Love Charms (19 page)

Annie
found Dita sitting on a soft, oversized chair, still surrounded by admirers.
When Annie handed her the drink, Dita’s eyes widened slightly, but she motioned
her to sit. The crowd of people moved away the moment Dita waved her hand,
leaving the two of them in relative privacy.

“Well,
dear, I didn’t expect you back...so soon…” Dita sipped the drink and her
eyebrows rose in surprise. “And this is exactly what I asked you for!”

“I
hope so.” Annie sank into a chair with a defeated sigh. “You have no idea what
I had to do to get it. Or maybe you do. I don’t know. I’m so tired of this
runaround. Do you really know where Eric is? I need to find him.”

Dita
set her glass on the little table between them and leaned toward her.
“Actually, I got a call from him just a few hours ago.”

“Oh
please.” Annie rolled her eyes. “Do you think I was born yesterday?”

“He’s
back in town.” Dita picked imaginary lint off the chair. Annie marveled again
at how incredible she looked for being a grown man’s mother.

“Then
why wasn’t he at his place today?” Annie crossed her arms.

Dita
shrugged. “How should I know?”

“Why
don’t I believe you?” Annie shook her head.

Dita
gave her a cool, grim smile. “You can believe what you like, darling. He
doesn’t tell me everything. What I can do is give you the address to The
Elysian Fields. He will be seeing a client there between two and four
tomorrow.”

“What
in the heck is The Elysian Fields?” Annie cocked her head and frowned.

Dita
raised her eyebrows at her and then winked. “It’s a mystery school.”

“A...what?”
Annie asked, shaking her head as if to clear it. Eric’s mother looked as if she
were enjoying Annie’s suspense.

Dita
crossed one knee over the other. “I guess the best way to describe it...it’s a
kind of new age school, for people like intuitives and psychics.”

Annie
put her head in her hands for a moment. It was beginning to hurt. “You’re sure
he’s going to be there?”

“It’s
what he told me,” she replied with that one-shoulder shrug.

Resigned,
Annie said, “Okay, give me the number.”

Dita
bit her lip and then sighed. “They don’t have phones.”

Annie
laughed, incredulous. “Oh, come on!”

“It’s
true!” she protested. “Something about vibrations? They have a lot
of...alternative ideas. But I can give you the address. It’s about an hour’s
drive out of town.”

Annie
sat still for a moment, pondering. “What the hell. Why not? This couldn’t get
any stranger. Give me the address.”

Dita
reached into her purse and pulled out a black book. She flipped the pages and
Annie watched as she wrote an address in large, looping letters on a slip of
paper before handing it to her.

“Thanks.”
Annie stood. “Enjoy your honey…and your drink. Virgil and that old guy were
both quite an experience.”

Dita
caught Annie’s arm as she passed. “Would you mind doing me another favor?”

“Are
you kidding me?” Annie sighed. “What? What could you possibly want now?”

Dita’s
smile was kind and Annie felt herself relenting. “Can you pick up something for
me while you’re there?”

“Is
it anything illegal?”

“Goodness,
no!” Her laugh was like silver crystals falling. “It’s just a beauty cream.
Inquire at the office and ask for Kora. She’s holding it for me.”

“I
guess I could,” Annie replied, feeling gently bullied again, but not knowing
how to refuse.

“Thank
you, dear.” Dita stood and leaned over, surprising Annie by giving her a brief
kiss on the cheek and leaving behind the smell of lavender and roses. It should
have been a kind act, but Annie fought the urge to wipe at the spot. As Annie
tucked the slip of paper into her purse, she headed down the metal staircase
and heard Dita call out that odd parting phrase again, “Good luck!”

* * *

This
is crazy
. Annie made her
way down the steep, narrow steps into the darkness, feeling her way. The only
light in the stairwell flickered on above her head for a brief hopeful moment
and then went out again. Dita had been right. It took her an hour to find the
place, but it wasn’t in the country like she’d assumed it would be. It was in
the middle of a place that looked like a small version of
Chinatown—complete with signs in strange languages. She found the brick
building next to an open marketplace selling everything from candles to
crystals.

