of the truck and up to the door. Alex didn’t know if he should knock or
just walk in. As if in answer to his question, he noticed a small, hand-printed
sign, “Please ring”. Alex pushed the button and heard a low buzz sound out
behind the door, then waited long enough to start second-guessing his decision.
He’d just begun to realize how ridiculous this whole thing was when the door
creaked open.

Maybe he’d expected to see some mysterious, kohl-eyed gypsy
with her long hair covered in a silk scarf. He was surprised when a tall, lanky
black teenager answered. The young man held the door open just enough to peek
out and the smell of incense wafted out around him. “Can I help you?” he asked,
sounding like he wasn’t at all interested in helping.

“Is Mrs. Luster available?”

The boy smirked. “
Miss
Luster doesn’t see anyone
without a referral.”

Alex felt compelled to convince the guy that he belonged
there—even though he wasn’t entirely sure of that fact himself. “Diana Wallace
sent me.”

The boy swung the door wide and swept his arm in a “c’mon in”
gesture. “Why didn’t you just say so in the first place?”

Red
. That was Alex’s first impression. The room was
dimly lit with candles glowing in crimson-tinted glass votives and electric
lamps covered with filmy red scarves. A heavy red curtain on brass rings
stretched across the rear wall of the shop. Alex supposed that separated the
sales floor from the room where the psychic readings and séances took place.

Shallow, open shelves ran the entire length of the wall
behind the counter from floor to ceiling. There was a smattering of slick, new,
mass-produced items—books and candles mostly—artfully merchandised among the
ancient-looking inventory. A small rodent skull—
raccoon
, Alex thought at
first glance—was perched on a stack of paperbacks—
Wicca for the Uninitiated
.

There were plenty of Celtic symbols on the walls, a grouping
of colorful bottles arranged under a glass cake dome and amulets hanging from
the ceiling on cords. Scattered throughout the store were bells and other items
that Alex was sure had a purpose, but couldn’t even guess at what it might be.

He was most interested in the dozens of hand-labeled jars
and wooden boxes lined up on a single shelf just above eye level and assumed
most were only for atmosphere. Ground bat wings, powdered wolf blood, dried
snake skin?
Uh-huh
. Probably just a bunch of spices bought from the bulk
bins at that local food co-op where all the tree-huggers and wanna-be hippies
liked to hang out.

The kid walked behind the counter, lifted a thick text from
a tall stool, dropped it on the counter and had a seat.

Alex glanced at the cover. It featured a mortar and pestle
and the title
The Art of Compounding
.

“Pharmacy school?” Alex asked

When the young man nodded, Alex realized he must be older
than he had originally thought.

“So what can we do for you?”

“Is Ms.—Miss—Lustre available?”

“She’s out,” he said, and picked up his text. Alex felt like
he’d just been dismissed.

“Can you tell him when she’ll be back?”

“Nope.”

“Nope?” Alex said, planting his palms on the counter and
leaning in. “Why’d you let me in here if she’s gone and you’re not going to
help me?”

The kid closed his textbook, set it carefully on the counter
and spoke slowly, as if he were addressing a three-year-old.

“I let you in,
sir
, because you said Miss Diana sent
you. But since you don’t know that Miss Lustre is…indefinitely indisposed, I kind
of doubt that Miss Diana sent you at all. If fact, I kind of doubt that Miss
Diana even knows who you are.”

“Huh?” was the most eloquent response he could muster.

The kid walked from behind the counter and headed toward the
door. “I’ll show you out, sir. I was just getting ready to lock up anyhow.”

“Wait, wait, wait. Hold on just a second,” Alex said. He
reached into his pocket and the clerk’s eyes widened. It took Alex a beat to
realize that the kid probably thought he was there to hold him up.

Alex held out his decidedly nonlethal cell phone and gave
the clerk a give-me-a-break sneer. The young man’s expression of fear turned
immediately to one of impatience.

