Spellcasting in Silk: A Witchcraft Mystery (19 page)

And I had the distinct impression that neither was Selena.

*   *   *

Selena and I peered through the metal security grates that covered the front of
El Pajarito
.

Santa Muerte’s cigarette dangled from her bony mouth at a rakish angle, and her skeletal visage appeared to smile. But Selena only had eyes for the bedlam beyond the display window.

“Wow,” said Selena. “That’s a real mess.”

“You can say that again.” If and when Ursula was released, she was going to have one heck of a time getting things back to normal.

I was pleased to see that although Selena was shocked by the mess, she did not appear to be traumatized.

“Shall we go in?” I asked my partner in crime.

“How? It’s locked, and I don’t have a key.”

“Good point,” I said. I had been so intent on making sure Selena and I had protective talismans, I had forgotten to bring my Hand of Glory. “What about around the back? Is there a window, or something?”

Selena’s eyes were wide and serious. “We’re going to
break in
?”

Adhering to the code of normal people had never worked all that well for me, so recently I had embraced the “witches’ code”:
An it harm none do what ye will.
In my grandmother’s words,
“haz lo que necesitas,”
or “do what you need to do.” The “do no harm” was implied.

All of which is to say I wasn’t above breaking into Ursula’s store to look for evidence of a doll similar to the poppet found in Betty North’s house.

“We’re hardly breaking in, now, are we? After all, it’s your grandmother’s store, right?”

Her eyes narrowed. “Is that why you invited me
along? So you wouldn’t get in trouble for breaking and entering?”

“No, of course not. I invited you along because I thought you could help me figure out what might be going on here. I also thought you would enjoy being back.”

“Hmmm,”
she said, giving me a speculative look, as if I were a juvenile delinquent and she the schoolmarm.

“C’mon,” I said.

“Where we going?”

“Around back.”

“Can’t. The gate to the alley behind the store is locked.”

“Let’s try next door.”

The neighboring business sported a huge sign advertising: “Money Orders, Send Money Back Home!” Through the front window I spied a ray of afternoon sun shining through a small window in the door at the back of the store.

“Follow my lead,” I said, and we went in.

A long line of people waited patiently for their turn at one of the tellers, who sat behind thick slabs of bulletproof glass.

I marched briskly past them toward the rear of the store, Selena close on my heels. We pushed through the door at the rear, and into the alley. The door swung shut and locked behind us.

“Why didn’t anyone stop us?” Selena asked.

“Never underestimate the power of a self-confident woman in a vintage dress.”

The narrow alley was lined with trash cans and recycling containers. One end was closed off by a brick wall, the other by a chained gate topped with barbed wire. By virtue of the locked gate, the alley was populated by no one but the two of us and, I was certain, vermin.

A little blue bench sat next to the back door of
El
Pajarito
, the twin of the bench out front. Cigarette butts littered the concrete in a semicircle around it. Apparently Santa Muerte wasn’t the only one with a nicotine habit.

As I had hoped, the alley access to Ursula’s store wasn’t as secure as the street entry. There was a door and an unbarred window, and the door appeared to be secured with a simple doorknob lock. I pulled a credit card from my satchel and slipped it between the doorframe and the knob as I had seen done in movies. I wasn’t at all sure this would work, but figured it was worth a try. My backup plan was to break the window, which I hoped wouldn’t be necessary. Sure enough, after working the credit card a few minutes, the lock mechanism released.

“You can open locks?” Selena said, more awed by this simple trick than any of my magic she had witnessed.

“Watch and learn, young grasshopper,” I said, feeling smug. Unfortunately, the door opened only a few inches before being caught by a chain.

Selena snickered.

I smiled at her, pleased to hear her laugh. If I couldn’t break into the store, at least I could amuse my ward.

I pulled a chopstick from my bag, and shut the door as far as I could while still allowing enough room to maneuver. I closed my eyes and concentrated on envisioning the chain sliding. After another few moments—and a couple of swear words—it fell away.

