Bewitched and Betrothed

by Juliet Blackwell

  She shook her head. “I don’t really remember. I peeked into all the boxes up here and took the ones with clothing in them downstairs to look through more carefully. Carrying a box down those stairs took a lot of concentration.”

  “Next time you should ask me to come with you.”

  “In case I find another cursed shirt?”

  “No, so I can help you with the lifting and carrying. We could have handed the boxes to each other.”

  She shrugged.

  “Maya, it occurs to me that you and I have something in common: We’re both independent to a fault at times. There’s no sin in asking for help, you know. I’m coming to learn that. But it’s still hard sometimes.”

  Maya smiled. “Right you are, boss. Anyway, there were a bunch of boxes stacked over in that general area. . . .” She gestured toward the far side of the attic.

  I scuttled over, closed my eyes, and tried to “feel.” I’m a terrible necromancer, but I often feel the presence of ghosts. It was a physical sensation, like an army of ants marching up and down my back, or whispers of breath on my cheeks. Was it possible Ray Perry had hidden out in this attic? And if so, would I be able to feel something that would lead me to him? Seemed unlikely, but I would give it a try.

  Feeling self-conscious, I said: “Would you mind leaving, Maya? I’ll be able to concentrate better by myself.”

  “You’re sure?” She looked skeptical.

  I nodded. “I won’t be long. Seriously. This is what I do, remember?”

  “Okay, but if you need me just shout. I’ll go see if I can help Mrs. Archer locate those house papers,” Maya said, and disappeared down the access stairs.

  I sat on the dusty wood floor, cross-legged the way I’d seen Sailor do dozens of times. I stroked my medicine bag, closed my eyes, and bam.

  Standing in front of me was the image of a man in a blue chambray shirt. Number 258.

  Chapter 13

  He was clear as day. Like a life-sized black-and-white photograph, right in front of me.

  I squeaked and jumped to my feet. I never see ghosts. I can’t see ghosts . . . or could I? What was going on?

  I stroked my medicine bag, closed my eyes, and reached for calm.

  When I opened my eyes, the image was still there. It wasn’t what I would have expected from a ghost—he wasn’t misty or wavering in any way. But then, I’d never actually seen a spirit, so I wasn’t sure what they looked like.

  “H-hello?” I tried.

  He just stood there, not interacting, almost like a hologram, and his eyes were empty, devoid of humanness. Was this what necromancers saw? From the outside it had never appeared to be like this, but then I had never asked the necromancers I knew—Sailor or my friend Hervé, or Patience for that matter—to describe precisely what they saw, or how.

  Maybe something else was going on. I thought about what Aidan had told me, which Graciela’s coven had confirmed at last night’s reading. If I now had two guiding spirits, the Ashen Witch and Deliverance Corydon, then wouldn’t my magic and my abilities change? Could Deliverance Corydon, as much as it pained me to admit, be lending me new skills, such as necromancy?

  Or was I getting ahead of myself?

  “Is there something you want to tell me?” I tried again. When there was no response after a minute, I asked: “Is this where you . . . are?”

  It had been on the tip of my tongue to ask if this was where he lived, but somehow that seemed rude to demand of a dead person.

  Again, no response. I tried a few other questions: “Are you Ray Perry? Did you escape from Alcatraz?”

  Suddenly a calla lily appeared in his hand. He held it out to me, looking for all the world as if he were asking me out on a date.

  My fear had subsided, replaced by frustration. My talents appeared to be broadening, but what was the point of being able to “see” someone if I still couldn’t communicate with them?

  Downstairs, I heard the doorbell ring, followed by muffled voices. I tried to maintain my concentration, but my eyes searched the attic, trying to figure out what my next move should be.

  My gaze fell on a box labeled FAMILY PHOTOS. They probably belonged to Emmy Lou, but was it possible they had been left here by the previous homeowner? The man with the Polish name?

  Feeling like a snoop but motivated by my worry for Elena, I folded back one cardboard flap.

