I realized as she greeted us that most of the other people I’d seen arriving for the community ritual were also wearing white. I, however, was in an apricot-colored sundress.
“Puma, should I have worn white?” I asked. No one had mentioned a dress code.
“What you wear doesn’t really matter,” she said. “It’s what’s in your heart that counts.”
“Shall we go inside?” Max suggested.
“I’m waiting for Jeff,” Puma said, “but I guess he can find us. I told him we were going to meet in Biko’s training room.”
“Jeff is coming?” I said in surprise.
“If that boy wants to date me, then you bet he’s coming,” she said. “He doesn’t have to share my faith, but he should understand that it’s a big part of who I am.”
“After you, ladies,” Max said.
Puma took my arm as we proceeded inside. “Listen, Esther, before Jeff asks me out—and I’ve decided he
is
going to ask me out—I want your blessing. I won’t go out with him unless I have it.”
“Why do you want
my
blessing?”
“Well, you and I are friends, and you and Jeff used to go out. So it wouldn’t be right for me to start seeing him without your blessing.”
“Did Jeff tell you about us?” I asked.
She snorted with laughter. “No one had to tell me anything, girl. It couldn’t be more obvious if the two of you wore matching T-shirts saying, WE’RE EXES.”
Startled by this revelation, I looked over my shoulder at the two men accompanying us down the hallway toward the fencing room.
Seeing my inquisitive look, Biko said, “I think the T-shirts would be overkill. Not needed.”
“No, indeed,” said Max.
“Oh,” I said. “Well. Hmph.”
“So do I have your blessing or not?” Puma asked.
“My blessing
and
my condolences,” I assured her.
Biko said, “Spoken like an ex.”
As we entered Biko’s training room, which was spartan in its minimalist tidiness, Puma said to Max, “I guess you left Nelli at home?”
“Yes. After her severe reaction to the boa constrictor, she is not welcome at the foundation.” Max added worriedly, “However, I believe she would not have been able to attend today’s ritual, anyhow. She seems to be feeling under the weather.”
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“She’s very sluggish. To the point of being difficult to wake, let alone coax outside for a perambulation. Nor is she interested in her food dish, her water bowl, or any of her toys.”
“That doesn’t sound like Nelli,” I said with concern. “Maybe she needs to go back to the vet, Max.”
“Or maybe
someone
gave her too many treats again last night.” Biko’s accusing glance at Puma left us in no doubt of the probable culprit.
“I’m sorry if I made her sick,” Puma said to Max. “She just always seems to be so hungry.”
“I think it’s more likely that her injured paw has gotten infected,” I said, feeling guilty about being the one who had inadvertently wounded her.
“Well, if she is not back to her usual self by morning,” Max said, “I will definitely take her to the animal clinic.”
I told them all what I had learned from Lopez about the bodies that were missing from the same graveyard where Darius Phelps had been buried, confirming Max’s suspicions that additional zombies had been raised. I also said that I had explored the area of the stone steps at Mount Morris Park by day without finding anything.
Biko and Max thought they had spotted a baka in the park late Friday night, but it had quickly eluded them. And they had seen nothing since then.
“I’ve been reading the books you gave me, Puma,” I said. “And I’m wondering what we’re going to do about these zombies. According to my reading, we can’t, er, dezombify them without a lot of special ingredients that I think are going to be hard to find.” I read from a list that I had made during one of my breaks at the restaurant. “Human blood drained from the left foot. Powder from a ground-up human femur. A live chicken. A dead sea snake. The skin of a banana eaten by someone who’s recently recovered from a fever. And this is just a partial list!” I shook my head and concluded, “Harlem will be
swarming
in zombies by the time we manage to collect all the supplies we need.”
“Ah, the good news there,” said Max, “is that we can free the zombies from their enslavement simply by dispatching the bokor.”
“How
simple
do you really think dispatching a bokor will be?” Biko said skeptically.
“I mean to say, when the bokor falls, the zombies created by the bokor will fall, too.”
I said, “So stopping the bokor is the thing to focus on, then.” I tore up my shopping list with relief.
