by Pat Esden
“Why don’t you try doing it while I drive?” I suggested. “It probably wouldn’t spill if you used less soda.”
“I guess it’s worth a try.” She patted off some of the cola with a tissue.
Like a GPS, the road and the feather’s pointing coincided perfectly as I drove south along the west side of Mt. Desert Isle. Except for once, when I gazed too long in the rearview to take in a tantalizing glimpse of Chase’s abdomen as he took off his hoodie and pulled down his T-shirt. That distraction almost made me rear-end a farm tractor. Fortunately, I looked back at the road in time to see the tractor’s backside looming in front of us. I jammed on the brakes, tires squealing and my heart in my throat as we avoided smashing into it by mere inches.
“Shit,” Selena screeched. “I spilled soda all over my shorts. It looks like I wet myself.”
I glanced at her and frowned. In reality, there were maybe two drops of soda on her leg.
Chase leaned over the seat. “You want me to drive?”
“No. Just sit back there and don’t do anything,” I said. Maybe cooling our relationship was going to help him, but no way was it making me less distracted.
The tractor turned off and the road continued to wind steadily southward. There wasn’t much on either side of it, scraggly evergreen trees and shrubs, a few clapboard houses, rundown farms. Little hills up. Little hills down. Little curves one way, then the other.
Selena groaned. “This is making me carsick. Pull over. Now!”
I winged the car off the edge of the road and into a sandy spot in front of a deserted house with broken windows and junk tires stacked along one side.
“Roll down your window and get some air,” Chase suggested.
She set the compact on the dash, opened the door, then swung her legs out and began breathing deeply. “I can’t scry anymore. I’m going to barf for sure.”
I turned away, looking out my side window toward the house. If she was really going to puke, I didn’t want to see it.
Next to the house and junk tires, a grassy camp road jutted into a dark tangle of balsam trees and thick brush. A few yards up it, a bunch of long and narrow things dangled down from the overhanging branches, glinting in the sunlight. Pieces of mirror? Knife blades? White bones? They twisted and swayed in the breeze, like a disjointed corpse swinging from a hangman’s noose.
Rolling down the window, I blocked out the sound of Selena’s groaning, and I heard the low, slow gong of bells.
I opened my door and got out. “I don’t think you’re sick, Selena,” I said. “I think we’re just really close to Lotli.” I nodded at the trees.
Before I could take two steps, Chase bolted out of the Land Rover and sprinted up the camp road toward the dangling things, his hand sliding out a knife from his waistline.
“Wait,” Selena shouted. “I’ve got to get my sneakers on.”
I jogged to where Chase stood. Above him hung massive wind chimes, as large as a corpse and created from all the things I’d suspected. Knives and cleavers dangled from a crosspiece made out of a cow leg—I was sure of this because some hair and the hoof were still attached. Saw blades. Dead birds. Broken mirror pieces the size of my hand reflected light in all directions, spotlighting rusted bells and webs of fishing line.
Selena panted up behind me. “Whoa. This is creepy.”
Chase put his knife away and crouched down, studying fresh tire tracks. “They’re wide enough to belong to a bread truck. What do you think? Should we check it out?”
Sweat dampened my underarms. “I don’t think we have a choice, do you?”
Selena shuddered but followed as we started up the rutted drive, through an open wooden gate with a no-trespassing sign nailed to it. Ahead, the balsam limbs hung so low and dense they would have raked the sides of any car that tried to pass.
Chase lifted his hand. “You hear that?”
Cocking my head, I caught the faintest ting-ting sound, barely audible above the rusted bells’ slow gong. “More wind chimes?”
“It’s coming from up there,” Selena said, pointing to something—or more correctly a lot of small somethings—dangling about twenty feet up in a tree ahead.
I held my hand over my eyes, shading them against the sun so I could get a clearer look. This time it was a bunch of dismembered dolls: bodies with heads or arms and legs ripped off, hanging upside down or by one limb, mixed in with driftwood and clusters of clinking copper pipes.
Selena laughed nervously. “Maybe this is Stephen King’s driveway.”