Her
feet hurt. She had to park two blocks away and walk in heels. A block or so
before she found the building, she had seen two boys sitting on the sidewalk
playing some sort of game. Annie recognized it as she passed. Pick-Up Sticks.
She stood for a moment and watched them.
Kids still play that game?
She
was surprised they weren’t inside playing video games. When Annie stepped over
the flood of their sticks, they just looked up at her and smiled.

Edging
her way down into the darkness, she felt dizzy and nauseous. She reached into
her jacket pocket, remembering she still had the honey cake Virgil had given
her the day before. She broke off a small piece. The taste surprised her. It
was like honeyed coffee— rich and thick.

How
far down does this go?
She peered into the darkness and couldn’t see anything.

Behind
her, she could see the faint glow of daylight, where she had passed a bar
called The Boatman and had met a grizzled old panhandler sprawled at the
entrance marked “The Elysian Fields” in scrolling letters. Annie frowned, still
shaking off that half-creepy, half-sad feeling she got whenever she met the
homeless.

“Penny
for your thoughts?” he had asked, his voice rasping through what was left of
his teeth.

“You’re
gonna give me a penny for my thoughts?” Annie had smiled in spite of herself.

“You
give me a penny,” he had corrected. “And I’ll tell you your thoughts.”

She
had given him a penny, but had hurried past him before he could speak again.
Maybe she didn’t want to know what she was thinking.

Annie
couldn’t resist another small bite of the honey cake as she moved down the
stairwell. The stairs ended and a deep red light at the bottom illuminated a
sign indicating that the store was to the right and classes to the left. The
woman in the office upstairs had said she could find Kora in the store, so
Annie turned right. At least the passageway was lit, even if it was with hazy
red lights.

As
she neared the end of the hallway, Annie was paralyzed by a deep growl in the
darkness ahead of her. The sound came closer and she took a step back, her hand
reaching out to steady herself against the cinderblock wall. A large black dog
came into view under one of the red lights. Annie gasped, stepping further
back.

“Kirby!”
The faint voice came from somewhere on the other side of the wall.

The
dog turned its head in the direction of the voice and whined. Annie thought the
dog might be friendlier now, having been admonished, and reached a tentative
hand out, but the dog growled again, baring its teeth. She straightened,
putting her hands in her pockets and considered the stairway behind her. The
moist honey cake gave her an idea. Squatting down again, she made a kissing
noise, holding out a bit of the cake. The dog came forward, tentative, his nose
working. He took the offering from her fingers. His tail was wagging now and
Annie sighed, relieved, and stood up again.

“Bark
worse than your bite, huh, pal?” She moved past him toward the end of the
corridor. He followed her, nosing her hand to see if she had more for him.
Around the corner, the passage ended and Annie found herself under one of those
caged red light bulbs at a door marked with a strange symbol and the word
Apollyon. She frowned. There were no other doors and the corridor had come to a
dead-end.

Annie
shrugged. This must be the place! End of the line! She opened the door and it
swung easily. The room was all basement—cinderblock walls and pipes that
ran across the ceiling. The fluorescent light over her head flickered. It was
clearly a book store, filled with shelves, but there were all sorts of other
strange, occult novelties, tarot cards and glass fairy baubles and statues of
various gods and goddesses. Annie stared at a huge red Buddha on the floor that
had a sign near his faded belly that read, Rub Me.

She
could smell incense and located the source on a desk that held an ancient cash
register. The incense burner was in the carved out top of a human skull replica
that glowed with the light of a candle inside. Annie made a face.
Lovely.
Gotta remember to put that one on my Christmas list.
There were no
customers milling about.

“Hello?”
Annie called, looking for the source of the voice that had called the dog.
Annie thought she saw movement behind one of the book shelves and called out
again. “Kora?”

