Bewitched and Betrothed

by Juliet Blackwell

  Chapter 5

  “Call 911,” I yelled to Bronwyn as I ran to the door.

  “What’s going on?” Bronwyn asked, picking up the phone and dialing. “What do I tell them?”

  “I don’t know yet,” I said, my voice breathless. “But it’s trouble.”

  Halfway down the block, a crowd had gathered. Bright blue and brown Festival of Felons flyers were strewn about the street and the sidewalk, fluttering in the breeze. I pushed my way through the bystanders to find Conrad—a “gutter punk” friend—with his arms wrapped around Maya.

  Forrest looked frantic, a cell phone to his ear.

  Elena was nowhere in sight.

  “Yes, we’ve got the plate number,” Forrest said into the phone, and recited the string of numbers and letters to the dispatcher on the other end of the line.

  “Maya, are you all right?” I asked, putting my own arms around her. “What happened? Where’s Elena?”

  Maya had tears in her eyes; her voice was shaky. “Th—they took her! A white van pulled up at the curb, a man in a ski mask jumped out and grabbed Elena. It all happened so fast . . .”

  “Someone kidnapped Elena?” I clarified, glancing at Forrest, who appeared helpless and miserable. I could smell waves of guilt coming off him.

  “I didn’t even see it,” he said, the phone still to his ear. “I was in the dry cleaner’s, asking them to put up a poster . . . I heard the commotion, but I didn’t see it. I didn’t even . . .”

  “Dude,” Conrad said in a hushed tone. Several of his friends—young people who lived in the park and scrounged to get by—milled about, helping to pick up the scattered posters. I recognized a few of the self-described “gutter punks” who had helped clean up after Aunt Cora’s Closet was vandalized, but in general I had a hard time telling them apart. One was tall and redheaded, another was short and dark. There were several facial piercings and tattoos among them, but by and large they were of average height with lanky hair that ranged from dishwater blond to dull brown to dusty black. They were all painfully thin, and most appeared under the influence.

  “Did any of you see what happened?” I demanded.

  They shook their heads, and the redhead handed me a messy bunch of posters he had gathered. “That’s . . . whack, dude.”

  “Totally whack,” agreed a young woman. “Sorry.”

  Maya let out a long, shuddering breath.

  I was still trying to wrap my head around what just happened. Elena Romero—the sweet, smart National Park Service ranger we had been chatting with moments ago—had been snatched off bustling Haight Street in broad daylight?

  Who would do such a thing? And why?

  I looked up and down the street.

  Bright colors caught my attention. Lying in the gutter was the braided string I had used to bind the Alcatraz inmate’s shirt.

  Carefully knotted threads in orange, blue, and black.

  * * *

  • • •

  The first police officers to arrive interviewed Maya, Forrest, Conrad, and a dozen other bystanders, all of whom reported the same thing: A white van screeched up to the curb, a man in a ski mask jumped out and grabbed Elena, and the van roared off. A second man had been driving but nobody had gotten a look at his face. That was about it.

  Forrest kept shaking his head. “I should have done something, I should have—”

  “It all happened so fast,” said Maya. “Even if you’d been right here, no one could have done anything. I certainly didn’t react in time to help.”

  “But I’m . . .” I imagined Forrest was going to point out that he was a big, hearty man while Maya’s slight build was only an inch over five feet, but he trailed off with a shrug. “I just wish I had been there. Look, I think—Elena’s a federal employee, so this might be a matter for the FBI. I’m going to go talk with some people, see if I can marshal some federal resources, if you’re all right here.”

  “We’ll be fine, Forrest, thank you,” Bronwyn said. “Please let us know as soon as you hear anything.”

  “I will.” He hesitated, shifting his weight on his big booted feet as though wanting to say something further, then simply nodded again and loped down the sidewalk.

  Conrad, Bronwyn, Maya, and I returned to Aunt Cora’s Closet and huddled in the workroom, trying to comfort each other and waiting to see if the police needed to ask us any more questions. The brocade curtain remained open so that we could hear the sounds of the police radios squawking, see the commotion and the red lights flashing out on the street.

