“More than I want to.” If he polished that glass much more, it would disintegrate.
“Can I have a beer to go with the lecture and the disdain? Or do I have to dry swallow it?”
He scowled some more, but he did pull me another Amstel Light. I was going to have to take a good long look at my behind the next time I was at the dojo. Maybe Paul was trying to tell me something.
“I want a lemon drop.” Meredith plopped down on the stool next to mine.
If I thought Paul was scowling at me, that was because I had not yet seen the look he was going to give to Meredith. I was surprised she didn’t fall back off her stool. He then turned to me and gave me a wide-eyed what-gives sort of stare.
“Meredith and I have some business to transact,” I told him.
“And you had to transact it here? In my bar?” He actually sounded a little panicky.
“Apparently,” I said. “Now could you make her a lemon drop, please?”
“Those things are pretty strong.” A furrow developed between his brows. It took me a second to place the look. He looked worried. Honestly, there’s something kind of comical about a worried werewolf. I tried to hide my smile. Judging from the way Paul glared at me, I wasn’t entirely successful.
Meredith leaned forward on the bar, plumping her breasts on her folded arms and said, “That’s okay. I like things strong.”
I could swear that Paul gulped.
To be polite about it, Meredith is a bit of a bombshell. She’s not quite as young as she used to be, but in all fairness, Paul is easily two or three hundred years old. Tonight she had on a pair of tight jeans, a low-cut purple blouse that had something sparkly woven into it and a pair of high-heeled sandals. Norah would have called her a cougar, and to be honest, she was practically purring. Maybe it wasn’t such a bad label for her.
I once again had on jeans and a black tank top. Maybe it was time to go shopping. I glanced around and counted about five guys who were covertly checking Meredith out, despite the fact that she had ten to fifteen years on each and every one of them. Maybe it was time to have Meredith take me shopping.
She reached across the bar into the little tray where Paul kept the drink garnishes and grabbed a Maraschino cherry. Holding it by the stem, she ran it across her lower lip and then put it into her mouth, pulling the stem out with an audible pop.
Paul dropped the glass he was holding and it shattered on the floor. He let loose a string of obscenities and went off to get a broom.
“Do you do that to him on purpose?” I asked, turning to her.
She smiled. “Do what?”
Paul came back and managed to make Meredith’s drink without smashing anymore stemware. He set it down in front of her without a word and moved to the opposite end of the bar. Meredith smiled again.
“So show me this object you’ve brought to help summon your imp.”
I pulled the flute out of my backpack, unwrapped it from the cloth that I’d put around it and set it in front of her on the bar. From the corner of the bar, I saw Paul’s head come up as he tried to scent it. It’s a tricky thing with metal. I have trouble with it, too.
Meredith drained half her lemon drop. “Kokopelli’s flute?”
“Look again.” I sipped demurely at my Amstel Light. One of us had better stay at least a little bit in control.
She picked it up and turned it in her hands, running her long fingers up and down its length. “I’m getting something from it, but it isn’t nearly as strong as it should be.”
I resisted suggesting that she pucker up and blow. Paul, on the other hand, seemed to be turning a really interesting shade of purple. He strode over from his end of the bar, snatched the flute out of her hands and said, “Set that down before you get arrested.”
“For holding a flute in public?” Meredith’s eyes were wide and she was clearly amused.
“For public indecency.” He set the flute down on the bar and stalked away again.
“I’ve never seen him like that.” I turned back to Meredith.
She shrugged. “I have a knack. That, by the way, is not Kokopelli’s flute.”
“So I’ve been told.”
“It’s got some magic but not nearly enough, and not of the right kind either. That one might be Greek, but I’m not sure. I’d have to spend some more time with it.”
“I don’t really care about that one. I need the real one back.” I explained about the imp and how I ended up with the fake flute.
Meredith nodded and drained the rest of her lemon drop. “Hey, Paul, mix me another one,” she called, leaning over the bar again.
