The Poison of Ivy

by Jessica King

  Varsity rang the bell at the front of the store and heard, “I’ll be with you in a moment! Make yourself at home!” from behind long strings of beads.

  The store smelled sweet with tobacco and sour with rum. As he walked, he found various jars and shelves interspersed with old, grainy photos and different sets of instructions and recipes. Part museum, part store, the front room told a story of ancient African American magic passed through the blood and the exchange and energy of magic that was required to correctly perform hoodoo.

  Keys sat beneath spells for unlocking the mind and opening the soul to opportunity. A bookshelf was covered in chunks of tangled roots for “root work,” and potted flowers all around the space had pennies tucked into their soil. One flower had apparently received a large payout lately—a yellow flower promising success in love and companionship, open communication and strength in relationships. He picked up two little bundles secured in fabric. Damp and smelling of earth, he set them down on the shelf where he found their explanation. They were gris-gris or little sprits to keep in a left pocket.

  He passed dried alligator and rabbit feet, tightly rolled tobacco, and bottles of white and dark rum. Glassware of all different sizes filled with water littered the space as well as candles and smoking incense. He waved a hand in front of his face, not liking the smell. He found a series of black bundles with some sort of example above them—a spell to keep someone from speaking evil, apparently.

  Varsity examined it closely and read the handwritten description in the frame behind it.

  To ensure an adversary speaks no evil of you, place down a black piece of fabric. Atop the fabric, cut a lime in half. Take a picture or piece of paper with your slanderer’s name. Fold it away from yourself three times, turn the paper, and repeat. Place the paper on one half of the lime, put on gloves, and sprinkle crushed allum atop the paper. Press the lime together and use pins with black heads to seal the lime back together (X-patterns are recommended). Use string (black or red) to further secure the lime (tie three or nine times, dependent on preference). Then, pull the fabric around the lime and tie three times. To further secure, use fire to tighten cloth. Hide your lime (remember dogs’ affinity for finding them in the ground), or leave it here for safekeeping through planting in safe space.

  This conjure is meant to cause your opponent to be moved away from you (the folding of the paper away from yourself), shut their mouth (allum tightens pores of the skin), and cross their life so they do not have the time or energy to speak ill of you (the X-patterns).

  While wrapping in the fabric, please recite any words that are meaningful to you. While the spirits communicate through your actions and their understanding of directions, colors, numbers, patterns, and earth, words still hold great significance in hoodoo practice. Bible verses, significant songs, or small speeches of your own are effective in this work.

  For more serious cases in which a lime does not succeed in silencing your opponent, please ask for further assistance.

  Two women walked out from behind the beads. One of them held a small planter holding three different flowers. He recognized the other from a picture from the new Kingsmen site.

  “Just remember the exchange, the payment,” the taller of the two said, Mikayla Martin, ringing her customer up at the cash register, which was surrounded by candles on sale. “And let me know if you have any questions. It can be a little complicated at first. But usually, three pennies and some tobacco smoke is a good start.”

  “And don’t cut from the root,” the woman said, tucking her credit card back into her wallet.

  “Exactly. You don’t want to do that.”

  The women bid each other adieu. Mikayla Martin turned to him and smiled. “Hi, can I help you?”

  He’d practiced his cover several times. “I need a hex performed,” he said.

  Mikayla’s expression became quickly guarded. She ran her fingers along the length of her braid, which contained tiny braids within itself and beads and shining charms that made her hair seem more ornamental than natural.

  “Are you certain?” she asked. “I don’t really take those lightly.”

  “I’m certain,” he said. “I actually need three people hexed.”

  Mikayla hesitated.

  “Please,” he said. He tried his best to look desperate and a bit flirtatious. He was feeling confident after his date with Becca.

  “It’s very draining,” she said. “I’ll be physically weak for a good while after.”

  “I’m willing to pay whatever it takes,” he said. And he would have been if he didn’t plan to kill her before they ever got to the register.

  She led him behind the strings of clacking beads to a room with a small table. She pointed to an old chair with a seat woven from hemp. Varsity sat lightly. Mikayla sat in her own chair, her hands tucked beneath her legs.

  The room itself felt like a horrible treasure trove of dark magic. Potted plants overflowing with vines hung all around the space or laid on the ground like flopping spiders. Jars of what looked like dried grasshoppers and ashes and dirt littered the edges of the floor. Despite being painted with light colors, it still felt far too small, and he wished for a bigger table, for a bigger space between him and Mikayla.

  “What in particular have they done to you?”

  “They’ve brought evil into this world—and not just to me,” Varsity said. “To every person, they come in contact with.”

  Mikayla nodded, playing idly with a string of beads around her neck. None of them seemed to be the same size or color, and Varsity wondered if the nonuniformity bothered her as much as it bothered him. Unlikely. This entire shop seemed like a hodgepodge of ideas and thoughts and dark magic passed through the ages.

  “Are they male or female?”

  “All three are female.”

  “I’d like to ask you a few questions about your own view of these women.” When he didn’t answer, Mikayla continued, “Have you been romantic with any of them?”