“You’re amazing,” said Selena.

“Thanks. Hey, before we go in, this is what I’d like you to do: Feel for anything out of place, anything odd.”

“The whole place is ‘out of place.’ It’s a mess.”

“I mean at a deeper level. See if you feel anything ‘wrong,’ the same way you did with the wax doll you found in Betty’s clothes.”

“Okay.”

We entered
El Pajarito
.

Unlike the shop floor, the back of the store was neat as a pin, the air scented with bleach and a sweet-smelling detergent I always associated with Mexico. Boxes were labeled in a neat, tight handwriting:
Holy water, Lourdes; Holy water, Guadalupe; Holy water, Jerusalem.
Candles: success, love, family, scholarship, car accidents
.

A desk held a neat stack of papers, and wire baskets labeled “In” and “Out” for bills and invoices. I flipped through the bills in the “Out” basket: business taxes, what looked like a greeting card, a credit card bill. All stamped and ready to go; I picked them up and put them in my satchel to drop in the mail for Ursula. It was the least I could do.

There were a couple of paintings on the wall that reminded me of a Rorschach test: black ink on a red-brown background. To my mind they looked like twin demons; if I looked long enough I saw open mouths complete with fangs.

“You see what you want to see,”
the experts would say. I remembered meeting with a middle school psychologist after the incident with the exploding basketballs. She showed me a series of images, and even though I saw demons then, too, I told her I saw butterflies and kittens playing with a ball of yarn. I may have been young, but I wasn’t stupid.

“What are these pictures of?” I asked Selena.

“Nothing,” she said, hands splayed at her side as she attempted to sense something. “They’re abstract.”

Apparently she wasn’t stupid, either.

Time to face the mayhem in Ursula’s shop.

I paused in the short hallway that led to the shop floor, taking a moment to steel myself. What I had said to Carlos the other day wasn’t a joke; this was highly unusual behavior in merchandise. I’d witnessed the
occasional rogue activity, but only under a specific set of circumstances: when I was under the influence of strong emotions and physical connection—like lovemaking.
Other
people worried about accidental pregnancies or STDs.
I
caused dresses to dance or rose petals to appear.

Could the same principle apply under different circumstances? Maybe the merchandise in Ursula’s store was responding to the strong emotions Ursula had felt upon being arrested and hauled off to jail.

Or . . . maybe it was Selena’s influence. At her age I had wreaked havoc without meaning to, calling without intent but with the energy and neediness of youth. In addition to the basketball episode there had been an unfortunate incident during chemistry lab that had required a HazMat response team. The memory still made me cringe.

But if Selena were the source of the commotion at the store, could she be causing it from afar? Was the merchandise reaching out to harm anyone using it? That suggested intention, which would be beyond a poltergeist’s ability.

Selena stood behind me as I paused to take in the shop floor. It looked about the same as when I’d been here with Carlos: candles and figurines and bags of herbs scattered around the floor, the shelves half-empty. The food left at the foot of Santa Muerte was turning; flies settled on the rotting fruit and dried-out tortilla.

Suddenly I realized: We weren’t alone.

I pushed Selena back into the hallway with one hand and held up the other, wheeling around to my right and letting out a blast of power. A large stack of tarot cards fanned out through the air, landing willy-nilly, and yet another shelf fell off the wall, its contents shattering on the floor.

Patience Blix held her hands over her head, ducked, and spat out something in a language I didn’t understand.

“Stop it!”
she yelled.

“
You
stop it!”

“
I’m
not doing anything,” Patience said. “
You’re
the one taking the place apart.”

“You scared the
bejeezus
out of me.”

“What in the world are you
doing
here?”

“I think you stole that line from me,” I said. “What are
you
doing here?”

“I’m trying to figure out what’s going on,” Patience said with a grim set of her mouth. She raised her chin slightly and looked past me. “Hi, Selena.”