“Or someone’s Halloween fun house exploded,” I said.
She put her hand on my arm. “Wait a minute.” She raised her eyes to the sky and murmured, “Hecate, Protector of the Gateways, watch over us, protect us on this journey.”
Chase strode forward. “Come on. I smell a campfire, and steam, hot canvas—seaweed.”
“Canvas and seaweed?” I said. I hooked arms with Selena, snugging her close as we rounded a slight curve in the road.
A few yards later, the thick evergreens opened into an overgrown field. Just ahead was a dilapidated bread truck. Crystals and tassels curtained an open doorway in the side of the truck. Behind it and only partly visible from our angle was a tent with a blue tarp for a canopy and purple cloth curtaining its sides. Campfire smoke trailed up from somewhere behind it. I could smell the wet seaweed and canvas Chase had mentioned and something else, the strong musky odor of incense. That raised the hair on my arms and my mind went back to when the priest had performed the exorcism on Dad. This smell was identical to what I’d noticed back then.
One slow step at a time, we approached the truck’s door. “Hello?” I called out. “Anybody home?”
Selena shifted even closer to me. “How can she live here? Her and her grandfather in this tiny truck. Where do you think they go to the bath—?”
“Selena.” Chase raised his hand to silence her. A heartbeat later, Lotli appeared in the truck doorway.
To say she was clothed would be a misnomer. She had a sarong on, but the sheer leaf-green cloth left nothing to the imagination. Her layers of necklaces and arm cuffs covered more skin than the entire dress. She was shorter and smaller than I’d thought yesterday. She also wasn’t as pretty as I remembered. Her nose was large for the size of her face, her dark eyes too intense, and her hair too long and dense to look purposely tousled. But the birdlike tilt of her head as she studied us, the swoop of her fingers, and the swish of her steps as she descended from the camper left a blatant trail of sensuality. She reminded me of a dancer Dad and I had met in Belize when we’d toured a Mayan temple.
Tiny bells on her slave bracelet jingled as she pressed a finger to her lip and then pointed it at Chase. “We saw you yesterday at the park.”
Her voice had a strange cadence to it, a musical lilt. And, as her eyes lingered on his face, an uncomfortable feeling writhed in my stomach. “We noticed you, too,” I said.
Her head swung toward Selena and me, like a black egret about to spear its favorite snack. “Did you not see the no-trespassing sign? He does not allow uninvited guests.”
Pulling my shoulders back, I stepped toward her. “We saw it.”
Her hands slithered onto her hips. “How did you find him?”
Him? She had to be referring to her grandfather. I mirrored her stance. “We’re not looking for him. It’s you we wanted to talk to. You’re Lotli, right?” Despite how weird everything was, I figured there was no reason not to tell the truth. “We found you by using the feather you gave Chase.” I tilted my head in his direction.
She looked back at him, lowering her eyes demurely. “Ah, yes. Chase.”
My jaw clenched and I was glad Selena took that moment to step forward. “I used the feather to scry. We want—” She glanced toward the smoke, then at me. “You might as well just tell her.”
“When we were listening to you yesterday, we noticed that the smoke from the fire responded to your playing. We came to see you because we wanted to k
now about that.” My voice sounded calm, but I felt like poking her eyes out for the way she was scanning Chase.
“Interesting.” She peeled her gaze off him. “We’ll ask if we may speak with you.” She bowed, then turned away from us and swished around the tent toward the smoke.
I leaned into Selena and whispered, “Did you get any bad vibes off her?”
“No. But it’s freaky that she’s asking her grandfather if she can speak with us—and the whole we thing is really weird.”
“You’re right there,” I said.
Chase frowned. “Come on. Let’s get a closer look.”
He strode in the same direction as Lotli had, and Selena and I jogged after him.
We’d just reached the tent when Lotli whisked back around the corner.
She dipped her head. “He is eating and is sorry we did not prepare enough food for guests, but you are welcome to speak to us while he eats.”
