Spellcasting in Silk: A Witchcraft Mystery (11 page)

“Hey, did you hear when Bronwyn said ‘butt’?
Heh
! And then that one time, when Carlos had two pair and Duke had absolutely nothing, but he was bluffing? And then Maya . . .”

I put away the cake and brushed my teeth while Oscar followed me around recounting virtually every hand
we had played tonight. He was quite the multitasker: even while continuing his eternal quest for food, he had been checking out everyone’s cards.

I was about to change into my nightgown when I spied my crystal ball sitting, dusty and neglected, on a side table in the living room.

Before Aidan and I had our falling-out, he had been trying to help me develop my scrying skills, or the ability to see visions in the crystal ball. But in this area, at least, I was one sorry excuse for a witch. I hated to admit that I hadn’t gotten any better, but the truth was that I hadn’t. And it was my own fault. I’d been skating along on my other abilities and hadn’t been doing my homework.

Besides, after taking the GED I had flat-out declined to do any more studying for a while. I wanted a break.

In other words, I had no excuse. “Do it or don’t
. Hazlo o no
,” my grandmother often said. She was like a Latina Yoda with a cauldron.

But now, I felt a sense of urgency egging me on. Selena was just a girl, and though chances were good she was with Lupita, or had sought refuge with someone she trusted . . . what if she hadn’t? What if she was all alone, frightened, and convinced no one cared? Besides, Ursula mentioned she had been drawing pictures of lilies. So maybe we had some sort of connection.

I had to try.
Hazlo o no.

So I dusted off my crystal ball. It really was a work of art: The base was made of filigreed silver and gold and studded with semiprecious stones. The crystal itself was a polished glass sphere with a few random mineral deposits that looked like ethereal clouds trapped within.

I placed it on a clean white linen cloth atop the old steamer trunk that doubled as my coffee table and sat cross-legged on the floor. The key to scrying was to see
without seeing, to concentrate without concentrating, which was about as easy as it sounded. I closed my eyes, took several deep breaths, and tried to locate my third eye in the center of my forehead.

I had some serious doubts about my psychic anatomy in this regard, but Aidan had assured me that I did, indeed, possess one.

Slowly, I opened my eyes and gazed into the depths of the crystal.

I saw shadows and whispers, tantalizing tidbits snatched as though from a dream; unconnected threads I was unable to piece together into a meaningful whole. At long last, I thought I caught a glimpse of Selena’s thin face, surrounded by flashing lights.

And I tasted something. Was that . . . salt?

It wasn’t much, but it was a lot more than I was accustomed to seeing in my crystal ball. Under the circumstances, though, it was of no use that I could see. What I needed was an address, or a sign of some sort. A pin on a map would be nice.

I tried once more, but a little practice seemed to have made me even less able to see.

I leaned back, frustrated.

“Watcha doin’?” came Oscar’s distinctive growl.

“Trying to concentrate without concentrating.”

“
Ugh
, I hate that kind of thing. Like those pictures where you’re supposed to let your eyes go blank and then see a secret picture? I never see nothin’.”

“Me neither. I thought you’d gone to bed?”

“I was feeling a mite peckish.”

I smiled. When was my familiar
not
peckish?

“How about a grilled cheese sandwich?” At least cooking was something I was good at. A little domestic wizardry would go a long way right about now.

“With a slice of cake after?”

“You already had two slices at Bronwyn’s house.”

“But three is the best number. Every witch worth her salt knows that.”

*   *   *

The next morning I opened the store as usual, smudging widdershins, salting deosil, and then lighting a single white taper candle that I had “dressed” by massaging it with olive oil. As I walked through the steps of my daily ritual, I thought of Ursula Moreno’s mornings at
El Pajarito:
how she must have laid out sacrifices of fruit and bread, beans and tortillas at the foot of Santa Muerte, lighting the figure’s cigarette, placing a cup of hot, sweet Nescafé by her side.

