Buried Secrets (7 page)

“Thanks for that,” said Zack, while she stood. “But what we could really use is some idea of who or what we're hunting.”

Doña Maria lit a candle, murmured a prayer over it, then set to work. She took a wooden bowl from her cupboard and began to add ingredients from unlabeled jars. She measured the way Jo's grandmother had cooked, by practice and guess. A pinch here. A dollop there. “You are facing a
diablero.
”

“A devil,” translated Jo uncertainly. “
The
devil? No, that would be a
diablo,
right?”

“The
diablero
works the magic of
El Diablo,
” explained the
older woman, still mixing and measuring. Jo only half watched, not wanting to know if any dead hummingbird got added.

“So it's human, anyway,” said Lorenzo, as if that had even been in question. Or maybe it had.

“Perhaps,” hedged the
Bruja.
“Or no.
Hombres son brutos.
”

“Men are beasts,” translated Jo, trying not to grin.

“Thanks a lot,” said the P.I.

The older woman finished her mixture, then measured dollops of it into two squares of red silk, tying them with red cord.

“Keep these with you,” she instructed, giving a pouch to both Jo and Zack. “Pray the
Ave Maria
on them every night and morning, and together you may carry enough of the Lady's light to shine upon and destroy this evil. You understand,
si?
”

“Sure.” But Zack warily sniffed the pouch.

“Si,”
agreed Jo politely. “We understand.” Then she mouthed at Zack,
Pay her.
Which he did.

As they moved to leave, the
Bruja
stopped Jo with a hard grip. “For you,” she whispered, pressing a second pouch into her hand. This one was made of white silk.

“What is it?” asked Jo, watching Zack go ahead.

“A charm of love,” murmured the witch. “Pray to lead him from his darkness.”

To lead…
Zack Lorenzo?

“Oh no,” said Jo quickly. “I mean, that's nice of you, but I'm not interested….” The woman's dark eyes brooked no deception. “Not in that way,” Jo qualified weakly.

Watching the man's body and feeling safe around him had nothing to do with loving him
or
leading him from darkness!

“Hombres son brutos,”
repeated the
Bruja.
“But this strengthens them,
si?
Protecting us, it raises them from the animals. It is our calling to keep them holy in return.”

Jo looked more closely at all the photographs lining the kitchen, almost covering the front wall. School pictures. Family portraits. Clearly that was how Doña Maria had led
her
life, witch or not. But Jo had once tried for a normal life, once let a man protect her.

Never again.

“Say the prayers,” insisted the
Bruja,
releasing Jo's hand.

“I'm not even Catholic.”

“Do not be afraid of life,
marimacho.
”

“Hello?” called Zack, partway to the car. The Ferrari chirped and flashed its headlights as he approached it. That's when he stopped still.

Jo awkwardly thanked the woman, then hurried to catch up—until Zack said, “Stay where you are.” Even over the unending Texas wind, she heard the sharpness in his voice.

“Why…?”

But then she heard the snake.

Z
ack had always thought rattlesnakes
rattled.
This one buzzed, coiled in front of the Ferrari—way too close to him. It was the biggest snake he'd ever seen outside the zoo.

At least he stood between it and the women.

“Stand still,” advised Jo, approaching from behind. Great. If anything, the snake buzzed more loudly. “No sudden movements.”

“You're the one who's moving,” he said, slowly reaching under his outer shirt.

“You might shoot the car.”

“I buy the insurance for a reason.” He aimed. The Ferrari
was
just beyond the snake.

“We're over thirty miles out of town,” Jo reminded him. “And I don't see any other cars here.”

She was getting closer! “Will you stay the hell back!”

“I know rattlesnakes,” she continued, low. “You don't.”

Okay, that was it.
Now
he was pissed. So Jo hadn't let the old witch shake her? Kudos for her bravery in the face of grandmotherly
Brujas.
This was a freakin'
rattlesnake,
and he didn't need her showing off how tough she could be just now!

Besides, men were beasts, right? He
liked
killing things that threatened his life.

“Just leave it alone a minute,” Jo soothed, now right beside him, “and it should go away. It's a lot more frightened of us than we are of it.”

“Oh,” he challenged. “So you're scared of it, huh?”

He felt her stiffen beside him. “Not particularly. But it would make sense if you
were.
Being a city boy and all.”

Right. Like cities didn't have snakes right alongside the rats. “News flash. First, I'm no boy. Second, I'm not exactly crumbling under the pressure here. I'm just trying to keep
you
out of harm's way while I calculate how to avoid the gas line.”

But when Jo touched his wrist, staying him, he knew she would get her way. Wasn't that just like a woman? He couldn't aim his pistol now without shaking her off, which he was pretty sure counted as a “sudden movement.”

