LaMansec led the way through the beaded curtain, down a short, narrow, unadorned hall, and into his private office.
The interior decor surprised me: I might as well have been visiting my local DMV. A large, standard-issue gray metal desk was topped by a desktop computer; the walls were lined with shelves containing reference books, stacks of papers, and dozens of files. Atop a beige metal file cabinet sat a small television tuned in to The Oprah Winfrey Show. LaMansec picked up a remote and switched it off, then waved me toward a folding chair.
“Please, make yourself comfortable,” he said in an uninflected voice.
“What happened to your accent?” I asked.
“It’s strictly for the tourists.” He shrugged one brawny shoulder. “They feel cheated if they know they’re speaking to a guy born and raised in L.A. Tea?”
“Please.” I nodded.
He poured hot water from an electric kettle into two blue-glazed mugs, added bags of mint leaves, and stirred in a dollop of amber honey. Handing one to me, he took a seat behind his desk and fixed me with his intense gaze.
“I heard a powerful witch had come to town. It’s a pleasure.”
“You heard about me? From whom?”
“Let’s just say your reputation precedes you.”
Reputation? I had a reputation?
“I was hoping you might be able to tell me something about children disappearing from the Bayview-Hunters Point neighborhood.”
The pleasant smile dropped from his face. “Another one?”
“Just the other day.”
He shook his head and ran his hand across his forehead in a weary gesture.
“Is it La Llorona?” I asked.
“That’s their name for her.”
“And you’re powerless against her?”
A flash of anger passed over his face. “Powerless? Not at all. I’ve given them salts and talismans, along with the basic advice to keep their children by their sides at all times, especially at night. But I’m not a miracle worker. For most of these people, vodou is not part of their belief system. And as you well know—”
“If you don’t believe, it won’t work.”
“Precisely.”
“Have you ever had direct contact with the demon?”
He shook his head. “No. She won’t be summoned.”
“How hard have you tried?”
He gazed at me for a long moment.
“Not hard. To tell you the truth, she is an evil I’d rather not deal with. I try to help when people come to me, but I can only do so much. This is my living. I have paying clients—true believers—to worry about.”
“I understand,” I said, and I did. This sort of thing could consume a person; those of us born with supernatural abilities came to appreciate that early. This was especially the case for those who used their powers to make a living instead of, say, selling vintage clothes. But all of us had to become adept at what Oprah would call “drawing boundaries.”
“If they don’t believe in vodou, why do they come to you? Why not turn to their own curanderos?”
“Early on they decided their own magic was limited. I’m not sure why. I inherited this practice from my mentor, and she had been working with them for years already.”
“Could I show you some photos I took of a personal altar? I think it might be vodou.”
“Of course.”
I brought the envelope of photos out of my backpack. They weren’t the best pictures in the world, in part because there were so many halo effects and orbs that it was hard to see everything on the altar. But they gave the general idea.
Hervé looked at the photos carefully, spreading them out on the desk before him. His dark eyes then shifted back up to meet mine. “Where did you say you took these photos?”
“I’d rather not say. Why?”
“That looks like a Hand of Glory.” He pointed to the strange candleholder that I had taken with me. “Do you have any idea what that is?”
I shook my head.
“A genuine Hand of Glory is the dried and pickled hand—usually the left—of a hanged man. When a particular kind of magic candle is made and set within the Hand of Glory, like it is here in the picture”—he showed it to me—“it gives light only to the holder, and can unlock any door it comes across. Including spiritual doors.”
Our eyes met for a long moment. “So this would be beyond the average personal altar.”
“I should say so, yes. And the blackened bones . . . it is hard to tell, but they may well be black-cat bones.”
“As in actual cat bones?” I felt a little green around the gills.
“I won’t tell you how they obtain them.”
“I do appreciate that. I’m afraid to ask, but they do what, exactly?”
“They can impart invisibility when held in the mouth of a practitioner.”
“Invisibility?”
He nodded. “This altar must belong to a practitioner.”
Sweet little Frances Potts, a voodoo practitioner? “Can you tell whether the practitioner would be acting for good or for ill?”
“Much of my practice can be used for both purposes, just as in the craft you practice.” LaMansec hesitated for a beat. “But from the presence of the Hand of Glory and the black-cat bones, I would assume this person is working for evil.”
“One more thing,” I said as I put the photos back in my backpack. “I want to summon La Llorona.”
“To what end?”
I unfolded the missing-child flyer and set it on the desk before him.
“I want this child’s soul back.”
“What about the others? Will you ask for them all back?”
This is the problem with such things. You open up a can of paranormal worms. But the sad truth is that, over time, the children cannot return. They are no longer the same after too much time in another dimension. It might already be too late even for Jessica.
“I should have been able to protect her. I should have sensed that she was in danger.”
“Is this about the child, or about you?”
I ignored that. I wasn’t sure. “Is there anyone who can help me?”
Sigh. “You need to speak to my teacher, Mother Decotier.”
“Where can I find her?”
“She moved on to the next dimension almost ten years ago.”
I shook my head. “I’m not a necromancer.”
