by Jean Rabe
At least the witch had gotten her wish on that count.
Bridget crumpled the card and squeezed it so tight her fingers ached. She kept the scene playing in her head, watching Adiella smile and stretch like a cat, hearing the witch softly hum. The witch practically floated toward a shelf labeled “Occult and Supernatural,” depressed a whorl in the wood, and the case slowly swung out. A second set of shelves was behind it, loaded with shoe boxes and file folders and mason jars filled with things Bridget didn’t want to get a closer look at. Adiella reached for a box at the bottom, opened it and rifled through some index cards, tugging one out and returning to the counter, still humming.
The witch picked up the phone. It was an old rotary model, and Bridget watched her perfectly manicured index finger spin the numbers. Someone must have picked up immediately.
“Harry,” Adiella said. “I have an assignment for you. This will settle your debt with me. I’ll need you to take something to a warehouse in Fulton Landing, DUMBO, yes, that’s the area. She rattled off the precise number and street, provided a description of Bridget’s warehouse, and told him that he’d need to contact the men on the loading dock.
“No, I don’t know what this ‘something’ will be. I don’t have it yet. I’m certain I’ll have it tomorrow though. My client is desperate and wants to act quickly. So come to the bookstore tomorrow before closing. The package? It’s for Bridget O’Shea.” A pause. “Who is she? No one who matters and not your concern.” A longer pause. “Yes, Harry. This settles our account.”
Adiella kissed the card and returned it to the box, closed the secret panel and smiled even broader. Bridget had never seen the witch so happy.
“Glorious day,” Adiella said as she made the sign of the cross and whirled giddily like a child. “Praise God for the glorious day.”
Bridget felt sick and dropped the connection. “Glorious day,” she parroted. Instantly she thought of Tavio and Jimmy and again of Dustin. “A feckin’ glorious day.” Bridget closed her eyes and leaned on the counter, fought with the image of her demon feasting on Jimmy’s heart. It had killed those close to her as a threat … free its fellow demons or it would keep on killing. But what would happen when it killed them all? Bridget didn’t have that many people who meant something to her. Kill everyone in her smuggling operation? Kill whatever Westies members still remained? Her contacts overseas? Could it travel that far from her? Would it continue to pull person after person from her mind until she did as it bid or until she got someone else to take on her curse?
Why the hell hadn’t she let the thug in the subway keep the damn buckle?
When Bridget opened her eyes again, the witch was standing across the counter from her.
***
Twenty Nine
“What the hell are you doing in my shop?” Adiella glared daggers.
Bridget wondered how the witch got in. She hadn’t heard the door open, or the floor creak. Was Adiella so powerful that she could appear out of thin air?
“Irish guttersnipe!” Adiella continued. “You’ve no right to trespass. I will—”
Bridget dropped the crumpled business card on the counter, smoothed it out, and pushed it toward Adiella. Though with all the creases and in the poor light it couldn’t be properly read, apparently Adiella recognized it. She folded her arms in front of her chest and put on an imperious look. The witch might indeed have appeared out of nowhere. She wasn’t wearing a winter coat, just a thick cable knit blue sweater that looked expensive. Her customary overly large jewelry—a brass and wood bead necklace with a stylized sun fob, earrings that dangled to her shoulders, and bangle bracelets, were probably made to her unfashionable specifications. Her long nails—Bridget likened them to claws—were painted a shimmery gray and tipped with black lines. Odd to be dressed to the nines so early, she thought. Or maybe it was late; maybe Adiella had been at some coven gathering.
“You will help me,” Bridget said, tapping the card.
“You want to know why I did it?” Adiella glanced at the card. “Why I seized upon the opportunity?”
So the witch was actually admitting it. Bridget hadn’t expected that.
“No. I honestly don’t care why you did it.”
