I was saved from having to answer by Ruby’s return. Her arms were full of packages, and Ramsey leapt to take them from her.
“Be a dear and put those in the car, would you?” Ruby said.
Ramsey smiled happily and scooted on out the door. I looked at Ruby, who looked back blandly.
“Really?” I said. “Ramsey?”
“It’s not what you think.”
Whenever anyone says that, it’s usually exactly what you think. But this was a mystery. First of all, Ruby was gay. Or so I thought—I had a moment’s horrified suspicion that she’d been putting me on just to avoid my attentions, but then I remembered having met one of her girlfriends.
But if she was going to dip a toe in the other pool, why Ramsey? I could understand if she’d decided to hook up with some gorgeous man, or even some brilliant practitioner. But Ramsey was far from either—short and unprepossessing, with lank hair that always looked greasy and a perpetually unkempt beard. Plus, small talent as a practitioner and the aforementioned obnoxious and clueless demeanor.
“What, then?” I said. “His sparkling personality?”
“Don’t be mean. He’s not that bad.” A smile flitted across her face. “Besides, he can be quite useful.”
I didn’t doubt that. Like many marginally talented practitioners, Ramsey did possess one area of expertise—he was a consummate sneak. He could slip wards, unless they were very strong, and had a way of remaining unnoticed even if you were looking for him. He could indeed be useful, but putting up with him would be quite a challenge.
“I’ll bet,” I said. “But if you have any sense, you’ll keep him away from Victor. He’s not as tolerant as I am.” She laughed and patted me on the shoulder.
“Actually, I’d just as soon you not mention this to Victor. He’s a bit judgmental, you know.”
“So I’ve heard.”
Campbell had become increasingly impatient and finally grabbed me by the arm.
“Mason. We have to go,” she said.
“Sorry,” Ruby said. “I’m keeping you. Anyway, I have to go myself—I’ve got to pick up some things across town.” She went over to the counter, found a scrap of paper, and scribbled down her number. “Call me. We’ll catch up.” I tore the paper in half, wrote my number down, as well as Victor’s, and handed her the other half.
“Do give Victor a call,” I said. “I’m sure he’d like to hear from you. But not for a few days. He’s going to be . . . a bit tied up for a while.”
As soon as we were out on the sidewalk, Campbell said, “What was that about? Why didn’t you tell her the whole story about the creature and where it came from?”
“I’m not sure,” I said. “Just habit, mostly. I’m not used to confiding things, even to friends, and I haven’t seen her for years. I’ll let Victor decide how much to tell her.”
“You are one paranoid puppy.”
“Maybe. But I’ve learned to be.”
“I’m sure. But let’s get back to Victor’s before that leg just falls off.”
AS SOON AS WE GOT BACK, CAMPBELL UNWRAPPED her purchases and started pulling plastic baggies containing various other plants out of her pack. Then a small glass bottle and a dish. She unstoppered the bottle and poured oil from it into the dish, adding a floating wick. As soon as she lit the wick, a thick chocolaty scent filled the room.
A medium-sized bowl of wood was next, and Campbell carefully measured out bits of plant matter and shredded them into it. She uncorked a flask and poured a different oil, thick and viscous, into the bowl. Again the aroma of chocolate filled the air. As she stirred up the ingredients, I looked at her questioningly. I hadn’t seen her use anything like this before.
“Lwil maskrati,” she said, indicating the oil in the bowl.
“Come again?”
“Lwil maskrati. From Mama Yara’s. Something I learned about from Montague.” A brief sadness passed over her face.
“Voodoo?” said Victor, with interest. I noticed that his hair was damp with sweat. He wasn’t having as easy a time of it as he was making out.
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “Same tradition, but not the same at all, not really.” She applied the paste to Victor’s leg, smoothing it over his leg from the ankle to just above the knee, wiping the excess off her hands with a soft cloth. “Almost ready.”
I expected to feel a wave of healing energy coming off of her. That was her usual practice, and her healing powers had more to do with her personal abilities than the plants she used. Talent is about redirecting energy, not what objects are employed. The plants were just a focusing device to help enable her potential. That was my take; Campbell vehemently disagreed. She saw herself as simply empowering the intrinsic properties of specific plants. Who knows? She might even be right. She often was.
This time, however, she’d come up with something new. She started a slow, sinuous dance, using precise movements. It wasn’t improvised; it was a carefully constructed ritual. It wasn’t like any form of pagan dance I’d ever seen; it was suggestive, aggressively sexual, without being obvious. Whatever tradition it was from must have been one of emotion and feeling, not cold reason.
She kept it up until her eyes started to go glassy, then threw herself down next to Victor like a stage diva playing the dying swan. Finally, that familiar surge of energy rolled off her, but stronger than I’d seen before, and with a different tinge.
Victor hissed, drawing in his breath with a quick intake, and immediately after, a muffled grunt of pain escaped him. He prides himself on being stoic—he hadn’t even flinched at the emergency room, so either this had caught him completely off guard or it had hit him like a ton of bricks. Campbell remained on the floor a few seconds before climbing shakily to her feet.
“That should help,” she said, out of breath. “It will take a few more days, but when it’s healed completely there won’t even be any scars.” A shadow of doubt passed across her face. “Hopefully.”
Victor gingerly extended his leg. It was hard to see under the goop that Campbell had plastered over it, but from what I could tell, the skin beneath had already partially healed. In places it looked almost undamaged except for a network of fine red lines crisscrossing over it. Campbell had always possessed an aptitude for healing, but she now appeared to have taken a quantum leap toward being a major talent.
“Thanks,” Victor said, slightly out of breath himself. It’s not a word he uses often.
