“A friend in the city referred me to you.”
She studied me for long moments in silence. “Tia.”
My brows went up. “Yes.”
“It is good to know she thrives, even in a world of concrete and steel.”
“She sends her regards.” That wasn’t strictly true, but it might help our cause. I gave Nalleli the condensed version of events, leaving out only the bit about Ernesto and the massacre at Monkey Island. “So I need you to remove the curse from the saltshaker, and, if possible, the tracking spell as well.”
“I can do this.” Her manner remained serene. “But it carries a high price.” Well, I’d been expecting that. I reached down for my purse. She stopped me with a hand on my arm. “Not from you. There is no coin sufficient for me to take this risk.”
“What do you need, then?”
With some trepidation, I remembered that Twila, the voodoo priestess who owned Twilight and San Antonio, had wanted my dog at first, and then time alone with Chance once she realized he was the greater prize. I still didn’t know what they had been doing all that time, and it wasn’t likely my ex would ever tell me, not the way we’d parted.
“Call your companion.”
Was this a trap? My heart raced. But this woman could hardly do my guardian real harm after all I’d seen him suffer. Hoping I was doing the right thing, I spoke his name. Kel bounded into the hut; he should have looked ridiculous with one arm raised to do battle, the other cradling a Chihuahua, but he didn’t. His skull tats glowed faintly. I’d come to recognize that as a sign of him drawing power.
He assessed the scene at a glance. “You’re fine.”
“She won’t help us without payment from you.”
“Is this true, witch?” The word could’ve been a curse or condemnation, but spoken in that tone, it became an honorific.
Nalleli inclined her head. “It is.”
“I have no monetary wealth.”
Their eyes locked, questions asked and answered in a blink. My gaze ranged between them, sensing hidden currents. I hated being the only one in a room who didn’t get the joke, and this was only a hundred times more serious. Restraining a growl, I plunked the white box on the table in case they decided they could do business—whatever that business might be.
I figured they must be communicating silently, and then Nalleli said, “That’s not the payment I seek, as you well know.”
“Step outside for a moment,” Kel told me.
Dammit, not this again.
Chance had done the exact same thing to me in San Antonio and I’d wound up attacked by a shade in a cemetery. If anything bad went down while Kel was otherwise occupied, I’d be a sitting duck. God knew, the kid couldn’t protect me.
“No.”
He didn’t push the matter. “Your choice.” The free-will thing again. I could get used to this. “Very well, I accept your terms,” he told the witch.
Nalleli rose, a silver dagger in hand. It had runes etched into the blade, not that I could read them. She cut a thin slice in his arm and caught the ruby red blood in a bowl. If she drank it, I was so out of here. But no, that wasn’t the master plan. Instead, she painted her fingertips and brow with a minuscule amount. The rest she poured into a glass vial and then capped it with a wax plug. Okay, I didn’t want to know what she planned to do with it; I was a little worried on Kel’s behalf.
“That’s all,” she said to him. “Go now.”
The whole process leaned toward the wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am side of blood donation, but he didn’t seem to mind. Butch whined as they left, and the curtain billowed inward as if warning of a coming storm.
“Why did you want his blood?”
Her brows lofted. “You truly do not know?”
Man, I hated this. I’d never been good at puzzles or guessing games. “Because he’s God’s Hand?”
“If he has not confided in you, then I must respect his privacy. But with such a potent source, I can work miracles.” Her eyes shone with ambition.
Frustration surged. It didn’t seem fair that she knew his origins, but she was right in that Kel should choose what he told me—and when. Accepting that, I muttered, “So we’re square. You’ll remove the curse and the tracking spell.”
“I will,” she said. “I’m protected so long as I wear his blood. They will not be able to scry for me, and by the time it fades, my magickal tell will long since have vanished in the ether.”
Pretty slick, I had to admit. Plus, she got to use his leftover blood—whatever was so special about it—for her extracurricular spells later. I dug into my bag for the sketch Kel had drawn. “I’m not sure if this will help, but Tia gave us an idea what the practitioner looks like.”
Nalleli nodded. “Thank you. Now I need for you to sit quietly. It’s important you don’t touch or attempt to communicate with me from this point.”