  This wasn’t a homicide—I prayed it wasn’t a homicide—but I was pretty sure Carlos Romero, SFPD homicide inspector, would arrive soon to try to figure out what had happened to his cousin.

  “Why would anyone kidnap dear Elena?” asked Bronwyn, pouring each of us a mug of her new tea blend, “Summer Blush,” a fragrant mix of hibiscus, lemongrass, and a few secret ingredients. I passed around a plate of chocolate-chip-and-butterscotch cookies I had managed to keep hidden from Oscar since last night—a new record.

  Conrad added three heaping teaspoons of sugar to his mug and helped himself to several cookies. After years spent avoiding reality by using drugs, Conrad had decided to get sober, joined a twelve-step program, and asked for my magical assistance. Where I used to have to coax him to eat, he was now hungry all the time and had developed a mean sugar habit. Now I worried about his diet, but it was better than worrying about what drugs he was taking.

  “Dude. Maybe she’s secretly an heiress to a great fortune,” Conrad suggested.

  Maya looked incredulous. “Do wealthy heiresses typically work for the National Park Service?”

  “Seems like a stretch, sure,” said Conrad, munching on a cookie. “But what other reason could there be?”

  “A disgruntled ex-husband or boyfriend?” suggested Bronwyn, her soft chocolate brown eyes shadowed with worry.

  “Maybe,” said Maya, her voice sounding strangely hollow. “But the kidnapping was so organized—there was the guy driving, in addition to the guy who jumped out. Wouldn’t a psycho boyfriend just wait in the bushes outside her apartment or something? Why go to the trouble of recruiting an assistant and kidnapping her off the street in broad daylight, with dozens of potential witnesses? Lily, did you sense anything?”

  “No, I’m so sorry. I had a premonition just after you left the shop, but it didn’t tell me anything except that something terrible had happened.”

  “Could there be some sort of political connection?” Bronwyn suggested.

  “These are National Park Service officers,” said Maya. “Who could they anger?”

  Bronwyn nodded, conceding the point, and sipped her tea.

  “I wonder whether there’s a connection to that inmate shirt,” I said, glancing at the braided strings I was still holding. I had tried to give them to the police officers, but they hadn’t been interested. I would try again with Carlos, though part of me wanted to keep the braid so I could see if my fiancé, Sailor, or his cousin Patience—both talented psychics—might be able to pick up anything from it.

  “The shirt? Why?” asked Maya. “How?”

  “There was something hinky about it.”

  “Are you saying the shirt itself attracted the violence, somehow?” Bronwyn asked.

  I had thought it impossible for Maya to look any bleaker until another wave of worry passed over her features.

  “Not as such, no,” I said. “I mean, that wouldn’t make any sense, would it? Why would a criminal be lying in wait on the off chance someone left the shop with a genuine Alcatraz inmate’s shirt? And how would a criminal even know what was in the bundle?”

  The bell over the front door tinkled, and Carlos Romero strode in. He was a good-looking man with romantic, dark features. Not much taller than I, Carlos exuded confidence and a don’t-mess-with-me attitude, no doubt honed from
his years working big-city homicide. He wore his usual uniform: khaki pants topped by a hip-length black leather jacket.

  He looked as bleak as the rest of us, but with a frantic edge I had never noted in him before. He declined our offers of tea and cookies, placed a chair directly in front of Maya, leaned toward her, and in a gentle but stern voice, asked her to tell him everything, one more time.

  Unfortunately, there wasn’t much to tell.

  “Have you traced the license plate number?” asked Maya.

  “The van was reported stolen a few days ago,” said Carlos. “And it was just found illegally parked not far from Pier 39. No sign of the perps. Forensics is on the scene, and there are uniforms canvassing for witnesses, but it’s such a busy area, with so many people coming and going, that it’s probably a long shot.”

  “And . . . Elena?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “What else can you tell me, Maya? Anything at all.”

