Black Magic Woman (12 page)

Snake hoped she'd be returning there soon. He was sick and tired of being bossed around by someone who, to his way of thinking, ought to be cleaning up after white folks in an office building someplace.

He had been careful not to let his resentments come to the surface. Apart from the fact that he had strict orders from his Mistress, whom he feared greatly, the nigger woman was too damn handy with a knife. And not squeamish about using it, as Snake had reason to know.

He continued watching as Cecelia Mbwato added an oddly shaped twig and several bits of vegetable matter to the arrangement of objects on the cheesecloth. Then, from a red and white plastic cooler, the kind people often take to the beach, she brought out a gray, wrinkled lump of flesh, about the size and shape of a baby's fist. Snake recognized that one instantly.

It was the heart of the six year-old girl that Cecelia Mbwato had cut open the night before.

She sprinkled the gathered materials with two different kinds of powder, one fine and one coarse, muttering in that foreign tongue the whole time. Then, with infinite care, she rolled up the cheesecloth and tied it, at each end and in the middle, with a bright green twine that she had measured and cut into precise lengths.

Snake had known enough to keep silent while the ritual was taking place. But now that it was done, he asked, gesturing toward the tightly rolled bundle, "What do you call that thing, anyway?"

Cecelia Mbwato looked at him with her lizard eyes. After a moment she said, "In English, you would call it, I think, a fetish."

Snake's brow furrowed. "Ain't that some kinda kinky sex thing? Like gettin' turned on by woman's shoes, or somethin'?"

"I know nothing of the disgusting and perverse sexual practices of your people," she said primly. "And I do not want to. This fetish is a most powerful magical talisman, just like the other two that I have already completed."

Snake nodded respectfully. He knew about magic, and what it could do. He was smart enough to fear it. "Yeah, well," he said, "how many more of these things do you gotta make?"

"Two more. Just two, and then all will be ready for delivery to the one who sent you. Then I will receive my payment, and our time together will be done."

"Damn," said Snake impassively, "that'll be a shame."

Morris and Chastain followed the numbered doors until they reached 936, which bore the legend "C. Prendergast and Sons. Genealogy." Inside, they were greeted by a pert woman in her mid twenties sitting behind an ancient oak desk. She had been using a jeweler's loupe to examine the faded page of an old ledger. "Hi, come on in," she said. "Have a seat, if you can find one under all the mess."

Morris looked at the young woman, who had short auburn hair and a face that was more interesting than beautiful. The huge lenses of her aviator-style glasses could not conceal either the intelligence in the blue eyes or the sprinkle of freckles that spread out from her nose to accent the high cheekbones. "We're here to see Sidney Prendergast," he said. "We have an appointment."

"That means you guys are Morris and Chastain, right?" Without waiting for an answer, she turned to Libby and said, "Just put that stuff anywhere on the floor, it's fine."

Morris saw that Libby was moving a pile of four or five books off a nearby armchair. "You're right," he said to the young woman. "I'm Quincey Morris, and this is Libby Chastain."

"Pleased to meet you. I'm Sidney Prendergast." She stood, and extended a hand to Morris. After a moment's hesitation, he took it. As they shook, he noticed that the woman was wearing a faded Harvard T-shirt and blue jeans. As Libby stepped over to shake hands, Morris moved a box full of files off another chair and sat down.

Once all three of them were seated, Sidney Prendergast closed the ledger before her and said, "Well, let's start by getting the FAQ stuff out of the way."

There was a moment's silence before Libby said, "You mean 'frequently asked questions?'"

"You got it," Sidney Prendergast said with a nod. "First-time clients usually have the same ones. Such as: 'Isn't Sidney a man's name?' Answer: yeah, usually, except among old-money WASPs, which my mother was before Granddad pissed away her inheritance."

"I see you
have
done this before," Morris said with a slight smile.

"Oh, sure. I don't mind, really. Let's see, what else? There's 'Why does the door read C. Prendergast and
Sons?'
That's 'cause Dad, Charles Prendergast, was both optimistic and stubborn. My two brothers never found genealogy interesting—one's a cop in Fall River, and the other one teaches high school—but Dad was too proud to have the sign changed." Her lips split in a grin. "Besides, he always used to say that I was his favorite son."

"Used
to say?" Libby asked. "Past tense?"

"Afraid so. Dad passed away almost three years ago. I'd been working for him part-time for years, and he left me the business." She gave an exaggerated shrug. "It pays the bills while I finish my diss. After that, we'll see."

"Where are you getting your doctorate?" Morris asked.

She plucked at the front of her T-shirt, holding it out from her body for a moment. "The shirt tells the true tale," she declared with another grin.
"Veritas,
baby,
veritas."
Letting the grin fade, she continued, "And considering the cost of tuition at Harvard, I hope you folks have some nice, complicated genealogical research you want done, thus allowing me to present you with a nice, fat bill. So, what's the deal?"

Morris said, "We're interested in tracing a woman who is a descendant of someone executed during the Salem witch trials."

Sidney Prendergast studied each of them in turn before saying, "You know, I charge by the hour, with any portion thereof rounded upward." The good humor was gone from her voice now. "So if this is your idea of a giggle, it's going to end up costing you some money."

"No, we're entirely serious," Libby said. "And we're prepared to pay for your time, no matter how much you have to put in."

