Hexes and Hemlines (7 page)

The cat skulked over to Oscar and stealthily curled up beside his sleeping form.

Rules, schmulz. It seemed to me that when one’s pal was in trouble, it was time to get pushy.

 

Bronwyn lived just a few blocks away, in an old brightly painted wooden Victorian typical of the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood. I let myself in the main door to the broad foyer, which today was aromatic of fresh cinnamon rolls. The two men who lived downstairs were always baking something decadent and delicious, filling the air with mouthwatering scents, yet they both remained excruciatingly slim. One of life’s many mysteries.

Worn wooden treads squeaked in protest as I climbed the steep stairs, but I loved this building. It gave off a vibrant, distinct hum. Bronwyn told me it had once been inhabited by Janice Joplin and other musicians during the sixties heyday of the hippie movement, and it was easy to believe. It carried the resonance of creativity and music in its tall wainscoting and multipaned windows of wavy glass. Harmony emanated from its bones.

Bronwyn had painted a border of cheerful daisies right above the wainscoting, leading all the way up to her bright purple door at the top of the stairs. A hemp doormat read:
Welcome, all ye who enter here.
And a hand-painted, flower-bedecked sign on the door held a line from the amiable creed of her Wiccan faith:
An it harm none, do what ye will.

Bronwyn was a wide-open, smiling, rosewater- and patchouli-scented soul, the type who would as soon hug you as look at you. Normally. But not today.

In response to my loud knock, she opened the door just a crack. It didn’t take supernatural sensitivity to know she wasn’t particularly happy to see me.

“Bronwyn? What’s wrong?” I stuck my foot in the door, just in case.

“I . . . this isn’t the best time, Lily.” She looked behind her, whispered something, then turned back to me. “I don’t suppose you’ll go away, let me call you later?”

I shook my head.

“Lily . . .”

“Bronwyn, you know how stubborn I can be.”

“Really, I’ll call you—”

I started humming and looking at my fingernails. I did not remove my foot from the door.

Bronwyn sighed, stepped back, and swung the door wide.

She wore a typical Bronwyn-style dress: purple gauze over a tie-dyed slip. Her brown hair was as fuzzy as ever, but lacked the floral decorations with which she usually adorned herself. Her feet were bare, her shoulders uncharacteristically slumped.

Bronwyn’s apartment, like mine, was filled with herbal sachets, crystals, and charm bags hanging above windows and doors. Mirrors were set up opposite the front door and several windows to deflect bad energy. But unlike me, Bronwyn felt no reason to hide her wannabe witchy ways: On the walls hung numerous rainbow-hued goddess paintings, and every horizontal space was graced with stones, herbs, candles, books on Wicca, a crystal ball, a pentacle.

And today, two young children were sitting at a low coffee table in the living room amid scattered markers and recycled paper scraps.

“Lily!” the girl said as she jumped up and ran to give me a hug.

Eight-year-old Imogen reminded me of her grandmother Bronwyn. She had soft brown eyes and unruly hair, an open heart, and an innate sense of joy. I hugged her back, savoring her pure, straightforward vibrations.

Her fair-haired brother James, a studious six-year-old, looked up, mumbled a shy “Hi, Lily,” and went back to his coloring book.

A three-legged calico cat ran up to greet me right after Imogen, rubbing against my legs. I sneezed.

“I don’t suppose you’d like another cat? I have a very sweet one looking for a home. It even has all its limbs,” I teased. Bronwyn took in the rejects from the pound—the ones slated for death.

“Oh, I can’t, Lily. My landlord would kill me. He barely agreed to the last two, and that was only after I cast a spell of cooperation on him. I know I shouldn’t have, but it was for the sake of the animals.”

“I want a cat!” said Imogen.
“Mom!
Could we take Lily’s cat?”

“No. Cats are dirty,”
came the voice of Bronwyn’s grown daughter, Rebecca, from the direction of the kitchen.

Imogen smiled up at Bronwyn and rolled her eyes at her grandma, while Bronwyn beamed at her and winked.

I took a minute to admire the children’s artwork; Imogen’s drawing depicted a woman with a tall hat and a veil up in a castle tower, like a princess of yore. James was fond of cars and monsters, and thus was designing a series of monster-cars.