“Hi,” Selena said quietly.

“I thought you said you didn’t know Selena,” I said to Patience. “
Or
Ursula Moreno.”

“I never said that,” Patience said, raising one arched brow. “You assumed it.”

“I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Lying by omission is probably a skill mastered along with cold reading and
bujo
drops.”

“
Bujo
drops? The witch has been doing her homework.”

“I keep my ears open,” I said with a shrug. “What are you doing here, Patience? And how did you get in?”

“I have my ways, just like you. Listen, I’m glad you found Selena, but now we need to find Lupita and figure this thing out. This campaign against fortune-tellers is about to put me out of business.”

“I thought you were aboveboard. Beyond reproach.”

She smiled. “Of course I am. That doesn’t mean I want cops coming by every other day, scaring off my clientele. I need calm vibrations to work. And they seem no closer to resolving this, so I thought I’d see if I could feel something.”

Could I believe her? I didn’t want to. I really,
really
didn’t want to. But it actually made sense. And, I reminded myself, Sailor trusted Patience. Aidan admired her. I should stop allowing my emotions to color my reaction to her.

“And . . . any clues?” I asked.

“Not really. I was hoping to find something to help me track Lupita down. But . . .” She looked around the jumble and heaved a deep sigh. “Considering the state this place is in, I don’t know what I might find. Selena, I take it you don’t know where we could find her?”

Selena shook her head, looking around the shop with wide eyes. “Look at these silver charms. They’re so
tarnished
. Lily, can I take them back to the shop and polish them?”

“Sure.” While she gathered the pieces, I asked Patience, “If Selena finds something that belonged to Lupita, could you read it, maybe intuit her location?”

“Want to take my hand, and try something together, you and me?” Patience suggested, in the same taunting tone she’d used when I went to her lair to ask for help finding Selena.

“All right.”

She looked surprised. “Really?”

“If you think it can help us find Lupita, I’ll do it. Sailor trusts you.”

“And you trust him. Is that it?”

“Implicitly.”

A broad smile broke out over her pretty face. She gestured to Selena. “Your guardian, she is very trusting, is she not? So, is there something here that belonged to Lupita? Maybe a ring, something personal?”

“She wasn’t here that much,” said Selena.

“How did Ursula get in touch with her?” asked Patience.

“Voice mail.”

“
What
voice mail?” I asked.

“If Ursula needed to talk to Lupita, she called a voice mail number and said she had some money for her.”

“What’s the number?” I asked, irked that Selena hadn’t mentioned this little factoid earlier.

“I’ll dial it if you want,” she said, picking up the handset of the phone behind the counter. Then she handed it to Patience.

Patience smiled like the cat that ate the canary.

I tamped down my annoyance. I was vying with the fortune-teller for
Selena’s
affection now?
Get over yourself
,
Lily
.

Patience left a message that Lupita had an inheritance coming to her, and included her phone number. I had to hand it to her— she sounded very convincing. Much more so than I would have.

“Well, I guess that about does it for now,” said Patience. “We wait and see if she calls.”

“And you’ll let me know when she does?”

“Of course.”

I didn’t exactly believe her, but what could I say?

It dawned on me that the entire time we’d been in the shop, Ursula’s merchandise had been quiet. Either that was a good sign, suggesting the source of the disturbance had dissipated; or it was a very bad sign, indicating a calm before the storm. I couldn’t shake the feeling that trouble was imminent.

“Let’s get out of here,” I said.

We turned to go.

A man stood in the hallway.

“Leaving so soon?” asked Carlos Romero.
Inspector
Carlos Romero.

From the expression on his face, I wasn’t sure the friendship we had shared at the pizza-and-poker party was going to get me very far.

