A Snake in the Grass (22 page)

The sounds of young boys’ soft snores lulled
me into sleep, but it was uneasy. I dreamed the tunnel dream again,
stepping out into immense space over and over again, always
watching for the dark figure at the other end. Sometimes it was
there, sometimes it wasn’t, and I was never sure when I was more
relieved.

Breakfast, when it rolled around, seemed more
subdued than usual. I mean sure, there was the usual stampede of
ravenous teenage males, the typical roughhousing and taunting, but
the adults in the room all had a bit of a gloom hanging over them
and the kids picked up on it. They scarfed down their food and
scattered in record time, leaving me with the spell casters and a
plan to work a scrying.

“What are we going to use, Mama?”

Carlotta pursed her lips for a moment, then
nodded decisively. “Salt, I think. I want a clear picture of what
he is up to.”

There are different kinds of scryings. Some
of them involve a pendulum and a map, others can involve something
akin to dowsing rods that will swing in the direction of the sought
item. The only one I’d actually seen performed involved a giant
basin of salt water, and if it went as expected, would provide us
with an actual picture of where Paulito was and what he was doing
at that given moment.

Oddly, the last time I’d seen a salt scrying
performed, it had been Mira, searching for the kid’s brother
Miguel. He’d already been dead by that time, and all we’d seen was
the moment of his death, caught in an endless loop. It
was…unpleasant.

Like a line of ducklings, we followed
Carlotta across the compound to her little sanctuary. The souls in
my shoulders prickled a bit as I crossed the threshold, but at
least they didn’t drop me to my knees again. I found a seat on one
of the benches and stayed out of the way as the four casters laid
out their tools for the spell.

At one point, Carlotta looked at me
thoughtfully. “I am unsure if you should be present, given how
strongly you react to magic.”

“I can go back to the house, if you want.”
Not being in this tiny building with massive amounts of magic
swirling around was a brilliant idea as far as I was concerned.

“We need someone outside the circle,”
Terrence grumbled. “In case.” After a few moments of thought,
Carlotta nodded her agreement.

A large metal basin – nearly big enough to be
called a cauldron – was placed in the center of the room, and
Carlotta dumped the entire box of salt into the bottom of it.
Esteban and I got drafted to haul in buckets of water from a nearby
hydrant, both of us making four trips before we got the vessel
filled to Carlotta’s liking. She stirred the water slowly, until
the salt had dispersed enough to make it a uniform milky white,
then nodded to her son. “Fetch the box.”

The box turned out to be a small cigar box,
nondescript in appearance, unless you happened to have the ability
to see spells. On the magical spectrum, the thing shone like a tiny
little floodlight. It had been overlaid with so many sigils and
marks that my eyes watered, and the souls in my shoulders swirled
around in sudden interest. I backed my way into a corner, putting
as much distance between myself and that box as I could.

The reason for such strong protections on it
became clear once it was opened. Inside were locks of hair.
Hundreds, probably, each neatly tied and labelled with a name. Here
was a link to every single living member of the Perez family,
something that would allow an instant magical connection. The only
thing more powerful than hair would have been blood, but I was
willing to bet that didn’t store well.

Carlotta sorted through them until she found
the one she wanted, holding the clipping of raven black hair by the
tag as the kid put the rest of the box away. “Sveta, Estéban, if
you could step inside the boundaries while Señor Smythe closes the
circle, we will begin. Jesse, if the souls become too agitated, you
can step outside.”

There was a faint pop of changing air
pressure in my ears as Terrence closed the circle around them with
barely a wave of his hand. The four of them got comfortable,
Carlotta facing Sveta across the vessel, and Estéban mirroring
Terrence. Sveta and the kid both rested on their knees, I noticed,
fighters ready to spring to their feet at a second’s notice. The
older pair were more solid in their seats, legs crossed as best
they could, and I had to wonder if it was a magical thing, or just
the necessity of older bodies.

“We will begin now. I will take the lead.”
Carlotta waited until everyone had nodded their understanding, then
she closed her eyes, breathing deeply. The other three regulated
their breathing as well, until they were all aligned with hers.

