by Paula Jolin
Mariam drove right past the end of Aliya’s street. “No, I’m not taking you home yet,” she said. “Not before I talk some sense into you. Your parents, I don’t think you have any idea how much you’re upsetting them.”
Her parents. That’s who she should be thinking about. The parents who grounded her after the séance when the car didn’t clean up quite as nicely as it should have. Baba, grabbing his jacket without a word, storming off to the pizza shop. Mama, shrieking, wringing her hands—anyone would have thought the car was alive and her daughter dead.
“I know you don’t believe it,” said Mariam, “but they’re just worried about you.”
Of course she believed it. Wasn’t that worry, those expectations, part of the problem?
“I’m worried, too,” her cousin continued. “Everyone is. Sherine wants to know why you’re avoiding her in the halls, whispering in corners with that Caribbean girl.”
What had Aliya been thinking, getting into this car? An enclosed space on wheels—she was at Mariam’s mercy. No surprise, Mariam took her trapped silence for an invitation to go on. “Trevor was more of a kelb than his dog was,” she said. “You deserve someone who respects you, who respects women. You deserve a good Muslim who obeys God’s law.” Aliya crossed her arms, looked out the window as Mariam kept going. “A million girls in school who would be happy to swing it with him, but no, he has to go and pick a decent Muslim girl.”
Decent Muslim girl. Where had she heard—
“You wrote to him, didn’t you?” Aliya said. “You told him to stay away from me or you’d chop off his head.”
“Of course not,” said Mariam, but it was her shaky voice she used, the same one that had denied ever having had a boyfriend.
“It was you who broke into Trevor’s room and smashed it up, wasn’t it?” She hadn’t been thinking about Trevor’s room the right way. All concerned with what might be hiding there, she never asked: Who hated Trevor so much that they’d beat up his pillows after he died? “Pull over,” she said.
“Of course I didn’t! I would never go in the room of a non-maharam, a man who’s not a relative. If my husband ever found out . . .” Mariam drew a hand across her throat. Her voice was steadier this time, more earnest, but didn’t liars improve with practice?
Aliya opened the door.
“Aliya!” The car came to a stop just in time; Aliya’s legs were already on their way to the ground. She didn’t bother slamming the door closed, just took off down the road. Mariam had taken Davis Drive; if Aliya jumped the fence by the corner house, she’d find herself in the maze of alleys behind the downtown shops.
“Aliya!” Behind her, Mariam was swearing. And putting the car in park and getting out to close the door because, really, she had no choice.
Ba-da-di-da-da. A text message. She glanced over her shoulder, saw Mariam climbing back into the car. No time to check it now. The red house was in sight. Time to pump her legs and run a little faster.
TWENTY-ONE
GILLIAN SET her chai tea down on the corner table. Almost a week since the séance, and she’d finally marshaled the courage to tell those girls what she was thinking. Of course, she’d been texting them all evening, and had she heard back even once? Here it was going on nine thirty, and not a skinny Arab girl, not a trendy Japanese one, in the place.
She pulled a pack of cigarettes out of her bag and placed them next to her cup. What was wrong with this chupidee table? There, that leg was higher than the others. Maybe if she pressed down here . . . oh, shit. The paper cup bobbled and there you were, tea all over the table, all over the cigarettes. Stupid table. Stupid tea. Stupid guy behind the counter, filling the cup to the very top.
“Let me get that for you.”
A firm hand wiped away the mess with a paper napkin. An expensive silver watch clinked against the table. Gillian looked up. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“I saw you through the window,” said Nick. Shrimps, man. Just when she’d most wanted to avoid him, too. “You didn’t return any of my calls—did you even get my e-mail?— so I figured I better grab you while I can.” He crumpled the napkin and tossed it in the nearby trash bin. “Like I told you, I’ve got your evidence.”
“I’m meeting friends,” said Gillian. “Two friends. So, sorry, no room for you and your evidence.”
“There’s room,” said Nick. “Better be. I think you have something for me, don’t you?” He looked up at the menu board. “Three forty-nine for a latte? Then I’ll take . . . two thousand, eight hundred and sixty-five of them. Keep the change.” Smug, stupid boy. She hated it when he rang things up in his head, like a cash register with legs and a little piggy between them. Did he actually think he impressed people?