I remembered Graciela doing something similar. Every morning, she would mix her instant coffee, put in three heaping teaspoons of sugar, then take the steaming cup out to her garden, where she would meander and talk to her plants. Gathering a stalk of verbena or sprigs of oregano and basil and
epazote
, she would return to the kitchen and crush the herbs with a stone mortar and pestle she claimed had originally belonged to an Aztec shaman before the Spanish conquest of Mexico. Graciela would take the fragrant herbs, mix them with beans, fill a few tortillas, and place them on her altar atop a bureau in a tiny closet. On the altar were pictures of ancestors and photos of those whom Graciela loved, yours truly included; fresh flowers that she replaced every few days; candles; and a stone figure with its hands in the shape of a cup, into which she placed her herbs before starting to pray. There was also a battered Hot Wheels car, an old keychain, a picture of a marmot, quotations and pictures ripped from newspapers and magazines.

I never knew whether she was praying for her loved ones, or for the people who came to her for help. Graciela didn’t charge for her services, not exactly, but she
did ask for a contribution in the form of a charitable donation. When people understood how powerful she was, they gave what they could: a chicken, fresh farm eggs, a knitted shawl.

When it came down to it, Graciela wasn’t all that different from Ursula Moreno. Maybe that was why I felt compelled to help Ursula. Either she was telling the truth about Nicky Utley, her shop, and Selena, or she was losing her mind, as Aidan had implied. Or she was ripping everyone off—perhaps contributing to the deaths of her clients—and needed to be stopped.

So what should my next step be?

Who was this Lupita, and
where
was she? Could she be the one wreaking havoc in the shop? According to Ursula, Lupita didn’t have that kind of power, something Aidan had tacitly confirmed. Had she been powerful, he would have made it a point to meet her. But if Lupita had Selena with her, could she be using the girl as a weapon? And if so, why?

After finishing with my morning cleansing ritual, I opened the shop door and said good morning to Conrad.

“Dudette, your paper.” He handed me the
San Francisco Chronicle
.

“Thanks. How about a bagel today?”

“Duuude.”

That meant yes. The morning was foggy, so I pulled on my wool car coat, hung my Brazilian shopping basket over my arm, left the shop under Conrad’s watchful eye, and made my way down the street to Coffee to the People, a café that was a true throwback to the Summer of Love. Unlike many of the stores of the Haight-Ashbury, Coffee to the People wouldn’t have to change a thing in order to fit in with the upcoming festival. I suppose they could lose the Wi-Fi connection and a few posters for contemporary political causes, but otherwise the café
was the same as it had been when it opened, back in the hippie heyday.

After Conrad and I made short work of breakfast, I went inside to assist a lone customer looking for an outfit for the Summer of Love Festival. Mornings were slow at Aunt Cora’s Closet, so she and I had a blast digging through the merchandise to find the perfect peasant skirt, a Grateful Dead T-shirt, and a Mexican serape. We topped it off with soft fringed leather boots, and a wide leather belt with scrollwork.

“I look
exactly
like my mother in 1967,” the woman said, looking in the mirror. “I’m . . . adorable.”

I laughed. “That you are.”

Maya walked in as the woman was leaving, a recycled Aunt Cora’s Closet bag clutched in each hand.

“First sale of the day already?” Maya said.

I nodded. “Yep, the entire transaction took less than twenty minutes. She knew what she was after.”

“Funny how some people seem to camp out all day, while others are in and out,” she said, setting down her chai soy latte as she spread the newspaper open on the counter.

I straightened up the dressing room, hanging up the discarded blouses and skirts. It never ceased to amaze me how the process of trying on clothes resulted in something resembling the aftermath of a hurricane.

“Anything interesting in the paper today?” I asked.

“Depends on what you mean by interesting,” Maya said. “A house in Pacific Heights sold for nearly a million dollars
over
the asking price, which, I don’t mind telling you, doesn’t bode well for my future ability to afford living in my native city.”

“Maybe real estate prices will become more reasonable in the future.”

“And maybe pigs will fly in the future.”

Oscar lifted his head from his purple pillow and snorted.

“Sorry, Oscar,” Maya said. “Didn’t mean to cast aspersions on your porcine name. Oh,
here’s
a fun story: The Bridge Troll is back.”

“There’s a
Bridge Troll
?”

