Spellcasting in Silk: A Witchcraft Mystery (13 page)

“This is all very interesting,” I said. “But I’d like to get back to the important matter: locating the girl.”

“All right,” said Patience. “What happened when you tried to read your crystal ball?”

“Not much. It’s not one of my strengths.”

“No? That’s rare for one of your talents, isn’t it?”

I shrugged.

“Let me read for you, and then we can talk.”

With the exception of Graciela and Sailor’s aunt Renna, I’d never allowed another practitioner to read for me and I certainly didn’t want to start now. But there was something about the challenge in those green eyes. I didn’t want to back down in front of this woman.

“Come now, you’re not afraid, are you? According to you, a girl’s safety is at stake,” Patience said.

Who’s playing double-dog dare you now?

I blew out a long breath. I needed to find Selena. But was this the only way? Not only was I afraid of allowing Patience, a virtual stranger, to access any part of my psyche, but it could possibly prove dangerous. When Aidan and I had connected, the resulting power surge caused some serious collateral damage. I wasn’t at all sure I could control what might happen if Patience and I linked. And what if our energies clashed?

She reached across the table, rested her hand on the cloth for a moment, then slowly turned it palm up. Her fingernails were freshly manicured, her fingers festooned with gold rings. I placed my right hand on the table, inching it toward hers.

I looked into her dazzling, teasing eyes. Just as her fingers were about to wrap around mine I reared back, leaping up so quickly I knocked my chair over. It landed with a thud on the threadbare Oriental carpet.

The fortune-teller’s laugh rang in my ears as I ran out the door and down the front steps. I didn’t slow until I hit the sidewalk.

*   *   *

Idiot.

What was I truly afraid of? That our energies would
merge and create something out of control? Possibly. But property damage can be repaired. Was it that Patience would be able to read my mind?

Or did my fear stem from worry that Patience would tell me something about Sailor, or my relationship to him, that I didn’t want to hear?

I had learned the hard way to be guarded in my life, to make sure when I was going into a potentially hazardous situation that I was armed to the teeth. So that’s what I would do: I would brew, cast myself a centering, protective spell, and then come back to deal with Patience.

It would help to know more about her, though. Sailor was no help; Aidan not much more. Where else could I turn?

The newspaper. Nigel Thorne had quoted Patience in his article in the
San Francisco Chronicle
about fortune-telling scams. The article hadn’t said anything about Patience being implicated, but that by itself meant nothing. Nigel was far too crafty a journalist to make unsubstantiated claims against anyone.

In person, however, Nigel might be more forthcoming about what he had uncovered about the delectable Patience Blix. Maybe now would be a good time to stop by the offices of the
San Francisco Chronicle
.

Out of the corner of my eye I caught my reflection in the shiny plate-glass window of a real estate office.

Today I was wearing a sundress featuring bright red cherries against a turquoise background. It was one of Lucille’s reproductions, not true vintage but patterned on a dress from the early sixties. I wore a little red cardigan over the sleeveless bodice. I had thought the outfit was darling when I tried it on in the store, but in Aunt Cora’s Closet I had been surrounded by friends and positive vibrations. Now . . . with my feet clad in scarlet
Keds, and my hair swept up in a ponytail tied with a gauzy turquoise scarf . . . Patience was right. I looked like a girl on her way to an after-school dance. Not like a grown woman.

Not like
her
. Nothing like Patience Blix, sexy, busty, confident, Rom fortune-teller.

Upon returning to my car, I resisted the urge to bang my head against the roof of my car. Goodness knows I’m no stranger to self-doubt, having experienced it often enough in my life. But this felt different. This stemmed from something I couldn’t control, couldn’t cast against. Being in love meant making myself vulnerable with no guarantee my feelings would be returned, and oh, was
that
a challenge.

What I
wanted
to do was to cast a love spell over Sailor, to ensure his everlasting fidelity and adoration.

But I couldn’t. I
wouldn’t
.

Graciela had drilled that lesson into me:
You must never use your power for the wrong reasons, m’ijita. That is not what it is for. And selfish reasons are almost always the wrong reasons.

When I was in the fourth grade that lesson was driven home. I had developed my first crush on a boy, but he didn’t return the sentiments, and my days were spent in a tizzy, my nights in painful, agonizing yearning. With the single-mindedness of youth I searched my grandmother’s Book of Shadows for a love spell, and set about gathering the ingredients. Graciela found me in a neighbor’s henhouse, searching for a spotted egg with a greenish cast. She grabbed me by the arm with impressive force for a woman of her diminutive stature and dragged me, protesting vehemently, back home.