He did. He sat there and preened, stroking his chin. Jackass.
She took a deep breath and a sip out of her half-empty cup at the same time. Not like she’d forgotten Nick’s threats, just that she had other things to worry about.
He leaned over and pulled up a briefcase. Briefcase? And the guy couldn’t figure out why girls blew him off and he ended up romancing the screen? He edged his chair around so that his back was to the room. “I’ve heard interesting things about you lately, Gillian,” he said. “Going places, doing things that aren’t quite the norm for you.”
Gillian caught her breath. Caught her cup, too, which was about to bobble itself off the table. Had Nick been spying on her? Had he climbed into his car and followed her as she drove out of the bright lights, big city, through the winding roads of the countryside, up, up, up into the state forest? Had he watched from the top of the hill as three girls lit a fire and danced?
She shook herself. Ridiculous. He’d be blackmailing her now, if he’d been there, something about vandalizing state property. Instead he was lining up the numbers on the lock, flipping the briefcase open, pulling out a sheaf of papers. “First things first,” he said, passing her an orange folder. “Photo evidence.” He cast a quick glance around the room. “My guess is, you don’t want anyone seeing those, so you should be careful—”
Gillian yanked the photos out of the pocket. The first was a blond, shot from behind, hair swept up in some kind of chignon. Emmie, clad in pale lingerie that didn’t quite cover her bottom. Gorm, man.
“Told you so,” said that smarmy ass. He punched some buttons, held the shiny black iPhone to his ear. Jeezan ages, she needed to find a way to pin all this on him. Visiting a prostitute was a crime, too, wasn’t it? She’d love to see his face when they took all his possessions and handed him an orange jumpsuit in exchange.
Back to the photos. She grimaced. She wasn’t a prude— even if she’d left T and T when she was too young to wear the really sexy Carnival clothes—she just thought most people looked more attractive with clothes on. Especially people she had to see at school every day.
Photo 2: Full-length Emmie doing some kind of strip tease. Photo 3: Emmie and fat Ronald from Am Civ class, his surprisingly long legs stretched out on the bed. Photo 4, photo 5, photos 6, 7, 8, 9: More of the same, Emmie with some naked guy. Nevil Carter, uglier than ever with that hairy chest. The pale ass of Haroun Suresh. Geoff Seaver from behind—no, not Geoff, the shoulders were too broad. And what did it matter anyway? A sigh of relief as she turned over the last one. No Trevor. Not that she expected to find him there, but you never knew—and then she’d have to tell Aliya about it, and Aliya had such mistaken ideas about the kind of guy Trevor was.
“So? What’s this got to do with me? Go blackmail Emmie.”
iPhone still at his ear, he took out a red folder with the other hand. “Financial records,” he said.
Gillian took up the thick folder and pulled out another sheaf of papers. Copies of credit card bills on top—bills for rooms at the Holiday Inn.
Underneath, receipts printed out on paper with a formal The Matchmaker letterhead. Signed in thick black ink, Trevor Sanders. Copies of checks—made out to Trevor, yep, $1000 each.
None of them had
known the bastard they were dealing with.
Underneath the checks, bank statements. The one she was looking for, though, the last one, wasn’t there. Where the fuck had Trevor hidden the money?
“Again, so what? None of this has anything to do with me.”
Yellow folder. Thickest of all. Pages and pages of her e-mails to Trevor. i got cat wilks to sign, she’d written a couple of months ago. hotter than lava, that gyul. we can ask the cash for dis one—we gonna be rich. And another: don’t go for flat boobs mehself, but haroun suresh lapped up pix of melinda tanner (saint sebastien day school, no?) i think he’ll pay double. Haroun Suresh. The very same Haroun Suresh who was lapping up Emmie in the photo . . .
Gillian felt a little sick. She turned over all the pages in turn, went back to the bank statements—sure enough, Nick had removed all evidence of his own involvement. So much for the john charge.
