Bewitched and Betrothed

by Juliet Blackwell

  One of Oscar’s more disconcerting traits was the way he popped up without warning. I had no idea how he managed to get around town without attracting attention—neither a pig nor a gobgoyle could stroll down a city street unnoticed—nor how he was able to track me down so easily. On that latter point, I could only assume he used a gobgoyle GPS device of some kind. But since Oscar also had a knack for showing up whenever I was in grave danger, I wasn’t about to complain.

  “Heard you might need some backup,” said Oscar as I climbed in.

  “And just where did you hear that?”

  Oscar said nothing but his eyes widened in an attempt to convey innocence.

  “Well, I’m glad to see you,” I said. “I’m headed to the School of Fine Arts.”

  “Cool! I love students.”

  “We’re not going to visit the students. This is serious business.”

  An oversized goblin hand waved away my concern. “Road trip! We should stop for snacks.”

  “It’s only a few blocks away,” I said, amused by his enthusiasm.

  He ignored this. “Road trip!”

  The San Francisco School of Fine Arts was located off Chestnut Street, near the vibrant North Beach neighborhood. Originally an Italian immigrant enclave, North Beach was host to a bevy of Italian (and Italian-ish) restaurants as well as numerous bars, cafés, nightclubs, strip clubs, and jazz joints. Finding parking on Columbus Avenue was never an easy feat, so I used my parking charm to encourage the owner of a gas-guzzling Escalade to make way, and pulled my car into a space near the corner of Chestnut.

  As we approached the doors of the School of Fine Arts’ Spanish-revival facade, I glanced down at my porcine companion trotting along by my side. Bringing a pig into the school would likely cause a bit of a commotion, but there was no way Oscar would wait in the car.

  If I left him there, he’d join me, anyway. I decided to brazen it out.

  Luckily, the school was on summer recess. The front hall was empty, and as we proceeded along, past the school’s administrative offices, no one appeared to notice us. As we walked down the hallway we passed a few people and I searched for signs of unusual strife or discord, which I knew from my previous encounter with Sitri had been one of the first indications that the demon had been conjured. But the students seemed calm, with only the usual marks of creative young people: multicolored hair and plenty of piercings, bright paint splotches on clothing and hands.

  A few students noticed Oscar and pointed him out to friends or asked to pet him. I just smiled and barged on through to the rear stairway at the end of the hall, avoiding the central staircase that led to the haunted bell tower.

  Today’s business wasn’t ghosts, but a demon.

  The stone stairs had grooves in the centers of the treads, worn down by the feet of legions of nuns, and now students, traipsing up and down this staircase for more than a century.

  As I mounted the steps, I thought back to when I was last here. It had been only the second murder I was involved in solving. It seemed like ages ago; I had been a different person then. I felt so much older now, definitely more experienced, and hopefully a tad wiser. I was a lot more confident in my abilities, but . . . also more jaded. Encountering death and violence took a toll, no doubt about that.

  We reached the top floor, under the eaves, where the former nuns’ rooms had been converted into faculty offices and storage closets. I used to know one faculty member here, Luc Carmichael, but his office door now sported a different nameplate. Perhaps Luc had changed offices, or perhaps he had moved on. I had dated Luc’s brother, Max, for a while, but it hadn’t worked out, and we hadn’t kept in touch.

  Jiminy Crickets, that felt like a long time ago.

  At the end of the hall was a heavy cabinet, behind which used to be the door to a large storage closet. After battling Sitri, we had sealed the doorway with concrete blocks and covered the blockade with an enchanted plaster mixed with my magical brew. As a last step to sealing the portal, I had sketched protective symbols into the wet stucco, and then we had moved the heavy cabinet back in front of the doorway so that only a few people knew of the closet’s existence.

  “Oscar, would you please help me to push the cabinet out of the way?”

  “You didn’t tell me there would be heavy lifting involved,” Oscar groused, even though in his natural form he was quite capable of lifting a grown man over his head. “I’m here to supply brains, not brawn.”

  I gave him a look.

  He sighed and effortlessly shoved the cabinet aside, then jumped back and swore.

