Spellcasting in Silk: A Witchcraft Mystery (23 page)

“I don’t see why I have to be here,” whined Patience when I refused to take her home, insisting we follow Sailor’s suggestion and reconnect at my apartment. I wasn’t wild about letting Patience into my personal domain, but under the circumstances. . . .

“I think Sailor’s right; we need to work together to figure this out.”

“I don’t have to do any such thing. I agreed to meet you at the Sutro Baths, which just goes to show no good deed goes unpunished. I’m too nice, that’s my problem. It gets me into trouble.”

I glared at her, but she was too intent on her reflection in the rearview mirror to notice.

We arrived at my apartment to find Oscar and Selena bickering over a game of poker. From what I was able to tell, Oscar was trying to teach Selena Five Card Stud, but she turned out to be a much better cheat than he was.

I asked Selena whether the Sutro Baths meant anything special to her or Lupita. She shook her head. I didn’t want to scare her by letting her know what had happened there and instead put in a DVD of
The Jungle Book
and tucked a blanket around her. She and Oscar, in his piggy form, sat on the couch and watched our trio with wide, cautious eyes.

I poured three shots of tequila and Sailor, Patience, and I settled in at the kitchen table.

Sailor unfolded the note. On some kind of strange parchment was a message written in code:

X i,

J I f tpn h pg st. Zpv l j dbo u zpv.

Hj m, p f.

—b g e

“What kind of an extortionist writes in code?” asked Patience, in a scathing tone. “The fool’s criminal career is doomed to be short-lived, I say.”

“Can you read it?” I asked her.

“Of course not. It’s gibberish.”

“I mean ‘read’ it. With your third eye, or whatever.”

She sighed and picked up the note, closing her eyes, releasing a long breath through her nose. After a moment she opened her eyes and shook her head. “Cloaked. You’re dealing with someone who has some knowledge.”

“It looks like . . .” I held the note up to the overhead light. “Yes! I think it’s invisible ink. Probably lemon juice, or vinegar.”

“Or urine,” said Patience.

“That’s disgusting,” I said.

“
What
? It works the same way as lemon juice. Everybody knows this.”

“Why invisible ink?” Sailor interrupted. “Are we dealing with a ten-year-old?”

“Good question,” I said.

I lit a candle and carefully held the note over the flame, not so close it would catch fire but near enough to heat the ink.

Sure enough, more letters emerged. Still, they made no sense.

Xjudi,

J ibwf tpnfuijoh pg zpvst. Zpv lopx j dbo vtf ju bhbjotu zpv.

Hjwf nf uif mkffq, ps fmtf.

—b gsjfoe

“
Xjudi?
Could it be . . . the Basque language, or Navajo, maybe? Something obscure like that?”

“I don’t think so,” said Sailor. “There aren’t enough vowels. Every language uses vowels when it’s written in our alphabet, right?”

Patience shrugged and poured herself another shot of tequila.

“Wheel within a wheel,” said Selena. Apparently overcome with curiosity, she had left the couch and was now hovering near the table, looking at the note over our shoulders.

“Wheel within a wheel?” I asked.

“It’s a simple Caesar shift,” she said.

“I’m sorry?”

“A Caesar shift. It’s a cipher. Rot one.”

“You can decipher this?” I asked. “Is that what you’re saying?”

She nodded. “You just shift the letters over. In this case you would rotate the wheel one letter. That’s why it’s called Rot one.”

“It’s that simple?” Sailor asked.

“A is b, b is c. Like that.”

I grabbed a pencil and replaced each letter with the one next to it in the alphabet. Translated, the note read:

Witch,

I have something of yours. You know I can use it against you.

Give me the ljeep, or else.

—a friend

“Told you,” Selena said, and returned to watch the movie with Oscar.

“Well, there you go,” said Patience, reaching for the tequila again. “Just give him the
ljeep
, and everything’s fine.”

Sailor moved the bottle out of her reach. “Don’t you think you’ve had enough? We need to keep our wits about us.”

“
You’re
not the one who got shot at tonight, fell off a wall, and shoved into a black hole. You wanna see my bruises?”

Sailor poured her a half-shot.

“So, the question now is: what does he mean by
ljeep
?” I asked.

“Maybe he made a mistake,” said Patience. “He meant to write ‘Jeep’, by which he means your precious Mustang. Vanity mirror or no.”

“That’s ridiculous,” I said.

“You have a better idea?” Patience said tartly.

Sailor was looking up
ljeep
on his smartphone.

“Anything?” I asked.

“There’s a big sale on Jeep Wranglers at the dealer on Van Ness.” He scrolled through the rest of the search results. “That’s about it. That can’t be his meaning. Maybe he got it wrong.”

“I want to go home,” Patience whined.

Sailor and I exchanged a glance. I nodded. “I don’t think there’s anything more to be done right now. I’ll cast a protection spell, but I doubt I’ll be threatened again tonight. Apparently I have an
ljeep
this person wants, so I should be safe in the meantime.”