  Varsity didn’t consider his impending dates with Annie or Marisol to be romantic. He considered them more like appointments. And he wasn’t interested in either of them or Mikayla. “No,” he said.

  “And do others complain about them and their effects on the world?”

  He could show her an entire website claiming that there were tons of witches who were destroying the world, bringing about horrible things.

  “Thousands.”

  This gave Mikayla pause. “Are these women public figures?”

  “No,” he said.

  Mikayla looked at him, and he backtracked, feeling as though he were bumping into the edges of her confusion, the edges of her limits. “Thousands might be exaggerating, but everyone within my … social circle views them as a nuisance that could use a rather severe backlash.” He supposed that was as good a way as any to say it.

  “And you’re sure this isn’t personal bias? There’s nothing you could change about you to find peace with them?” At first, it sounded like an insult, but her tone told him it was a standard part of her pre-curse questioning.

  Varsity thought about this for a moment. “I’m certain if I changed to acclimate myself to them, I’d be doing myself a disservice.” It would only be through their change—their elimination—that would give him the peace he desired.

  Mikayla seemed to take this as enough of an answer, and she said that okay, she would help him, though it certainly would be a pricey conjure. He said money was no object, which made her raise her brows, but she looked down to the table right away. “It must be difficult to have this job and not be nosy,” he said, trying to warm her up.

  She smiled shyly. “At times, it can be challenging not to ask.” She pulled out three large black candles, three pieces of paper, and a pen. She stood and slid three ceramic plates from a shelf above her where several plain white plates sat, stacked like waiting wishes. “But I don’t necessarily find it my business to ask those questions.” She set the plate on the table and pull
ed out a small carving knife.

  “Is there any sense of backlash you worry about from this work?” she asked, indicating the black candle in her hands with a subtle nod. She drew three Xs along an imaginary vertical axis, and then repeated the carving on the other two candles.

  “I fear that these women may come for me—in this life or another.”

  “You believe in reincarnation?” Mikayla asked. “That’s unique in Western culture.”

  “Only for some,” Varsity said, and Mikayla’s eyebrows scrunched together. It was at this time that he truly remembered he was talking to Betty, an ancient witch who was in her fourth reincarnation.

  “For the holy?” the woman asked.

  “For the unholy,” Varsity corrected her, trying to catch her eyes, which turned contemplative but remained on her work.

  She pulled out an old spice shaker filled with some collection of ground spices and stones which she named for him, but he only recognized salt and sulfur. Mikayla stood and opened the only window in the room—a window that was high enough no one could easily look in. “Ventilation,” she said. “It’s necessary for some of these bigger things.”

  He assumed by “bigger things,” she meant curses and hexes.

  She shook some of the mixture across the carved parts of the candles and wore a glove as she rubbed it into the wax, leaving three light brown Xs instead of simple carved ones. She repeated the process for each candle, and then struck a match, warming the underside of each candle until it was melted enough to merge to their respective plates. “Would you like me to do the names?”

  At his wide eyes, she shook her head that it was fine if he preferred she didn’t know the names.

  She handed him the pieces of paper. “So, here, you’ll want to write what you know about them. Sign their name three times and then turn it the other way so you’re cross-hatching with you know, their address or their phone number, whatever you know about them. Three times. And then turn it diagonally, so you’re covering the paper one more time, and you can write “cursed” three times. After that, sprinkle a bit of this over the paper.” She pointed to the shaker of the salt-sulfur combination.

  “I’ll need to use my phone,” he said.

  “That’s fine,” she said. She sprinkled some of the mixture in a ring around each candle before handing him the shaker. “Whenever you’re done, fold them three ways lengthwise, then turn it and fold three more times. I’ll handle the string, and we’ll keep going. I’ll give you a minute for this.”

  She left the room, and Varsity filled out the names. Annie Garner, Marisol Sanchez, and Mikayla Martin. He had Annie’s and Marisol’s number, and a quick search online reminded him of the address where he was currently sitting. After writing “cursed” nine times, he felt a little cursed himself. But this was what separated him from fools like Mikayla. He knew his physical actions were stronger than any dark magic she had. He’d kill her, and then where would her curses and hexes be? He felt some sense of righteousness in making Mikayla curse herself and the two other witches. It would hurt her more to use her own wickedness. Or, if they were all lucky, it might be enough of a hit to their egos to know that they were hexed to make them refuse their opportunity to reincarnate. If after death, they found out his trick and believed they’d been cursed—maybe they’d choose the grave. He’d be a hero.

  He folded the papers like she had shown him and called for her. She returned with a spool of red thread, which she used to tie the little packets of paper together. She said a prayer and to “The Father, The Son, and the Holy Spirit,” which he found odd, and she placed one little packet in front of each candle. She placed a red chrysanthemum on top of each packet, which she called “petitions,” praying the same prayer over each one: she blessed the power, asked for it to give strength to the petition, for it to magnify the effects of the petition, and to act quickly to fulfill the petition. She again ended it in the names of the Christian trinity.

