“No!”
“I’m not leaving here without her.”
“And what will you trade for her?” Delores asked, the little girl dropping away as her sneering, adult veneer returned. “Your own soul?”
“No.”
“A soul for a soul. That’s the only way.”
“I know that. I have a soul in mind. One of her favor ites. You.”
My eyes flashed over to Aidan, who stood by the water’s edge, holding his call for La Llorona.
The wind blew the fog around us in wraithlike streams, the salt air of the bay wrapping around us both.
Delores leaped down from the top of the car and ran toward me in a rage. When she hit the line of the circle she bounced off, as though she had hit a brick wall. I broke out of the protection of the circle and grabbed her, dragging her toward the water’s edge.
She was being pulled in, feetfirst. She reached out to me. The planes in her face shifted, and all at once she looked like the little towheaded girl who had been lost so long ago, young Elisabeth.
“Help me!” she yelled.
My resolve faltered.
In that instant skeletal hands wrapped around my ankles with an inhuman force. They pulled my feet out from under me and just that quickly I was in the water. This was not the bathwater-warm sea of the Caribbean. The numbing cold made it hard to move; the horror made it hard to think. La Llorona was dragging me down with her, into the depths of the bay.
Fighting panic, I willed myself to concentrate on my goal.
Jessica.
The wind whipped, the water crashed, whitecaps appeared all around us.
I took a huge lungful of air before the water closed over my head. I had never been underwater before in my life—it was an odd, all-encompassing sensation. I was drowning. Once again I fought panic. Squeezing my eyes shut, I envisioned the coven of women on the shore helping me, all of whom were there for me, and for Jessica. I saw Graciela, and my helping spirit. Aidan. Max. Little Oscar.
Kicking at the skeletal fingers that clasped my ankles only caused them to tighten on me, pulling me down farther.
My eyes opened. I could see nothing in the murky darkness of the water. But I could hear the desperate cries of drowned souls, and the anguished, never-ending sobbing of the demon.
I forced the panic down deep in my belly and called on my spirit guide to sustain me, to keep me from being driven mad by the pain and fear. I concentrated on accepting my fate, and on my goal: the salvation of a little girl.
Jessica.
I heard La Llorona’s screaming again, but it was different this time. It sounded closer and closer to me, indicating she was farther and farther away. The horrific keening wrapped around me until it was inside my head, becoming the whole of sensation for a brief, excruciating moment.
There was no more air. My lungs spasmed. Black spots danced in front of my eyes. I looked overhead to the subtle glow of the full moon through the fog, dancing on the surface of the water so far over my head. Since I was a baby, like every other natural witch, I had drawn strength from the moon, had responded to its phases and cycles. I yearned to be bathed in its light just one more time.
Suddenly I felt something drift into my arms. With my last ounce of strength I grabbed at it. Flesh, hair . . . a child.
The grip on my ankles slackened, then released.
I wasn’t strong enough to swim to the surface, but luckily I didn’t have to. As soon as I was free the waters thrust me up and out. Within seconds I bobbed up to the surface, corklike, with Jessica in my arms. We both took great gulps of air, coughing and sputtering. Jessica began to cry, but I couldn’t keep from laughing with joy.
Witches don’t sink.
Gosnold’s boat came toward us. As it neared, I saw Max looking over the side, his face a study in worry and fear. He threw a life preserver to us and fished us out of the cold brine, pulling us up and over the side.
Gosnold turned the boat around and headed to the dock.
Max swore in a constant, profane stream as he wrapped Jessica and me in emergency blankets, then enfolded both of us in his arms to help warm us.
Jessica stopped crying and just looked at us with those huge dark eyes, vague and unfocused, as though she were sleepwalking.
“You okay, sugar?” I asked.
“What . . . what happened?”
“It’s a little hard to explain. You’re safe. We’ll get you back to your family. Go back to sleep.”
