The Darkening Dream (32 page)

Emily didn’t respond when Sarah and Anne slipped inside. She lay in bed looking pale and sweaty, propped up on a pile of pillows, her hair damp and matted.

“One of her calm phases,” Anne said. Sarah could hear tears in her friend’s voice. “She’s feverish all the time now.”

Anne crossed the room and took a damp towel from a bowl to wipe her sister’s forehead. The scene was so reminiscent of Judah’s room near the end that Sarah wanted to curl in a ball and cry.

Emily’s eyes opened, the whites bloodshot.

“Mom-my?” She moved her tongue as if it was too big for her mouth.

“It’s me, Emily,” Anne said. “Sarah’s come to visit.”

Emily’s gaze drifted to Sarah. “Hi.” She made a halfhearted attempt at a smile.

“How are you feeling?” Sarah asked.

“Thirsty. Tired.”

Anne poured her a glass of water and told her about what had happened with the bracelet last night.

“Sam couldn’t get through it with a pair of gardening shears — the darn thing’s hard as steel. But that wasn’t the worst of it. She started coughing up blood, and her eyes filled with it.”

“I’ve been reading a lot,” Sarah said. “It’s not like there’s a manual, but Emily said the pastor was trying to draw on her energy. I think the bracelet is rooted in her life force.” She put an arm around Anne. “I also think there’s a second physical anchor for the spell. That thing Emily saw the pastor dry by the fire.”

“How does that help us?”

“I’m not sure yet. But—”

“I hate being sick,” Emily said.

“Everyone does, you’ll be better soon,” Anne said.

The three girls were quiet for just a few minutes when Emily grew restless. She squirmed and twisted, grasping feebly at the blankets. Her movements were wild and uncoordinated but not fast or forceful. And she moaned.

“Emily!” Sarah took hold of her arm. The only response was louder moaning.

“What are you doing?” Anne asked.

“Just trying to see if she knows we’re here,” Sarah said.

Anne bent over her little sister and smoothed her hair.

“I wish we’d never gone riding that day,” she said. “Although Emily was spending time with Pastor Parris before then.” She straightened up and turned to Sarah. “The vampire-pastor connection doesn’t make any sense.”

Sarah considered whether to burden her with the story of the Horn. Her friend deserved to know, but it might push her over the edge.

“There’s a pattern here, but we keep missing it,” she said.

“Why’d this happen to her?” Anne said. “She’s the only Williams kid who actually reads the Bible.”

On her way out, Sarah found herself blocked by Emma, the Williamses’ big colored cook.

“You going to help her?”

“I’m trying,” Sarah said. “I don’t know what’s wrong. Hopefully the fever will break soon.”

“’Tis no fever,” Emma said. “I throw
Ifá
, and you gots to fix what you broke.”

She couldn’t save Charles, but with Emily she had a chance. She slumped against a kitchen counter.

“I don’t know how, Emma.”

She didn’t know what
Ifá
was either, but Emma knew things. If Papa’s prayers worked, maybe the cook’s did, too.

“Lady Tituba have big
ashé
.” Emma cupped one of Sarah cheeks. “You ask her.”

Emma always talked about
ashé
, which apparently meant life force, a kind of magical energy. This Lady Tituba must be some kind of mystic woman.

“Where do I find her?”

It was stupid to go alone, but Sarah did it anyway. She had to walk the better part of an hour to reach the address Emma gave her.

The Point was a poor section of town, mostly four-story wooden tenement buildings crowded so close a man could spit on his neighbors. As she climbed the narrow wooden stairs to the fourth floor, she smelled an array of foreign spices. Loud laughter and conversation echoed through the thin walls, little of it in English. This was an immigrant neighborhood, where you rented if the steamer passage that brought you here was all the money you had.

A small colored boy answered her knock. “What you want?”

“I’m looking for Lady Tituba,” Sarah said.

“That be my grandmama,” the boy said. “Come.”

The apartment was tiny, dark, and smelled of a thousand things. Bundles of dried herbs hung from the ceiling, shelves of jars lined the walls. A preserved cat floated in pink liquid in a tank and dead frogs filled a container to bursting.

The boy left, but a lady returned in his place. If she was his grandmother, she’d been a young mother. Rail thin and barefoot, she wore a long white dress that set off her dark skin and striking features.

“So what’s a nice white girl doing in my fine upstanding neighborhood?”

Her southern accent made Sarah think of wind chimes hanging from a willow tree.

“I want to know about a bracelet made of hair. Oily, smelling of licorice and calamus.” No point in being coy here.

Lady Tituba cocked her head. She must iron her hair straight, something Sarah had almost done last year after some girls at school teased her about her ‘Jew curls.’

“Oil of bend over?” the lady said.

“Huh?”