“
No puedes forzar el amor, Lilita
—you can’t force love. It will come or not come, it has its own energy in its world. It is a living, breathing entity. If you try to force it,
you will corrupt it, and then you will destroy it. Understand?
M’entiendes
?”

And then she made me clean the kitchen
and
the bathroom with a pail of hot, sudsy water and an old toothbrush.

I wished I had the benefit of Graciela’s wisdom as I sat behind the wheel of my car. I took a deep breath and tried to locate her. I couldn’t do this for anyone else, but recently my grandmother seemed to have carved out a little place for herself inside the core of my being. It felt a little like when I was casting, reaching out through the years to the ancestors, and to the Ashen Witch, my guiding spirit. But this was quieter, more direct, and I immediately felt warm and connected. And calmer.

No, I wouldn’t cast a love spell over Sailor. That was wrong, unethical, a violation of my powers.

What I
would
do, I thought as I turned the key in the ignition and pulled out onto Fillmore, was to stop by the offices of the
San Francisco Chronicle
to see what Nigel Thorne had to say about Patience Blix, the mayor’s campaign against larcenous purveyors of magic, Nicky Utley’s suicide, and
El Pajarito
.

I was pleased to see the newspaper office was still abuzz. Journalists were becoming an endangered species as readers turned to the Internet for their news, and advertising revenues fell. The trend worried me, as I considered journalists among the last stalwarts against official corruption and vice. But then, perhaps they were simply finding their way onto the Internet, a medium to which I was a stranger.

I really
did
need to get over myself and join the twenty-first century. Put that on the list. Right after resolving this particular case of suspicious death and magical mayhem.

When I stepped off the elevator, I glanced around the big room full of cubicles. I didn’t even know if Max Carmichael was still working regularly at the paper, much less what I would say to him if I saw him. I wanted to ask him about interviewing Lupita and the gang at
El Pajarito
, but it was awkward speaking with an ex-boyfriend. I hadn’t had a lot of experience with this sort of thing.

I let out a sigh of relief when I spotted Nigel Thorne,
who had helped me out with my first paranormal case in San Francisco.

“Well, look who’s here,” Nigel said, his hawklike eyebrows shooting up. He was slouchy and potbellied, and had what looked like a coffee stain on his yellow oxford shirt. Long yellow hairs from his beloved golden retriever adorned his dark slacks. “Long time no see, Lily. How you doing?”

“I’m well, thank you. How about yourself?”

“Doin’ okay. Wife’s redoing the bathroom. You want to talk about dust?”

I smiled. “Maybe later. Right now I was hoping to talk about fortune-tellers.”

“You saw today’s article? Nice one, huh?”

“Well written, as always. And well researched. How did you get the fortune-tellers to talk to you?”

He shrugged. “I’ve got a way with people.”

“Max Carmichael was the one who started the series, wasn’t he? I seem to remember he wrote a piece on the
botanicas
in the Mission.”

Nigel nodded.

“Do you have any idea why Max was poking around
El Pajarito
, in particular?”

“I asked him to do it as a favor. I’d set it up as a kickoff to the series, but a crisis at City Hall took precedence and I wasn’t able to go. Max filled in for me, but he’s got more important things to do these days.”

“How is he?”

“Well.”

I glanced around the room again. “Is he . . . here today?”

“Nope, he’s freelance so you never know when he’ll be stopping by. You should give him a call.”

“I might just do that. I don’t suppose you’d have a copy of that article he wrote about the
botanicas
, do you?”

“Sure, it’s in the archives. I’ll print it out for you,” he said with a grunt as he leaned forward over his keyboard, typed something, and his desktop printer started up. He leaned back in his chair, which squeaked in protest, and fixed me with a look. “But something tells me you didn’t come all the way over here just to ask for a reprint of an article. What’s up?”

“What can you tell me about Patience Blix?”

“She’s a knockout.”

“So I’ve noticed. I was hoping to have a slightly more elevated discussion, perhaps about what she’s like as a person.”

He grinned. “Well, there’s no evidence she’s been bilking anyone. From what I can tell, she’s taking over for Renna as the informal head of the local fortune-tellers. She appears to be a smart businesswoman, doesn’t want any part of
bujo
cons.”

“What’s a
bujo
con?”