  “I’m so sorry, Carlos. It all happened so quickly, seconds after we walked out of the store. None of it makes any sense.”

  “Does anyone have a personal grudge against Elena?” I asked. “A boyfriend, maybe?”

  “Not likely. Elena’s married to a woman, Bethany. She and Elena’s sister are tracking down friends, making up a list of her former romantic involvements, that kind of thing. But nothing so far. Bethany’s going crazy.”

  “Of course she is, poor dear,” Bronwyn said.

  “You’d been corresponding with Elena, correct?” Carlos said to Maya. “Could I see the texts?”

  “Of course.” She handed him her phone, and Carlos scrolled through the messages. “That’s all of it. We spoke on the phone once, but otherwise we texted.”

  “How did you two come to be in touch?” Carlos asked.

  “I went on that Alcatraz tour with her a while back, remember?” Maya said. “So I thought of her when I stumbled across an old inmate’s shirt.”

  “Lily, anything you can tell me that no one else may realize?” Carlos asked, handing Maya’s phone back to her. “According to those texts, Elena and Forrest were here to pick up the shirt. Was that all?”

  I nodded and held up the braided strings. “This was left in the street. I used it to bind the shirt.”

  “Which means what, exactly?” Carlos asked.

  “The vibrations were pretty dark—”

  “Wouldn’t you expect that from something a prisoner wore?” Carlos interrupted. “Life in prison is no picnic.”

  “Yes, but—this was something more. There was . . . an edge to it. I know that seems vague, but the vibrations were distinctive, like nothing I’ve felt before. I assumed it was because the shirt belonged to an escaped prisoner, who was presumed drowned in the bay.”

  Carlos raised an eyebrow. “If he drowned in the bay, then how did someone get ahold of the shirt?”

  “That I can’t tell you.”

  “Okay, next question: If the shirt is dangerous, why did you give it to Elena?”

  “I did a binding spell,” I protested. “I was a little nervous about letting Elena have it, but she promised to put it on display under glass right away, which I thought would be safe. It wasn’t as though she was planning on wearing it.”

  Carlos blew out a breath and ran his hand through his near-black hair. “All right. But you’re saying these strings, the binding thingie, was torn off the shirt?”

  “I found it in the street.”

  “It must have been ripped off in the tussle,” said Maya. “But there wouldn’t be any fingerprints or DNA—the guy was wearing gloves.”

  Carlos took the strings and studied them. “Forensics wouldn’t be able to pick up fingerprints from this, anyway.”

  “If you don’t think it’s useful as evidence, I’d like to have it back,” I said. “I’m hoping Sailor, or his cousin, will be able to ‘read’ something from it.”

  Carlos paused, then gave an almost imperceptible nod. “Fine. You keep it for now, see what it can tell you. Since Elena’s a federal employee, Forrest thinks the FBI will get involved, which means they’ll probably be talking to you as well. In the meantime, if any of you think of anything else, anything at all, call me immediately, day or night. And Lily—you might think about installing some security cameras. I know San Francisco doesn’t always feel like it, but this is a big city, after all.”

  He strode toward the front door.

  “Carlos, wait!” I called out, hurrying to join him at the door. I grabbed a Raven mystical stone from the display counter and pressed it into his hand. “Do me a favor? Keep this in your pocket.”

  His dark eyes settled on the shiny stone.

  “Raven, huh?”

  “To open the mental paths in your mind, for clarity and wisdom, and for general good health.” I was blushing by the time I finished running down Raven’s list of attributes. Carlos was remarkably open to my magic, but he had his feet firmly planted in the “real,” logical world.

  He nodded and pocketed the charm. “I’ll take any help I can get. Thank you.”

  The door swung closed behind him. I turned to find Bronwyn, Conrad, and Maya watching me, as though hoping for direction. If only I knew what to suggest.

  Oscar snorted.

  “I’m going upstairs, to see if I can learn anything from this binding braid,” I said. “Y’all okay down here? Or if you want to take the rest of the day off, Maya, it’s totally fine. In fact, maybe we should close the shop for the rest of the day.”

