Touched (The Marnie Baranuik Files) (44 page)

Ruby toddled around from behind the counter, using the glass-topped structure for support. I wondered why she didn't own a cane, or where her walker was, and just how much Windex she needed to keep this place so sparkly clean, with all its glass, crystal and mirrors. From a rod around the cash area, tiny tinkling crystal wind chimes made an eerie, broken kind of music, setting my teeth on edge. I tried to ignore it.

“I was so hoping you'd drop in, Marlene,” she said kindly, smoothing the front of a patchwork skirt. “I'm afraid I was a little rude at the funeral home, dear. You must forgive an old woman for not being herself.”

“No one's quite themselves at a funeral,” I agreed. Thinking of my slutty outfit, I added: “I know I wasn't.”

Ruby was wearing big yellow floral Wellingtons, the rubber scuffed at the toe in black lines. They were otherwise clean as a whistle, and I wondered: why boots instead of shoes or slippers? But then, the floral pattern on them, orange and turquoise flowers, matched the faded hem of her skirt. She brought a pair of thick glasses with bright citrus orange rims up to the bridge of her nose and squinted through them. She was adorable.

Ruby said, “I heard about the ghoul. Everyone has. Honey, you're in over your head, aren't you?”

I laughed, weak with relief. “More than you know.”

“Oh dear, oh dear.” She stopped abruptly in front of me and craned her chin up, and I was struck by the funny angle. I don't think I'd ever met anyone who had to look up at me. She must have only been four-ten, four-eleven. “I'd better make tea, Marlene. There's terrible trouble in your face.”

“Trouble with Tribbles.”

She brushed past me on her way to the door as though she either didn't hear me, didn't get the Star Trek reference, or didn't think it worthy of a response. “And while it's true that trouble teaches, sometimes the lesson isn't pleasant.”

“Yeah, I hate learning,” I agreed. “My brain's already full. It hurts to stick more stuff in there.”

She stopped, her eyes narrowing behind her lenses. Her face transformed from charming grandmother to scolding teacher.

“Don't do that, dear.”

Surprised, I could only wait wordlessly, feeling scolded like a kid.

“Debasing yourself isn't as endearing as you think it is, and your playing dumb frustrates those who know you're more capable than you let on. You're a brilliant young lady with a doctorate to prove it, and friends in high places who respect your opinion and seek out your advice.” She waggled a prune-y finger up at me. “Don't dumb yourself down. You're not fooling anyone.”

I nodded, embarrassed, as she went to the front door at turtle's speed and flipped the OPEN sign to CLOSED, PLEASE COME AGAIN! Two steps up into an alcove, there was a reading station
with a library table and six chairs. It took her two pulls but she tugged one out and patted it meaningfully, then toddled off behind a curtain on a far wall.

I browsed the book wall for a minute under the watchful gaze of the perching cat, who winked at me in friendly contemplation. I had a feeling if she was a floor cat rather than a gargoyle-on-ledge cat, she'd have been rubbing my legs by now, purring. I pulled out a couple books I'd purchase, knowing I should have come here much sooner. As the warm sun beaming into the center of the store fell heavy on my shoulders, I took a deep breath, smelling sandalwood incense and the crisp mix of familiar herbs in the air: angelica and lemon mint and thyme, and the black licorice scent of fennel.

I let the stress squeeze out of my neck as I clenched and unclenched my shoulders and rolled my head back and forth. For the first time in days I felt safe, optimistic and productive. The mixture of certainties was heady, empowering. I was going to get some solutions, today. No more wondering and head-scratching. No more running. No more crap-shooting random spells that I hoped would help. Ruby Valli would be a powerful ally. Relieved, I went to the alcove and poured myself into a chair.

Calling out the big guns now, bitches, I thought. Look out, Sherlock.

The library table was set up with pencils and tiny white squares of paper in oak blocks. The pencils made me think of Batten's soft palate impalement, and made me wonder if he'd ever actually done it. Of course he had, I thought. He's a carnage machine. Then I thought about his inevitable flight out of my life, to blustery Michigan of all places, and the fact that I could do nothing about it. Should do nothing about it. Except maybe one last romp for old time's sake?

Bad idea! my brain scolded.