  The signs I had etched into the then-fresh stucco had been altered—burn marks elaborated upon my designs, incorporating them into a large U topped by gothic crosses.

  Sitri’s sigil.

  Several of the cement blocks had been sledgehammered, and the stucco around the edges gouged out, creating an opening big enough for someone to pass through.

  Dangitall.

  “Mistress!” Oscar said, starting to back down the hallway. “Time to go.”

  “Aren’t you the one who says he’s not scared of anything?” I asked.

  “I’m not scared. But I’m not stupid, either.”

  “Does this mean you’re not going in with me?” I asked as I whipped my woven pack off my back and started taking out supplies.

  “You’re going in?”

  “Of course. Why did you think we were here?”

  “Not to confront a demon,” he replied. “You didn’t say anything about confronting a demon. I would have remembered that.”

  “You insisted on coming, remember?”

  “I thought we could go to the Russ Building to check out the gargoyles. Besides, I told you, I like students.”

  “Well, if you like students then we need to take care of this particular demon before he starts screwing around with them. Remember what happened last time?”

  Demons are fascinating creatures—frightening as all get-out and to be avoided at all costs unless absolutely necessary, but intriguing nonetheless. Though they could slaughter puny humans without much effort, they preferred to hang around and mess with us, to make us think we’re losing our minds—or help us to do so. They enjoyed watching us ruin our own lives—and kill ourselves, and others—instead of doing it themselves. It amused them.

  The last time we had encountered Sitri, he had incited all sorts of mayhem among the students and the faculty. On one memorable occasion, a professor’s face seemed to melt off and he flung himself out a window.

  I tried to shake off the ghastly image.

  “Oscar,” I said, lighting some incense and candles, slipping protective stones and crystals—amethyst, lapis, black obsidian, citrine, and rose quartz—into my pocket, and stroking my medicine bag to center myself. “I’m going to see if I can figure out what’s up. Stay out here if you want, but come to my rescue if things take a turn for the worse?”

  He nodded and mumbled something under his breath.

  “What did you say?”

  “No-thing, mis-tress,” he responded in a long-suffering, sullen singsong.

  I knelt down. Ignoring the grit digging into my knees, I peeked through the gaping hole.

  Rays of orangey late-afternoon sunlight sifted through cracks in the boarded-up windows, illuminating the large storage closet. The chamber appeared as I remembered: a full-length standing mirror with broken glass; a large chest of drawers; and a steamer trunk that once held the frilly Victorian underthings belonging to the long-ago nuns who had been involved in conjuring Sitri. In exchange, he had spurred on the great quake of 1906.

  But the salt circle and binding triangle that I had used to contain him had been broken open.

  I glanced over my shoulder. Oscar had retreated down the hall and was poised near the top of the stairs, as though ready to make his escape.

  Tur
ning back to the hole in the wall, I hesitated. Maybe Oscar was right. Maybe it would be the height of stupidity to enter this cursed closet. It might also be unnecessary. The last time I’d dealt with Sitri he had been conjured by accident and hadn’t yet gained his full strength. If someone had summoned him intentionally this time, and had offered him a sacrifice, Sitri would have quickly gained power and control and could go anywhere he wanted.

  It was enough to determine that I was correct. The vibrations I’d felt in that cursed dungeon on Alcatraz did, indeed, belong to Sitri. So at least I knew for sure this was the demon we were up against.

  Stucco shards crumbled under my knees as I started to back away from the hole. Suddenly, I felt something pulling at my arms, sucking me into the closet. As I fought against it, the closet fell away, becoming a deep dark hole, a dank and musty chasm into which I was about to tumble.

  A terrible screeching hurt my ears. I recognized it from the last time I was here. It was the sound of wind whistling through Sitri’s wings.

  If I fell I would be lost. Not dead, but something far worse: lost. Forever.

  “Mistress!”

  I felt Oscar grabbing my ankles, anchoring me as he tried to pull me back. For a moment I was lifted off the ground, the ghastly tug-of-war threatening to tear me apart.