She gave a huge yawn, closed her eyes, and slept against Max’s chest. She was breathing well; her pulse was strong. I wrapped an arm around her and concentrated, sagging with relief to feel her pure, clean, human vibrations.
The fog lifted suddenly and bright moonlight streamed down upon us. I looked overhead to the full moon and thanked the universe. Jessica was going to be all right. She wouldn’t remember the trauma of the past few days as anything more than a vague, unpleasant dream.
“What in the hell happened out there?” Max demanded.
I was still grinning down at Jessica. The salt drops on my face felt like tears of joy.
“Lily? What happened?”
I looked up at Max. His face was close to mine as I huddled at his side, drawn to his warmth.
“In the old days, one of the tests they gave witches was to throw them in the sea or a lake. Do you remember what happened?”
His light gray eyes held mine. “If they sank and drowned they were innocent. . . .”
“But if they floated, they were true witches,” I finished. Countless women—and not a few men—had died from the “ordeal of swimming,” the indicium aquae. If they were innocent of being witches, they drowned. If they failed to drown, they were hanged or burned. Talk about your no-win situation.
“I can’t sink,” I said. I couldn’t contain my grin. “Never even could swim worth a dang. I float like a proverbial witch.”
Gosnold pulled up to the dock and Max climbed out, taking Jessica from my arms and setting her on the pier, and then turning back to help me out.
Oscar was squealing and trotting back and forth, his piggy hooves clopping loudly on the wooden-planked pier. I crouched down to give him a reassuring squeeze. His mere presence had helped tonight. He was a great familiar.
Looking farther down the dock, I saw Aidan. Our eyes met. Thank you, I mouthed. Aidan Rhodes, male witch, nodded and kept walking, just an ordinary guy out for a stroll at three in the morning.
“You know that guy?” Max asked.
“I wouldn’t go that far,” I said. “But I certainly owe him.”
Maya ran toward us and enfolded Jessica in her arms. She and Bronwyn promised to take her straight home. I told them to stay back and let her go to the door herself, so they wouldn’t have to answer a lot of uncomfortable questions. I imagined the police would have a hard time with this particular truth.
The coven women gathered around me, everyone hugging and crying and cheering. I had never been a big hugger, but I did my best to join in their euphoria, knowing that in a few minutes Jessica’s family would have all their prayers answered. They had been touched by grace, and by the bravery of a bunch of courageous, caring strangers—and they would never know it.
After some time, I noticed Max standing to the side, arms crossed over his chest, frowning.
I extricated myself from the throng and went to him.
“You okay, Max?”
“I don’t know. . . .” He shook his head and looked out over the water. “I can’t quite wrap my mind around what happened here tonight.”
“It’s probably best not to think too much about it. The point is, it all worked out okay.”
His face was sketched with worry, tugging at my heart. Time to change the subject.
“Too bad you didn’t have your film crew, now that Gosnold finally took you out on his boat, right? Tell me, did he charge you for the privilege?”
Max smiled down at me, the light dancing in his eyes. “As a matter of fact, he did. He told me I might
see something I would never forget.”
“He’s such a sleaze.” I shook my head.
“He’s a businessman.” He shrugged.
Our gazes held for a long moment.
“You scared the hell out of me,” Max said, his voice low and harsh.
“Do I still scare you?” I tried to keep my tone flippant, but I really wanted to know. Now that he had seen this part of me in action, would he turn away from me, like so many other cowans?
“You’re a scary woman; no doubt about that . . .”
My heart sank.
“. . . but you certainly haven’t scared me off.”
Max drew me into his arms, tilted my head back, and kissed me.
Slowly. Deeply. Thoroughly.
It was enough to make a witch swoon.
Chapter 20
That night, Maya and Bronwyn came back to my place after seeing Jessica home, and decided to sleep over at my apartment. Too giddy and stunned from our triumph to go to bed right away, we popped popcorn and brewed nothing more magical than hot chocolate. Oscar snoozed on the couch while we laughed and chatted. It was bliss.