Best idea we've ever, ever had, my private parts retorted, completing a full-body coup and plotting how I might bring Kill-Notch Batten again to miraculous surrender, how hot it would be on a scale of one to oh holy fuck. While I suffered thigh-trembling, pulse-quickening, breath-stealing, bordering-on-rapture memories of Mark's thickness surging inside me, slippery and eager, his hips
pumping furiously, skin slapping mine as he groaned and gasped in my ear; I swallowed hard and shook the memory out of my head. Dizzy with lust, I damn near fell out of the chair.

Jeez. Harry was right, I had to get the damn hunter out of my life. The only thing Batten and I had was sexual chemistry, and titillating as it might be, it was still only chemistry.

Mrs. Valli came back with a tray and I realized suddenly that I had one hand squeezed tight between my thighs. I stood abruptly to take the tray from her like a good girl. She relinquished it with an appreciative nod.

“My hands are not what they used to be, I'm afraid.”

It occurred to me, as I snuck a sideway glance at her pouring out a spicy-smelling dark tea from a Brown Betty teapot, that she looked every day of her supposed 93 years. DaySitters are always a lot older than they appear, aging in appearance about five years for every ten that actually went by. But Ruby's age had never clued-in for me before seeing her thin, transparent skin in the light streaming like an accusing finger from the overhead dome. Depending on how old she was when she first Bonded to Gregori Nazaire, Ruby could conceivably be into her thirteenth or fourteenth decade. Without looking down at my hands, I scrawled this observation in my mini notebook and then slipped it back in my pocket.

Her knuckles were bent into a crook, but not so much that they seemed swollen with arthritis. Despite her shaking, she insistedon pouring, and on handing me the delicate porcelain cup, which clattered like a terrified hostage against its saucer. Her hair was thinning, coiling in soft white curls around her ears, and I could see her pink scalp through her careful hairdo.

She seemed fragile until you looked into the clear magnitude of her fierce blue eyes. There was strength there that could not be denied, reassuring wisdom and an enviable catalogue of knowledge. It was more than just her precognitive abilities; the subtle unnatural color of magic was upon her like the sweep of melon-pink blush on a ballerina's high cheekbone. It wasn't something you could put your finger on exactly, but anyone who'd been in the presence of power knew: this woman had it in spades. Whatever influences her elder revenant fed her only added to what she already wielded. Again, I thought, a potent ally.

“What fanciful gloves, Marlene.” She indicated my frog-embroidered cuffs while gazing at me steadily, like she was waiting for a confession. “A gift from one of your many admirers?”

It was an odd assumption, but sorta true, and I admitted it with a nod while I sipped my tea.

“I've got problems,” I started, sipping more tea when she indicated I should. I closed my eyes to savor the strong flavor. It tasted like I'd licked India from the Bay of Bengal clear across to the Arabian Sea. I asked politely: “Chai masala?”

“I mix my own bedtime blend, lots of cloves, very comforting.” She set her own cup down on its little chintz saucer. “Tell me everything.”

I finished my tea in one gulp and watched as she refilled. “I should start at the beginning. Danika Sherlock—”

Ruby interrupted, “Danielle Smith-Watson is her proper name, isn't it, though? Yes. That stage name of hers is just plain silly.”

“Yes!” I agreed. In a rush of relief, I explained what had happened.

“Oh dear, oh dear. Dreadful, what jealousy will do to an unstable mind,” she said sadly.

I hurried on, “She put Kristin Davis' eyeballs in my jar of newt bits!”

“How grisly,” Ruby agreed, blowing steam carefully across her tea.

“And now you're going to ask why I had newt bits…”

“Of course not, honey.” She sat forward. “You white witches, you don't understand how your ‘morals’ limit your choices. But does not everything in nature take from everything else? That is the lesson of the Mother. And yet when a witch takes the force of a natural living object, it is considered black magic.”

Uh… “Well, I see your point. But the line is drawn, and it's a clear one.”

“Don't argue with me, missy. I had magic mastered when your mother was still shitting her pants. It's a chalk line, meant to be redrawn as circumstances arise.”

I blinked at the dark flicker across her face and bit down hard on my tongue. Trying not to imagine my mother shitting her pants, I thought: Don't argue with the Potent Ally, stupid!

“Well, thanks.” I guess. I sipped my rapidly cooling tea. At the lower temperature, the nutmeg was overpowering and my tongue felt coated. “The spell I used was called the black-watch.”