For a moment they just stood there, facing down a snake that was
clearly
more frightened of them than they were of it, since it turned out neither of them was scared. Jo continued to hold his wrist, her hand soft and steady, and Zack noticed again that she was smaller than he generally thought she was. Not that he had reason to think about her. Incense from the
Bruja's
sanctuary clung to Jo's short, shiny hair. The Texas heat felt magnified, with her so close, despite the wind. He began to feel flushed.

It didn't seem to have anything to do with the rattler.

Finally, just as the sheriff had predicted, the snake's buzzed warning softened. It began to lower its triangular head.

Then, in a sudden whiplike movement, it slithered right at them.
It was not scared!

Zack elbowed Jo away from him to raise his pistol, but she was already stepping between him and his target—
damn it!
—and stomping.

Like that, she was standing with a cowboy boot firmly planted on the snake's head. She crouched, a jackknife in her hand. In a sure, firm movement, she cut right through its neck.

Zack lowered his pistol to point at the desert floor and started to breathe again.

Backing away, Jo lifted one foot to wipe her blade on the sole of her boot first and then—the worst gone—on her jeans. If she'd had hair of any real length, the cocky little lift of her head when she looked at him would have tossed it. “There.”

She'd blocked his shot, risked her life, and that's all she had to say?
There?

He stared at her, short and solid and smug. More protests than he had words for pushed up into his throat before he gave them up and stalked past her to the dead reptile. He knelt, picked up the long, headless body, and stood. The thing was so thick around, his fingers didn't meet his thumb as he held it. It had to be at least five feet long. Unless he held his arm up almost shoulder height, its rattle dragged in the sand.

He'd seen a lot of postcards about everything being big in Texas, but—Jesus, Mary and Joseph!

“Watch out for the head,” cautioned the sheriff, behind him. “The fangs are still poisonous.”

Her words were tough, but her voice was still a woman's.

“What the hell were you thinking?” Zack demanded, turning on her. “It could have killed you!”

“Not likely,” she assured him, slipping her knife back into her pocket. “There's antivenin in town.”

“But possible. And what happened to it going away? Maybe I'm just some dumb city guy, but I've got to ask—do snakes normally
charge at people
like that?”

Jo had the grace to look uncomfortable. “Actually…no.”

He waved the headless snake closer to her. “Exactly!”

To her credit, she didn't flinch from the gory trophy. Any of his sisters would. Gabriella would've fainted by now; she'd always needed him to deal with the creepy-crawlies.

Then again, Jo was the one who'd beheaded the thing.

“You know,” she murmured, leaning closer to the reptilian corpse, “that was exactly what a snake
shouldn't
do. Snakes don't get rabies, do they?”

He shrugged. “Like I should know?”

Then their gazes met. They both knew who might. Ashley Vanderveer.

Doña Maria strolled past, startling them both. The old woman,
her white skirts not quite brushing the rocky ground, bent low over the abandoned snake head.

Zack considered warning her that the fangs were still poisonous, but she lived out here. She probably knew.

When she produced a large cooking knife and skewered the thing, lifting it on the point of the knife, he was just as glad he'd kept his mouth shut—unlike some
women
he could name.

“Señora,”
said Jo after a moment, following as the
Bruja
carried the snake head back toward her adobe house, “Do you—or the Holy Mother—consider snakes as evil omens or anything?”

Since it was a good question, Zack followed. Besides, who knew what trouble the sheriff might get into otherwise?

“No,” assured Doña Maria, circling the house. “Spiders,
si.
Wolves. But snakes, they are medicine animals.”

Well, that's a relief,
thought Zack—until they rounded the corner of the house and saw the old shed back there, its wooden wall papered with nailed strips of what he realized were snake-skins, undulating in the constant breeze.

There had to be…ten…thirty…fifty…?

How many snakes had the old lady skinned? And
why?

“But these,” continued the
Bruja,
moving the lid of a large, clay jar and dropping in the fanged head. “These have been called, I think. They answer the
diablero.
”

Zack said, “Our
diablero?”

“Say your thanks to Guadalupana for protecting you,” Doña Maria suggested, heading back to the house.

“But what about the snakes and the
diablero?
” asked Jo.

The old woman went into her house and shut the door behind her. So much for that line of questioning.

“Is…?” Zack looked over his shoulder at the wall of reptiles. “Never mind.”

He stalked back toward the car with their headless snake.

“Is what?” demanded Jo, following him.

He'd been going to ask if this was normal, but when had he started wanting backup? “This can't be normal. The number of snakes she's put under the knife isn't, and the way this thing
came at us definitely isn't. We'll take its body back to Vanderveer. If we ask nice, maybe she'll test it for rabies.”

“Wouldn't she need the head to check for rabies?” asked Jo. It annoyed him that he hadn't remembered that much.

“You wanna go fishing in her jar-o-venom for it?” he challenged, then regretted it. Jo James might turn around and go back, in some feminista show of courage.

Instead, she caught up with his longer stride and gestured toward the body. “We might as well leave this too.”