  Inside were numerous old photos taken in and around the house. The colored snapshots had faded to shades of yellow and blue, the clothing styles indicating the photos had been taken in the 1970s. Emmy Lou and her husband had bought the house in 1990. That settled it: I was going to assume these belonged to the former owner.

  I dug through the box and found an old framed black-and-white picture of a man in a guard uniform, standing in front of Cellblock D. I couldn’t be sure, but I was going to guess this was Alcatraz Island. The name over his pocket was impossible to read, but it was long and started with a P.

  “Can you tell me anything at all?” I said to the ghost, or the apparition, or whatever it was. I held the photo out to him. “Are you connected with this man? Was he your guard?”

  Suddenly the apparition flew at me, his finger in front of his mouth as though he were miming “shhhh,” like the crotchety old librarian in my hometown elementary school. I fell back on my butt, but the apparition disappeared as quickly as he had flown toward me.

  “Last chance,” I said, trying to still my heart. “You have anything for me? Want to tell me something?”

  After several more minutes of nothing—no sound, no more apparition—I turned off the light and brought the box of old photos with me as I climbed back down the stair ladder, closed the hatch, and joined Maya and Emmy Lou in the living room.

  “I hope you don’t mind,” I said as I set the box on the coffee table. “I noticed this up in the attic; are these your family photos?”

  Emmy Lou leaned forward and took a peek.

  “Oh, no, those must have belonged to the former owner. If you’re interested in them, please help yourselves. He didn’t have any family to take his things, and if no interested parties have crawled out of the woodwork in all these years, I’m pretty sure it’s all up for grabs. It’s a help to me to clean things out.”

  “Thank you. I noticed one photo in particular,” I said, handing her the framed picture of the guard. “Was this the man who sold you the house?”

  “It might have been. But it was thirty years ago; I barely remember meeting him when we signed the papers. A lawyer handled the sale.”

  “Oh, Lily, we did find the name of the former owner,” said Maya, holding out a sales agreement for the house, dated 1991. “But I have no idea how to pronounce it.”

  I read: “‘Ned Przybyszewski’.” I couldn’t read the name on the guard’s uniform, but it was long and started with a P. It would match. So what did that tell me?

  My eyes fell on a large pink bakery box. It was from Renee Baker’s cupcake shop.

  “Where did that come from?” I demanded, an edge to my voice.

  “It was just delivered!” said Emmy Lou. “A thank-you present from a very nice man who came to the house the other day, the morning after you were here, Maya. I have no idea why he would thank me, though; I told him I had already sold all my old clothes to you.”

  “Who was it?”

  “A young man in a van like yours, but it was white, with no name on the side.”

  “Did he leave a card, or a number, any way of getting in touch with him?” I asked.

  “His last name was Jones, and he left a number. It’s somewhere around here. . . .” She trailed off as she pawed through a pile of correspondence, coupons, and newspaper advertisements on a small side table by her chair. Finally she extracted a piece of scrap paper. “Here it is. I told him not to bother; I couldn’t offer him anything because Maya had alre
ady taken all those old clothes to your store. But he said, ‘Just in case.’”

  I asked to use her phone and dialed the number. A recorded voice stated it had been disconnected.

  “How did he know you had clothes to give away?” Maya asked.

  “You know, it didn’t occur to me to ask,” said Emmy Lou. “But he was a very nice man. Still, I’m not supposed to eat sugar. Why don’t you girls take those cupcakes home with you? I have a hard enough time resisting the snickerdoodles.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “That would be great. Could you describe the man who came looking for clothes?”

  “Well, let’s see. . . . He was young, thin, white, in his twenties, I would say. He had brown hair; I didn’t really notice his eyes. Really nothing remarkable, though he was very polite.” She beamed at Maya. “Good to know the next generation is so well mannered, like Maya here.”

  Had this mystery man somehow found out that Emmy Lou Archer had an inmate’s shirt from Alcatraz in her attic? That seemed far-fetched. On the other hand, it seemed even more unlikely that another vintage clothing dealer—with a nonworking phone number—just happened to come by immediately after Maya had left.

  “So, Mrs. Archer—,” I began.

