A Snake in the Grass (19 page)

The Ukrainian woman came to crouch at my
side, tilting her head as we surveyed the messy scribbles. “They
are of no system of magic that I know. Neither pagan, nor
Christian.”

“They’re not
brujería
.” The kid knelt
down too, peering across the floor. “If I had not seen it work, I
would say it is just gibberish. Nonsense.”

“I have to wonder if we really saw what we
thought we saw.” There wasn’t a hint of magic in the place, I would
bet my life on it. Sure, I wasn’t a wiz at it myself, but the souls
in my skin hadn’t been wrong so far, and they’d pegged traces much
fainter than I’d have ever sensed myself. Now, they were totally
quiet, not stirring in the least. I actually found that comforting.
If they weren’t upset, then we were probably safe here, at least
for the moment.

“The circle worked. Both nights, I saw it
hold that small demon. It pounded on the barrier and could not
escape.”

“You can’t hold a demon, kid, unless it wants
to be held. That thing could have just poofed back across the veil
anytime it wanted.” Rocking back on my heels, I tried to see the
bigger picture, tried to figure out what we were missing. “Did you
actually see him cast the circle?”

“No. It was already in place when we arrived,
both times.”

“A permanent structure would have to be bound
to something more than these symbols, and there would be traces
left. I find none.” It was good to hear that Sveta found no
leftover magic either. Made me feel better about myself.

Taking the flashlight with me, I stood and
started walking a slow spiral out from the painted circle. “He had
to know we’d come back here. Maybe he dismantled whatever it was.”
A few yards out, I caught something shiny in the edge of the light.
“Here. What’s this?”

This proved to be a tangle of very thin wire,
wadded up in a useless ball and kicked into the corner. There were
shreds of cellophane tape stuck to it in places, and as I unwound
bits of it, I could see that it was long enough to encircle the
symbol-covered area. My fingertips tingled very faintly as I ran
the wire over them. “Tricky, but it’s been done before…”

“What has?”

“Portable ward.” I showed them a length of
the wire with tape attached. “Bless the wire, circle the area, tape
it down. The symbols are for show, they did nothing.”

Sveta held the wire up to her face, sniffing
it with a disdainful wrinkle of her nose. “There isn’t enough magic
here to light a candle, let alone cage a demon.”

“Paulito was never that strong,” Estéban
offered, looking uncomfortable when we both turned to look at him.
“When we would practice our casting, his spells were always the
weakest.”

I dropped the tangle of warded wire and stood
up, taking one last glance around the empty warehouse. “It wasn’t
enough to cage one, just enough to put on a good show. Which means
that the demon
wanted
to be held. And that worries me more
than anything. Your cousin was way too buddy-buddy with that thing
for my comfort.”

The kid’s face looked creepy and grim in the
shadows cast by the flashlight. “We have to find him, Jesse. We
have to stop him.”

“I know, kid.”

“Where do we look next, then?” Sveta was all
business, all the time.

“What about the girlfriend? Where does she
live?” If Paulito was like every other red-blooded male I’d ever
met, he wouldn’t be far from his girl.

The kid shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know
who she is. I’ve never seen her, until the other day. But he told
me about this cantina in town that he likes. He was going to take
me, later. Even if he’s not there, we could ask if anyone knows
where Reina lives.”

“Better than nothing. Saddle up.”

The cantina itself gave a whole new meaning
to hole in the wall. Like, the door itself was literally a hole in
the stone wall of an old building, covered with only a decorative
curtain that did nothing to stifle the horrible canned music
playing through tinny speakers.

Inside was worse, if possible, with tiny
round tables packed in so close that making a path to the bar was
an event in and of itself. There was a ratty dart board in the
corner, currently occupied by a couple that was…well, not playing
darts. It was the kind of place whose main asset was obviously the
fact that they were still open. Y’know, that place where the drunks
go when their usual bar boots them out.