“It originally referred to a way to scam people out of money.
Bujo
means ‘bag,’ and refers to the bag of money people are told to bring to the con artist so as to remove a curse. The con artist substitutes the bag with the real money for an identical one containing worthless paper. The victim is told not to open the bag until a specified period of time, giving the con artist time to get away. Nowadays
bujo
refers to any kind of scam to wring money out of the wallets of idiots. I mean, to steal from gullible, vulnerable citizens.”

“What prompted the mayor to launch his recent crusade?”

“As long as the fortune-tellers didn’t get greedy, and the victims were mostly tourists, City Hall didn’t care. But recently a few high-profile victims started raising holy hell when they realized they’d been snookered.
Rule number one in running a con: Don’t target someone who can fight back.”

“They were victimized by
bujo
scams?”

“Those, as well as a number of others, such as conning the elderly into leaving all their worldly goods to Madame Sees-the-Future. Hey, if the fortune-tellers were legit, why didn’t they predict that their victims were about to go toes-up?”

“Maybe they did. Maybe that’s how they knew whom to target.”

Nigel’s eyebrows shot up. “Hadn’t thought of that.”

“What about the owners of
botanicas,
like those in the Mission? Why is the mayor targeting them?”

“Same reason. Disgruntled customers with connections in high places.”

“Any specific cases?”

He shrugged and glanced at a glassed-in private office. “We can’t talk about a lot of the cases at this point. But there are one or two . . . Why are you asking?”

“Have you heard of Nicky Utley?”

“Killed herself, right? And now the DA’s charged that woman from
El Pajarito
. That’s why you’re interested in Max’s article?”

I nodded. “What can you tell me about that case?”

“Not much. Don’t see how the DA will be able to make the charges stick. Can you imagine trying to explain that to a jury? Dollars to donuts a judge’ll toss the case soon enough. Shame about the dead woman, though. Her bad luck that the Golden Gate Guardian didn’t spot her in time.”

“Is that like the Bridge Troll?”

Nigel laughed. “No, the Golden Gate Guardian’s an actual person. You never heard of him?”

I shook my head. “Who is he?”

“Guy who monitors the bridge. They say he’s talked dozens of people out of jumping. True hero, in my book.”

I agreed, but since, as Nigel pointed out, he had not been on guard when Nicky jumped, I didn’t suppose it was particularly relevant. I asked the next question on my mental list.

“What about the woman at
El Pajarito
named Lupita? Her photo was included with Max’s article. Someone told me she volunteered to bring a reporter to the shop.”

“You gonna make me do some work? Hold on.” Nigel rummaged through his messy desk, pulled out an old notebook, and started flipping through it. “Let me see here. . . . Yeah, here it is. You know, that was odd. One Lupita Rodriguez came in, proposed the story. That doesn’t happen often with people from that community. That’s why I jumped at the chance, and pitched the idea to my editor for a series of articles about supernatural issues.”

“Do you have an extra copy of the article?”

He passed one over. I skimmed it: Max had interviewed several of the same shop owners Aidan and I had visited, including Ursula Moreno. The article described their shops, the merchandise, and the services offered in a flowing prose that sometimes bordered on the poetic. Max also described the need fulfilled by such shops: that people who were too poor or alienated by “modern” medical services looked to these
curanderas
for culturally relevant solace and hope. His sympathy was obvious, but so was his academic skepticism.

“Did Lupita ask to get paid, do you know?” I asked.

“She did, as a matter of fact,” said Nigel. “But we don’t pay for stories.”

“So what was in it for her?”

“Not sure, to tell you the truth. She seemed pretty
happy with the article though, called to thank me. I remember she said her fiancé got a real kick out of it.”

“Do you have a phone number for her, or an address? Any contact information?”

He shook his head. “She always came to me, and when I insisted I needed a number she gave me the one for the store,
El Pajarito
. But when I tried calling to fact-check something, the woman who answered said Lupita was almost never there, and was surprised she had given me that number.”

“So, what’s the next article in the series going to focus on?”

“Haunted houses.”

“Seriously?”

“Believe it or not. I got the idea from Max’s article, the bit about
limpias,
or spiritual housecleaning. I’ll be interviewing some folks who claim to be able to see ghosts, but mostly the article will focus on how rumors of hauntings affect real estate values. Because, you know, I’m a
serious
journalist
. Did you know in California real estate deals a seller has to disclose any death that occurred at a home, because so many people won’t buy a house where a death occurred?”

“Really? I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

“Good. That’s what makes it news.”

“Well, I should let you get back to work. So,” I said, hoping to sound casual. “You don’t expect to see Max anytime soon?”