The young woman looked at Libby for a long moment before nodding silently. Then she opened a desk drawer, pulled out a legal pad, and picked up a pencil from the desktop. "So, you want to locate someone who is living today, someone who had an ancestor die during that awful business in Salem, back in the 1690s."

Morris and Chastain both nodded.

Sidney Prendergast wrote rapidly on the pad. Without looking up, she said, "They've figured out what caused that, you know."

"Caused what?" Morris asked.

"The fits and other weird behaviors by some of the citizens that got interpreted as witchcraft." She looked up from her notepad. "Wheat ergot."

"Do tell," Libby murmured politely.

"Yeah, I read about it in my American Mythology class. Apparently ergot is some kind of fungus that infects grain in the field—wheat, rye, all kinds, I guess. It's not visible to the naked eye, and the heat you get from baking doesn't necessarily kill it."

"So, what does this sneaky fungus do?" Libby asked.

"Screws up your central nervous system. People who eat the bread, or cake, or whatever, can be afflicted with uncontrolled twitching of the limbs, paralysis, delirium, all kinds of weird behavior."

Morris nodded. "I've seen the results of ergot poisoning in the Middle East. It's not pretty."

"No, I guess not. So some of the wheat fields near Salem were apparently carrying ergot, and that wheat was picked, ground, baked, and eaten. Result: a lot of people start acting very strangely, and the authorities decide that they're either victims of witchcraft, or witches themselves. Then they start arresting and hanging people."

"I'm curious about one thing," Quincey Morris said. "How did the person who came up with this theory actually establish, after three hundred-some years, that ergot was in the wheat consumed by the people of Salem?"

"Well, they
couldn't
prove it, after all that time," she said. "But it stands to reason. I mean,
something
caused all that hysteria."

"It wasn't real witches, then," Libby said, her face as expressionless as her voice.

"No, not hardly," Sidney Prendergast said with a slight smile. "Sorry if that disappoints you."

"I think we'll both be less disappointed if you can identify the person we're interested in."

"You realize this usually goes the other way, don't you?" Sidney Prendergast said.

"How do you mean?" Morris asked.

"Mostly, my clients want me to start with the present—that is, with them—and work backwards. Sometimes they just want a nice copy of the family tree to being to a reunion. Other times, they're trying to claim a piece of some trust fund that's being distributed to 'all the living relatives of the late Mary Jones,' or somebody. And, pretty often, clients want me to establish that they're descended from some prominent, even royal, family. I can't tell you how much business Dad got when Princess Di was alive."

"No trust funds for us, I'm afraid," Libby said with a shrug.

"And I already
know
that I'm a bastard offspring of the British royal family, so we don't have to waste any time on
that,"
Morris added with a slight smile.

Sidney Prendergast shook her head in mock disapproval. "Well, let's see what we have to work with, here." She turned the legal pad to a fresh page. "What's the name of the person executed in Salem?"

"Carter," Libby said. "Sarah Carter."

"And the alleged crime?"

"Witchcraft."

On the floor, the length of electrical cord continued to burn, the smell of its insulation adding a harsh chemical overtone to the smell of the incense.

On the nearby table, the smoke detector, its battery intact, was silent as the dead.

"Okay, that probably doesn't matter. People didn't always have middle names in those days, anyway." She wrote some more. "Rebecca's date of birth?"

"Don't know that, either," he said. "We believe she was about seven years old when her mother died, so…"

Sidney Prendergast looked up again.
"About seven,
you say." Disdain for the imprecision was clear in her voice. "All right, what happened to the little girl after her mother's death?"

"She was taken in by relatives from Boston," Libby said.

"Their names?"

Libby shook her head. "No idea."

Sidney Prendergast blinked a couple of times. "Well, were they family on the mother's side, or the father's?"

"Same answer, I'm afraid," Libby said.

"Did they formally adopt Rebecca, or just let her live with them?"

Quincey Morris and Libby Chastain were silent.

Sidney Prendergast tapped her pencil on the desk a few times. "Well, then, what other information do you have about the family line?"

After another brief silence, Morris answered, "Nothing else, I'm afraid."

"Nothing?"

"Those are all the facts we have available to us," Morris said. "We were hoping that you'd be able to fill in the rest. That's why we want to hire you."

"To find somebody alive today, with nothing but
that
—" she slapped her palm lightly on the legal pad, "to go on?"

Morris nodded sheepishly.

"Hell, what makes you so sure the family line didn't die out, somewhere along the way? That happens all the time, especially with families this old. How do you know there even
is
a living descendant?"

"We know," Morris said. "I'm not at liberty to tell you how, but we know."

"Aw, Jesus…" Sidney Prendergast tossed the pencil onto the desk and leaned back in her chair. "Well, fortunately for you guys, my old man raised me to be ethical. So, instead of spending six months pretending to work on this piece of shit and then sending you a bill for ten to twelve grand, I'll tell you right now: it can't be done. Not with the limited—"

"Excuse me," Libby Chastain said suddenly. Turning to look at her, Morris saw Libby's eyes dart around the room, then rest on the door through which they had entered. "Sorry to interrupt," Libby continued, and there was something in her voice that made Morris suddenly, completely alert, "But I was just wondering—
do either of you smell smoke?"