“So,” said Nick. He’d finally let go of the stupid iPhone and was leaning across the table to take his folders. Maybe she should have tried to steal them, snatched them up and run out the back door? But what good would a bunch of copies do her? How had he gotten those e-mails, anyway? Damn that Trevor, she’d told him and told him about Internet security, but did he ever listen? “I’ll take my money in crisp one-hundred-dollar bills.”
“I don’t have your money, mook,” said Gillian. Then regretted it. Sweet Jesus, he could probably have her arrested, the evidence in those files. Procurement, they called it, so they didn’t have to use “pimp” in public. Even if she got off, that word would haunt her. Down in Trinidad, they read the New York Post, the National Enquirer, too.
And imagine if she didn’t get off? If twelve people in a jury box couldn’t make out her accent and believed Nick’s white-skinned lies? She’d be the one claiming the jumpsuit. “I mean, Trevor hid all the money. My money, too. I’m looking for it.” She swallowed. Swallowed her anger, swallowed her disgust. “When I find it, of course I’ll give you yours back.”
“And I’m supposed to believe you because . . .”When she didn’t answer, Nick leaned forward, face balanced on the palms of his hands. Who did he think he was, Lord Drake of the gothic novel? “Of course, there are always other ways to pay.”
Anger bubbled back. “I don’t think so, jackass. I am not some kind of—some kind of Emmie.” Damn, she’d have to call that girl, see if she could get some evidence of her own. “I don’t take money for sex, and I sure as hell don’t use sex to pay my debts. I’ll get you the stupid money, Nick, I have more than a few maps in my treasure-hunting kit.” Like obeah. Her stomach clenched. That unexpected rain running down her neck, seeping into her clothes, putting out a fire that might have enveloped the forest tree by tree. Her hands, burning on the metal handle. She found herself opening the right one, then the left. Still uninjured, still unmarked.
Nick had the gall to reach across the table, to touch her fingers, still wrapped around the paper cup. “Well, it wouldn’t be all about sex.” He was touching her—damn him, making her skin crawl—but not looking at her. “I mean, I’m in it for the whole thing. I’m looking for a girlfriend. You wouldn’t have to think about it as paying a debt, Gillian. You could just think: he’s my boyfriend, he’s trying to help me out.” Nick gave a corny little laugh. “And my parents are very liberal, so you wouldn’t have to worry about the race thing.”
Gillian shuddered. From over her shoulder, someone said, “Hey, what are we missing?” and someone else said, “Hey Gillian, hey Nick.”
Miya and Aliya to the rescue.
“I didn’t know you guys were friends,” said Aliya as she pulled up a chair and swung her legs over the side. She wore black jeans and cowboy boots.
“We’re not,” said Gillian.
Nick gave another little laugh. “Not exactly friends,” he said, so coy he sounded like a girl. “I was just asking Gillian out to dinner on Saturday night, an intimate twosome at P.F. Chang’s.” Aliya’s look: straight out of a horror movie. Miya bent her head and tried to fix the uneven table leg. “I’m thrilled to say she told me yes.” He scraped back his chair and stood up. “Six o’clock okay?” he asked Gillian.
Say no. Say, Never in a zillion years. Say, Here’s the ten thousand I owe you? “I’ll call you,” she got out, between her teeth.
He swept up his briefcase, dodged two tables full of people typing on their laptops, and made it to the door.
“So,” said Miya. “You and Nick, huh? Young love, how inspiring.”
“Oh, shut up,” said Gillian. “Where have you chupidees been all night? It’s almost ten.”
“Hiding from my parents,” said Aliya. She reached over and grabbed the tea, flicked the little plastic piece open, drank. “Want some?” Miya shook her head. “I told you like five times that I was grounded.”
“So how’d you get here?”
“My window.”
Gillian swiped her tea back before Aliya drank the whole thing. “What’ll you do if you’re caught?”
Aliya pulled her hair off her face. “I’m not sure I’m going back.”
Gillian drained the tea. She’d been thinking the same thing. Time to find her own way to get out of here. Maybe she could get Nick drunk and put the plane ticket on his credit card.
“Hey,” said Aliya. “You sent us about five hundred texts. ‘Urgent,’ you said. ‘Must meet.’ Speak up—what’s going on?”