“Go on back to your coloring now,” I said. “Grownups need to talk.”

Intoning a charm under my breath, I kissed my thumb and touched each child’s forehead in turn, casting a cocooning spell over them. No need for them to hear what we were talking about. I remembered learning too many things I shouldn’t have by listening in when the adults thought I was otherwise occupied.

“Come on into the kitchen,” said Bronwyn. Her anklet of bells jangled as she led the way.

I had only ever seen Rebecca in her usual guise: sleekly put together; highlighted chestnut hair worn in a smooth, styled coif; makeup perfect; clothes spotless, neutral, and expensive. So I barely recognized the woman sitting at the brightly painted kitchen table: Her cheeks were tearstained, her big amber eyes rimmed in red.

Bronwyn had been only nineteen when she gave birth to the daughter she originally dubbed Rainbow, raising her in an urban commune right here in the Haight. Rainbow left for college a year early, changed her name to Rebecca, married an ambitious young scientist, and moved into a posh condo on upper Broadway, where she was now a stay-at-home mom with live-in help. As far as I could tell, she seemed to visit her mother, Bronwyn, only when she needed emergency child care.

“Hello, Rebecca,” I said.

“Hi,” she said with a loud sniff, and little warmth. She turned to Bronwyn. “For the love of
God
, mother, could you refrain from the witchcraft crap, just for the day? You know I don’t allow that sort of thing in front of the children.”

Bronwyn hummed under her breath, ignoring Rebecca’s remark. She busied herself at the stove, heating a kettle of water and preparing a pot with homemade herbal tea pouches.

Ironically, Rebecca needn’t have worried about any potential powers from her mother embarrassing her. Any change of heart the landlord experienced had been due to simple ethics rather than any enchantment Bronwyn had managed. My friend was many things, but her true gift—her magic, so to speak—was in her wide-open heart and the unconditional friendship she offered her friends. When it came right down to it, Bronwyn couldn’t enchant a squaddie onto a swayback.

But still, Bronwyn was a devoted Wiccan and she lived by the Wicca Rede: She harmed no one. She enjoyed practicing certain pagan rituals, observing the solstices and making simple offerings—usually wine and cake—to the ancient lord and lady, to the gods and goddesses of nature. There certainly was no harm to it, and it was a durn sight kinder than a whole lot of organized religions I could mention. Not for the first time, I wondered whether Rebecca would be as disdainful of her mother for being Episcopalian, or Jewish, or any other religion considered more acceptable by the greater society.

“Tell Lily what’s going on, Rebecca,” said Bronwyn as she poured water from the steaming copper kettle into a porcelain teapot decorated with a daisy chain. “She might be able to help.”

“Somehow I doubt that,” Rebecca said, her gaze running over my vintage outfit and her nostrils flaring slightly, apparently displeased. She had a discomfiting way of looking down her nose at those around her, reminding me of the children I grew up with. It amazed me that she and Bronwyn were of the same blood.

“I can’t guarantee I can help,” I said, taking a deep breath and concentrating on emanating understanding. “But I’ll do what I can.”

She blew on her tea, looked around the kitchen, and finally spoke.

“It’s my husband, Gregory . . .” Her voice trailed off, and she sipped her drink. “He was accused in . . . a murder.”

I tried to keep the expression on my face neutral. I knew from a few vague comments from Bronwyn that Rebecca’s marriage had been on the rocks lately, so I had expected Rebecca to mention a separation, perhaps a divorce. Nothing like this. I was doubly glad I had created a cocoon of silence for the children.

“Of whom?” I asked. “He’s been arrested?”

“Not exactly,” Bronwyn said, handing me a cup of fragrant tea in a chipped earthenware mug. I smelled rose hips and chamomile along with orange peel and . . . was it cardamom? Bronwyn was forever experimenting in search of the perfect cup of tea. “He was named as a ‘person of interest,’ that’s all. It could be nothing.”

“Or everything,” Rebecca said glumly. I put my hand over hers, casting a quick comforting spell. In reaction, she took a deep breath and steadied herself slightly. I sensed the dank smell of shame, overriding fear, and dread. I had the distinct sense that the public humiliation was weighing on her more than the fear that her husband might have perpetrated a crime.