*   *   *

Half an hour later, Selena and I limped back to Aunt Cora’s Closet in disgrace. Actually,
I
seemed to be the only one of our trio who was concerned about my reputation. My teenage ward appeared no worse for wear, her attention focused on her silver charms. And Patience had withstood Carlos’s scathing interrogation with an air of boredom. In fact, she had made a wisecrack about being the bad kids to Carlos’s middle school teacher, which had made me laugh despite myself.

But as I drove across the city I wondered if Carlos would trust me again. I hated to disappoint him . . .
especially since this expedition to
El Pajarito
hadn’t revealed anything new. If only Selena had informed me of Lupita’s voice mail number the night I’d picked her up, this could all be over by now.

Why hadn’t she mentioned it before?

*   *   *

Aunt Cora’s Closet was closed on Mondays, which was a good thing. The combined appetites of Selena and Oscar had laid waste to my kitchen cupboards. Time to restock.

Like most people I patronized a local chain grocery store for basic household items, but whenever possible I preferred to shop at one of the many farmers’ markets held throughout the city. On Mondays there was one at the United Nations Plaza, which was the fancy name for an open area not far from City Hall. Most days the plaza was full of homeless folks passing the time and panhandling. But on market day it was a bustling bazaar of farmers, artisans, and food trucks hawking their produce and goods.

Sailor had a rare day off from his training and offered to accompany us. Bronwyn and Maya seemed to sense I could use their support in dealing with Selena, so even though it was their day off, too, they insisted they wanted to come along.

Oscar, for his part, would not be denied.

“You’ll have to wear a leash,” I said as Selena and I gathered shopping bags and baskets.

He glared and crossed his arms over his skinny chest.

It seemed doubly humiliating for Oscar to be leashed in front of Selena, who didn’t make things easier when she surprised us both by laughing out loud. We had never heard her laugh before; it was a sweet, melodic sound.

Unfortunately, the fact that she was giggling at Oscar on his leash gave the sweetness a mean-spirited edge.

It was a gorgeous day to stroll through the stands of
produce and handmade goods at the market. In addition to fresh fruits and vegetables, a person could buy locally produced honey, olive oil, responsibly fished seafood, antibiotic-free chicken, prepared foods, fresh-cut flowers, all sorts of jewelry, knitted items, ceramics, and artwork.

At one end of the farmers’ market was an inflatable jumpy house, which moved and bounced with the energy of the laughing, screaming children inside.

Selena stopped in her tracks. She gazed at the kids, then at the parents waiting outside the jumpy house. I read yearning in her eyes; did she long for a “normal” life as desperately as I had when I was her age?

Bronwyn seemed to notice as well, and came to lay an arm across her thin shoulders.

“Don’t they have fun?” Bronwyn asked Selena. “Do you want to go in?”

Selena shook her head and turned away, and we moseyed along an aisle of vendors who sold stone fruits and verdant leafy greens. It was slow going, as we had to step carefully around strollers, and make time for all who wished to admire Oscar. I felt myself begin to relax. Holding Sailor’s hand, accompanied by good friends, I took delight in the warm sunshine and the milling, good-natured crowd.

I stocked up on some kitchen staples and purchased the ingredients for gumbo, cornmeal crust pizza, spaghetti, and a few other dishes to feed the two hungry creatures living with me.

“Could I try one?” Selena asked, pointing to a kiosk selling Greek gyros.

“Sure, why not?”

Sailor found us a table near a man playing folk tunes on a violin, and our group dispersed to buy lunch before returning to the table and settling in. Maya decided on a burrito, Bronwyn opted for Thai salad rolls, and Sailor and I split a plate of Afghani food.

I bought Oscar a gyro, too, and he made short work of it, then watched the progress of every bite of Selena’s gyro. She ate slowly but steadily, and no sooner had she finished the gyro than she asked for dim sum. After that, she tried falafel, then Thai chicken satay, and finally a slice of cherry pie. Sailor had to buy Oscar his own slice of pie so he’d stop whimpering and snorting.

