Secondhand Spirits (26 page)

“Check it. I'll e-mail you her reply and the meeting time.”

What was it with all these tech-savvy spooks? Sometimes I felt I would have done better as a sixteenth-century witch . . . except for the massacres, of course.

As we rose to go, Hervé went over to a cupboard and extracted a small jar of what looked like dirt. He sprinkled a little of it into a tiny plastic Baggie.

“My gift to you. For your charm bag.”

“What is it?”

“Dirt from a prison gateway in New Orleans. It will help to keep evildoers from you. Powerful protection.”

“Thank you, Hervé. I really appreciate it, and your taking the trouble to talk with me.”

“My pleasure.”

By the time we returned to the front, Max appeared to have gotten over his snit. He stood with the dread-locked woman by a display of scented oils. He was holding her wrist up to his nose, apparently assessing one of the perfumes. She laughed at something he was saying. Twin boys, about eight, joked with him, and he looked down and teased them about their New Orleans Saints T-shirts.

The smile left his face when he looked over to see me standing with LaMansec. He glared. Hervé grinned.

“Tell you what, Lily, you bring this one along. Mother would love to meet him.”

“I don't think that would be a good idea—” I began.

“I'll be there,” Max said. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a business card. “Just let me know where and when.”

I thanked Hervé again, and Max and I left the shop.

I paused for a moment out on the sidewalk. Closing my eyes, I breathed deeply and let the smells and sounds surround me. Spicy fried meats, refried beans, ranchero music and rap with booming bass moving by from a car. A million vibrations, mostly good. This was a pulsating, vibrant neighborhood, peopled by up-and-coming im migrants, students, and artists. It might be scruffy, but it was full of hope. These people were looking forward, toward the future.

“You okay?” Max asked.

I nodded, opened my eyes, and smiled up at him. “Mmm.”

“What exactly did that voodoo priest do to make you smile like that?”

I laughed and shook my head. “It's this neighborhood. Isn't it great?”

Max glanced around us and then fixed me with a doubtful look. “Which part are you talking about? The overflowing Dumpster or the rampant graffiti?”

I cocked my head and studied the bright spray-painted tags on an otherwise uninspired cement wall. Not that I approved of such vandalism, but the vivid colors did enliven the place.

“You have to admit it's well-done. I mean, they obviously take pride in their work.”

Max chuckled. “I'll say one thing for this neighborhood: They've got some of the best tacos in town. Come on, tiger; you owe me dinner.”

“I don't owe you a darned thing.”

Nonetheless, I let Max lead me a few noisy blocks down Valencia Street to an informal restaurant called Taqueria El Toro
.
He spoke in Spanish at the counter, ordering tacos of
pollo asado
,
mole
,
chile verde
, and
al pastor
, as well as cold beers for both of us. I almost asked for
carnitas
, but since spending time with Oscar, the thought of eating pork was hard to stomach. Despite his earlier words, Max insisted on paying.

We took our bottles of Dos Equis, each adorned with a wedge of lime, to a clean booth near the back. Max nabbed a basket of chips and a small bowl of salsa, then set them on the table and took a seat across from me.

“You want to tell me what's going on?” he said.

“Not particularly, no.”

“Carlos Romero is a homicide inspector.”

“Mm, this looks like good salsa.” I dipped a chip, still warm from the fryer, into freshly made tomato salsa and popped it in my mouth. The chip was a crisp, salty explosion, and the salsa was flavorful and perfectly spiced. I hadn't realized how hungry I was.

“What's a homicide investigation got to do with a witch?” Max pushed.

“Keep your voice down.” I glanced around us to see who might be overhearing our conversation. There were still a lot of people in the world who believed in the power of witches, for good or for ill.

“I thought wi—”

I gave him a look.

“Er, your type of people were proud of who you are. Your . . . heritage, or whatever you call it.”

“I doubt you know the first thing about my people.”

“Enlighten me.”

I sat back and took a long pull on my ice-cold beer. “Any idea how many people—mostly women—were killed during the hysteria in Europe?”

“Hundreds, I would imagine,” he said as he dug into the chips and salsa. “Maybe thousands.”

“Conservative estimates put the number between fifty and eighty thousand.”

He stopped chewing.

“More than the entire population of London at the time. Up there with the Black Death. And those are the ones we have court records for; a lot were taken care of in a rather less formal fashion. Countless others were tortured and driven from their homes. So when you speak so flippantly about a ‘heritage' of witchcraft, you might want to consider what it would be like to walk around knowing you have that kind of history.”

“Lily, I understand that it's a historical tragedy, and evidence of our misogynistic past as a society . . . but there's no proof the accused were actually witches. I've read
The Crucible
.”

“It's true; a lot of the women killed were victims of personal vendettas. Some were so influential and respected that their very existence threatened the men-folk in charge. Some were simply guilty of being ‘weird.' The last woman put to death for witchcraft in England was a senile old lady. But a lot were, in fact, natural witches and sorcerers.”

“If they had supernatural powers, why didn't they just get themselves out of the situation?”

“Plenty did. They weren't able to catch us all, not by a long shot. I suppose if they had, I would never have been born.”

Our eyes met for a long moment.

“And anyway, you don't understand how it works,” I continued. “We can't just point a wand and make things happen the way you see in the movies. It's much more complex than that.”

“Lily—”

Saved by the bell. A young man at the counter called his name, and Max got up to retrieve our food order. I gathered napkins and forks and knives from the stand, two more kinds of salsa from the salsa bar, and we sorted out our order at the table.
Al pastor
and
chile verde
for him,
pollo asado
and
mole
for me. Salsa and guacamole for us both. We dug in.