  “Emmy Lou, please.”

  “Emmy Lou, then,” I said with a smile. I leaned toward her and cast a quick comforting spell to appease any nervousness my social awkwardness might have engendered. “Could you tell us anything else about the shirt, or the former owner of the house, or Alcatraz, maybe? He never mentioned being a guard out there?”

  She shook her head. “I’m sorry, as I said, I didn’t really deal with him. My husband took care of most of the paperwork; I don’t think our paths crossed more than once or twice. And I know people love to talk about Alcatraz, but I’ve never gone there. People say that place is cursed, that’s what I hear.”

  “Any federal prison is going to seem a bit bleak, I would guess,” said Maya.

  “True, but one of my church friends, Norma, was part Miwok Indian. She said her grandmother always told her the island was cursed. That’s why there were never any native villages out there, even way back when.”

  “Also because there’s no source of freshwater,” Maya said quietly.

  “Well, now, it’s true that Norma had a lot of different beliefs. When we bought this place, as a matter of fact, she refused to come in until we’d taken a bundle of leaves and waved smoke here and there.”

  “A smudge bundle?” Maya asked.

  She nodded. “Yeah, that sounds right. Norma said there was something off about the former owner, and maybe there was. How do you get to be that man’s age with no friends or family?”

  “Did you smudge up in the attic?” I asked.

  She looked surprised by the question. “No, as a matter of fact, I don’t think we did. You think maybe that’s why I never liked it up there? Norma said there was bad juju.”

  “Norma sounds like an interesting woman. Might I meet her?”

  “I’m afraid she passed away a couple of years ago.”

  I couldn’t think of anything else to ask, and Emmy Lou mentioned needing a nap, so we thanked her for her time and left with a box of old photos, and a box of potentially ensorcelled cupcakes.

  Back in the van, I asked Maya: “So who do you suppose I should talk to about a Native American curse on the island of Alcatraz?”

  “That’s a tough one,” Maya said. “Sounds like the plot of a bad teenage slasher movie to me. You know, a prison built on top of an ancient Indian burial ground, everyone but the blond female lead falls victim to a curse and dies in a horrific manner. Sounds more than a little . . . I don’t know, ethnocentric? Not to mention cheesy.”

  “Good point. I still want to check it out, though.”

  “Fair enough.” Maya consulted her phone. “Let’s see. . . . This looks promising: There’s a Professor Guzmán at Laney College in Oakland, who’s Chochenyo Ohlone.”

  “Chochenyo?”

  Maya shrugged, still fiddling with her phone. “I’m afraid I’m woefully ignorant about the native peoples from this area, but according to this site, a number of tribes were grouped under the name of ‘Ohlone,’ which is a Miwok word meaning ‘people of the west.’ The Chochenyo were basically the East Bay folks. And the Ohlone had sovereignty over the island of Alcatraz. Anyway, there’s an office phone number here. Looks like Dr. Guzmán teaches anthropology, so I’ll bet he could tell you a thing or two. Want me to call him?”

  “That would be great, thanks.”

  Maya discovered Guzmán had office hours the next day, and made an appointment for noon tomorrow.

  Then she sat back, watching the houses go by, a touch of defeat in the slant of her shoulders. “So what now? Back to the shop? There’s always laundry to do.”

  “Honestly, Maya, it would be fine if you wanted to take a couple of days off. Bronwyn and I can handle the store, and if not, it’s not the end of the world if we need to close early or open late.”

  “I’d rather keep busy,” she said with a shake of her head. She fiddled with her phone for another moment, then shut it off. “Lily, do you think the man who came to Mrs. Archer’s asking for clothes was the one who took Elena?”

  “That would be my guess.”

  “How would he have learned about the shirt?”

  “I wish I knew. Listen, would you mind making a quick detour before going back to Aunt Cora’s Closet?”

  “I’m at your disposal,” said Maya. “More clothes?”

  “More cupcakes. Maybe we could get some clues as to what’s going on by talking with Renee.”

  I headed to Renee Baker’s cupcake shop.