“You’re a thief, Bridget O’Shea. You stole my son and his affections, kept him from finding a good woman. Kept him from giving me more grandsons. You steal the air from the righteous that walk the streets in this city, defiling it with your presence. You steal. ‘If a thief be found breaking up, and be smitten that she die, there shall no blood be shed for her. If the sun be risen upon her, there shall be no bloodshed for her, she should make full restitution—”
“I can quote scripture, too,” Bridget cut in. “Once upon a time I was a ‘good Catholic girl.’ Suffer not a witch to live—”
“You can’t even get that right,” Adiella spat. “Exodus: Thou shalt not suffer a sorceress to live. And I am no sorceress.”
The demon trundled closer, looking between Bridget and Adiella, its fifth eye closed tightly, but the other four open and glimmering with obvious curiosity. It belched, the noxiousness wafting up and smelling like a carton of rotten eggs.
Bridget came around the counter and watched as the witch’s expression withered. Fear? Did Adiella fear Bridget? “Well, you damn well better hope you can cast spells like a sorceress, ‘cause you’re going to help me.”
The witch backed up, giving herself more space; the demon watched only Adiella now. “I told you I cannot dispel the demon. I didn’t lie to you. It is an old one, a powerful one, more powerful than anything I’ve encountered before. It can hide from my vision. Satisfy it, you Irish târfă. Find out what it wants, I told you. Do whatever—”
“Oh, I damn well know what it wants, Adiella. I managed to share a handful of words with the beast. It wants me to free all the demons in the city. I already let two loose.”
“Then just keep—”
“Letting demons run amok? Hell no. I’m done trying to satisfy this warty gobshite. Now I’m going to send it back to whatever layer of hell it came from. And you’re going to help me. Send it back and catch the ones I turned loose.”
Adiella opened her mouth, but Bridget didn’t give her a chance to protest.
“You’re going to help me, or I’ll suffer a witch not to live … just for spite. Your blood on my hands? That’s nothing next to what I caused last night. And you set it all in motion by saddling me with a feckin’ demon.” Bridget took a breath.
“Unshackle Aldî-nîfaeti,” the demon said. It was staring at Bridget now.
“You didn’t have to steal the briefcase from Elijah Stone. I didn’t make you steal the demon, Bridget O’Shea. I didn’t force you to do anything. I might have presented you with the opportunity to steal it, but you didn’t have to do it. Your decision. Your action. It’s all on your head. Tavio’s death. It’s on you. Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not ever steal!”
Bridget grabbed Adiella by the arm and tugged her toward the front door. “Too bad you didn’t wear a coat. You’re going to be awfully cold until we reach your pit.”
“How dare you, Bridget O’Shea. Trespass in my—”
“Yeah, well, Otter’s trespassing there too.” And Michael, Marsh, Rob, Alvin, and Quin. The witch was just going to love having Bridget and her entourage gathered in her bones-of-saints sanctified hidey hole.
They made one stop, at a rundown twenty-four hour corner bodega above the subway entrance. It sold questionable looking fruit, as well as cigarettes, snacks, and soda. Bridget found energy drinks at the bottom of a cooler and bought all of them: four cans of Red Bull, two Monster, three Rockstar, and a one Full Throttle. The clerk claimed not to have change for the hundred she slapped on the counter, so she added a half dozen packs of Twinkies, a stack of Hershey bars, a New York Times and a Daily News, and a cheap-looking keychain flashlight. The clerk double bagged it all in plastic sacks that appeared to have been used several times before.
“Do you have
any notebooks? Notepads? Anything to write on?” Bridget craned her neck this way and that in the cramped, dirty confines of the convenience store. She saw a large cockroach meander slowly across a shelf. The place was probably infested with them. Adiella stood just inside the entrance, making sure she didn’t touch anything, shivering, and glaring at Bridget the entire time. “Anything?”
The clerk shrugged. “Postcards. I have postcards.”
“Great.” Bridget grabbed the entire stack and pocketed a pen that was on the counter. “Keep the change.” Then she ushered Adiella outside and down the stairs, waited for the train to pass, and disregarded a pair of beggars who tried to stop them from climbing down near the tracks. She turned on the tiny flashlight, and prodded the witch toward her pit.