“Would you prefer if I left?”
“No,” she said. “Unless you spook easily.”
I didn’t think I did. So I settled on the stool opposite and watched her preparations. First she laid a white cloth across the makeshift table and then she set it with terra-cotta clay dishes. On each plate, she put a different item: corn tortillas, grilled fish, green plantains. Once she’d finished, Nalleli bent, rummaged through the crates stacked against the wall, and straightened with a carafe of red oil.
Palm oil
, I thought. I knew of no other that carried that precise hue. She drizzled the fluid over the top of the other offerings and then set out red candles in a circle. To some degree, it reminded me of the séance we’d conducted in Laredo, but this was altogether more elaborate.
“Everything is red,” I said as she lit the candles.
I’d forgotten I wasn’t supposed to interfere. She cut me a look, but answered, “Yes, it is the color of sacrifice.”
I wasn’t sure I liked the sound of that. “I thought there were two types of magick, white and black.”
“There are three,” she corrected. “White for purity, black for destruction—”
“And red for sacrifice.”
She nodded, fixing me with a steely look. “I need you to be silent now, or you must leave.”
Chastened, I fell quiet, promising myself that no matter what happened, I wouldn’t react. Given the atmosphere rising in the hut, that might prove a bigger challenge than I anticipated. Though it was a warm day, since she started her ritual the air had cooled until I could see my breath. Goose bumps rose on my bare arms, but I didn’t dare rub them.
Once she arranged the table to her satisfaction, Nalleli lit the candles and called, “Pedro,
los tambores
!”
“¡Sí, mamá!”
Outside the hut, I heard the sound of something being dragged over dry palm leaves and then a simple rhythm commenced. The sound was hypnotic; I could imagine the boy playing with his small, quick hands: three drums, one cadence. Before me, Nalleli swayed, listening to otherworldly whispers. Her eyelids grew heavy, but not, I thought, through any lack of concentration.
She sang out, “
YaYa, yayita, büey suelto / Oya viene alumbrando / como es / YaYa, yayita, büey suelto / Oya viene alumbrando / como es.
”
Though I didn’t understand all the words, in my bones I recognized a summoning chant when I heard one. My blood sparked and kindled, as if some long-dormant part of me sprang to life in welcome. In anxious reaction, I curled in on myself, wrapping my arms about my knees. Mist rolled in, peculiar and blood tinged; I had never seen anything remotely like it, except, perhaps, for fog burning in the wake of distant taillights.
Nalleli’s movements became a dance as she shuffled, sang, and swayed. The air gained weight, as it had in the boat, but it did not carry the same stench, not sulfur and brimstone. Instead, it smelled of copper and yarrow, a fruitygrassy scent I remembered from my mother’s kitchen, similar to sage. For a moment I could feel her around me, warmth discernible for the way it shielded me from the surrounding chill. Though it was impossible, I actually looked for her and found only that red mist.
Beneath my feet, beneath the spellbinding surge of the drums, the earth rumbled as though something ancient and powerful had awakened. Nalleli moved faster now, her hands trembling as she set the palm oil alight. It should have seared the cloth and begun a blaze inside the hut that we’d be hard-pressed to contain. Instead the flame burned with merry intelligence, devouring the food that had been set forth.
“
Bienvenida
,” the witch crooned.
“Bienvenida, nuestra señora del relámpago
.
”
Welcome, our lady of the lightning.
That, I understood.
“Acepta este sacrificio en tu nombre
.
”
Accept this sacrifice in your name.
The words sent a chill through me. Would I have agreed to this had I known? Animal sacrifice led to darker things. I touched the hard place in my side where the murderer’s weapon had plugged my wound. Perhaps I ought to be asking whether I could have countenanced this before—before Kilmer, before the demon, before I died. I didn’t like where those thoughts led.
Yet I did not protest. I had promised I would not, and I feared the consequences of disrupting her work. Nalleli withdrew a small bird from one of the crates behind her and cut its throat with a slim, wicked knife. The fresh blood spattered atop the offerings already set forth. Somehow, I swallowed my moan, wishing I’d waited outside.
Say nothing.