“Do you have any reason to think he might have done it?” I asked.

Rebecca’s eyes flew to mine, sparking. “Of course not! What kind of man—why would you—he would never do such a thing!” she sputtered. I could practically see orange-red bristles of aural anger coming off of her.

“I’m sure you’re right,” I said. “I just . . . I’ve never met Gregory.”

“He’s a good man,” Rebecca said, eyes once again welling with tears. “He’s . . . we’ve been having trouble lately. He’s had some problems at work—some of his experiments were compromised. And he’s started drinking. A little. But then a couple of weeks ago he was stopped and charged with a DUI.”

“Was that the first time?”

She nodded. “But it’s been one thing after the other. And now . . . I can’t believe this! It’s like we’re cursed. I’m almost ready to believe mom’s right—maybe we’ve got bad juju or something.”

“Who was the murder victim? Someone Gregory knew?”

“His name is—was—Malachi Zazi. He and Gregory went to high school together, and Gregory attends dinner parties at his house every month.”

Coincidences in my life did not bode well. They usually added up to something fishy, something that a witch had to get involved in, whether she wanted to or not.

Did SFPD inspector Carlos Romero know about my connection, through Bronwyn, to Gregory? Was that why he asked me to look at the crime scene? I felt my own spikes of orangey-red anger and disappointment rolling off of me. Carlos was smart. It was hard to believe he would overlook something like that. So what was he doing, involving me? Did he think that since Bronwyn was a member of a coven, and I was a witch, and we could be linked to the man accused of killing Zazi . . . then what?

I let out a deep breath of consternation. I didn’t know what to make of it.

“What can you tell me about Malachi Zazi?” I asked.

Rebecca shrugged, blew on her tea, took a sip, put the mug back down. There was a faint damp ring on the tabletop where it had been before; I watched as Rebecca set the mug in exactly the same place, tweaking it until it was precisely where it had been. Her graceful hands were tipped by a perfect French manicure; a thick gold wedding band and a huge diamond and emerald ring glittered on her finger.

“Rebecca?” I urged.

“Do you know there used to be a thirteenth sign of the zodiac? Malachi put together these dinner parties and called his little association the Serpentarian Society, after that sign.”

“What was the purpose of the society?”

“The idea was to debunk superstitions, to prove that the world is ruled by rational science, rather than magical traditions and old wives’ tales.” She glanced over at her mother, and then at me. She shrugged. “No offense.”

“None taken.”

I wondered how much Bronwyn had told Rebecca about me. We had only met a few times, at the shop, and since she was so clearly not a believer—and so invested in her own lifestyle—I had immediately put her in the category of people around whom to maintain a nonmagical façade. But Bronwyn wasn’t known for her discretion. Her openness, so appealing under normal circumstances, could also be something of a drawback.

I made a mental note to talk to her about that. Yes, I was opening up more about my abilities, hiding less, but even in this day and age—even in a place as accepting as the Bay Area—one didn’t bandy about the notion of being a witch. At least I didn’t. Lessons learned early ran deep.

“So Gregory joined these dinners?”

“Every month, on the thirteenth, always at midnight. I found it to be rather ridiculous, but like Gregory said, the dinner invitations were basically a who’s who of San Francisco movers and shakers.”

“More like the children of the movers and shakers,” said Bronwyn.

“Some of them are doing things in their own right. Like Gregory,” Rebecca said. “It’s just . . . people don’t understand what it is to be raised in that kind of privilege. It can be its own burden.”

Bronwyn snorted and rolled her eyes in an exasperated gesture so un-Bronwyn-like that it took me aback.

Our eyes met, and she explained: “All I know is that any one of those kids could be out changing the world with their resources, and instead they party and play around with things they don’t understand.”

“Okay, let’s back up just a second,” I said. “Are we talking about children or adults here?”

“Adults who
act
like children,” said Bronwyn. “They’re in their thirties, but they grew up with everything, in complete privilege, and they can’t seem to get past it. They go to all the right society events to be photographed: the Black and White Ball, the openings of the symphony and the ballet. Then they snort coke and stay out all night getting into trouble.”

For someone as typically nonjudgmental as Bronwyn, this was saying a lot.