My first ever slumber party, at the ripe old age of thirty-one.
“Don’t you want to close the store for a few days, take a well-deserved break?” asked Bronwyn as we washed our dishes. I reveled in the ordinariness of the chore after our extraordinary night.
I shook my head. “All I want is to get things back to normal.”
“So how did you know what spell to use, and that you needed the coven?” Maya asked.
“I finally broke down and called my grandmother Graciela. She taught me everything I know about the craft. Though I have to say, there’s no way to really know about these things. There’s a bit of improvisation that goes into it. But she was working a spell on her end . . . and I had some other help as well. And all you women, too. I could never have done it alone.”
“I still can’t believe that Delores Keener was . . . less than human,” said Maya.
“Poor thing,” I said. “I still feel bad for the child she once was, for Elisabeth.”
“Why didn’t Frances just say her child had been returned to her? Why the big secret, keeping her in the attic, of all things? Maybe that’s what made her so nuts.”
“It took Frances a couple of years to get strong enough to negotiate with La Llorona, during which time Elisabeth wouldn’t have aged. Hard to explain. Plus, by the time her mother got her back she was changed . . . altered.”
“Even her new name, Delores, meant pain,” Maya mused. “And her last name, Keener, as in one who cries or wails, like La Llorona?”
“That’s what I finally guessed, after a few hints.”
“Now that I’ve seen you in action,” Bronwyn said, hanging three Italian ceramic mugs on their cup hooks, “I have a hard time believing your protection spell didn’t work for Frances.”
“At first I thought it was because I had focused the brew on demons, rather than humans. But as it turns out, my spell was useless against suicide. Self-destruction is a powerful drive. And ironically enough, I made a mistake with an important ingredient—hair—that helped Delores survive the poison.”
“And then she went on to try to run us down, and kill Sandra?” Maya asked. “How is Sandra, by the way?”
“Back to her old self since I called and told her I was giving Frances’s property to the neighborhood association. She’s nothing if not goal-oriented. She says they’ll make it into a park.”
“A haunted park?”
“That part’s anybody’s guess.”
“Lily, sweetie, what’s this?” Bronwyn picked up a piece of paper I had left out on the counter. My last will and testament.
“Um . . .”
“You really didn’t think you were going to survive tonight, did you?”
“Well . . .”
“But you went anyway?” Maya asked.
My new friends looked at me, eyes huge.
“It was important,” I mumbled.
“You’re important,” said Bronwyn.
“Important and a little bit crazy,” added Maya, her voice edged with anger.
The cuckoo clock chimed five o’clock.
“So, does it still count as a slumber party if there’s no sleeping involved?” I asked, hoping to change the subject.
“That’s almost the very definition of a slumber party,” said Maya with a reluctant smile and a little yawn. “But with that said, I call the couch. I’m even willing to share with the pig.”
Despite my entreaties for them to get some more sleep, Maya and Bronwyn stuck to me like white on grits as I opened Aunt Cora’s Closet that morning. Soon after I performed my cleansing ritual, the bell rang and we all looked up to see a man walk in, his faced obscured by two cellophane-wrapped supermarket floral bouquets and a shiny helium balloon that read, Thank You.
I knew who it was by the tattooed biceps.
“Tomás. How nice to see you.”
“Hey.” His dark eyes shifted to Bronwyn and Maya.
“Guys, could you give us a minute?” I asked.
“Sure. We’ll go down to the café for coffee. Either of you want anything?”
I asked for a mocha latte. Tomás shook his head.
After they left, he and I looked at each other in silence for a long moment. Then he held out the flowers and balloon.
“These are for you. On behalf of my family. They don’t . . . they don’t know what you did for them, for all of us.”