O O O
The demon seethed. It squatted in the crevice at the entrance to Adiella’s pit, acid drool dripping from its lower lip and hissing against the floor. It had tried to enter the chamber several times, and tried once again now as Bridget watched. It closed its four main eyes and opened the fifth, made a scritch-scritching against the stone with a talon and then tentatively raised that talon and prodded forward. Rebuffed again, it appeared to doze.
“It’s there,” Bridget told the witch, pointing. She talked softly. “My demon. It’s angry.”
“I can feel that. It is palpable,” Adiella said. She also kept her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “You have trapped us here, Irish târfă. If one of us dares to leave, that thing will—”
“—rip out your heart. That’s what it does. And eat it.” Bridget sat cross-legged in a corner, under the spray-painted caricature face of Bob Marley. The pit smelled fusty and damp, but the air was ten times better than usual because the reeking demon could not get close to her.
“Jimmy’s heart,” Michael said without turning around. His back was to Bridget. “It ate Jimmy’s heart.”
“Then by my hairy word we had better be successful, eh, Adiella? Or these men will either die of old age here or die to the beast you’ve saddled me with.”
Thou shalt not steal, Adiella mouthed.
Otter still slept, thank God, on the bed against the opposite wall. Alvin and Quin sat side by side, coats pulled tight, guns on their laps, watching her and the witch, but with eyes that could hardly stay open. Their heads bobbed; they’d be sleeping soon. Rob and Marsh were on either side of the vintage Louis Vuitton wardrobe trunk, using it as a table and playing cards, both feasting on the Twinkies she’d bought. But both men were clearly more interested in what Bridget was doing than in their game. Michael sat in front of the space heater, deliberately not looking at her, running his thumb around a can of one of the energy drinks.
Bridget knew Michael would be leaving her employ if she managed to find a way free of the demon mess. He’d seen Jimmy’s body, and so the threat of that happening to him was holding him in place at the moment. Alvin and Quin, she knew they’d be done, too. Despite them witnessing the tentacle beast turn her brownstone into so much kindling, she’d had to practically physically force them through the abandoned tunnel and into this graffiti-coated den. “We’re too old for this shit,” they repeatedly told her.
Rob and Marsh? The latter would probably be on his way; she’d beat him up pretty bad at Otter’s birthday dinner, had never treated him with much respect … one more regret to add to the ton she’d already logged.
One more.
Rob would stay, to the death of him. He’d grown up in the Westies with her, and she knew he’d always harbored a crush … and also always known nothing would ever come of it. Rob was more of a brother than a love interest. With the exception of Tavio, she hadn’t allowed herself to get so close to another. Dustin? Had she loved him? she wondered again. Maybe. But not with the intensity she’d once felt for Otter’s father. She’d never allow herself that intensity again. She started to cry and brushed away the tears.
“Got something in your eye, boss?” Rob asked.
“Just memories,” Bridget answered.
“What is it you want me to do?” Adiella was in the rocking chair, stack of postcards in her lap, pen ready. “What am I supposed to write?”
Bridget carefully unwrapped the package Rob had brought. She noticed the demon had its eyes opened again, thin slits that added to its evil-looking countenance. Again it tried to breach the entrance, and again it couldn’t come an inch closer. She moved aside the shredded packing material and brought out a small bowl. The lighting in the pit was just enough so she could make out the details. It was etched, like the ones had been that she’d broken in the museum, and there were little stick figures … people maybe, or demons.
“What am I supposed to write?” Adiella persisted, raising her voice enough so that Otter stirred. The boy rolled over and continued sleeping.
“Whatever I say.” Bridget could tell that the other bowl was a little larger. The packer had nested them together. She didn’t have a lot of room to work, so many people in this chamber made it rather cramped.
The demon saw the bowl and became more animated. “Unshackle,” it said. “Bridget unshackle.”
“I want to find the spell written on this bowl, Adiella. I want to somehow be able to repeat it and for you to record it. Then I want you to use it against my … companion … over there.” Bridget didn’t know if it would work, but the demon hadn’t wanted to be too close to the bowls when they were in the museum. She’d thought the beast nervous then. Now, it was clearly furious, and yet also seemed excited at the prospect that she might release another of its fellows. It pantomimed flipping the bowl over, just like it had in the museum.