“Matter of fact”—he thumbed through a dog-eared agenda—“looks like he’s supposed to come in for a four-thirty meeting. Want to stick around?”

“Oh, no. Thank you, though.”

“Want me to tell him you were looking for him?”

“No. No, I . . . actually, yes. Thank you. Here’s my card.”

“I imagine he remembers the number.”

“Maybe. Thanks, Nigel.”

“Good to see you, Lily. You take care, now.”

“You too. And good luck with the remodel.”

He rolled his eyes and snorted. “‘His and hers’ sinks. You believe that?”

*   *   *

Early that evening, in my apartment, I placed my Book of Shadows on the counter and flipped through it until I found the section on fertility spells.

I had never worked much with these kinds of spells because I didn’t feel comfortable with such weighty magic. My grandmother did, though; she was also an experienced
partera
—midwife—as were many traditional
curanderas
.

Fertility spells were among the most difficult magic because they were meant to bring forth life. What could be more profound, more complicated, and more difficult than that?

How easily life can be taken away compared to how difficult it was to bestow,
I thought. And that, I realized, was another reason to be suspicious of Ursula: A practitioner should not be so casual with fertility spells. On the other hand, I supposed she was right; perhaps conception sometimes involved emotions and belief as well as straightforward biology.

“Watcha doin’?” asked Oscar.

I was almost certain his question was the preamble to asking when he could expect his dinner. But I chose to take it at face value.

“Studying up on fertility spells.”

Oscar’s huge green eyes got even larger and more luminous, and he spoke in an awed, fierce whisper. “Mistress is going to have a baby? I
thought
I noticed you putting on weight!”

I stood up straighter and glanced down at my stomach. Was it pooching out? Was I looking
pregnant
now?

“Mistress
is
! Mistress is going to have a baby! Is it Sailor’s?”

“Who else’s would it be?” I said, momentarily distracted from the ridiculousness of our conversation by the notion that I could be pregnant with another man’s baby.

Oscar started hopping around, but I couldn’t tell whether it was out of agitation, or excitement, or both. He scampered up to his cubby over the refrigerator and disappeared within.

Belatedly, I realized I had misled him.

“
No
, Oscar. I’m not going to have a baby, not with Sailor or with anyone else. Apparently I need to cut back on the red velvet cake, though. Come down from there—are you hiding?”

He crawled out of his cubby and jumped down to the kitchen floor.

“This isn’t about
me
,” I continued. “I’m trying to figure out what happened to a woman who went to Ursula Moreno for help with fertility.”

“Oh.” Oscar looked crestfallen. Then I realized he was hiding something behind his back.

“What are you hiding?”

“Nothin’.”

“So what’s in your hand?”

“In what hand?”

“The one behind your back.”

“Nothin’.” He shrugged. “I’ll put it back.”

I craned my neck to see. It looked like a bit of cloth of some sort, covered in a hodgepodge of lace and ribbons and dried flowers.

“Oscar, what is that?”

He shrugged again and kicked his taloned feet. “It’s a Ruerymplegandling cloth.”

“A what, now?”

“A Ruerymplegandling cloth.”

“A rue . . . ?”

With exaggerated patience, Oscar enunciated slowly: “Rue. Rymple. Gandling. Cloth.”

At my blank expression, he gasped. “You tellin’ me you’ve never heard of a Ruerymplegandling cloth?”

“I can’t say as I have. What is it? May I see it?”

He hesitated.

“Please?”

Oscar laid the item on the kitchen counter. It was a scrap of cloth, a bit of broadloomed raw silk into which had been woven colored ribbons and feathers, lace, and long-dead flowers. There were even two powdery old butterfly wings attached to one side.

He gazed at it and caressed it gently with one oversized, scaly hand.

“Oscar, does this belong to you?”

He nodded.

“Did you have it before you met me?”

He nodded again. “For the longest time. You wear it when you’re introduced to the faerie court. So’s the Good People of the woods don’t try to eat you, or whatever.”

“Well, that seems useful.”

“My mother gave it to me. She brought me to the ceremony right before she had to change back.”

Oscar’s mother suffered under a curse that turned her into stone. Anytime we came across gargoyles, Oscar searched for her, looking for her face among the carved countenances.

I stared first at the Ruerymplegandling cloth, then back at my familiar. “And you were going to give it to me?”

“To your baby. Not to
you
,” he said, laughing so hard he began to snort. “I know you want to be introduced to
the woodsfolk, but a Ruerymplegandling cloth is for helpless little babies, not grown-up
witches
!”