  “I’d rather stay,” said Maya. “It’s . . . I’d rather be here. With people. My mom’s on her way, too. She had a fitting across town but one of the women in her shop called her to let her know what happened.”

  “We’ll be fine,” said Bronwyn, her hand on Maya’s shoulder. “We’ve got tea and cookies, good friends and vintage clothes. What more could we need?”

  Conrad helped himself to another cookie, and added: “Dude.”

  There wasn’t much else to say.

  * * *

  • • •

  I mounted the stairs to my apartment, Oscar trotting along behind me, his piggy hooves tapping loudly on the wooden risers. At the landing outside my door he transformed. When we’re among other people, Oscar assumes the form of a Vietnamese potbellied pig, but when it’s just us—or us and Sailor or Selena—he’s his natural self, a gobgoyle, for lack of a better word. He reached to my waist at full height, with batlike ears, a longish snout, oversized hands, and big, bottle glass green eyes. He used to have wings, but a while back I had been forced to destroy them in order to save him. I still felt guilty about that.

  Oscar had entered my life as my witch’s familiar, but had become more like a partner or a sidekick. Goodness knows he almost never did what I told him to do, which was a stellar quality in most witches’ familiars.

  “Anything?” I asked him the moment we stepped inside our home and I had closed the door.

  Oscar shook his head and walked toward the kitchen. “I tell ya, the world these days. What are you gonna do? It’s like Carlos said, San Francisco isn’t as friendly as a critter might expect.”

  “That’s it? You think this was just a random act of urban violence?”

  “Course not. I’m betting it’s related to that creepy prison shirt.”

  “I was afraid of that, too. But here’s the thing: The kidnapping was obviously planned. Why would someone steal a van and wait outside my shop on the off chance that Elena would be leaving with the shirt? And for that matter, how did the kidnapper know about the shirt? I didn’t even know about it until this morning.”

  He shrugged and started scrounging in the snack cupboard.

  “We out of potato chips?” he asked. “Better add that to the shopping list. It’s a kitchen staple, you know. Not to mention Cheez Doodles. And Tater Tots.”

  “Oscar, please
—this is a big deal. If the kidnappers just wanted the shirt, why wouldn’t they have simply snatched the bundle out of her hands? Let Elena go, or leave her in the van, once they had it?”

  “Plus, why would they leave the van in the touristy part of town?” Oscar pondered. “Lotta people coulda seen them. Me, I woulda gone down by the docks, someplace quiet, if I wanted to dump a body.”

  “A body?” Fear ran through me, a shock hot and cold at the same time. “No.”

  I said this last almost like a prayer, a mantra, as though I could change reality with magical thinking. But I knew only too well that wasn’t true. Absentmindedly, I toyed with an appliquéd oven mitt my mother had sewn; it was old and stained, and one edge was slightly charred from an incident with a noodle casserole and a cranky old oven in Madagascar. But for years it had been the one tangible item that connected me to Maggie, and it still felt comforting in my hands.

  Oscar had settled on a bag of salted peanuts, which he was crunching loudly and chewing with his mouth open, spilling peanut shells on the floor.

  “Oscar, do you know something, or are you just speculating?”

  “Sorry,” he said with a casual shrug that negated his apology. “I always forget how attached you get to cowans. And you don’t even know this woman, hardly.”

  “I don’t have to know her well to care about what happened to her. Besides, she’s Carlos’s cousin, so I’d be in on this no matter what.”

  He shrugged again. “What time are we going to Calypso’s house? I have a hankering for some pizza.”

  “It’s not even noon.”

  “Helloooo? Lunchtime?”

  “Fix yourself a sandwich,” I said, distracted.

  Oscar was right about one thing: Pier 39 was among the busiest tourist areas in all of San Francisco, with hundreds of people milling about at all hours. How would the kidnappers get a struggling woman out of a van without being seen? Had they somehow incapacitated her? And if they had, wouldn’t carrying an unconscious woman raise suspicions?

  Worry clawed at my belly. I kept thinking about that shirt.