I flashed on Nicky Utley, standing in the middle of the Golden Gate Bridge, buffeted by winds, looking down at the churning water. I had tasted salt when I looked in my crystal ball—could it have been the salt off the sea? Was it trying to tell me something? Could there be a supernatural explanation for her death, something that had nothing to do with dangerous herbs or possessed items from
El Pajarito?

A
troll
, of all things, scaring people into the frigid waters below?

Because I had abandoned my witchy training before it was completed, there was a lot I still didn’t know. I was certain many things cowans thought were myths or fairy tales were real—like the Good People of the woods, for example. And shape-shifting critters like Oscar. But I wasn’t sure about unicorns, satyrs, or . . . trolls.

Maya laughed and showed me a photo of a small bronze sculpture.

“This is the little guy. After a section of the Bay Bridge
collapsed during the last big earthquake,” she explained, “an artist fashioned a troll out of bronze and attached it to the underside of the bridge to guard the repairs. When the old span was shut down, the troll went missing. Apparently someone has made a new one. He’s on the underside of the new bridge, out of the sight of drivers so no one runs off the bridge trying to spot him. But he’s cute, isn’t he?”

I nodded.
Cute
.

It seemed so very Bay Area that some artist, somewhere, had gone to the trouble of making a bridge troll . . . and that the transportation agency had given the go-ahead to install it. It just went to show that even people who didn’t “believe in magic” made symbolic gestures of safekeeping: crossing themselves, knocking on wood, or sculpting bridge trolls.

“And in
other
bridge news,” Maya continued, sipping her chai soy latte. “There’s been another suicide off the Golden Gate Bridge.”

“
Another
one?”

“According to this, there are a couple of dozen a year, so I guess it’s not that surprising. So sad. Hmm . . . this is interesting.”

“What’s that?”

“Apparently the mayor’s started a campaign to crack down on fortune-tellers.”

“I heard something about that.”

“It says here: ‘We provide guidance and counsel, and yes, a little magic. Who doesn’t need a little magic in their life? And who is to say that I haven’t made that magic happen?’”

“Who said that?”

“The spokesperson for the San Francisco Fortune-Tellers Association. Did you know there was a San Francisco Fortune-Tellers Association?”

“News to me,” I said, rearranging the belts that hung from small brass hooks. “I can’t say I’ve ever thought about a fortune-teller union. But according to Carlos, they have to be licensed by the city. Who’s the spokesperson?”

“Let’s see . . . Patience Blix. Great handle.”

“
Patience Blix
?
Is there a photo?”

Maya folded the paper and held it up.

She didn’t look like Sailor’s aunt Renna.

Patience Blix was a bombshell. A cascade of raven hair curled around her heart-shaped face. A huge smile showed perfect, white teeth, framed by dark lipstick. Her piercing eyes were lined with kohl. A plunging neckline showed an abundance of cleavage.

She was spectacular.

“Now that’s what I call drop-dead gorgeous,” Maya said. “Wow. You ever hear of her?”

My lips felt stiff. When I spoke, I mumbled
,
“She’s been training Sailor.”

“Wow,” Maya repeated, her eyebrows shooting up.

Good thing Patience is Sailor’s cousin,
I thought, then chided myself for such an unworthy sentiment. But the idea of Sailor spending a lot of one-on-one time with a woman who looked like Patience Blix gave me a sickly sensation in the pit of my stomach.

I glanced down at my own modest chest. My size made it easier to fit into vintage fashions, but at the moment I felt inadequate, downright boyish compared to the luscious woman in the photo.

“Hey, check this out,” said Maya. “The article refers to Patience Blix’s ‘pulchritude.’ When’s the last time you read that word in the newspaper?”

“I’m not sure I even know what it means.”

“It means ‘beauty.’ Doesn’t sound like it though, does it? Sounds like something nasty.”

Like the thoughts running through my head at the moment
.

“Wait. . . . Could I see that article?”

I checked out the byline: Nigel Thorne. Nigel had been at the
Chronicle
forever and enjoyed showing off his vocabulary. I was familiar with his work because he was the paper’s unofficial “woo-woo” reporter, the one who caught all the paranormal stories. He, and to some extent, Max Carmichael.