Heads came up and conversations stopped as we
entered, and I was painfully aware that I’d left The Way in the
truck this time. There were at least twelve men in there, several
of them sporting wounds that placed them at Paulito’s fight club in
their very recent history. Either that, or they were just guys who
liked to get in fights. Neither possibility bode well for us. Sveta
and I stood out like sore thumbs, to say the least, and none of the
three of us were going to pass for tourists. The back of my T-shirt
rippled a little as the tattoos adjusted themselves, not
distressed, just aware.

“
Oye
. You lost,
gringo
?” The
bartender leaned on this bar, giving me a challenging look.

“I’m with him.” I pointed at Estéban who was
just stepping through the doorway behind me. The kid came up on my
left, and I felt Sveta flank right, just behind my line of
sight.

A scruffy man at the table immediately to my
right laughed into his beer, an ugly, wet sound. “
Apoco ya está
mayorcito el bebito como para tomar
?” I didn’t quite catch it
all, but it was something about “Is the baby old enough to
drink?”

Ignoring him, Estéban’s eyes swept the bar,
and he shook his head with a frown. “He’s not here.”

“
Oye, chico
!
Qué te crees demasiado
bueno para hablar tu propio idioma o qué
?”
You too good to
speak your own language or what?
A round of ugly chuckles
rippled around the room. Sveta pressed close to my side then,
giving the pretense of being a timid female, but I felt the butt of
her gun snug against the back of my thigh, and I knew that the
drunk assholes here had no idea where the danger was about to come
from.

Esteban focused on the bartender.
“
Dónde
está Paulito Perez
?”

The bartender snorted. “Oh now he speaks
Spanish.” He swiped a filthy towel over the top of his bar
nonchalantly. “He is not here,
niño
. We have not seen him
tonight.”

“His girlfriend, then. Reina. Where does she
live?”

“Reina?” The man pursed his lips
thoughtfully, taking his sweet time. “Don’t know no Reina.
Oigan, vatos. Alguien conoce una tal Reina
?” A chorus of
negatives answered him, but their sneers and chuckles said
otherwise.

“They are useless,” Sveta snarled in my ear,
but Scruffy at table two heard her.

“Hey,
chica
. I gotta use. You come on
over here.” He leaned back and patted his lap with a leer.

Sveta’s eyes fell on him, and I knew we were
screwed. She tilted her head slowly to one side, examining him
thoroughly, and a slow smile spread over her face. To anybody else,
it looked inviting, but up close I could see the cold blankness to
her blue eyes. This was going south, real quick.

“Don’t do it…” She ignored me. Women do
that.

With some extra sway to her hips, she
sauntered in his direction, her gun hand carefully concealed behind
her leg. If I didn’t know her and fear her so thoroughly, I would
say she was an attractive young woman. She caught her bottom lip
between her teeth, ducking her head playfully, and I saw the guy’s
eyes dilate, even in the murky light of the bar. Her new best
friend had obviously had too much to drink to sense the imminent
threat. “And how might I best make use of you?”

Scruffy smirked at his companions and patted
his lap again. “Sit down, we can talk about it over a beer.”

Without looking, I reached to my left and
found Estéban’s arm, firmly pulling him behind me as I pushed us
both back toward the door. With all eyes on Sveta, no one else
noticed.

The dark-haired woman straddled Scruffy’s
knees, settling down on his lap and slipping her free hand around
his neck. “Like this? I am a stranger to your country, I am not
sure of the proper etiquette.”

“Your etiquette is just fine,
chica
.
Very good.” One big, greasy hand came to rest on her ass, and
that’s when it all went to hell.

Faster than anyone could see, she brought the
gun up and had the barrel pressed up under his chin hard enough to
tip his head back awkwardly, the smile never leaving her face. It
took Scruffy a few moments to process his sudden change in
fortunes, and then the color drained from his tan face, leaving him
a strange, ashy color. “What? Is this not also very good?”

“Well that escalated quickly,” I muttered
under my breath, trying to figure out how to best defuse the
situation.

One of the guys near the dart board twitched
toward something at his belt, and somehow, without even looking up,
Sveta put her full attention on him. “Move again, and you will wear
his brains.
Entiendes
?” When the man held up his hands and
backed up a step, she smiled at her would-be suitor once more.
“What is your name?”

He had to try twice to get the word out.
“Enrique.”