Alex hit Sam and Diana’s speed-dial number. When he told
Diana where he was calling from, she squealed with delight. “Oh, baby doll, I’m
so glad you decided to go! So, what do you think of Miss Lustre?”

As soon as Alex explained to her that Miss Lustre was gone
and that some kid was trying to throw him out on the street, Diana instructed
him to hand over the phone to the young man, whose name, she said, was Louis.

Louis grudgingly took the phone and shot Alex a look
bursting with attitude. He listened for a moment before the smirk dropped from
his face.

“Yes, ma’am. Yes, Miss Diana. Well this guy…Mr. McKenzie… I
thought you knew about Miss Lustre’s little…
difficulty
with the IRS, and
then when this guy didn’t seem to know about it, well I just assumed… Yes, Miss
Diana. I will. Yes. I apologize, Miss Diana.”

Louis disconnected the call, handed the phone back to Alex
and slunk back behind the counter. “Sorry for the misunderstanding, Mr.
McKenzie. So what can we help you with?”

Well, now we’re getting somewhere
. But at the exact
instant Alex realized he’d won the battle, it dawned on him that he would have
to confess to Louis what had brought him to the warehouse district on a Sunday
night.

What the hell? He was already dirty. He’d probably never see
this guy again and the whole adventure would make for a funny story to tell at
the bar—someday.

“Women,” Alex finally blurted out. “I’m having trouble with
women.”

Louis bit his lower lip, clearly trying not to laugh. “Well,
you know, Mr. McKenzie, any doctor can write you a prescription for this little
blue pill—”

“Not that kind of problem. I can get it up just fine. It’s
women in general. I freeze up. I panic just thinking about approaching them
and, when I finally do, I babble incoherently.”

The more Alex talked, the stupider he felt.
I’m a man of
science, a doctor of veterinary medicine and I’m getting life coached by some
college kid selling snake oil.

“So it’s a software problem, not a hardware problem,” Louis
summed up.

Computer references were lost on Alex. He knew how to check
email and surf the internet, but he didn’t really know how any of it worked.
The confusion must have shown on his face because Louis shook his head and
rephrased his assessment.

“Your equipment is fine, you just need reprogramming. You
need a confidence booster, Mr. McKenzie.”

“And you can help me with that?”

“Miss Luster can help you with that.”

“And she’s not here,” Alex observed.

Louis reached under the counter and pulled out a battered
notebook.

“No, but this is,” he said, tapping the cover.

It didn’t look anything like Alex would have imagined a book
of spells to look. It was a run-of-the-mill drugstore notebook; spiral bound,
with a glossy green cardboard cover and college-ruled pages and it had seen
better days. The cover was tattered and creased with frayed corners. The spiral
wire had worked its way out of several of the bottom holes and the free end
corkscrewed out of the top edge. The notebook as a whole had expanded to at
least twice its original size with the addition of a hodgepodge of loose papers
stuffed between its pages.

Louis flipped through the book and, by all appearances,
seemed to know exactly what he was looking for.

“You’re lucky that I can make out Miss Lustre’s chicken
scratch,” he said, still turning pages, careful not to let the loose leaves
escape.

Louis broke into a wide grin and tapped on a page. “Here it
is,” he announced, “Potion for Confidence.”

He carried the notebook to the shelves and spent a few
moments looking between the pages and the jars. “It’s a tea, Mr. McKenzie. And you’re
in luck—we’ve got all the ingredients on hand.”

Knowing that Louis was studying to be a pharmacist made Alex
feel, ridiculously, more confident in his abilities. He quickly reminded himself
that pharmacist or no, the kid would probably just be selling him a concoction
made up of inert powders and common kitchen spices. Louis turned around and set
the notebook on the counter.

“There are some pretty rare ingredients in this mixture, Mr.
McKenzie. Miss Lustre’s policy is to collect the fee up front before any potion
is prepared.”

“Of course,” Alex said, pulling his wallet from his back
pocket.

“That’ll be forty-five even,” Louis said, without so much as
a hesitation.

“Dollars?”

“Mr. McKenzie, this is a very old recipe, and it comes with
an incantation.”