“Then why was he shooting at you at the ruins?” Sailor asked.

“That was related to Lupita. I think he was trying to keep her from telling us something.”

“Probably something about the
ljeep
,” Patience muttered. “Funny word. What rhymes with Jeep? Peep, cheap, leap, creep, weep. . . .”

“I’d better get her home,” said Sailor. “You sure you’re all right?”

“Oscar’s here, and my apartment’s the safest place I know of. It’s like Fort Knox around here.”

He smiled. “A magical Fort Knox.”

He gave me a hug, a kiss, stroked my head, and looked into my eyes. “Take care of you, hear me?”

I nodded. “Thank you for coming to my rescue. You’re my hero.”

“Not that I did much . . . but, I’ll take it,” he said with a warm smile. One more kiss, and then he got my motorcycle helmet out of the closet and tossed it to a sour-looking Patience.

“Let’s go, cousin,” said Sailor. “I’ll take you home.”

“On the
motorcycle
?”

“Limo’s in the shop.”

“Why can’t we use the witch’s Mustang?”

“Take it if you want,” I told Sailor.

“Nah. Then I’d have to come back and change vehicles again. C’mon, Patience. I can see into the future: You’re going to be one heck of a motorcycle mama.”

“For the record, at this moment I hate you both.” Patience took another swig of tequila, slammed her glass on the table, and swept regally past Sailor, snatching the helmet from him.

“Good night, Patience,” I said. I doubted we would ever be best buddies, but we’d shared something tonight.
I grabbed a small jar from a kitchen shelf. “This is mugwort salve—it will help the scrapes and bruises. And . . . thanks for meeting me at the Sutro Baths. It was interesting.”

“Oh, yeah, sure, it was a hoot. Do me a favor? Lose my number.”

I didn’t point out that
she
was the one who had called
me
. I got her meaning.

I fixed Oscar and Selena a snack of cheese and crackers and fruit, and left them to finish the movie.

While they were occupied, I slipped into my bedroom, closed the door, and dialed Graciela.

Tonight I had been shot, chased into a dark hole, left a mysterious note to decipher, and still had a crime—or several—to figure out. But what was really weighing on my mind, what was eating away at me, was what Aidan had said: that I was not destined for love.

So when Graciela answered, I recounted what Aidan had told me. I prayed she would tell me what I wanted to hear: that Aidan was messing with my mind, probably as part of some Machiavellian plan.

“I think he’s right,” she said without hesitation.

“About my needing to work with him, or . . . that I shouldn’t have a relationship with Sailor.”

“Both.”

“What you mean by
that
?” I could hear her eating something, and felt a deep stab of annoyance.

“I heard some rumors. I think something is building
in San Francisco. Think about it,
m’ija,
you have seen a lot of supernatural situations since you arrived in that city—a lot of trouble, even for the likes of you. And it was a parrot who told you to go, no? You know how birds are.
Listo
. Very smart.”

“It was just a fluke—he was repeating something he had heard, probably.”

“It was a sign, and you knew it. It is no accident that you were drawn to the city by the bay.”

“Okay, well, be that as it may, what about the other thing? The . . . love thing?”

“You have always had difficulty understanding that the path of power requires sacrifice.”

“So you’re saying powerful people can’t experience love? My friend Hervé is married and adores his wife.”

“His path is not yours.”

I heard crunching sounds, and some rustling around. I lost my temper.

“What in the world are you
doing
?”

“Eating chips, and making
chiles rellenos
. They used to be your favorite.”

“It’s the middle of the night in Texas.”

“
Como se dice?
What is it you kids say? I’m a ‘party animal.’”

“This is serious, Graciela. I have to know: What will happen? Will I hurt Sailor if I stay with him?”

Even though my witchy intuition was compromised by telephone lines, I could sense that I finally had her full attention. When she spoke, she sounded irked.

“
M
’
ijita
, I am just an old woman. I am not an Oracle. You have to find your own path. There
are
no easy solutions. Yes, you can try to walk away from the truth, from the hard path, just as you did when you were a girl. But you are no longer a child: You are a woman. So deal with it. My dinner’s ready.”

*   *   *

I tucked Selena into her bed on the couch, kissed her on the forehead, and wished her good night.

“Is everything going to be all right?” she asked, her serious eyes searching my face.

“Of course it is,” I said, trying to convince myself as much as her.

She seemed doubtful, so I tried again. “You’ll be okay, Selena. I promise you that I’ll do everything in my power to make sure of that. And I don’t mean to brag or anything . . . but I’m a pretty kick-ass witch.”

She didn’t return my smile but rolled over and closed her eyes.

I went into the kitchen to reconnect with my familiar.

“Oscar, do you have any idea what this is all about?” I whispered.

“Sorry, Mistress. I got nothin’. And you’ve got me on loony girl guard”—he gestured toward Selena,—“so I haven’t even had time to work on my karaoke, much less go out and scout or anything.”