“You’ll need to keep off of it for a couple of days,” she told him. “And you’ll need some rest. A major healing, especially a quick one, isn’t entirely free, you know. It’s taken something out of me, of course, but it’s taken a lot more out of you—more than you probably realize. I think you might need some help with stuff for a while—where is Eli anyway?”
“Out of town for a few days,” I told her. “Some conference of medieval history academics. He’s due back tomorrow.”
“You should call him.”
“I will,” Victor said. “But Timothy can take care of pretty much everything.”
Victor was obviously drained and mostly just wanted to be left alone, so I suggested to Campbell we get a bite to eat. We stopped in at Marnee Thai, a small Thai restaurant in the Richmond, one of my favorites. We chatted over ample portions of Pad Thai and Mi Krob, catching up since we hadn’t talked for a while. Campbell was in the loop and knew about the creature we’d been hunting, but she hadn’t understood just how dangerous it was.
“What if you just left it alone?” she asked. “Maybe it would go back to wherever it came from, or just settle down somewhere.”
“If only. It doesn’t seem to have any desire to leave. And it seems to have a tremendous hatred of Ifrits—why, I can’t say. Maybe because it’s a distorted version of the true thing. In any case, Jasmine’s Ifrit, Mercedes, came up missing a while ago. In the old days we would have just assumed she had abandoned her—it’s sad, but it does happen. But then last month came an attack on Peewee, that little Ifrit/ferret who hangs with Jim Marvin. Jim was there and managed to drive it off, but it was a close thing. Then other deadly attacks, but this time on humans—by the supposed mountain lion that had been in all the papers. So it’s become serious and Victor and I have been trying to hunt it down ever since.”
“It never ends, does it?” Campbell said.
“Apparently not.”
“You been seeing anyone lately?” she asked, changing the subject. I shook my head.
“After my last misadventure, I haven’t much felt like dating.”
“I can understand that,” she said.
I didn’t ask her the same question. What had happened to Montague was still too raw. When Campbell was ready to resume a seminormal life, whenever that might be, I was sure she’d let me know.
Lou was waiting patiently on the sidewalk when we left and accepted a spring roll with good grace. No peanut sauce, though. As we walked back toward where I had parked, a homeless guy detached himself from a doorway.
Lou took one look and started over to greet him, then stopped, then started again, then stopped again, as if he were a toy mechanical with a gear out of whack. It takes a lot to confuse an Ifrit, but I didn’t blame him. This guy had long wild hair and a huge beard plaited in dreadlocks. He also flickered as he walked. And I knew him, all too well.
“Spare a quarter for a cup of coffee?” he said.
“What, you’re living in the sixties now? Where are you going to find coffee for a quarter?”
“A buck, then,” he said, smiling through discolored yet surprisingly strong teeth. And not just strong. Sharp, too. “Who’s your lady friend?”
He wasn’t threatening in any way, but he did project an unsettling aura of suppressed violence, as if he were a bomb that could go off at any moment. A year ago Campbell would have instinctively pulled closer to me, but she’d been through a lot since then. She gazed levelly at him and then walked over and offered her hand.
“I’m Campbell,” she said.
He looked a bit taken aback, which amused me no end, but he put out his own hand and grasped hers. When he let go, he stepped back and considered her curiously.
“You’re a healer,” he said. “An important profession. I’m honored. My name is Rolf.” She inclined her head gravely in acknowledgment.
I stared at him in astonishment. I’d know him for almost a year, and the only name I ever had for him was Bridge Guy, since that was where I’d first met him, living under the span of the Bay Bridge. He’d never shown any inclination to give me his name, and I hadn’t been sure he even remembered what it was anymore. But he casually handed it over to Campbell like he’d met her at a party in the Mission.
I also wasn’t entirely sure just how human he still was. He’d been the one who called up that creature we’d been hunting—with a little help from me.
“I’ve been looking for you,” he said “You screwed up, I see.”
I nodded, unsurprised. “That goes without saying. But you’re going to have to be more specific.”
“That thing you’ve been hunting? You’re supposed to get it, not the other way around.” Once again, he seemed to know more about my life than I was comfortable with.
“Maybe things would have turned out different if we’d had some help. You didn’t seem that interested the last time we talked, remember?”
“True. I had other concerns at the time. But there’s something else. That’s why I was looking for you.”
“Oh?” He shot a questioning glance toward Campbell. “She knows,” I said. “I tell her everything.” Campbell mumbled something I couldn’t quite catch, but it sounded like “not everything.” Bridge Guy, or rather, Rolf, nodded.
“Well, the creature that ran off that night wasn’t the only thing that came out of the energy pool. And not the worst, either.” Rolf could always be relied on to bring good tidings.
“How encouraging. What other things?”
“That’s not entirely clear to me. But it’s troubling.” Rolf wasn’t troubled by much, so this was also not great news.
“Yes, I can see how it would be,” I said.
He smiled, showing teeth that were suddenly a lot sharper than they had been. One of the unsettling things about Rolf was that he didn’t keep any one persona for any length of time.
“You could be of some help with this. You do owe me, you know.”
That wasn’t how I saw things at all, but I let it pass. But not completely. If I just went along with what he said, he’d be sure to take advantage of it.
“You got something to trade?” I asked. It wasn’t that I needed anything, or even wanted anything, but bargaining was mandatory. That was the way Rolf operated. He smiled again, teeth sharper yet.
“Actually, I’m the one doing
you
a favor, but I’ll let it ride this time. Meet me tonight, over by the bridge, same place. Don’t be late.” He nodded politely at Campbell and turned and hobbled off, just another street person.
“What time?” I called after him, but he didn’t turn around.
“Charming fellow,” said Campbell as we watched him shuffle down the street. “What was that about?”