The Devil's Metal (31 page)

“Stranger.”

When we finally found the house with the
right address, I was quite surprised to see it was the most
well-kept house on the street. It was dark and small with a red
glow from the windows and beads instead of curtains. There was a
tended garden with flowering plants that smelled heavenly. We went
up the stony path to the front door and, after taking a steadying
breath, Sage knocked on it.

We waited, listening.

“Are you even sure anyone is home? Is she
expecting you?”

He gave me a look indicating I needed to
shut up. So I did.

We waited some more, and he was about to
knock again when we heard the slide of the peephole. After a few
beats, as if the person was deciding whether to open the door or
not, we heard many locks being undone and finally the door
opened.

The woman was lit from behind with that
eerie crimson glow. I couldn’t really see her face, but she was
short with pulled back dark hair.

“Can I help you?” she asked in a full-on
Creole accent.

“Hi, I’m sorry to bother you so late,” Sage
began.

“Late is all relative. What do you
want?”

I eyed Sage expectantly.
Yes
, I
thought.
What do you want?

“I got your card off my uncle. You met him
once when his band was here, the Mariachi Seven. His name was
Felipe Gonzales.”

“He sounds very Mexican. I think I recall
him.”

Her head turned in my direction briefly. I
smiled faintly before her attention went back to Sage. “But you
didn’t answer my question. What do you want?”

“I need your help with a hex removal.”

I don’t know what I expected Sage to say but
I didn’t expect that. The woman, however, just raised her brow and
calmly said, “All right. Come on in.”

I followed Sage inside the house. The woman
pulled on the string of a table lamp and I was able to see her more
clearly. She was pretty and surprisingly young, maybe thirty at the
very oldest. Her eyes were small and dark, skin smooth and pale,
eyebrows full and expressive. She was wearing a long African
looking tunic made up of oranges and browns. She stood in front of
us and clasped her hands together.

“I am Mambo Maryse,” she announced. “Please
tell me your names.”

“I’m Sage Knightly,” he said. “This is Dawn
Emerson.”

“Are you a couple?”

“No,” I said quickly, perhaps protesting a
bit too much.

She nodded, clearly noticing.

“Do you have money up front?”

Sage was caught off-guard. He paused and
pulled out his wallet from his dark jeans. “I’ve never done this
before, I don’t know how much.”

“I charge by the half hour,” she answered
simply. “Fifty dollars. A genuine hex removal will take at least an
hour. We will have to investigate the problem first, then I’ll have
to make a potion specifically for you.”

Potion? I looked around the room and noticed
how normal it all looked. Just the neat and tidy, albeit dark, home
of a single woman.

She noticed me staring.

“My office is downstairs.” She waited until
Sage gave her a hundred dollar bill then she turned gracefully and
made her way down the narrow hallway. “Come with me, please.”

We walked down a short flight of narrow red
lacquered stairs and then we were in her office. This was more like
it. It was dark, the walls were a lush purple color, and books,
tomes of all sizes, were piled high on dark wood bookcases. There
was a little table in the corner that looked like it belonged at an
herbalist’s, piled high with strange jars, liquids, and powders.
There was also a kettle and bags of tea, which I assumed were for
tea leaf reading. In the middle of the room was a round table with
two chairs on either side with an honest to god crystal ball on it
as well as a pendulum and a stack of cards. Two white candles
burned brightly in a silver holder.

Instinctively I grabbed Sage’s hand. He gave
me a squeeze and held on tightly.

Mambo Maryse brought over another chair from
the side of the room and put it at the table. She nodded at it.

“Here, sit down, please.”

We did so. The candlelight flickered
ominously on her face as she studied us.

“I would like to hear what is going on. Why
do you think you’re being hexed? From the beginning, if you
will.”

I kept hold of his warm hand. He steadied
himself with a deep breath and launched into it.

“I don’t really know when it started. We’ve
just had a lot of bad luck lately. Especially on the tour. I’m a
musician like my uncle. I’m the guitarist in a band called Hybrid,
a bit of a hybrid of sounds: metal, rock, and blues. Anyway, a few
months ago, someone broke into our rehearsal space and stole all of
our equipment.”