“Okay, thanks. I want you to know I really appreciate your being here. It puts my mind at ease to know you’re on the job.”

“Aw, shucks.” He waved off my thanks and puffed out his chest. “She’s just a slip of a girl, no match for the likes of me.”

“I guess we should all get some rest. No doubt this will be here waiting for us in the morning.”

Oscar crawled into his cubby over the refrigerator, and I sat and gazed at the strange note for a while.
Ljeep
? Could it be a typo, a mistake?

And Patience was right: What kind of extortionist writes an unintelligible note?

I sat back as a wave of weariness washed over me. And dread. If Aidan and Graciela were right, and
something was revving up in San Francisco . . . what did that mean for me, and mine?

It meant I had to be strong. And powerful. As kick-ass a witch as I had just boasted to Selena.

But did it really mean I had to give up Sailor?

Other people drink or meditate or pray when they feel they are at a crossroads. I brew.

I filled my cauldron with river water and put it on the stove to boil. Then I gathered some herbs and roots from my terrace garden and started grinding them with my stone mortar and pestle. Little by little I dropped them, along with a small lock of my hair, into the brew.

I chanted as I did so, stirring the pot doesil until the contents began to swirl on their own. Then I closed my eyes, thrust my face in the steam, breathed deeply, and called to the Ashen Witch.

Finally I used my
athame
—a ceremonial knife—to cut a tiny X in my palm, and held it over the cauldron. As soon as the droplet of blood hit the brew a great burst of steam rose and coalesced overhead: the amorphous face of the Ashen Witch, looking down at me.

I had hoped she might actually speak, or write with smoke in the air like the witch in the
Wizard of Oz
, or otherwise give me a clear message. But instead, all I felt was a growing sense of clarity.

No
. I refused to give up Sailor. I would
not
.

My whole life people had been telling me I was a freak, not like everyone else. First, I was an outcast among my neighbors in Jarod, Texas; later I was weird even among magical folk. I never finished my formal training and I was always getting the rules wrong, bumbling around because I was unaware of how things were “done.” So now I would use it to my advantage. Aidan said magical folks weren’t able to open themselves up to love because it made them vulnerable; but what if I
embraced the vulnerability, and used it the way I did my anger: to make me, braver, stronger?

“Tell me how! Tell me anything!” I begged my guardian spirit, but she was already gone, lost amid the steam that hung just under the ceiling, as mysterious and hard to pin down as the fog hovering over the Bay.

I looked back to see Selena standing at the kitchen table, wide-eyed and frightened.

“It’s all right, sugar. Let’s go to sleep. Want to sleep with me tonight?”

“No. I’ll stay on the couch. Did you figure this out?” she held up the parchment note.

“Not yet. We’re working on it. Do you have any other ideas?”

She shook her head, and let me lead her back to the couch and tuck her in.

*   *   *

I awoke to a thumping sound.

Something was wrong.

A frisson swept up my spine as though an alarm had been tripped. I stopped to listen, then cautiously got out of bed and passed into the living room.

Selena wasn’t on the couch.

I heard a muffled yelling and thumping coming from the kitchen.

A piece of plywood had been wedged over the opening to Oscar’s cubby. I recognized the wood from an old packing crate in the backroom of Aunt Cora’s Closet. But it was covered in symbols that functioned as a magical padlock.

“I’m coming, Oscar!” I yelled. I used a piece of chalk to negate Selena’s childish—but effective—scribbles and then was able to dislodge the wood.

An outraged gobgoyle is not a pretty sight.

“She
hexed
me! That little witch
hexed
me! She caught
me unawares, while I was sleeping! Of all the low-down, dirty . . .”

I was relieved to see that while he was embarrassed at having been tricked, my familiar wasn’t hurt.

“Well, don’t feel too bad,” I said. “I didn’t wake up, either.”

“Yeah, but you never wake up. It’s always
me
that wakes you up.”

“You got me there. Where could she have gone? To
El Pajarito
, do you think?”

“Good riddance, is what I say. I’ll show her, I’ll—”

“Oscar, listen. She was wrong to do what she did, of course she was. But I have to find her. I
have
to.”

“I don’t know where she went! I was asleep, and then . . . I think she sprinkled pixie dust on me or something. I was having the wildest dream, and by the time I woke up she had trapped me! A piece of wood’s no match for the likes of me, but she
hexed
it. That little . . .”

“She didn’t say
any
thing?”

He mumbled something.

“What was that?”

His eyes narrowed. “She said ‘rot too.’
She
should rot, is what.”

“Rot too?” That made no sense. Unless . . . I cast my mind back: Selena had said it was a Caesar something-or-other, wheel within a wheel . . . if Rot One meant to shift the alphabet over one letter, then Rot Two would mean two letters. Maybe whoever wrote the note just threw in an extra complication . . . but why?

The sheet of parchment was still on the kitchen table. I sat down and moved the letters in
ljeep
over one more place.

It spelled
kiddo
.

Give me the kiddo, or else.