Then Selena asked for a piece of chocolate cake.

“Don’t you think you’ve had enough, sugar pie? I wouldn’t want you to get sick.”

Her eyes narrowed at me. “I never get sick.”

“Okay . . . but I think you’ve had enough for now.”

“At Betty’s house you said if I came with you I could eat.”

“That’s true, and you’ve eaten well, haven’t you?” I said.

Selena opened her mouth to respond, but Sailor cut her off.

“She said no,” said Sailor, gathering our things to toss in the nearby trash and recycling containers.

Selena shrugged, and we resumed our shopping. Sailor and Bronwyn stopped at one booth to sample olive oils while Maya and I paused to check out some handmade batik scarves. I looked up from a particularly beautiful emerald green scarf to notice Selena making a beeline for a display of crafts created from old cutlery.

An artisan had created funny faces and dancing figures from forks, knives, and spoons. Mobiles made of antique silverware hung from an overhead bar. As the pieces moved in the wind, they clacked and chimed pleasantly.

Selena lifted her face to the mobiles, and I realized they danced more each time she looked at them. Was she calling the breeze, somehow? The sun glinted off the shiny metal, casting little bubbles of light on the ground
and on the passersby. When the reflected light moved over Selena’s pinched features, it was as though it was caressing her. More lights gathered, so many that her features were bathed in light. A look of pure, reverential joy passed over her face.

Maya came to stand next to me. “She seems enamored.”

I nodded. “Well, at least we know there’s one thing that makes her happy. Two, if you count making fun of Oscar.”

“When did she make fun of Oscar?”

One of the challenges of having normal nonmagical friends was remembering when to keep my mouth shut. As close as we were, Bronwyn and Maya did not know about Oscar’s true form as a gobgoyle, much less that he could speak and interact like a human.

“Oh, she just thought he looked funny on his leash,” I improvised.

“Well, I gotta say, a pig on a leash
is
pretty funny-looking.”

I had to smile. “I suppose that’s true.”

I couldn’t take my eyes off Selena, who didn’t take her eyes off the mobiles. Finally I said to Maya, “I know you and Bronwyn wanted to buy supplies. Why don’t we meet up with y’all later? Would you mind taking Oscar with you? If we don’t run into you again let’s all meet back at the car.”

“Sounds like a plan,” said Maya. “See you later. C’mon, pig.”

I joined Selena at the kiosk.

“Would you like one of the mobiles, Selena?” I offered.

She looked startled. “You mean, like, a present?”

“Exactly like a present.” I checked one of the price tags.
Ouch
. But it was handmade by an artist using
antique silverware. Besides, at this point I was willing to pay a pretty penny to make Selena smile.

“People don’t give me presents,” she said.

“What, never?”

She shook her head.

“Well, then, it’s about time to change that, don’t you think? Let this be the first of what I’m sure will be many gifts.”

She started shaking her head, narrowing her eyes. A basket of mismatched antique spoons fell from a card table to the grass below.

“Calm down, Selena. It’s fine, we won’t buy anything now, and we’ll talk about this later, okay?”

“’Kay,” she said with a sullen shrug.

What was she angry about? I trailed her into the stream of people, giving her a little distance.

Sailor fell in step beside me. “Have you ever heard of silver magic catchers?”

“Um . . . one of the women at a
botanica
mentioned it to me when I was there with Aidan. Why? You think those mobiles are examples of magic catchers?”

“No. But they were responding to Selena. Surely you noticed.”

“I did. They were reflecting light onto her. She seemed to enjoy it.”

“She more than enjoyed it. I think she has a relationship to metal, probably more profound than she realizes. Think back when you were a kid—everything seemed normal, right? It’s only when we get older that we start to realize that not everyone had those same experiences, that not everyone is like us.”

“You’re right.” I nodded. “Looks like I have a little homework to do, researching metal magic. If I want to help her with it I’ll have to figure out what it’s all about.”