Tight-lipped and stiff legged, he mixed up another lemon drop and brought it over. “Anything else?” He didn’t sound as though he really wanted to get us anything else, but Meredith ignored his sarcasm.
“Give me some of those pretzels, too. Melina and I are going to be in back for a little bit. Can you make sure we’re not disturbed?”
Paul rolled his eyes again. “Do you have to do that stuff here?”
“You know why I do it here.”
His shoulders sagged. He brought us the pretzels and he shooed us away. “Go on, then. Get it over with. And clean up after yourselves,” he called after us as we walked toward the back of the bar where the storeroom was.
“Why do you do it here?” I asked as I walked alongside Meredith. Meredith didn’t so much walk as stride. She was shorter than me, but she still managed to make it look like her legs were about a mile longer than mine.
“There’s this spot in the storeroom. It has . . . power.” A slow smile spread across her face, and I wondered exactly what kind of power the spot possessed.
“Is that what you use on Paul? Did you cast a spell on him, because I’ve never seen him act this way around a woman.” And I’d seen Paul on the prowl.
Meredith smiled wider. “Not all of my powers are magical.”
We walked through the Staff Only door and into the storeroom. Meredith gestured to a broom leaning against the wall. “Grab that, Melina. Now, do me a favor and sweep that spot over there under the hanging lamp.”
There wasn’t much on the floor, but I swept it anyway. While I was doing that, Meredith started pulling items from the giant hobo bag she had set down in the corner.
She strode into the center of the pool of light from the hanging bulb and placed the flute, the lemon drop and the pretzels on the floor directly beneath the bulb. I’d watched Meredith cast circles a few times and always wondered how much of it was really necessary and how much of it was theatrics. It always seemed a little bit cheesy to me, but it worked. The few times I’d tried to cast a circle, well, let’s just say that geometry was not my strong point.
Meredith closed her eyes and let her head fall back, her arms hanging loose at her sides. I watched the rise and fall of her chest as she breathed in and out, three times. A stillness came over the room. The noises of the bar seemed to come from far away now. She opened her eyes and lifted her arms over her head. Her long hair crackled with energy. She walked the perimeter of her circle for the first time.
She held her hand out to me. I’d seen it done often enough that I knew what she wanted. I grabbed the sage smudge stick and handed it to her. She held it in front of her. I lit it with one of the matches that had been lying next to it on the floor. I was rewarded with a small smile.
Meredith walked the circle again. This time I could see a faint glow in the wake of her footsteps. She handed the smudge stick back to me and held out her hand again. I gave her the small sack I knew she expected. She walked the circle again, this time sprinkling salt from the sack after her as she went. The glow grew brighter, burning a pale blue.
She moved to the center of the circle and chanted, “Three times round the circle is cast. I stand between the worlds at last.”
The circle glowed on its own now, flickering from blue to green and back again. She pulled a piece of chalk from her jeans pocket and crouched to the floor. She sketched a pentagram on the floor within the circle, keeping the flute, the lemon drop and the pretzels at the center of the pentagram.
Then she started to call Joe, and that’s when things got weird.
Remember that Eagles song, “Witchy Woman”? The raven hair? The ruby lips? The sparks flying from her fingertips? Well, that is precisely what was going down in the back of McClannigan’s Olde Towne Pub. Meredith’s hair floated like a dark nimbus around her head and crackled with blue light. As she turned slowly in the center of the pentagram, arms outstretched to her sides, her fingers left a glow of energy behind them.
“Joe,” she said. “Joe, I have something of yours. You have something of another’s. Come to me, Joe.”
Then she stopped and closed her eyes. Joe appeared in the center of the pentagram with an audible pop.
Joe whirled around, searching the room and spotted me. His leather eyelids lowered over his eyes. “You,” he said. “What do you want?”
“I’m pretty sure you know,” I said.
He scowled.
Meredith knelt down next to him and lifted the lemon drop. “Are you thirsty, Joe? Did you come a long way?”