She’d meant to tell them she was getting out. Leaving the obeah to them if they wanted it, and to the man in the white turban if they didn’t. How had her hands survived unscathed? Someone—something—had to have intervened. Step back, jumbies, she’d planned to say. Gillian Smith got the message.
The tea in her belly should have warmed her, but she went cold instead. It wasn’t really possible to say good-bye to obeah once you’d welcomed it in, was that it? Kill that thought. But the stupid thought lived on, echoed, reproduced. What had given her the crazy idea that she could hedge her bets with magic, with obeah of all things? Obeah, whose very purpose was to upend the future.
“Gillian?” said Aliya. “We’re not mind readers over here.” Something flashed on the other side of the table: Miya’s ringed fingers, her oval eyes.
“Sorry,” said Gillian. She rearranged her thoughts, stuffed the dark one way down in the back. Aliya and Miya were in this too, weren’t they? “Did you guys notice anything strange the other night?”
Stupid question. The whole idea, them in the forest, was strange. But Miya’s eyes widened as she said, “You felt it too?” and Aliya, sure, sad, said, “Trevor.”
Gillian locked eyes with Miya. “When I picked up the bucket of pee, the metal handle was branding-iron hot. Scars-on-your-palms-for-the-rest-of-your-life hot.” She lifted her hands slowly, held them up to the other girls. “By the time I got back to the car, they were absolutely fine. It was obeah that made them whole, had to be.”
Miya ran one finger across her bottom lip. “Maybe it wasn’t as hot as you thought,” she said. “Heat can be tricky, like when you cross a beach on a hot day—feels like your toes are going to burn right off, but once you stick them in the water, you’re fine.”
A comforting idea. Gillian stared into her smooth palms again. She heard her own screams echo in her ears, felt the sharp bite of searing metal. And found herself shaking her 145 head. “So you think nothing happened that night? Just us playing dress up and pretend?”
Miya looked away. “I didn’t say that.”
And anyway, that didn’t explain the fire, did it? Carefully cordoned off by rocks, and then—swoosh. Out of the pit and raging toward the trees.
“It wasn’t something strange that happened,” said Aliya. “Trevor was there.”
A little shiver ran down Gillian’s back. Did the crazy girl think he was really going to come back, hold her hand and be her boyfriend and give her some necromancer lovin’? Even obeah had its limits. At least she hoped so.
“I don’t know,” Miya said. “It wasn’t what I e
xpected, that séance, not exactly. I keep thinking: Isn’t there a simpler explanation? The red-haired girl, the one Trevor was fighting with. If we knew who she was—”
“I’d like to know who she was,” said Aliya. Her shuttered eyes stared down at the table where her fingers rapped a short, angry beat.
“Ask Luke,” said Gillian. “He’s the one who brought her up in the first place.”
A long, silent minute passed before Miya said, “Maybe I will.”
“And Aliya—”
But Aliya had crouched down beside the table, and the next thing, was heading toward the back door. Down on hands and knees skittering like a crab. “Al—,” Miya started to shout, but Gillian slapped a hand over her mouth. The girl might be brilliant, but she needed to pay attention. The door. Two tall, bearded men in long dark coats stood there, speaking gibberish.
“Oh,” said Miya.
Gillian’s hand came off, painted purple.
“I’ll tackle Luke,” Miya said. “And if Trevor’s going to contact anybody, it’ll be Aliya.”
“You really think Trevor’s going to contact her?” A jumbie coming to call wouldn’t be so bad if Gillian wasn’t the one who had to feel his cold fingers. Of course, if he did get in touch with Aliya, the girl would be so basodee she’d never get any straight answers.
“No,” Miya said. “At least, I don’t think so.”
Then she was gone, too—the normal way, on two legs. Gillian watched her collide with a stranger at the door, hang back, let the redhead in the black cap pass through first.
Redhead? Couldn’t be. Gillian grabbed her bag and rushed past the foreigners, broke through the long line of high-school kids waiting for lattes. There must be dozens of redheads in town—then again, wasn’t it the least common hair color?
No matter. By the time she pushed her way into the street, both girls were gone.