“You can’t call spirits?”
“Not in so many words. I mean, I attract demons and spirits like flies to honey, but I’m not a medium: I know when souls of the departed are near, but I can’t understand what they say.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Really.”
“I can’t read cards or tea leaves or palms, either.”
Hervé was grinning by now. “But you are a witch, are you not?”
“I feel vibrations in old things, and can sometimes feel, or even smell, the auras of people and objects. But the only truly ‘witchy’ thing I’m really good at is brewing.”
“You don’t see much of that these days.”
He was right; brewing as an art has largely lost favor amongst modern witches. Though many were clever at mixing herbs, teas, or poultices, few actually used the old-fashioned cauldron, which relied upon the magic of the fire, the process of boiling, and the transformation from liquid to steam to condense and focus one’s intentions.
“I blame Shakespeare,” I said.
“How so?”
“Remember the witches in Macbeth? Not a very flattering portrayal.” He smiled, but I was serious. Things just haven’t been the same since those infamous witches mixed ghastly ingredients and chanted, “Double, double toil and trouble, fire burn, and cauldron bubble.”
“In any case,” Hervé said, “there’s no need for necromancy. Presuming Mother is willing to speak with you, she will find a way. Do you know the small park dedicated to Mary Ellen Pleasant?”
“Who?”
“Pleasant has been called the m
other of civil rights here in San Francisco. She was a remarkable woman, an entrepreneur born as a slave, who went on to use her personal fortune to help fund the abolitionist movement. Following the Civil War she fought several high-profile court battles in San Francisco over crimes such as riding the streetcar while black. She won.”
“I’m embarrassed to say I’ve never heard of her.”
“Few have. When they couldn’t destroy her any other way, rumors started to fly that she was a voodoo queen, and a prostitute. The slander accomplished what nothing else had—she lost everything. Still, without her legacy San Francisco would be a very different city today. She was a very powerful soul.” He wrote on a notepad. “At 1661 Octavia Street there is a plaque in her honor. She used to live in a grand mansion there, and planted the eucalyptus trees that remain. Now Mother Decotier haunts the place from time to time in a sort of personal tribute. She likes to scare the tourists and remind them of who Pleasant was. Presuming she agrees to talk with you, she’ll require payment.”
“I understand. But just so we’re clear, I won’t sacrifice life.”
He threw back his head and laughed, a full-throated guffaw. For the first time in his presence, I felt a tingle of trepidation. His laugh was formidable, almost alarming.
“A witch with standards. I love it. Tell you what, Lily the witch. I will arrange a meeting, and inquire as to the payment—short of taking life.” He laughed again. “I will do it as a . . . professional courtesy.”
“Thank you.”
“Do you have a cell phone?”
“No.” I was a teensy bit phobic about portable electronic devices. They scrambled my sense of vibrations. “But here’s my card with my home number.”
“You have e-mail?” he asked.
“Yes, but I don’t check it very often.” I took back the card and wrote the address below my phone number.
“Check it. I’ll e-mail you her reply and the meeting time.”
What was it with all these tech-savvy spooks? Sometimes I felt I would have done better as a sixteenth-century witch . . . except for the massacres, of course.
As we rose to go, Hervé went over to a cupboard and extracted a small jar of what looked like dirt. He sprinkled a little of it into a tiny plastic Baggie.
“My gift to you. For your charm bag.”
“What is it?”
“Dirt from a prison gateway in New Orleans. It will help to keep evildoers from you. Powerful protection.”
“Thank you, Hervé. I really appreciate it, and your taking the trouble to talk with me.”
“My pleasure.”
By the time we returned to the front, Max appeared to have gotten over his snit. He stood with the dread-locked woman by a display of scented oils. He was holding her wrist up to his nose, apparently assessing one of the perfumes. She laughed at something he was saying. Twin boys, about eight, joked with him, and he looked down and teased them about their New Orleans Saints T-shirts.
The smile left his face when he looked over to see me standing with LaMansec. He glared. Hervé grinned.
“Tell you what, Lily, you bring this one along. Mother would love to meet him.”
“I don’t think that would be a good idea—” I began.
“I’ll be there,” Max said. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a business card. “Just let me know where and when.”
I thanked Hervé again, and Max and I left the shop.
I paused for a moment out on the sidewalk. Closing my eyes, I breathed deeply and let the smells and sounds surround me. Spicy fried meats, refried beans, ranchero music and rap with booming bass moving by from a car. A million vibrations, mostly good. This was a pulsating, vibrant neighborhood, peopled by up-and-coming im migrants, students, and artists. It might be scruffy, but it was full of hope. These people were looking forward, toward the future.
“You okay?” Max asked.
I nodded, opened my eyes, and smiled up at him. “Mmm.”
“What exactly did that voodoo priest do to make you smile like that?”
I laughed and shook my head. “It’s this neighborhood. Isn’t it great?”
Max glanced around us and then fixed me with a doubtful look. “Which part are you talking about? The overflowing Dumpster or the rampant graffiti?”