Alex shook his head as he dug out his wallet and counted
three twenty-dollar bills onto the counter.

Louis tapped the bills on the counter to straighten the
stack before ringing “No Sale” on the ancient cash register and returning to
hand him three fives.

That kid is going to pocket the money,
Alex thought.

Louis pulled a small glass bowl from beneath the counter and
set it beside the notebook and consulted the ingredient list.

“One large pinch each of parsley, rosemary and thyme,” he
read aloud.

He brought a jar of each of the herbs to the counter, pulled
out one large pinch from each and dropped them into the waiting glass bowl. “One
small pinch of dried bats wing.”

Louis returned the herb bottles to the shelf and came back
to the counter with a jar of something dried and jet black. When he pulled out
the stopper, Alex immediately recognized the aroma of orange pekoe. Alex
considered telling Louis to stop and immediately refund his money, but held his
tongue and waited for his overpriced tea. The irony of not having the guts to
call out the guy making the fake confidence potion was not lost on Alex.

“Just about there, Mr. McKenzie. One more ingredient—powdered
wolf’s blood.”

Alex fought the urge to roll his eyes.

Louis bent over the notebook, squinting. He carried it to
one of the table lamps and held the page under the red-tinted pool of light.

“G-R,” he muttered to himself, “G-R…must be ‘gram’.”

“Problem?” Alex asked.

“No. No problem, Mr. McKenzie. It’s just odd that Miss
Luster had converted this last ingredient to grams. Usually it’s ‘a pinch’ of
this or ‘a dash’ of that. Maybe it’s an expensive ingredient and she wanted to
make sure not to use any more than necessary.”

“It couldn’t be ‘grain’, could it?” Alex asked, trying to be
helpful.

Louis pulled the “powdered wolf’s blood” jar from the shelf
and brought it to where Alex stood. He yanked out the stopper and peered
inside. “Kinda doubt it could be ‘grain’, Mr. McKenzie.”

He held out the bottle for Alex to inspect. The kid was
right, the jar held a deep red, finely ground powder. Separating out a single
grain would require tweezers and a magnifying glass. Alex looked in the jar
again and realized the powdered wolf’s blood looked an awful lot like paprika.

Louis placed a clean glass bowl on the digital scale at the
other end of the counter and reset it to account for the weight of the vessel.
He carefully tapped out the paprika-colored “wolf’s blood” until the scale read
precisely
01.00
, then replaced the stopper and added the last ingredient
to the others. When he returned, he laid the notebook opened beside the glass
bowl. He reached under the counter and produced a long, narrow black velvet bag
with a drawstring top and pulled out what looked like a black lacquered
chopstick.

Holding the chopstick between his hands, Louis raised his
arms over his head until it was pointing at the ceiling. Alex realized the
thing he was holding was a wand. Louis closed his eyes and let his head drop
backward. He stood that way for several moments, as if meditating.

Looking back, Alex could remember exactly what he had been
thinking at that moment—that maybe this experience was worth the forty-five bucks.
It
was
pretty good theater.

Louis kept his arms straight, locked at the elbows, as he
slowly lowered the wand. His eyes remained closed and his head was still
dropped back, yet the tip of the wand came to a rest on the lip of the bowl. He
slowly raised his head and opened his eyes and locked Alex in his stare. Alex
tried to look away, but he was paralyzed.
Some kind of hypnosis,
he told
himself, still trying to break the gaze.
This is just part of the trick
.

While his intellect wrestled with his instinct, Alex’s
stomach knotted. A quiver of nervous energy balled up at his tailbone, and shot
up his spine until the electrical current exploded at the base of his skull,
shocking the hairs on the back of his neck to attention.

Even when Louis finally dropped his gaze, Alex couldn’t take
his eyes off him. He was mesmerized by the clerk’s every move. The young man
seemed different somehow. He wasn’t the college kid who’d opened the door for
him. He seemed older now—ageless really. His movements were fluid, like he’d
been in his skin for centuries.