Adiella was right, Bridget thought; the beast would no doubt slay whoever left this room.
She popped the top on a can of Monster and started slugging it down. The taste was strong and sugary, like liquid carbonated bubble gum. She nearly spit it out. Bridget had never tried an energy drink before; it had better work to keep her awake. She managed to chug the rest of it.
“I have to pee,” Rob announced. He stood and brushed his hands against his pants and took a step toward the crevice. “Is it all right if I—”
“No!” Adiella and Bridget shouted practically in unison.
Otter woke and sat, the bed creaking. “What’s … mom? Grandma Adiella? Mom! What happened to you?”
Bridget pulled up the hood of her coat to cover her nearly-bald head.
“Really, I have to pee,” Rob said. He shifted his weight from one foot to the next. “It’s gonna be running down my leg if I don’t—”
Adiella gave him a dirty look. “There’s a pot, under the bed. Use it.”
“In front of God and—”
“—everybody,” Bridget said. “If you want to keep breathing. Don’t leave this hole. And Otter, I’m fine. Had a little hair trouble.”
“No hair, no trouble,” Marsh whispered.
“Christ.” Rob looked under the bed and found a polished brass chamber pot. Marsh sniggered. “Laugh it up, buddy. Wait until you have to take a turn.” He squeezed behind the witch, apparently thinking her and the rocker afforded some measure of privacy. “What the hell? Where did my—”
“You think I would have my warren fouled with the smell of waste?” Adiella said.
“It disappeared,” Rob said. “My piss. It just…” He shrugged and zipped up, replaced the chamber pot and reached out to tousle Otter’s head.
The boy pulled back. “No-no. I know where that hand’s been.”
Rob returned to the card game. And he and Marsh passed cards back and forth while keeping an eye on Bridget and Adiella.
“This might take awhile,” Bridget told the witch. “Just listen, and when I repeat something that sounds like a spell—”
“I know, write it down,” Adiella said. “Whatever it takes to keep Otter safe.” She smiled sweetly at the boy. Bridget thought the expression did not suit the witch.
Bridget gently rested her fingers on the edge of the bowl and dipped her senses int
o the clay. She hadn’t read the ingredients on the side of the Monster drink, but whatever was in it had given her a burst of energy. The delving came easy.
Maybe too easy.
***
Thirty
Bridget was enveloped, the sensation bringing to her mind the image of being wrapped tightly in blankets. There was no warmth or comfort, just an oppressive sense of binding. It was as if she’d gone blind, but instead of a sheet of solid blackness, it was red-brown.
Clay.
She was seeing the clay of the bowl, effectively inside it and trying her damndest to look out, mind all jittery from the energy drink, heart racing. Fighting down a sense of panic, she explored further, her senses circling and finding the wall of red-brown interrupted by slashes—the characters that had been carved into the bowl’s interior. The symbols were artful and precise, laid into the clay with an expert hand. Her mind continued to circle the bowl, around and around like a merry-go-round, traveling up and down and all the while around, finding the stick figures that either represented men or demons.
Bridget felt water sloshing against her as she dipped her mind farther back into the bowl’s history. The clay she was inside came from a riverbank, dug by hand—the fingers of the digger thrusting into the ground and pulling her up, casting aside stones and the bones of fish. Her clay self was plopped into a wooden bucket and carried somewhere, the distance traveled not seeming far, listening to the measured footfalls of whoever toted her. Birds cried, and children laughed nearby. A man shouted. The strains of a wind instrument briefly played. She nudged time forward and felt herself lifted from the bucket, plopped on a hard, flat surface, fashioned by strong but elegant female hands, turned on a wheel. The spinning sensation relaxed Bridget, like hands working her muscles at a favorite massage parlor. Around and around like a merry-go-round. The sound of the wheel, and of the potter softly singing, was restorative.
Like Dustin’s feathery touch on her bare skin.
Around and around, hands sluicing up water to make the bowl she was becoming uniform and perfect, clay pulled off to make the bowl small. The song mesmerizing.