This was surely the reddest magic I’d ever seen. The whole hut swam with the shade—and the bloody mist threatened to choke me. I breathed through my nose, mute witness to what transpired next.
To my utter shock, Nalleli set both palms in the burning oil; she should have been maimed, but the blood on her brow and the backs of her hands exuded a heavenly aroma, a mix of cinnamon and raw brown sugar, and her flesh did not singe. Instead the flames ran up her arms, coiling about her head in snakes of smoke and ash. She screamed then, but it was too late—or maybe it was exactly what she wanted; I didn’t know enough about her rituals to be sure.
The fire winked out and her dark eyes filmed white like heat lightning. In that moment, I knew I was seeing something very old—not Nalleli at all. Whatever she’d summoned studied me with a tilt of the head, and I could clearly see that the spirit used her as a vessel. There was nothing of the island witch left at all. The creature inhabiting her body dismissed me as a nonentity—and I felt grateful. She turned her attention to Eros, raised in the center of the offerings. Energy crackled about its frame, such as would cause burns and lesions without paranormal protection. With no measurable fear or curiosity, the lady of the lightning took Eros into her cupped palms, sniffed it, and then took the item into her mouth. Her head fell back, and I would’ve thought she was choking, except her chest rose and fell in normal breaths. A rumble sounded both overhead and underfoot, thunder to accompany its lightning.
What. The. Hell.
Red thunderclouds formed and a sizzling arc slammed down from the top of the hut; as if that acted as the catalyst, Nalleli hunched forward, vomiting forth the saltshaker, along with a host of other things—dark sludge, what looked like congealed blood roiling with maggots. I just barely kept my breakfast down; in self-defense, I squeezed my eyes shut until her convulsions stopped. Blind, I listened to her blowing out the candles and cleaning the silver saltshaker before I trusted myself to look again. Somehow, I stumbled out of the hut without seeing the bird carcass or the mess left behind in removing the malignant spells.
In my absence, Butch had relaxed enough to venture off on his own, sniffing around to make sure things were safe. As he’d been borderline catatonic after the boat adventure, I took that as a good sign. I was still shaky, rubbing my hands up and down my thighs.
“Don’t go far,” I cautioned him.
Worrying about my pet distracted me from what I’d seen, at least. The dog threw me a look as if to say:
Do I look stupid?
Yeah, Butch was back.
“Everything all right?”
My gaze went to Kel’s forearm, where the wound he’d inflicted on himself had already sealed into a thin purple line. “Not so much.”
The shit I’d seen in that hut would stay with me. At last Nalleli emerged, but she looked markedly older, as if years had passed instead of minutes. Her hand trembled when she handed me the white box.
“Even shielded as I was”—she indicated the blood on her brow—“this was a nearly impossible task. Never have I seen anything woven with such mal intent.”
“So the guy Montoya hired—he’s good?” That didn’t bode well for us.
“The best I have ever seen. The orisha
and
your companion’s blood barely shielded me from his darkness. Go now. As it happens, you did not pay me enough.” And Nalleli crumpled, the color draining from her face.
Kel caught her before she hit the ground. At the boy’s instruction, he carried her into the hut and laid her on the pallet. She had, at least, cleaned up the evidence, though the smell lingered. I hovered, unsure of how best to help, and then I checked her vitals. It seemed she’d fallen into a swoon, nothing more serious. Her pulse was good, even if her skin was clammy.
“
¡Váyanse!
” her son spat.
We had no choice but to comply. Since it didn’t look as if the kid would be guiding us out, I hoped Kel had been watching the route. I sure hadn’t been.
He took point. I paid greater attention this time and saw there was, in fact, a faint path. It led downhill, but the soil was soft and moist, so I slipped as much as I walked, grabbing onto branches and leaves to break my clumsy descent. Green stained my palms by the time we hit the tiny, rocky beach, which wasn’t sand but mud. Three puppies frolicked in the shallows, where the boat was still moored.
Thank God.
I assumed the dogs belonged to the witch and her boy, but the sight of them reassured me. Despite everything I’d been through today, dogs still chased their tails, growled playfully, nipped, and peed on trees.
How’d the world know I needed to see something normal right about now?