It occurred to me that I should stop by the
San Francisco Chronicle
and have a little chat with Nigel about the mayor’s fortune-telling clean-up campaign. And if Max happened to be in the newsroom I could ask why Lupita had brought him to
El Pajarito
. Let’s see what Sailor had to say about
that
.

Ugh.
Grow up, Lily
. I should talk to Max, yes, but it was ridiculous to be scheming to make Sailor jealous. It was childish and unworthy of a grown woman like me to react this way just because Sailor had a gorgeous cousin. And hadn’t mentioned how attractive she was. And wouldn’t tell me what they were doing during all those hours they spent together, late at night . . .

A trio of customers came into the shop, and I tried to shake it off.

“Maya, would it be possible for me to read the transcript of the interview you did with Betty North?”

“Sure. I’ll call it up.”

“You . . . you don’t mean call it up on the phone, do you?” I’m an idiot with computers. Now that I was the proud possessor of my GED, I was thinking that I should get over my fear of technology and catch up with the modern world. But for the moment it was easier to rely on Maya, who hardly ever made fun of me even though she had cause.

Maya smiled. “No, I’m going to download the file
from the cloud. Tell you what, I’ll send it to the printer, where said device will miraculously spit out paper marked with ink so you can read it the old-fashioned way.”

“I appreciate that. And I particularly appreciate your understanding attitude about the whole thing.”

She squeezed my arm and headed for the laptop.

*   *   *

The rest of the day I was haunted by the fleeting image of Selena I had glimpsed in my crystal ball.

What, if anything, did it mean? I wished I could talk to Gary, Nicky Utley’s widower and father of Emma, Selena’s schoolmate. I imagined Carlos was right; the girls were probably not friends. Young witches were often outcasts. Still, I wondered whether Emma could give me a clue as to Selena’s whereabouts.

Unfortunately, not only was Gary vehemently antiwitch, but despite what Carlos had said, I kept wondering if he was somehow involved in his wife’s death. Haranguing him didn’t seem like my best option, especially alone.

So I decided to follow up with the next best thing: Nicky’s brother, Knox. He had been friendly enough when we met at
El Pajarito
, and had even offered me his card. I dug it out of my bag and gave him a call.

Knox told me he’d be home all day with the kids, and I was welcome to stop by. He lived across the bay, in El Cerrito, a residential community north of Berkeley on the BART line to San Francisco. The homes here were small, comfortable but not fancy, built on small lots just after the Second World War.

Knox’s house was a compact one-story, with an overgrown yard geared more towards children than landscaping. On the patchy front lawn were several balls, a plastic bat, and two bikes lying on their sides.

Three laughing children were playing a game of
hide-and-go-seek that extended from the front yard to the unfenced back. When they saw me coming up the walk they ran into the back, yelling for their dad.

Knox met me at the door wearing the same tortoiseshell glasses and plaid Bermuda shorts as the other day, but now with a salmon pink polo shirt.

“Hi! Come in, come in. Sorry about the mess. I meant to clean up but somehow I never manage to get anything done, what with the kids running in and out all day.”

“It’s fine, really. It feels like home.”

Knox chuckled as he led the way to the kitchen. “Yep, I guess it is homey. At least there’s that.”

The house was old-fashioned suburban, simple but comfortable, the fridge covered in children’s drawings. A framed poster showed Norman Rockwell’s iconic painting of a family sitting down to Thanksgiving dinner.

We settled into a breakfast nook with a view of the backyard, where the kids were now playing on a swing set and monkey bars. Knox poured two glasses of iced tea garnished with lemon.

“I’d like to say the state of the house is unusual, except that, I gotta confess, it’s always like this. Four kids.
Four
. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

I smiled. “I always wanted to be part of a big family.”

“Me, too.” He shrugged and stared at his children in the yard. “I mean, I had my sister—Nicky and I were fraternal twins—but I always wanted a brother as well.”

“I’m so very sorry for your loss.”

He nodded. “Thanks. It’s been tough. Nicky . . .” He trailed off with a shake of his head. “One part of me can’t believe it, but then . . . is it possible to be shocked by something, even when you’re not actually surprised?”