After a few minutes of eating in companionable silence, Max started to stare at me. Stretching one long leg out in front of him, he reached deep into the front pocket of his jeans and extracted my medicine bag, closed tight, and placed it upon the table. It was butter-soft red leather, decorated with colorful beads I had stitched on as a girl. Inside the leather was a second bag, made of black silk. Inside that . . . was magic.

I wrapped my hand around it. It was warm from Max's skin, and I could sense its welcoming hum. I let out a contented sigh and smiled. It was like being reunited with a long-lost friend.

“Tell me about the bag.”

“It's called a medicine bag, or a charm bag. It's consecrated, and imbued with protective powers.”

“A bunch of stones, a feather, powder . . .”

“You
opened
it?”

“Of course.”

Of course. What had I expected?

“Did anything spill?”

He shook his head. “I was careful. Tell me about the contents. Dirt? Magic stones?” He couldn't quite cover up his disdain.

I had no pockets, and I wanted the bag next to my body rather than in my backpack, so I tucked the bundle into my bra and purposely ignored his question, if not his tone.

“Do you carry a picture of a loved one in your wallet?” I asked.

His eyebrows shot up in question. “Sure. I've got one of my mother.”

“Could I see it?”

Looking at me curiously, he pulled out his wallet, flipped it open, and handed it to me. The photo showed a woman in her sixties with a broad, open smile. I slipped the snapshot out of its plastic jacket and laid it on the table facing Max. Then I held out a sharp knife.

“Gouge out her eyes.”

“What?”

“Go ahead. What harm could it do?”

“Give me a break,” he scoffed, and tried to sound condescending, but he wasn't as casual as he'd hoped. The horrified expression on his handsome face gave him away.

“Why not?” I challenged. “It's just a piece of paper stained with chemicals.”

“Put down the goddamned knife already.”

“Then curse her name. They're just words, right? According to you, they don't mean anything.”

“I get your point.” He snatched the photo back and slipped it into his wallet, refusing to meet my eyes.

“Don't you see, Max? We all ascribe meaning to inanimate objects; that's what we do as human beings. It's a bit of magic. Witches just tend to ascribe more meaning, and in a more conscious way. And we learn to direct that meaning. It's all about focusing intentions.”

“What I believe is that you've cast a spell over
me
. Talking to you, a person could almost start to believe in this nonsense.”

From him, that was high praise indeed. I smiled and returned my attention to polishing off the rest of my tacos. I sneaked a peek or two over at Max, watching the way his jaw worked while he ate, and the movements of his throat when he threw his head back and drank from his bottle of beer.

Why did he appeal to me? For one thing, he was smart, and I was a sucker for smart. And the chemistry was impossible to deny. And he was . . . normal. What would it be like to be able to be friends, or even something more, with someone perfectly normal like him?

Romance, not to mention sex, was problematic for me. The potent associations of sex and witchcraft was one favorite subject for the authors of the
Malleus Maleficarum.
They considered women to be temptresses, luring men to their doom, as in so much of the world and throughout so much history. But it is true that there is power in the intense feelings associated with sex. That kind of emotion can strengthen a witch's abilities, and for someone like me, who was not always in command of her own talents, the loss of control the emotions stirred up could be . . . significant.

My first boyfriend in high school, who I thought was decent and brave until I realized he was showing off to win a bet, wound up with a minor head injury. Graciela had gotten me out of that predicament, but not without a lot of effort and a stern warning. Later, in Geneva, I met a psychic with some knowledge of and sensitivity to my world. He and I had a brief relationship until I realized I was with him primarily because he wasn't afraid of me, and he was with me because he hoped to glean some of my powers. Luckily I was mature enough at that point to break it off without causing him bodily harm.

But how could I have feelings for someone like Max, a man who not only didn't believe in my world, but despised it? I could
force
him to care for me; love spells are simple enough, and can be very potent. I knew I had that kind of power. But I didn't want to do that. That always smacks of something sordid to me, the idea of making love to someone who wouldn't be interested in their right mind. I might as well go out and hire myself a gigolo.

“So back to my question about the police . . .” Max said, breaking into my thoughts.

“It's really none of your business.”

“I'm making it my business.”

I took a deep breath, felt my medicine bag for moral support, and shrugged. “The house we were at . . . I told you a friend of mine was killed there.”

“Was she a close friend?”

“Not really, no. As a matter of fact, I'd only met her once . . . twice, sort of. Once, really. But I still feel responsible.”

“How could you be responsible for her death?”

“Not responsible, exactly, just . . . It's hard to explain. I feel like I should have protected her.”

“I have to say, Lily, you strike me as someone who takes a lot on yourself.”

“Oh, I don't know about that.”

“Here's a for-instance: You meet a total stranger, and don't want him going out on a boat for some secret reason of your own. So besides giving him what seems to be your own personal good-luck charm, you also make sure the boat never picks him up.”

I smiled at him, despite myself.

“Seems like a lot to take on yourself, seeing as how we had just met.”

“Speaking of the cops, what's the story with you and Romero?”

He shrugged and took a drink. “He doesn't much care for me.”

“Any particular reason?”

“I investigated a story about police corruption. . . .”

“He's a bad cop?”

“No, quite the opposite. But police don't like outsiders nosing around, making accusations. It's a hard thing: Their job is tough, and their closeness is necessary to deal with what they have to. But when there's a problem they close ranks.”

“I guess that makes sense.”

“Plus, my wife . . .” His gray eyes met mine, filled with a restless, deep sadness. “Let's just say that the circumstances of her death were . . . unusual.”

“Unusual?”

“Romero doesn't trust me; let's leave it at that. He's actually more your kind of guy.”