  She added purple flowers all around the rest of the candle, praying that they would administer their dark power and that they would make it impossible for the cursed party to exact revenge on him. She then lit each black candle, praying over each that the candle would bring pain and suffering to each of the targets. The hair on Varsity’s arms stood on end.

  He knew several of the Kingsmen were religious and wondered if they ever prayed like this. For harm. It had only seemed right to him that people might ask for help for themselves, not for harm against others. A person should do their dirty work themselves, he thought. Even here, the hex was something Mikayla was doing herself, with her own power. But to extend it to call on this type of divine intervention …

  But her voice was sweet, and she prayed with the same cadences in her voice that he remembered from his childhood encounters with pastors. When his mother had dragged him to Christmas and Easter sermons. The only one he’d ever liked was Christmas Eve when the sanctuary filled with darkness before it was flooded with candlelight.

  He felt that he was experiencing a darker version of that now. A version that promised evil and confusion and pain. It felt more powerful somehow than praying for something good, but Varsity knew that out of anything in that room—whether it was a returning spirit or the witch in front of him or the black candle or even the flowers—he was holding all the cards because he, without a doubt, had the most power. He reached down to his ankle as if he were going to scratch it. He started his phone camera and held it at the lowest angle he could.

  The witch looked over her work. “Hoodoo is a very contagious work at times,” she said, not noticing his movements. “I would recommend not rubbing elbows too much with these people in the next day as the spirits work. They’re powerful enough that you want to, you know, stay out of the way,” she said and laughed a bit. “If those don’t work, come back and let me know.” She slid the matchbox closed and put it back in whatever drawer she’d taken it from and straightened up.

  “Oh, I don’t think that will be necessary,” Varsity said. He removed the gun’s safety. Before the witch could cast a single spell of dark magic or even raise her unholy hands, Varsity fired.

  The witch slumped back into her chair, the beads and metal in her hair clinking against one another with the sudden movement. The light didn’t last long in her eyes, and the blood did the dramatics of the witchy room justice, leaking down her arm and dripping from a single fingertip into a plate she’d left on the floor next to her. Almost as if her blood were intentionally being collected.

  Fearing the woman might have some sort of power of seeing of the future, he pushed the plate with a booted foot, and let the blood drip and roll against the cement flooring instead. He placed a Kingsmen card on her throat as instructed and took a photo. He shut the windows, blew out the candles, and left, the little bell above the door dinging. But to him, it was like the tolling of a bell signaling to those around that the hopeful finality of death had claimed another witch. He climbed into his car and sent the message that his work in progress was eliminated. He started his car and rolled back onto the highway. He had a date tonight.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Thursday, March 9, 2017, 3:58 p.m.

  “Dead witch found in her apartment,” Joyce said as soon as Ivy entered the lobby of the LAPD.

  “Tarot reading?” Ivy asked, turning on her heel to head back out to the parking lot.

  “Don’t think so,” Joyce said, walking alongside her as they made their way to Ivy’s cop car.

  Vince had just closed the backseat door, with a pizza in hand, when he rolled his eyes and made his way back into the car. The camera crew bumped into each other like a parade whose floats didn’t manage to move at the same pace and began loading back up into their van.

  “We got into her phone, and she had been texting a guy she met at a Prophetess meeting. The last text between them indicated they were going to see a movie and go to dinner.”

  “A Kingsman undercover as a Prophetess follower?”

 
; “Looks like it,” Joyce said. “They’re waiting for you at the scene so you can check it out before they clean up, but I found a card sitting next to her.”

  “So, not a work in progress.”

  “They haven’t taken out one of those since you took down the site, I think.”

  “They certainly know about us,” Ivy said. “And Ivan tracked down their new site—we’re on there, too.”

  “You haven’t gotten anything else, have you?” Joyce asked.

  Ivy shook her head. “Nothing. Even though they know my phone number.” She slid into the driver’s seat, and Joyce leaned against the frame of the door.

  “Maybe they got scared.”

  “I hope so,” Ivy said. “Want a slice?”

  Thursday, March 9, 2017, 4:02 p.m.

  Vince handed Ivy pieces of pizza as she drove to the home of Becca Viall.

  The apartment was as normal as any other—excluding the exception of the dead owner, and the cards Ivy was becoming much too acquainted with. “Witchy stuff in the bathroom,” Vince said from the bedroom.

  “Well, at least we have a name,” Ivy said.

  “Or a fake name,” Vince said, walking back into the main living area of the apartment.

  “Or a fake name.”

  And it was only a first name, she thought. Or, maybe a last name. But there was only one listed. Reid. Becca Viall wasn’t following a “Reid” on any social media, as far as she could find after a sweep through the young woman’s phone. She had been following a significant number of Prophetess accounts, though.

  Ivy dialed Ivan’s number. “We need to get someone in tech to do a sweep of the most popular Prophetess social media accounts and search for profiles that connect to the name ‘Reid’—both first and last,” Ivy said. “I know we owe you big time. Dinner on Vince and me. Great, thanks, Ivan.”

  Vince pressed a finger to his ear as he began pacing on his own call. He told the person on the other end that it was Vince and they needed some help with the Kingsmen case.