If it weren’t for the overwhelming scent of
cloves that billowed into the air, it would have looked like
nothing was happening. Carlotta and Terrence both sat with their
eyes closed, while the younger pair watched everything with intense
concentration. My skin prickled in response, like an army of fire
ants crawling all over me as the souls roused themselves for such a
blatant display. My vision flickered dizzingly between regular
sight and that strange state where I could almost see molecules
drifting in the air.

I could actually see magic pouring off of
them, drifting upwards like tendrils of steam. Carlotta’s energy
was a pale gold, delicate and warm, and there was a scent of
something like warm tortillas. The magic rising from Terrence’s
shoulders was an olive green, and there was a faint hint of
something old and mossy beneath the cloves. The kid’s power was red
and tasted like chili peppers, which didn’t surprise me a bit,
though there were hints of his mother’s gold threaded throughout.
Sveta’s was ice blue, like her eyes, and if there was a flavor to
it, it was lost underneath the burn of absolute cold. The thin
bands of energy wafted to and fro for a moment, twining in amongst
each other above the casters’ heads, creating a solid rope of magic
that then plunged into the depths of the cauldron. With every
moment that passed, the braided cord grew thicker, stronger, almost
pulsing with four matching heartbeats.

I’d never seen a group cast a spell before. I
don’t know what I’d expected. Maybe a lot of chanting or robes or
something. This went beyond just a joint ceremony, though. This was
a true melding of their powers, three of them willingly giving
their magic over to Carlotta to be used and guided as she saw fit.
And the woman herself glowed in my strange vision. Carlotta’s power
– her soul – seemed boundless, shining bright enough that my eyes
stung and watered. I couldn’t have looked away if my life depended
on it. Some guardian I was turning out to be.

The feeling of pressure in my ears was
building, almost to the point of pain, by the time Carlotta
stretched a hand out over the cauldron and dropped a few strands of
Paulito’s hair. Instantly, there was a disturbance at the surface
of the water, the dissolved salt coming to the top like hungry
guppies. It bubbled and churned there, and when Carlotta began
making a circling gesture over the water, the salt followed. Soon,
there was a whirling vortex of white streaks in the water, the salt
solidifying, coming together with purpose.

“Show us.” They spoke in unison, though only
Terrence’s words came out in English. Everyone else spoke their
native language as they said, “Reveal him.”

I leaned forward as far as I could without
disturbing the circle, anxious to see what the salt scrying would
reveal.

The water continued to swirl in the confines
of the cauldron, but the whiteness of the salt coalesced into
shapes, amorphous at first, then taking on purpose and definition.
What finally appeared was a vision of Paulito in negative, his
black hair stark white, the tan of his skin showing as a light
gray. His shirt, which must have been white, was marked by patches
of perfectly clear water, which read as black against the depths of
the giant bowl. The image was so clear, we could see individual
strands of hair that hung down over his forehead, the wrinkles at
the edges of his eyes as he opened his mouth to laugh at
something.

The clove odor that I associated with spells
took on a faintly charred smell, and the souls in my skin surged in
Estéban’s direction. The edges of his power were frayed, pieces
flaking off in spiky, brittle bits in response to his anger. Where
his energy fed into the joined spell, the edges of the other
strands browned and blistered with the heat, and instinctively,
they tried to recoil from the damage.

Carlotta’s jaw grew tense with strain as she
tried to hold the scattering powers together.

“Easy kid…You gotta hold it together, or your
mom’s gonna lose connection.” Carlotta couldn’t spare the attention
to chide him, but I could, and as I’d hoped, the sound of my voice
reached wherever he was. He closed his eyes for a few deep breaths,
and the thorns on his magic tendrils smoothed out.

In the cauldron, Paulito’s mouth moved as he
talked to someone out of our sight. We wouldn’t be able to see his
companion, the salt of the spell attuned only to the salt in
Paulito’s own body. But we might be able to get an idea of his
location if we could just discern what he was doing.