“It wasn’t just me. A lot of people worked together. Does Jessica seem all right?” I asked as I accepted the flowers and cradled them to my chest, breathing in the scent of mums and carnations. “Her old self?”
“Just like the day she left. The police already came by, and we told them what we knew: that she just showed up at the door in the middle of the night, and can’t remember a thing. That’s all.”
I nodded.
“She can’t tell us anything about what happened. It’s like she was asleep the whole time.”
“That’s for the best.”
His dark eyes fixed on mine, intense and wary.
“But you and I both know she had some help. I saw those women who just left for the cafe, your friends, hiding out in their car last night, watching until Jessica came into the house.”
“Some things are better left unsaid.”
“And . . . La Llorona?”
“She’s left town.” The combination of the strength of the coven, my spell casting, and Aidan’s power—mostly the latter—had convinced her to return home to the Rio Grande, where she belonged.
“I’m sorry about what I said, about you being a witch.”
“You saved my life, remember? So we’re even on that score. And the truth is, I am a witch.”
He smiled slightly. “Well, then, I guess there are witches and then there are witches.”
“I guess so,” I said, returning his smile.
“If there’s ever anything you need . . . all you gotta do is ask. I got your back.”
“Thanks, Tomás. That means a lot.”
“I’ll see you around, then.”
I nodded. “See you around. Thank you for the flowers.”
He turned and walked out, just as another person walked in. The two men nodded at each other as they passed in the doorway.
Max. With a spray of wildflowers.
His eyes held mine for a beat; then he looked down at the flowers in my arms.
“Looks like I’ve got some competition.”
“Yep. They’re practically knocking down the door.”
He smiled. “Well, as I believe I’ve mentioned before, I’m not easily daunted. Are you free for dinner on Saturday? There are things we should talk about.”
“Oh, I can’t on Saturday.”
“Hot date with Mr. Biceps?”
“Not exactly. The provost at the San Francisco College of the Arts saw the article on Aunt Cora’s Closet, and she promised me
a bunch of Victorian clothes and old flapper costumes she found in a sealed storage closet under the eaves.”
“Sounds intriguing. But why are you looking at this stuff at night?”
“Maya’s a student at the school, and she mentioned that I might be able to help out with an unusual problem. Supposedly the students have been hearing odd noises in the middle of the night; the provost wants me to check it out in exchange for the clothes.”
“Let me get this straight: You nearly drowned last night, and now you’re chasing ghosts again?”
“I’m not chasing ghosts, Max. I don’t know the first thing about ghosts. La Llorona was a demon. There’s a big difference.”
Max looked at me for a long time, an angry glint entering his light gray eyes. “You don’t even realize quite how crazy you sound, do you?”
“The students are just spooked because they discovered the school was built over an old cemetery, but of course that doesn’t guarantee spirits of any kind, much less malevolent ones. I’m just going to assure them there’s nothing to worry about. I’m certain I won’t see a thing more exotic than corsets and white cotton bloomers.”
Max blew out an exasperated breath. “I don’t know how I’m going to handle this sort of thing.”
“We haven’t even gone out on our first date yet and you’re already giving up? What happened to Mr. Undaunted?”
“I never said I was giving up. And we had our first official date already, over tacos. I was thinking of something slightly more elegant for our second outing.”
“Well, I do need an escort for this vintage wedding I was invited to.” I handed him the gilt invitation I had received yesterday via Susan Rogers, fashion editor at the Chronicle and aunt to Natalie. “But you’ll have to wear a tux. It’s at the Palace Hotel, pretty fancy.”
“I look great in a tux.” He looked down at the invitation. “But this is months from now.”
“You don’t think you’ll be around months from now?”
His eyes looked up into mine. At long last he gave me a slow, sexy smile. “Consider yourself escorted.”
Bronwyn and Maya returned with hot beverages and bagels in hand. I introduced them to Max. After exchanging pleasantries he ducked out of the store, promising to call me later.
Secondhand Spirits Page 25