  I found my voice and began chanting and repeating a protection spell.

  Finally, with a mocking tone, I heard:

  “Liiiily, ssssso good to sssseeee youuu . . . I hear congratulations are in order, but to whom are you marrying? And why are you naked?”

  I remembered what the Ars Goetia said about Sitri: He mocks women’s secrets and causes them to become naked. I heard a grunt as Oscar gave a mighty heave and yanked me backward, sending us both tumbling onto the hard tile of the hallway.

  We took a moment to catch our breath, staring at each other.

  “Are you all right?” I asked Oscar.

  “What did I tell you?” he said, sounding decidedly grumpy. “Didn’t you learn your lesson the first time? And what happened to your clothes?”

  I was clad only in my undergarments and my shoes—my medicine bundle was still tied to my waist, thank heavens—and I spied my sweet little yellow sundress lying in a heap on the floor inside the closet. There was no way I was going in there to retrieve it. Dangitall. I really liked that dress.

  “You might like this, witch,” came Sitri’s horrifying voice.

  A frilly chemise, a dress-length Victorian petticoat, came sailing through the hole in the wall, accompanied by demonic laughter.

  “Well, hardy har har,” I shouted back, my Texas twang showing. “You are one downright sorry, egg-sucking dog! I’ll be back!”

  Oscar picked up the chemise and held it out to me, averting his gaze in an exaggerated fashion. “Really, mistress? You’re calling a demon names?”

  “He’s treading on my last nerve,” I grumbled. “What was all that about?”

  “He’s playing.”

  I took the chemise, though I didn’t like the thought of wearing it, not one little bit. Not only had Sitri given it to me, but it had originally belonged to one of the sacrificed nuns. But I didn’t have much choice, since my only other option was to stride through the school, and down the street, in my underwear. Besides, although the petticoat’s vibrations were negative they were not very strong; I would be able to resist them. I hoped. I caressed my medicine bag, sprinkled a little brew on the fabric as I mumbled a protective spell, and pulled the chemise over my head.

  Oscar gave a low whistle. “Very pretty, mistress. Why is it that a garment like that makes you look more naked than when you’re naked?”

  “This will have to do, for the moment,” I muttered, fastening the last shell button on the bodice. Despite my bold words, I was more than a little chastened—and very worried. Sitri had grown in strength. And the feelings he inspired were tangible: lust aimed at no one in particular, uncertainty and doubt, mockery and ridicule.

  But I was stronger now, too. I just hoped I was strong enough to summon and control him.

  Because Sitri was definitely on the loose in the City by the Bay.

  Dangitall.

  Chapter 18

  “Wow,” said Bronwyn as I entered the store in my frilly Victorian getup. “You look—wow! You were walking the streets in that?”

  “We’re on Haight Street,” said Maya. “I’ll bet no one batted an eye. But you might want to change before our appointment at Laney College.”

  “True, but . . . what happened?” asked Bronwyn. “Where did the pretty little sundress go?”

  “It’s a long story,” I muttered, flipping through a rack and selecting a sky blue knit dress, with a tank top and a dropped waist, that I had bought for a buck at a yard sale in Santa Cruz hosted by a commune of retired hippies. I stepped into the dressing room, took off the Victorian chemise, and slipped on the cool, clean knit, whose vibrations were joyful, even comical. I needed a little levity at the moment.

  Then I packed my backpack with more salts, all-purpose brew, stones, and herbs. I also included the image of Sitri that Maya had downloaded from the Internet for me. It was from a medieval woodcut and portrayed Sitri as part feline, part bird, and very beautiful.

  Maya watched my ministrations and raised an eyebrow. “We’re going to see a professor at a community college in Oakland, right? Not a nest of vampires. I mean . . . unless you know something I don’t?”

  “No, no,” I said, feeling myself blushing. “But after what happened yesterday at Alcatraz I just want to be prepared.”

  Half an hour later we were headed east on the Bay Bridge: Maya, Oscar, and I.