“Maybe I want to keep it,” he said, aware that he was just being contrary now. “Make a belt or something.”

She shrugged, all
suit yourself.

Though he doubted the rental agency would appreciate snake guts in the trunk any more than they would've liked him shooting the car, insurance or no insurance.

Then he heard another rattle—and the headless snake writhed in his hand!

With a yelp, Zack threw it. The thing arced awkwardly through the air like a heavy rubber hose, landing on a flat rock. It wriggled some more, still headless, while he slapped his hand against his pants to wipe off the traces of the cursed thing.

“What the hell was that?”
Magic?

Then he heard a snort, and guessed not. If it was magic, Jo James wouldn't be trying—unsuccessfully—not to laugh. Another quick glance into the desert proved how uncoordinated the dead snake's movements were. The adrenaline in his system eased back to a trickle, allowing normal thought.

“Rigor mortis,” he guessed out loud, even more disgusted.

“Same thing happened to me once,” Jo assured him, which just annoyed him further. Like he wanted her sympathy!

“Oh really?” he challenged, swinging himself into the driver's seat. He let her open her own damned door.

“When I was
twelve,
” she agreed, climbing in. Her lips were pressed together, but her eyes danced with mirth. When he turned to glare down at her, Zack knew he was in trouble.

Even keeping things antagonistic, he couldn't pretend Jo was one of the guys.

 

As they drove back toward Almanuevo, Jo rolled the second “charm” the
Bruja
had given her in her hand, hidden from the driver's seat by her body. A love charm, huh? It felt lumpier than the protection charm did. Now that they'd left the incense and the props, neither bag seemed particularly magic. But would they? Did she expect them to glow, or tingle or something?

Would she want them to? Would she want them to work at
all?

The protection charm, maybe. But the
love charm?
Jo wasn't looking for any man, hadn't looked in years. Even if she did, the last thing she needed was a guy like Zack Lorenzo, who reeked of testosterone like cheap aftershave, to fall in love with her.

Except that his aftershave smelled expensive, not cheap, in the close confines of his powerful car. Rich and delicious.

“So you're widowed, huh?” she asked finally, rubbing her trigger finger over the silk of the bag. The callus on her finger caught against the fine fibers.

“More or less,” admitted Zack. Sort of. “Why?”

Jo made a face. No magic was powerful enough. “Do you think that's what the
Bruja
meant, saying we've both been robbed?”

“Could've been.”

Not big on personal answers, was he? “You aren't still sulking about the snake, are you?”

“I don't sulk.”

She raised a hand to fend off his vehemence. “Just asking.”

“Just because a guy doesn't want to talk through every detail of his life doesn't mean he's sulking. Geez!”

“Forget I asked!” And she leaned her seat back a little farther, braced a boot against the dash, and made herself comfortable.

Finally he said, “I don't like talking about my wife.”

“Fair enough,” she said, and for a while they just listened to classic rock. He had a good '80s mix—Journey, Cheap Trick, The Eagles—and a better sound system. She could do with less air-conditioning, though. It was only
March.

“Do you think it works?” she asked. “Spells and stuff?”

Casually steering with one hand, Zack said, “Yeah.”

“I thought a lot of these people were flakes.”

“A lot are. But some are scary powerful.”

“Do you think Doña Maria is powerful?” She'd been scary, that was for sure. In an incongruous, matronly way.

Zack considered that for a while. “I think she's legitimate, anyhow. Powerful's harder to tell. She didn't give us much.”

True. But they hadn't left empty-handed, either.

Jo's fingers curled more tightly around the secret gift. She'd never had magical amulets, before. “It seemed so normal,” she admitted. “I mean, not
normal
normal. But it wasn't…”

“No special effects,” Zack translated, to her relief. So she wasn't the only one who'd ever noticed that, huh?

“Yep.”

“Look, I'm no expert either—I investigate the stuff, I don't practice it—but I've seen magic work, and it…it's like it hides itself in reality. I've never heard of a spell yet that couldn't be called coincidence by some mean-spirited dweeb with a hard-on for skepticism.”

Jo admired the metaphor, but was vague on the point, “Uh-huh…?”

“Say someone does magic for money. He's not gonna open his eyes and find a pile of money on his coffee table, you know? He probably won't even win the lottery or have a relative drop dead and leave him an inheritance. More likely he'll get offered a second job, or a lot of overtime, or his tax return will come early, or he'll finally sell that old car that's been sitting dead in his driveway for a year. So is it coincidence? Hey, get the map out of the glove box.” He considered it. “Please.”

Jo guiltily pocketed her love charm and retrieved the map. “Hard to say if it's coincidence or not.”

“Exactly. But either way—” He glanced toward her for a split second, just long enough to convey his earnestness.
“He does get the money.”

She liked that he generally kept his eyes on the road; he was a safe driver, for a tough guy. “So these charms—I mean, the
protection
she gave us—they really might guard against evil? They might be why the snake didn't bite either of us?”