The
dog beside her barked and the door behind her swung shut, the force of it
making the skull light flicker and go out. Annie started, gasping, and her hand
went to her throat. The dog licked her other hand as if in apology and trotted
off behind the desk where wisps of smoke were coming out of the skull’s eye
sockets.

“I
heard you!” came a muffled voice.

Annie
turned at the sound of a door, and a girl entered the room looking like she
should be going to a funeral. Annie understood the whole goth-girl rebellion
thing, but she had never found it attractive.
I guess that’s the point?
The girl was wearing the requisite black lipstick, heavy make-up, dark eye
shadow. Her long hair was dyed a deep black with red streaks. Annie eyed her
combat boots and Beetlejuice-striped thigh highs and suppressed a smile.

As
the girl stepped under a glowing black light that Annie hadn’t noticed on the
ceiling, her black t-shirt glowed with a purple ghoulish image of a skull.
Annie took a step back in surprise as the girl advanced. The skull disappeared
as she moved to stand under the fluorescents.

The
girl smiled at her and extended a tiny, almost childlike hand in greeting.
Annie noticed her nails were long and painted like some bizarre reverse French
manicure, black on the bottom and white on the tips. “I’m Kora. You were
looking for me?”

Annie
looked down at the girl, whose head barely came to her shoulder. She wasn’t as
young as she looked, Annie judged. The tattoo and the belly ring and the
eyebrow stud make her look younger somehow.

“Yes.
I’m here to pick up something for Dita—” Annie stopped, realizing that
she didn’t even know Dita’s last name. Not that it mattered. People seemed to
know who she was, regardless.

“Ah,
Dita! She said you were coming.” Kora smiled and Annie saw the flicker of a
tongue stud. “You want the beauty box. Stay right here!”

Annie
waited, wondering how Kora had known she was coming if they had no phones. In
fact, how did one run a business without a phone, exactly?

Kirby
came trotting back around the corner in her direction. He stopped for a moment
to be petted before going to sit by the entrance, as if waiting for something.

Kora
returned holding a wooden box about half a foot square. It was carved with an
intricate pattern, something that seemed familiar to Annie, although she
couldn’t say why. It was unrecognizable as any concrete image, and she thought
perhaps it was something Celtic. She reached out her hand to touch it.

Kora
offered her the box. “Beautiful, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”
Annie took it and tucked it under her arm. “Thanks.”

“Oh,
she told me to tell you not to open it.” Kora headed toward the desk, her boots
treading hard on the basement floor.

Annie
closed her eyes and threw her head back toward the ceiling, slapping her
forehead. “Like mother, like son?” she muttered. Unbelievable!

“You
mean Eric?” Kora asked, lifting the skull on the desk and re-lighting the
candle.

Annie
moved toward her. “You know Eric?”

“Oh,
yes!” Kora watched the flame, a small, secret smile on her lips. “We all know
Eric.”

“Is
he here?” Annie leaned over the counter as Kora knelt behind it to pick
something up off the floor.

Kora
put some papers back on the desk, using the edge of the skull as a paperweight.
“I thought he was supposed to have clients here today. Check in the office
upstairs. Do you know where that is?”

Annie
nodded, already heading for the door. Her heart was racing. “Thanks for your
help!”

* * *

Annie
glanced up as the door opened, half rising to meet him. It was a stocky bearded
man with glasses and a goatee. He glanced at her, his eyes moving over her
blouse and skirt and heels. She felt out of place here. This guy was the most
average-looking person she had seen walk through the door yet. The tattooed,
long-haired biker guy just before him had eyed her, too, and then asked a lot
of questions at the window about a Reiki class. This stocky guy wanted an
application for something he called the “Medical Intuitive Program.” He sat in
the chair across from Annie with a clipboard and filled it out while he hummed.
Annie glanced at the clock again and sighed. The woman at the window, a patient
redhead named Polly, had told her he was due in any minute. That was almost an
hour ago.