  Laney is a community college in downtown Oakland, near Lake Merritt. It was an urban campus whose clutch of modern buildings looked more like an industrial park than a college to me, but then again, what did I know? I had never finished high school, much less gone to an institution of higher learning. We parked and left an unhappy Oscar to wait in the car, then walked across a wide concrete plaza to find Dr. Guzmán’s office. Students in shorts and T-shirts milled about, carrying backpacks, on their way to class or just enjoying the beautiful day. Through the center of campus ran a pretty little channel that connected Lake Merritt to the estuary and eventually to the bay.

  We found Gabriel Guzmán’s office down a nondescript beige hallway. His door was decorated with scholarly articles and colorful artwork, political cartoons, and a clipboard with a sign-up sheet for office hours.

  Maya tapped on the door. A muffled “Come in” was the response.

  Inside, jammed bookcases dominated two walls. In addition to books of all shapes and size, the bookcases held decorative objects, such as abalone shells that gleamed bright pink and green in the light from the window. But it was the woven baskets that grabbed my attention. Made of reeds and grasses, they incorporated intricate designs in shades of near-black against the buff color of the dried reeds. I wondered if the designs had meaning or were simply meant to be pretty.

  Dr. Guzmán stood up and reached across his desk to shake our hands. He was just beginning to gray at the temples, with a round, unsmiling, but friendly face and sloping dark eyes. He gestured to us to have a seat.

  “What can I do for you?” he asked.

  “We appreciate your taking the time to meet with us,” I said. I didn’t want to ask any leading questions about a curse and hoped he might volunteer the information. “We were wondering what you could tell us about the history of Alcatraz, especially what it meant to your tribe, that sort of thing.”

  His dark eyes rested on me for a long moment. “You’re doing a research paper?”

  “Not exactly. I’m . . . there have been some strange things happening on the island, and a national park ranger friend was kidnapped, and—”

  “Kidnapped?” he demanded.

  I nodded. “We don�
�t know if it has anything to do with Alcatraz per se, but we’re asking questions to see if there might be any connections. . . .”

  Sensing I was losing focus, Maya jumped in. “Really, anything you can tell us would be helpful. We’re especially interested in what the indigenous peoples thought of the island of Alcatraz, historically, if there’s any mythology, that sort of thing, surrounding the island.”

  “As you may know, the Miwok and Ohlone were dominant in the San Francisco Bay Area, though there are a lot of different groups within those tribal classifications,” said Guzmán. “I’m Chochenyo, but even so, I would never pretend to speak for all Chochenyo. But I can tell you that Alcatraz resonates with meaning for a lot of native peoples, for a variety of reasons.”

  “Historically Alcatraz was under Ohlone sovereignty, right?” Maya asked.

  He nodded. “It was. But even in antiquity, it was a complicated place. There were never any settlements or villages there; my ancestors sometimes went to collect bird eggs, but primarily the island was reserved for outcasts, or people who did wrong and needed to be separated from society.”

  “Someone else mentioned that—bad guys were essentially marooned out there?”

  He smiled. “Most of them probably could have swum to shore or constructed a raft, if they managed to read the tides right. But they had plenty of food out there if they worked for it, and this was a long time ago. My point is that the island was not considered suitable for living. For living a good life, that is.”

  “Have you ever been there?” I asked.

  He shook his head.

  “Not even for the sunrise ceremony?” Maya asked.

  “Sorry to sound so ignorant, but what’s the sunrise ceremony?” I asked.

  “The Indigenous People’s Sunrise Gathering is a commemoration of the 1969 to ’71 occupation of Alcatraz by the ‘Indians of all tribes,’” said Guzmán. “It’s a one-day event, on the National Day of Mourning. Otherwise known as Thanksgiving.”

  “But you’ve never gone?”

  “My grandmother told me not to go, and that’s good enough for me. Alcatraz lives on in the imagination as a scene of a fairly successful political action—the occupation of the island drew attention for the plight of the Native American in a way that little else had. And there’s no denying the symbolism: This was once native land that was turned into an island prison for native peoples deemed to be ‘hostiles.’ Did you know Hopi prisoners were kept there in the late 1800s, when it was still a military prison?”