Though I hated it, I felt a pang of sympathy for her. I couldn’t imagine my grandfather ever expecting me to bow and ask permission for silly things, or him putting up with me speaking the way she did, for that matter.
We followed Lotli to the other side of the tent. The smoke, as it turned out, was rising from a smoldering pit not much larger than a garbage can. Damp seaweed circled its edge and a canvas was stowed nearby, sure signs that someone had recently steamed clams or lobsters, or something similar.
Lotli pulled aside a tent flap and tied it open, then motioned for us to follow her. It was dark inside, the only light coming from the open flap and a dozen white jar candles sitting in the middle of the tent on barnacle-crusted boards. The scent of incense weighed heavy in the air.
“Sit.” Lotli motioned to the ground near the candles.
It was only after we’d done as she’d said that I spotted the old man sitting cross-legged on the ground, just beyond the candle flames. In front of him on a smaller board were several torn-apart lobsters. He was naked—or if he had anything on it was a loincloth. He also looked too old to be her grandfather, great-grandfather, maybe. He was that shriveled and wrinkled, more closely resembling a pile of twisted roots than a man. If he was sickly, like the storyteller had said, he wasn’t going to get well in this place or with that diet.
Lotli sat down next to him and introduced him with a jut of her chin. “This is Zea.”
Though he didn’t acknowledge our presence in any way, I politely introduced the three of us to him. I stuck to first names like she had. The less they knew about us the better, at least for now.
“You are curious about the flute music?” she said.
I decided to get right to the point. “We wanted to know if it can do things other than make smoke move, like can it open the veil between realms.”
For a moment, Lotli toyed with one of her cuff bracelets. The old man picked up a sloppy hunk of lobster body and yanked off one of its littlest legs. Clutching the body, he sucked on the leg as if it were a straw, juice dribbling down his chest over a couple of withered tattoos and onto his belly.
Lotli snagged a lobster tail and cracked it open. She removed the meat and bit off a hunk.
Selena leaned into me. “Maybe we’re supposed to wait for them to finish?”
I shook my head and sat up taller, hoping to come off as more in control. “So—can the flute’s music open the veil or not?”
Lotli set what remained of the tail on her lap. “On occasions we have used it to help people move on to the next world, to quicken and ease a difficult passing.”
“You mean death?” Chase shifted, deftly rising from where he sat on the ground into a vigilant crouch. Clearly, he was becoming more instead of less wary.
“So we do,” Lotli replied. She took another bite of tail, chewing slowly. “Is that why you are here? Do you have a loved one who is in pain and wishes for the peace of death?”
My eyes went to the old man, now sucking on a lobster antenna. After a few long seconds, he noticed my staring. Without taking the antenna out from between his lips, he studied me, his eyes beetle-black and eerie. I looked away, an uncomfortable tingling running over my skin and Dad’s warning to be careful echoing in my head. I also found myself reminded of an old buddy of Dad’s. The guy was a document forger, one of the best. But to look at him, you’d think he was a burned-out homeless person with maybe one functioning brain cell. That could easily be the case with this old man.
Selena spoke up. “Actually this doesn’t involve death, at least we hope not. We need to get into the djinn realm. We wanted to know if you could help us rescue Annie’s mother—”
I thumped her leg to shut her up. There was honesty, then there was stupidity. The low light, the candles and incense, the doll parts hanging from the tree were an awful lot like a bad horror movie. The only thing missing was a bloody machete. I had no idea how Lotli had made the smoke follow her music, but it could be just part of a particularly clever con. It seemed, however, much less likely that her lack of response to Selena’s mention of the djinn realm could have been rehearsed. Clearly, she was aware of its existence.
Lotli’s dark gaze swung toward me. “We do not expect you to believe and that doesn’t matter. We could not go with you at this time, even if you wished us to.” She rested her hand on the old man’s arm. “Zea would not allow us to leave until after the autumnal solstice passes.”
Chase sprang to his feet, the candles in front of us wavering from the speed of his rising. Shadows flashed across his face. He glared at Zea, his voice as tough as granite. “What is Lotli to you? I don’t believe for a second that she’s your granddaughter. A servant? A slave?”