“I think so, yes. What was she like?”

“Nicky was . . . well, I guess the best way to say it is we were very different. I always wanted a normal life, a
traditional kind of existence. Which I got, with a twist, of course: My wife works outside the home, while I’m the househusband.”

“As it says with pride on your card,” I said with a smile. “I noticed the Norman Rockwell print in the hall, too.”

“It’s always been a favorite. When I was a kid . . . well, Nicky and I didn’t have much of a normal childhood.”

“Was it . . . difficult?”

“It was for me. I mean, we weren’t beaten or anything, nothing like that. Our dad was a good guy, strict but loving. But we were military brats, moving around every couple of months, or every year at most.”

“That sounds challenging.”

“You learned how to be the new kid in class—that’s for sure. I attended sixteen different schools before graduating high school. And friends were made and then left, no lasting relationships. My dad worked all the time. That sort of upbringing can leave a person sort of . . . disconnected. So Nicky and I were close—we were each other’s only constant in those years.”

Silence reigned for a long moment. I imagined we were both thinking of Nicky—her loss must be felt even more acutely for her twin, and only childhood friend.

“All those years, all I ever wanted was a nice, normal home, to go to one school and make friends like everybody else, to be part of a community.” Knox gestured to his messy, lived-in kitchen. “Someplace like this, nothing fancy. Now, my kids are always asking me about what it was like to serve and spend time in exotic-sounding places like Okinawa, so probably they’ll want to run off and join the military. Maybe it skips a generation.”

“Do you know,” I said, “I’ve never seen a picture of your sister?”

He got up and grabbed a couple of framed prints from a small, paper-strewn desk in the corner. “Here’s a
photo of the two of us; I’d say we were about ten when this photo was taken. We were stationed in Germany. And here’s a wedding photo, with Gary.”

Seeing Nicky’s smiling, open countenance—first as a girl in braids, then as a bride in a lacy white gown—made her death less abstract, and thus more heartbreaking.

“She’s lovely.”

Knox nodded, looked at the photos for a long moment, and then set them aside. “I was the firstborn, apparently—by only a few minutes, of course, but I took my role as older brother seriously. I tried to take care of her . . .” He cleared his throat and shook his head, as though to rid it of the memory.

“Do you know why your sister was going to Ursula at
El Pajarito
?”

“She wanted a child. She’d tried the usual ways, and nothing worked. So I guess a witch doctor was the final call.” His eyes flew to mine. “Oh, I’m sorry. I forgot. You’re a . . . ?”

“Just a special consultant to the SFPD,” I said with a smile and a shrug. This was not the time and place to launch into a defense of witchcraft. “But wait—I thought Nicky and Gary had a daughter.”

“Emma’s actually Gary’s biological daughter; his first wife passed away. Nicky doted on Emma, but wanted to experience pregnancy and biological motherhood and all it entailed. The physicality of giving birth was very important to her. But she was no kid, and with every year that passed, the likelihood went down. I tried to reason with her—what’s the difference between adopting and having a bio-child? It’s the
raising
of a child that makes a person a parent, not donating one’s genes.”

As someone who had been rejected by her bio-parents, I had to agree.

“But,” Knox continued, “Nicky told me that was easy
for me to say, since I’m sitting here with four biological kids.”

Two of those kids chose that moment to open the sliding glass door and run into the kitchen. They were red-faced and sweaty from their antics on the jungle gym.

“
Dad!
Can we have lemonade?” asked a boy about six.

“You’re interrupting, honey,” said Knox, his tone kind but firm. “What do you say when adults are talking?”

“’Scuse me?”

Knox smiled. “Yes, you may have some lemonade. Need some help?”

“I can do it,” the boy insisted.

“Use a plastic cup, and help your sister.”

“’Kay. Come on,” he said to his younger sister. “I’ll help you.”

The boy crossed over to the refrigerator, but the little girl lingered, staring at me. I smiled and winked at her. She flashed me a shy grin before hustling after her brother.

“Sweethearts,” I whispered to Knox.

Knox smiled as he watched them, his eyes shining with pride and love.