I looked at him in shock. I hadn’t heard any
of this.

He continued, his eyes watching the flames
dance. “It was a lot of money. Aside from my acoustic which I kept
in my house, everything was lost. We weren’t even going to do a big
tour for Molten Universe—that’s our new album—a lot of the songs
don’t translate well live and we just wanted to get on with
recording the next one. But now we had no instruments and no money.
On top of that, album sales weren’t as strong as the last two. So
we had to do this tour. We needed to earn our keep. And then things
started getting, well, weirder. I had this feeling like I was being
followed everywhere I went. My dreams were about fire and monsters,
things you’d see in the movies. I couldn’t sleep anymore and I was
worried about the tour. I just had this terrible fucking feeling
like it was all a big mistake. Then Graham, our drummer, had this
great idea of getting a journalist to cover the tour. Our band
manager agreed and found Dawn here.”

The woman’s eyes flicked to me briefly then
went back to Sage. I noticed she was watching him closely, almost
in disbelief.

“Dawn can attest that the tour’s been crazy.
I don’t know if you follow the news, but we had a girl, a fan, die
from a drug overdose in our trailer a few nights ago. Then our
bassist went batshit crazy and she’s being treated in a hospital.
Last night our stage in Nashville collapsed, though thank god no
one was hurt. Tonight there was barely anyone at the show. We’re
losing money now and we’re going to get sued over the stage
collapse.”

She squinted at him. “That’s it?”

He looked puzzled and laughed nervously.
“Well, what more do you want?”

“And you think there is a hex on you? Who do
you think would do that?”

He shrugged and exchanged a look with me.
Mambo Maryse was watching me closely now.

“I think I would like to hear from Dawn
here. She seems to have a different story than you do.”

I opened my mouth to say something but she
continued, “But first I would like the truth to compare it to. And
though I believe what you say has happened to you, is happening to
you, I don’t believe you’re being honest with either me or your
friend. Or perhaps yourself.”

She put her hands on the table, palms
up.

“Put your hands in mine.”

I let go of Sage. He seemed nervous.
Terrified, actually. I didn’t like seeing him terrified. He was
supposed to be my rock. He was certainly built like one.

“What are you going to do?” he asked
tersely.

“I’m just going to hold your hands. That’s
all. I will see if I can get a reading off of you. If not, I will
use ceromancy.” She winked at me, the first show of humor. “That’s
just reading candle wax.”

“Do it,” I whispered, kicking him lightly
under the table. She wasn’t going to bite. At least, I hoped she
wouldn’t.

With great reluctance, Sage laid his hands
in hers. They were so large and dark compared to her small, pale
ones. She gripped him lightly and closed her eyes.

We watched as she sat there, motionless at
first. Then she began to frown and twitch. It got worse and I
wondered if she was having a seizure of some sort. It reminded me
of my brother on rough days.

Finally, she grew completely still. Sage and
I leaned forward, holding our breaths, watching her closely.

Her eyes flew open. They were completely
black from rim to rim.

I stifled a scream. We were too scared to
move.

She spoke in a thick and raspy metallic
voice. “You, fool. Did you really think you could get out of the
deal? We told you the conditions and you agreed. This is your fate,
Sage Knightly, this is the fate you chose.”

Then the woman closed her eyes, twitched
once more, and shot up out of her chair, her eyes back to normal
and filled with fright. She pointed at him, hand shaking.

“Get out!” she cried. “You get out of here!
Your lie could have cost me!”

“What’s going on?” I scrambled to my feet,
nearly knocking over the chair.

Mambo Maryse shook on the spot. “You may
invite a demon into your life, but you do not invite a demon into
my home!”

“Demons?” I cried out.

Sage refused to move. He stared the woman
down.

“I’m not leaving until you tell me what to
do! I paid you!”

The woman pulled the bill out of her robe
and threw it on the table. “You take your money and get out. You
knew this wasn’t a hex. You lied!”

“Sage, what the fuck is she talking about!?”
I screamed, my focus swinging between the two.