“I am Svetlana, Enrique. I am glad that we
are going to be friends.” She settled in his lap firmly, in a way
that might have been enticing, y’know except for the giant freaking
gun between them. “Now, we are looking for Paulito Perez, and his
lovely lady friend, Reina. Are you able to help us?”

Scruffy shook his head slowly. “Like he said,
Paulito hasn’t been in tonight. I don’t know where Reina lives, she
doesn’t come in here.” He swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing
in his throat, and Sveta gave him a smile that I’m sure should have
been encouraging, but instead looked like she was going to eat him
with some fava beans and a nice chianti.

“And your friends? Do any of them know where
she lives?”

Scruffy cast beseeching looks at his buddies,
but one by one they shook their heads to the negative. If possible,
he went paler.

“Wait, let me get this straight. Not one of
you knows where she lives? This town isn’t that big. Someone has to
have seen her coming and going.”

The bartender gave me an uncomfortable shrug,
but his eyes never left Sveta. “She just turned up one day, you
know? Don’t even know her last name or anything.”

Sveta sighed and stood up, but her gun stayed
firmly against her new friend’s chin. “I am disappointed. I believe
you all, but I am still disappointed.”

“What are you going to do?” Scruffy looked
like he maybe didn’t want the answer to that question, but felt
compelled to ask.

“I think I will go spend some time alone, and
be sad.” She patted his cheek gently, then leaned down to press a
kiss to his forehead, leaving a smudge of light pink lip gloss
there. “You were correct. You were very useful to me. Thank you,
Enrique.”

Backing her way toward the door, she kept the
gun leveled at the room in general now. “Pardon us for interrupting
your evening. You may continue.”

“Go, kid,” I muttered, making sure Estéban
was out through the curtain before I followed. I held the fabric
aside so that Sveta could step through without losing her aim. She
backed up a few paces then jerked her chin in my direction, and I
let the curtain drop. “Move, both of you.”

Okay, we didn’t exactly
run
back to
the truck, but we moved with definite purpose. “Have you ever
considered some therapy for your obvious social interaction
difficulties?” Sveta just gave me a bland look, eyeing the night as
the kid and I climbed into the truck, and only then did she follow
us. “You realize that every guy in that place probably had a gun on
him, right?”

“So? I am faster.”

I threw the truck into drive and got the hell
out of Dodge before Scruffy Enrique and his buddies got over
wetting themselves and came after us. “What were you going to do,
shoot someone? You can’t just go around shooting people, Sveta.
It’s not what we do.”

“It’s not what
you
do, you mean.” She
gave me a cool glance across Estéban, who was doing his damnedest
to shrink into a tiny, not-there ball between the two of us. “I do
not always have the luxury of some of your moral choices. I have
been in places like that before. Force is the only authority they
recognize.”

“And the fact that the guy pissed you off and
groped your ass had nothing to do with it?”

A slightly feral smirk crossed her face,
visible in the dash lights. “They discounted me because I was
female. It is their weakness.”

“It’s not a mistake they’ll make again. That
trick only works once, and they’ll be looking for you now.” Getting
around in town was going to be a helluva lot harder, from now
on.

Our avenues of investigation were obviously
exhausted for the night, so I pointed the truck up the mountain.
“Think, kid. If you wanted to live somewhere here, and you didn’t
want anyone to see you coming and going, where would you shack
up?”

He sighed and shook his head. “I do not know.
Perhaps one of the homes in the mountains, but most of those have
held the same families for generations. Reina does not belong to
any of them that I know of.”

“Would any of them shelter Paulito?”

He frowned, the crease between his brows
looking deeper in the dim light. “At one time, I would have said
no. But there were men at the warehouse that I have known since I
was a small child, families that we have lived near for years. I
would not have believed them capable of such actions either, and
yet there they were.”

The frustration practically dripped from his
voice, and I let the silence stretch out, hoping that he would go
on. Finally, he did, smacking his hand against the dash. “I do not
understand why these things are happening. Everyone on the
mountain, in town, they all know what my family does. They used to
respect the name Perez. Now… I do not know what has caused the
change. I do not know why Paulito would do these things. He is one
of us.”