“I see,” she said, as though I'd cleared up some mystery. “What else would someone of your mediocre caliber be capable of?”

Mediocre… So much for “brilliant” Marlene. Biting my tongue was starting to hurt. “I'm not entirely certain how Watson got into my cabin and put the eyes in my jar. Or how she put a head in my mailbox without the cops at my kitchen table noticing. Or how she came in while I was home and stole all my gloves from right under my nose…”

She interrupted, “If you were more educated in such things, you would know. The gloves should concern you much more than the eyes.”

I felt my face go carefully blank. Did Ruby Valli just suggest that stolen gloves trumped punctured human eyeballs from a murdered twelve-year-old floating in a jar of newt bits?

Ruby was nodding. “A personal object worn so often and so close to the skin can be used in so many ways against you. But of course, she did it all with witch-walking.” She pulled one of the books around on the table and licked her fingertip, shifting through the pages until she thudded her forefinger on a spell. Looking at her thick, elderly fingernail drawing across the lines made my skin crawl, though I couldn't have said why.

I scanned it quickly. The spell cheerfully outlined the creation of a grisly object, its upbeat tone not unlike Julia Child outlining the recipe for a delicious honey spice cake. The result was a fetish, and not the kind involving lubed cleavage or toe-suckling.

I read aloud: “The witch will sever the middle finger of her right hand using the knife of her enemy held in her left hand. The witch will scrape clean the bone, and carve the following sigil into the bone with a shard of broken mirror anointed with the scent of her enemy. Throughout the duration between the current moon phase and the first night of the waning moon, the witch will drink only undiluted blood, and consume only skin peeled from her own…”

I saw stars, shadowy stars against the yellow sunshine-filled backdrop of the gleaming oak table and the off-white paper before me. The table swam up at my face and I jolted, bracing myself.
Ruby's soft, old hand landed on my forearm, where she patted me reassuringly. My vision cleared instantly.

“Flesh magic. I thought Watson was too crazy for complex magic,” I said hopelessly.

“She would have left behind the fetish to cloud your mind, allowing witch-walking, and she'd be wearing your gloves, or other intimate items of clothing. It would only work in the parameters of the spell, the current residence of the one it was attuned to, that is to say you. Once the bitch was inside, the spell would temporarily cloak her from being seen in the house.”

Bitch or witch? Freudian slip? One I agreed with, so I didn't correct her.

“Even from my revenant companion?”

“Oh of course,” she chuckled, conceit sneaking into her voice. “There are many ways to toy with the mind of an immortal. They aren't the only ones with power.”

Ruby used the arms of the chair to slowly inch her way back to her feet in what looked like a painfully stiff progression, then shuffled behind the counter to retrieve a book bound in a strange yellowish leather. I snuck my notebook out again and jotted glamour: witch-walking, middle finger, flesh magic and bitch underlined three times.

Ruby's book made an impressive, hefty bang when it hit the library table. Its cover was printed with her personal sigils and signs; a grimoire, her own book of shadows.

“I think the eye in your pocket at the funeral home might have ruined Danielle's plan. Likely, she was prepared to raise the ghoul after the funeral and send it to Shaw's Fist, to your cabin, to retrieve its eyes, to which it would be attuned. You got that eye too close and it prematurely kick-started the whole darn spell.”

The look she gave me was almost scathing, and my belly crawled; I suddenly felt like a child who knows she's in trouble but not why. “That's what I thought, too. I guess I screwed up.” Why am I apologizing for ruining a spell aimed at killing me in my sleep?

“Here. No don't touch.” She slapped my fingers away when I reached for the edge of the paper. I withdrew them. “I'll read it to you.” Her voice boomed in the airy space, carried up into the glass
dome and echoed around us. “Immunda phasmatis, immunda phasmatis, immunda phasmatis, vindicatum vestri praemium.”

Okaaaaay. “I don't… erm, speak Latin.”

“It's goetic conjuring. “Unclean spirit, claim your prize.” The ghoul is then lured with a piece of itself, eats the object, the demon in turn devours the object's soul. The witch releases the demon with thanks and praise.”

“Am I the object in that whole mess?” I blinked, my stomach chilling even as my breath whisked away.

“Unfortunately, yes,” Ruby said. Under the table, her rubber boots squeaked against each other. “More tea?”