“Tell her,” she commanded. “She deserves to
know what you dragged her into.”

“Hey, I didn’t drag her into anything!” he
yelled, coming around the table toward her, a towering man on a
mission. “My manager did!”

The woman stood her ground. In all the fear
and confusion, I was impressed.

“Your manager is part of it! Didn’t you
question it? You knew you made the bargain, you knew it.”

“I was only fifteen!” he bellowed, his voice
booming across the room. Utter anguish contorted his face. “I
wanted a better life! I shouldn’t have to suffer for it!”

“But you have been. You knew this was
coming. You’re going to lose everything that was given to you.”

“So how do I stop it?!”

“You can’t,” she told him. A flash of
sympathy clouded her eyes. “You can’t stop it.”

“Would someone tell me what the fuck is
going on here?” I yelled, throwing my hands up in the air.

She looked down at the ground. “You need to
leave. Both of you. Sage, I suggest you fill her in while there is
still time. You’re only twenty-seven for a few more days.”

My eyes widened.

“I’ll go,” Sage said, defeated. He eyed the
bill on the table but didn’t pick it up. “But please, tell me what
I can do to save any of the others. They shouldn’t have to suffer
because of me.”

“I said there’s nothing you can do. You made
a deal with black forces. Almost with Satan himself. There is no
getting out of it. Your only hope is the code.”

“Code?”

Her mouth jerked briefly with dry amusement.
“A moral code. They only take what is owed. Nothing more and
nothing less. You need to think about exactly what the deal was.
What it is you asked for. That’s the only place you’ll find
answers. I can’t give them to you.”

I exhaled sharply through my nose, trying to
keep my frustration and anger under control. The woman was being
kind and giving us this much.

I put my hand on his arm. “Come on, we need
to go.”

Sage sighed and gave me a quick nod. We left
up the stairs, leaving Mambo Maryse behind to start cleansing her
office, chanting and waving smoke around.

Neither of us bothered to call a cab from
her house, so we walked down the dark, quiet street in silence. I
waited for him to speak. I knew if I started, I’d end up crying or
screaming or hitting him. I didn’t do well when frustrated. I
didn’t even know where to begin.

We were turning onto the main road when Sage
finally spoke.

“I’m going to tell you everything,” he said
quietly. “You might not believe me. But it’s the truth. You might
hate me. But it’s the truth.”

“I’ll try to keep an open mind,” I said.
After hearing monsters in the dressing room and seeing another
entity speak through our medium, there wasn’t much I wouldn’t
believe. I was as willing as they got.

“When I was fifteen, I went camping with
Robbie and his family. They were outdoorsy people. My dad was
always working on the farm so I didn’t have that many chances to
get away. And I liked Robbie’s family. They always welcomed me.
They had what I once had. So we went to Lake Shasta. It was the
usual spot for people in the area. It’s beautiful. Warm. The lake
is full of fish, this unbelievable green-blue, and the banks are
this rich red earth. We stayed on one of the many peninsulas that
jutted out into the water. Robbie’s parents in one tent. Me and
Robbie in the other.

“I woke up in the middle of the night
thinking that someone was calling my name. Part of me thought I was
still dreaming. I got up and realized I had to pee anyway. I left
the tent, not waking Robbie, and walked through the darkness. The
area there at night is pretty spooky. It’s alive with creatures. I
saw the calm eyes of a gray fox as I walked down the path toward
the lake edge. Some animal growled and moaned across the shore.

“I didn’t think Lake Shasta was sacred in
any way. It’s a manmade lake, after all. So I pissed in it as teens
do. Then I put my ass down on the ground and started to cry. I
remember feeling so distraught, so helpless and alone. I guess
years of not dealing with my mother’s death caught up with me. I
had so much want inside, ripping me apart. I had just joined the
band with Robbie but I was the drummer. I wanted to be more than
that. I saw Mickey and his girlfriend Noelle. I was jealous. I was
a scrawny little shit back then, and unfortunately I was in love
with Noelle and she’d never given me a second look. We were poor
too, and my dad was struggling. Things were just bad. And to a
fifteen-year-old, it was life-threatening.