Lady Tituba drifted to a shelf. The brightness in the room seemed to follow her. She broke the paraffin seal on a jar and held it out.

“Put this on your lover, and he’ll bend over and take it anytime you want.”

Sarah felt herself grow hot. She couldn’t shake the image of Alex bending over. But she gave the jar a sniff.

“This smells like what I’m talking about,” Sarah said.

It was hard not to stare into the wells of Lady Tituba’s eyes. What gazed back seemed older than the woman before her — much older.

“What would the oil do on a bracelet?” Sarah said.

“Make a bracelet of bend over. Some call it a commanding bracelet.” She held up the jar again. “I put grains of paradise in mine, for extra potency.” The woman’s smile revealed perfect white teeth. “Is it power you seek? In the back room I have the mummified hand of a king.”

Sarah shook her head. “The oil, would it make someone sick?”

“Nothing comes without a price.” The lady stepped closer, close enough for Sarah to smell her — spices fried in a skillet. And then, far in the distance, she heard the slow and mournful tone of the horn.

“No, you haven’t come for power.”

“Wh-what if a man put the bracelet on a girl,” Sarah said, “formed from both their hair braided together?”

“Then she be bound to him. Body and soul.” The lady blinked. Green tadpoles swam in the muddy ponds of her irises.

Not good, but she might as well buy some oil. “How much?”

“Five dollars a pint.”

“That’s outrageous.”

“You can’t put a price on quality.” Lady Tituba leaned closer still. “But it’s not just the three of us in this room, is it?”

Sarah’s eyes darted about. Was the boy still here?

The lady lifted her free hand to caress Sarah’s cheek. The horn droned louder and louder.

The lady froze, her pupils consumed her eyes, and she jumped back.

“Mighty
Eshu
, forgive me. I didn’t recognize you.” Now she looked away.

“I just want to help my friend,” Sarah said. “I need to know how to remove the bracelet—”

“The passage is unlocked. What is lost will be found.”

Lady Tituba tossed the jar to Sarah and shrank back the way she’d came.

“No charge. The oil is a gift.”

She slammed the door behind her.

Sarah’s found herself alone with the medicinal jars and their occupants. A dead possum gave her the evil eye. The horn continued to blare.

In her mind’s eye, she saw Charles mouthing:
The passage is unblocked
.
What is lost will be found
.

Thirty-Six:

The Painted Man

Salem, Massachusetts, Wednesday night, November 12, 1913

A
L-
N
ASIR LEFT HIS NEW LAIR
by the fourth-story window. Truth be told, this one was much better than the last, at least after Tarik had cleansed the sarcophagus and decorated the crypt.

He circled Salem, tasting the cool night air. This was his third night hunting. The thieves’ scents — two men and two women — were burned into his memory. But the process of finding them was tedious, sniffing them out street by street, house by house.

Then again, what did he have if not time?

He flew over his former home and turned south, searching new areas as the mood struck him. At one point he was obliged to cross the estuary that separated Salem proper from the Marblehead Peninsula. Flying over deep water was uncomfortable at best, so he bled height in exchange for extra speed.

Once on the peninsula, he inspected each dwelling, circling one then flying to the next. It might take weeks, but he would find them.

Then he felt the call.

Fouad. The Moor requested his return. The nature of their bond didn’t allow for a specific message, but he knew the old servant wouldn’t summon him idly.

Thirty minutes later, the vampire was close to home, flying over the surrounding neighborhood. Fouad waited in the townhouse crypt, but al-Nasir hadn’t eaten in two days, and hours of searching had rendered his appetite sharper than a Saracen’s blade.

The ancient blood gods looked after their own. A boy of perhaps twelve, a chimney sweep, struggled with his long brushes on a nearby roof. The vampire dropped from the sky, one hundred and forty pounds of dead weight. There was no time for finesse, nor did al-Nasir bother to return to human form. He yanked the boy’s neck to the side and tore it open with his razor-sharp incisors. He savored the sweetness of the kill, the warm flesh, the hot salty rush of blood. Haste made him sloppy, allowing some of the liquid to splash the wooden roof tiles. No matter. He fed perched like an enormous gargoyle, wings wrapped around his spasming prey.

Al-Nasir liked to toy with his food. Ideally, each meal was to be savored over several evenings. Even if it was to be a one-night affair, he liked to dance with death. Every human had his threshold, the exact amount of blood loss beyond which no recovery was possible. To bring prey to that limit, pull back, then return to it again and again was to court the sublime. When finally the point of no return was reached, the blood took on a thick syrupy quality, like oasis water siphoned from a palm. Tonight, however, he plunged right through to the brutal end. It was not the most enjoyable meal but it did provide a kind of quick and dirty satisfaction. He likened it to the difference between a lover savored all night in the harem and a virgin sodomized during the bloody sack of a city.