I cocked my head and studied the bright spray-painted tags on an otherwise uninspired cement wall. Not that I approved of such vandalism, but the vivid colors did enliven the place.
“You have to admit it’s well-done. I mean, they obviously take pride in their work.”
Max chuckled. “I’ll say one thing for this neighborhood: They’ve got some of the best tacos in town. Come on, tiger; you owe me dinner.”
“I don’t owe you a darned thing.”
Nonetheless, I let Max lead me a few noisy blocks down Valencia Street to an informal restaurant called Taqueria El Toro. He spoke in Spanish at the counter, ordering tacos of pollo asado, mole, chile verde, and al pastor, as well as cold beers for both of us. I almost asked for carnitas, but since spending time with Oscar, the thought of eating pork was hard to stomach. Despite his earlier words, Max insisted on paying.
We took our bottles of Dos Equis, each adorned with a wedge of lime, to a clean booth near the back. Max nabbed a basket of chips and a small bowl of salsa, then set them on the table and took a seat across from me.
“You want to tell me what’s going on?” he said.
“Not particularly, no.”
“Carlos Romero is a homicide inspector.”
“Mm, this looks like good salsa.” I dipped a chip, still warm from the fryer, into freshly made tomato salsa and popped it in my mouth. The chip was a crisp, salty explosion, and the salsa was flavorful and perfectly spiced. I hadn’t realized how hungry I was.
“What’s a homicide investigation got to do with a witch?” Max pushed.
“Keep your voice down.” I glanced around us to see who might be overhearing our conversation. There were still a lot of people in the world who believed in the power of witches, for good or for ill.
“I thought wi—”
I gave him a look.
“Er, your type of people were proud of who you are. Your . . . heritage, or whatever you call it.”
“I doubt you know the first thing about my people.”
“Enlighten me.”
I sat back and took a long pull on my ice-cold beer. “Any idea how many people—mostly women—were killed during the hysteria in Europe?”
“Hundreds, I would imagine,” he said as he dug into the chips and salsa. “Maybe thousands.”
“Conservative estimates put the number between fifty and eighty thousand.”
He stopped chewing.
“More than the entire population of London at the time. Up there with the Black Death. And those are the ones we have court records for; a lot were taken care of in a rather less formal fashion. Countless others were tortured and driven from their homes. So when you speak so flippantly about a ‘heritage’ of witchcraft, you might want to consider what it would be like to walk around knowing you have that kind of history.”
“Lily, I understand that it’s a historical tragedy, and evidence of our misogynistic past as a society . . . but there’s no proof the accused were actually witches. I’ve read The Crucible.”
“It’s true; a lot of the women killed were victims of personal vendettas. Some were so influential and respected that their very existence threatened the men-folk in charge. Some were simply guilty of being ‘weird.’ The last woman put to death for witchcraft in England was a senile old lady. But a lot were, in fact, natural witches and sorcerers.”
“If they had supernatural powers, why didn’t they just get themselves out of the situation?”
“Plenty did. They weren’t able to catch us all, not by a long shot. I suppose if they had, I would never have been born.”
Our eyes met for a long moment.
“And anyway, you don’t understand how it works,”
I continued. “We can’t just point a wand and make things happen the way you see in the movies. It’s much more complex than that.”
“Lily—”
Saved by the bell. A young man at the counter called his name, and Max got up to retrieve our food order. I gathered napkins and forks and knives from the stand, two more kinds of salsa from the salsa bar, and we sorted out our order at the table. Al pastor and chile verde for him, pollo asado and mole for me. Salsa and guacamole for us both. We dug in.
After a few minutes of eating in companionable silence, Max started to stare at me. Stretching one long leg out in front of him, he reached deep into the front pocket of his jeans and extracted my medicine bag, closed tight, and placed it upon the table. It was butter-soft red leather, decorated with colorful beads I had stitched on as a girl. Inside the leather was a second bag, made of black silk. Inside that . . . was magic.
I wrapped my hand around it. It was warm from Max’s skin, and I could sense its welcoming hum. I let out a contented sigh and smiled. It was like being reunited with a long-lost friend.
“Tell me about the bag.”
“It’s called a medicine bag, or a charm bag. It’s consecrated, and imbued with protective powers.”
“A bunch of stones, a feather, powder . . .”
“You opened it?”
“Of course.”
Of course. What had I expected?
“Did anything spill?”
He shook his head. “I was careful. Tell me about the contents. Dirt? Magic stones?” He couldn’t quite cover up his disdain.
I had no pockets, and I wanted the bag next to my body rather than in my backpack, so I tucked the bundle into my bra and purposely ignored his question, if not his tone.
“Do you carry a picture of a loved one in your wallet?” I asked.
His eyebrows shot up in question. “Sure. I’ve got one of my mother.”
“Could I see it?”
Looking at me curiously, he pulled out his wallet, flipped it open, and handed it to me. The photo showed a woman in her sixties with a broad, open smile. I slipped the snapshot out of its plastic jacket and laid it on the table facing Max. Then I held out a sharp knife.
Secondhand Spirits Page 19