Zea’s eyes went wide and he dropped the antenna. Then he turned to Lotli, put his thumb and forefinger in his mouth, and whistled. It was a series of sharp sounds that followed the pattern of human speech.
Without looking at Zea, Lotli gave a smug little smile and set her last bite of lobster tail on the board. “He does not speak, like you do,” she said to us.
She may have been pleased with herself, but this time I was one step ahead. I’d heard that whistle before when Dad and I visited the Canary Islands.
My lips curled into their own smug smile. “Chase,” I said, tugging on his pants leg. “Do you mind sitting?” I glanced up at him. “Please. I’ve got this.”
He nodded and settled back into a crouch, his wary eyes still pinned to Zea.
“Hmmm. Very interesting.” I rested my hands on the ground behind me and leaned back, totally casual. “That’s Sylbo Gomero, isn’t it? The whistling language.”
Her hand bolted to her waistline, the way Chase’s had reflexively reached for his knife when we’d first gotten out of the Land Rover. My eyes whipped to where her hand hovered. The flute. Her fingers were inches away from it, its outline barely visible in a fold in her sarong.
I sucked in a breath. I needed to rethink. Her reaction told me that she most likely did have magic after all and that the flute was her weapon of choice. It told me this wasn’t part of a con. It also told me that right now she felt threatened.
“So you are familiar with the language?” she asked, her hand still frozen at her waist.
“I’ve heard it before. But no, I wouldn’t say ‘familiar.’ ” More than anything, I wished Zachary were with us. I’d never be able to duplicate the sounds Zea had made, but Zachary had an ear for language. At a minimum, he’d have remembered it well enough to decipher it later.
Lotli’s hand relaxed, lowering to her lap as her eyes went to Chase. “We do not know who told you that Zea and us are kin. We are not. We were willingly indentured to him as a child. Our abilities have been enhanced by our bond and his teachings. We cannot leave without his permission.” She bit her lip, hesitating. “My family’s roots are ancient; magic has always been in us. Harnessing the power calls for help. It calls for apprenticeship, to a master.”
Chase thumped the ground with his fist. “That’s bullshit! Call it what it is. You’re this man’s slave.”<
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This time, Lotli was on her feet, pacing toward the candles, closer to Chase. “We were willing. If we were to break the bond, we would not survive. We are grateful to him.” She glanced back at Zea, then once more at Chase. Her voice and actions were resolute, but her eyes pleaded for him to stay quiet. Her gaze darted to Selena and me, and her voice softened. “Now, tell us about you. Tell him what it is that you offer us.”
My pulse hammered. My head swam with confusion, struggling to make sense of what was going on. It looked like she might be begging for help. However—I gave her another once-over—my gut said she was trying to make her situation appear worse than it actually was, so Chase would feel sorry for her.
Zea picked up the chuck of lobster tail that Lotli had set down, shoved it in his mouth with two hands, and started chewing.
Selena slid to her feet, dusting dirt off her shorts. “I don’t know why we’re making such a big deal about this. It’s simple. We want you to come back to my family’s house, so we can ask you about flute-magic. Either you know about it and how to use the magic to open the veil between this realm and that of the djinn, or you don’t.”
Lotli frowned and folded her arms across her chest. “We cannot tell you or teach you this magic. It is a skill that is not learned. It is a part of my lineage. We are a tool, not the shaman or a teacher. It is inborn. That is why we are with Zea. We are necessary to each other.”
For a second, I rubbed my lips, thinking. I couldn’t believe there wasn’t a solution or they would have turned us away before now. It had to be something obvious.
I looked at Zea. “What would it cost to have Lotli help someone cross into the djinn realm and return?”
He stopped chewing and stared at me. Lotli’s lips curled into the slightest smile. “When he sends us to ease a person’s passing, there is a standard donation. Ten thousand dollars per lunar cycle.”
“Ten thousand a month,” I reiterated for clarity. Now we were out of the hocus-pocus realm and into an area I understood, and was a master at. Dickering.
“Yes,” she said.