  A large handwritten sign in Renee’s window, on butter yellow paper and decorated with tulips, declared: CLOSED FOR REMODELING, BACK IN A JIFFY!

  “Strange that they’re closed for business, yet still have baked goods on their shelves,” said Maya. “Also, they just delivered a box of cupcakes to Mrs. Archer.”

  “Strange, indeed.”

  The building next door used to be occupied by a vintage clothing store. There was paper up in the windows, and another big sign, this one professionally printed: PARDON OUR DUST! RENEE’S IS EXPANDING! . . . JOIN US ON ALCATRAZ FOR THE FESTIVAL OF FELONS!

  Below this was a photo of Renee standing beside a veritable tower of intricately decorated cupcakes. She was a plump, middle-aged woman with an easy smile and a maternal, unassuming air. It was always hard to believe she posed any kind of sinister, supernatural threat to the city.

  “Wow, Renee must be doing well if she’s expanding. Most of us can barely afford to pay rent on a living space, much less a cupcake shop,” said Maya. “It’s strange to see that old vintage clothes store gone, isn’t it? Sad.”

  I nodded. We were both thinking of the former owner of the store that previously occupied the space; Maya and I had stumbled upon her, gravely ill, a while ago. She hadn’t made it.

  “So, what is it with you and the cupcake lady?” Maya asked as we returned to the car and headed back to Aunt Cora’s Closet. “She wound up with a concussion last time you two got together.”

  “That wasn’t my fault,” I said, my voice scaling up. “Renee deals with some scary folks.”

  “Don’t take this the wrong way, but so do you.”

  “That’s true. But somehow I doubt that either you or Bronwyn is going to betray me and then knock me over the head in an attempt to gain control over the magical community in San Francisco.”

  “Well, I’m not going to now,” she teased. “But seriously, that’s what’s up with Renee?”

  I nodded.

  “You’re telling me she’s . . . like you? A magical person?”

  “Magical, yes. But not like me in any other way, I hope.”

  “I wondered why you were in such a state about her
. You really should take your own advice, you know, and ask for help from time to time.”

  “Funny, I feel like I ask for help all the time,” I said, as much to myself as to Maya. “But I get what you’re saying. I think . . . I’ve kept you and Bronwyn in the dark about certain things. Mostly I didn’t want to worry you, or put you in danger.”

  “So Renee-the-cupcake-lady is dangerous?”

  “Very much so, yes. She traffics in way more than sugar.”

  “Well, darn it. It’s getting so a person can’t even indulge in a bit of frosting without worrying.”

  I smiled and gave her a quick squeeze. “There are always Snickers bars. Oscar swears by them.”

  “Oscar’s not what I would call discriminating when it comes to food.”

  “True enough.”

  * * *

  • • •

  I parked in the driveway around the corner from Aunt Cora’s Closet, dropped the pink box of cupcakes in a Dumpster, and headed for the store. As we walked along the sidewalk, I spotted posters featuring Elena’s smiling face, with MISSING! printed in large letters. My heart sank at the sight of her, and at the thought of what she—and her loved ones—were going through. The posters reminded me of the flyers my friends had put up when Oscar disappeared not too long ago. They hadn’t helped me to find him—in fact, I had known where he was, I just couldn’t figure out how to get him back—but they had filled me with warmth, knowing that the community was rallying around me.

  At times like this, when facing ghosts and demons and killers, it was important to be reminded that there was a lot of good in this world. Most people were caring and decent, as a matter of fact; ready to go out of their way to help a stranger.

  “I’m going to take these things upstairs,” I said. “I’ll be right back.”

  Given what Emmy Lou Archer had said about smudging the house, it made sense to draw a protective circle around this box of photos. Just in case.

  But first, I turned my attention to Elena’s hat. Despite Carlos’s protestations, I still wondered whether Elena could somehow be involved. I knew firsthand how seductive the promises of magical powers could be. And if my inkling was right, that her disappearance might be connected to something more, something demonic, well . . . a person didn’t have to be evil or corrupt to fall under a demon’s thrall, just vulnerable in some way.