Sitting, obviously, that was the first thing.
He was lounging back in some kind of low chair, one hand drifting
to his mouth and away as he idly smoked a cigarette. The chair was
vaguely visible where he touched it, as was the floor where his
feet rested. He gestured with his other hand as he spoke,
dismissing something with a sneer and a roll of his eyes. At some
point, someone handed him a bottle, which only appeared in the
vision once he held it in his hand. It was disturbingly like he had
just willed it into being. He swigged out of the bottle, then gave
another wave, obviously bidding farewell to whoever was in the room
with him.

We needed him to get up and move, that much I
knew. A snapshot of the room he was in was going to be next to
worthless unless we could place just where it was.
Come on, get
up…move…
I didn’t realize that I was thinking it so hard until
the skin of my back grew warm, and I started to feel the lines of
every single tattoo that decorated my shoulders. In the salt
picture, Paulito paused for a moment, his head tilted like he’d
heard something, and then with a thoughtful frown on his face, he
slowly got to his feet.

“Jesse! Stop!” Carlotta hissed at me, and I
tried, I really tried.

Down, guys, back off. This isn’t our
show.
They didn’t want to listen to me, I could tell that much.
The muscles around my shoulder blades cramped as my passengers
lodged a formal protest. They could help, why wouldn’t I let them
help? The message was plain as day.

Paulito turned his head to his left,
obviously speaking to someone else. He was still frowning, and he
shrugged in response to their unheard question. At some prompting,
he held his hand out to the unseen person, and there was a ghost of
a shape there as another hand took his. It wasn’t enough to see the
person, but the fingers were delicate, the skin the same shade of
light gray as Paulito’s.
Reina.
Had to be.

The moment their hands touched, Paulito
jerked upright, his spine ramrod straight, and his gaze whipped to
the right…straight at us. Almost like he could see right through
the water and salt, watching us as we watched him.

That’s not good…
Paulito gave a sneer
and mouthed a few words with exaggerated care. Estéban whispered,
“He says he sees us.”
That’s really not good.

A knife appeared in his other hand, and with
a smirk, he turned away from us and very deliberately ran the blade
over his palm. A plume of bright red blossomed in the bottom of the
basin, the white of the salt quickly overwhelmed by the sudden
burst of color.

The souls in my skin went crazy, and for once
I totally agreed with them. “Drop the spell. Carlotta, drop it!”
When she couldn’t respond, I tried to barge in, fully intent on
kicking the basin over. I was brought up short at the edge of the
circle, slamming into a wall that smelled like Terrence’s mossy
magic.
Dammit!
I bashed my fist on the barrier, but knew
already that there was simply too much magic in me to allow me to
cross. “Carlotta! Kid, snap out of it! Sveta!”

The red water swirled, faster and faster, and
I could only watch as a shape rose up out of the depths. A head,
vaguely human-shaped, but with a mouth full of fangs and eyes that
gleamed the blood red of an angry demon. It dragged itself out of
the depths of the water, rising a foot, two feet into the air. A
clawed hand appeared, clamping down on the edge of the basin, and I
knew, just
knew
that if this thing crawled its way out of
that water, we were in deep shit.

I shouldn’t have worried. I was in the
presence of two of the strongest spell casters I knew, and they had
the strength of two younger folk thrown in on their side. With a
grim frown, Carlotta made a gesture with her hand, and the rope of
combined power looped around the creature’s neck. Terrence
motioned, and the rope grew taught, strangling the thing. The sound
that rose from its throat was a choked snarl, but the single clawed
hand abandoned the edge of the basin and instead scrabbled at the
cord around its throat.

“You are not welcome here.” Again, the four
spoke in unison in their respective native tongues. “Begone, and do
not return.”

It was working, I realized, the blood-salt
thing melting slowly back into the cauldron. The lips curled back
from its fangs in impotent rage, the coil of combined magic
dragging it back down into the water. The water itself bubbled and
churned, boiling with the force of all the power that was running
through it.

The thing wasn’t done, though. With one last
thrash, it managed to sink its teeth into the rope that bound it,
and what followed could only be described as an explosion. The
basin erupted, boiling water splattering in every direction, and
the force of the blast knocked me off my feet, completely blasting
through Terrence’s protective circle.