“Long enough,” he said, eyeing the glass. “I am a little parched. Maybe just a sip.”
Meredith handed him the glass, his nails clinking against it. He took a sip and his eyes widened. “Tasty!”
She took the lemon drop back and offered him a pretzel, which he took and nibbled in a manner way more delicate than I would have predicted. I’d figured Joe for a cram it in his mouth kind of guy. He finished the pretzel and reached for the drink, licking his lips with a lizard-like forked tongue.
After he’d finished most of the drink and about half the pretzels, Meredith said, “You know you have to give it back, right?”
His shoulders slumped. “He didn’t want the one I sent.”
“It’s not his, Joe. He wants his back.” Meredith scratched the back of his neck with her long fingernails.
Joe stared up at Meredith with a look of adoration on his face and shivered with delight. “I can see that. Perhaps we could work out a deal?”
I chimed in. “I think it’s too late for that. He’s kind of pissed at this point. If you hand it over now, I can get it to him and we can all put this behind us.”
“It’s not like I have it on me.” He glanced at me.
“Is it far?”
His head drooped and he shook it. “No. Not too far. We’re in Old Sac, right?”
“Yep.”
He nodded. “I can take you there now.”
I looked at Meredith. She’d have to release the circle. She nodded and stood back up. Walking backward around the circle, the glowing edges receded more and more as she stepped through until she’d been around three times. She knelt again. “It was nice to meet you, Joe. Merry meet and merry part and merry meet again.”
“A pleasure to meet you as well, Witch.”
I opened my backpack and Joe hopped in. It was going to be stuffy, but there was no way that he could walk through McClannigan’s without someone raising a ruckus or thinking they were having a psychotic break, both outcomes to be avoided. As I headed out of the storeroom, Meredith called out to me, “Send Paul back here, would you, Melina? Tell him there’s something I want to show him.”
I smiled and shook my head. I could only imagine.
15
WHEN WE GOT OUT OF THE BAR, I ASKED JOE WHERE WE WERE going.
“Down the block. Look for a set of white wooden stairs leading down and some columns.” His high voice was muffled but still easy to hear through the backpack.
I started walking. Sure enough, toward the end of the block was a set of stairs leading down from the street. That wasn’t all that unusual. Sacramento is, after all, a raised city. The weird thing was, the stairs didn’t really lead to anything. I’m not saying there was an abyss at the bottom, but it was just a vacant area. Grass had grown up through what little had been paved. A few columns still stood, but several were down on the ground in various stages of disintegration. I peered at the top of one of the fallen capitals. Sacramento Iron-works 1860.
I wondered what the area had been. Some kind of patio or promenade, maybe? I ducked underneath the stairs out of view of the street above or the alleyway that ran alongside. We were invisible or might as well have been. I could hear people walking by on the sidewalk, but I couldn’t see them.
I set the backpack down on the ground as gently as I could, although I heard a little grunt from inside anyway. I unzipped it, and Joe hopped out and shook out his wings. “Have you ever considered, I don’t know, washing that thing? It smells like cheese in there and not in a good way.”
Everybody’s a critic. “Sorry. I don’t usually use it as a form of transport. Now where’s the flute?”
“This way.” Joe twitched his head in the direction of a cellar door that hadn’t been visible from the street.
I tried the handle, but it was locked. Joe shook his head and shoved at my knees to push me aside. Using his talons like a set of lock picks, he had the door open in a matter of seconds. “How do you get along with those sausage-sized fingers?” he asked, shaking his head as he led the way into the dank, dirty-floored space that the open door revealed.
I followed more slowly. The smell of the river reminded me of the
kiang shi
. We were only a few blocks from the temple and their resting place, and the sun was getting ready to set.
“You’re complaining about the smell inside my backpack when you hang out in this place?” Along with the scent of the river, I detected the pungent odor of sweat and a faint undertone of decaying garbage.