Puma asked, “Speaking of the bokor . . . Do we think Esther was targeted deliberately? Or is she just unlucky because her purse was stolen by the baka?”
“Excellent question. Unfortunately, without more information, either possibility is feasible.” Max added to me, “It is my hope that the gris-gris pouch will protect you. But you must notify us immediately if anything unusual happens, or if you start to feel peculiar.”
“I’ve felt peculiar ever since I met Darius’ zombie,” I said. “But I understand what you’re saying.”
Max said, “I think the most interesting thing that we have learned recently is simultaneously also the least surprising.”
“That I used to date Jeff?” I said.
They all looked at me.
“Never mind,” I said. “Go on, Max.”
“Under the influence of hypnosis—which had the unfortunate side effect, as Puma noticed, of making Nelli exceedingly hungry—Shondolyn recalled additional names from her troubled dreams.”
“Besides Mama Brigitte?” I said.
“Yes. Baron Samedi, for example. This was to be expected,” Max said. “The bokor must make offerings to the Lord of Death, without whose blessings no one can raise a zombie.”
“And why would the Lord of Death
let
anyone raise a zombie?” I demanded. “Doesn’t he want to, you know, keep the dead on his team?”
“Baron Samedi is a trickster,” Puma said. “He does what amuses him. And the bokor’s offerings to him may be very generous.”
“However, most of the names Shondolyn recalled were those of Petro loa,” Max said.
“Petro,” I said. “Those are the violent, dangerous spirits, aren’t they?”
“Very dangerous,” Max confirmed. “Dark, angry, and unpredictable. In some cases, genuinely evil.”
“Marinette was one of the Petro loa that the girl named,” Puma said. “Marinette is a sworn servant of evil. Invoked strictly for black magic.”
“This is, of course, the sort of spirit we would expect to find the bokor serving and petitioning for favor.” Max added, “Even so, our adversary is daring.”
“Also ambitious,” said Puma.
“How so?” I asked.
“The darkest Petro demand a very high price for their blessings,” Puma said. “Permanent, steadfast devotion and, more to the point, expensive sacrifices and rich offerings.”
“In exchange,” Max said, “they can work impressive feats of magic and confer great power on their worshippers.”
“But invoking them is perilous,” Puma said. “They can turn on their followers.”
“The Petro loa may even kill a servant who disregards a vow to them or who breaks a pact with them,” said Max.
“So that’s why you think we’re looking for someone who’s daring and ambitious,” I guessed. “The bokor has chosen dangerous partners in hopes of securing great power.”
“But a crucial unanswered question,” Max said, “is why has the bokor exposed a teenage girl to these influences? What is the goal or the intention?”
Biko said, “Whatever it is, it probably intersects with the reason zombies are being raised.”
“I do wish we could communicate with Jeffrey’s missing colleague,” Max said anxiously.
“I’ve convinced Detective Lopez that it’s important to track down Frank Johnson,” I said. I had left a phone message for Lopez earlier today asking for an update, but he hadn’t called me back yet.
“The cop?” Biko looked doubtful. “Is that such a good idea, Esther?”
“We must pursue every possible avenue for finding Mr. Johnson,” Max said. “His information could be critical. Well done, Esther.”
“You see?” I said to Biko.
“Whatever.”
“Meanwhile,” said Max, “if I am correct in my theory and Darius Phelps was murdered, then my researches in recent days have led me to understand how it could have been done.”
He had our full attention now.
“Poor Darius may have been murdered via a fairly arcane form of sympathetic magic,” Max said.
Considering that I was pretty sure the bokor now possessed strands of my hair, I didn’t like being reminded that sympathetic magic could be fatal.
“You begin by taking wrappings from food that the victim has partially eaten,” Max said. “Such as sausage casings or banana leaves. There are no doubt many equivalents in contemporary New York, including sandwich wrappers and cannoli tubes. In any case, you fill the wrapping with certain rare ingredients, exercise dark magic to create a mystical bond between the object and the victim, and then you, er . . . stomp on the object. Linked in sympathetic symbiosis with the victim’s intestine, this causes a rupture.”
“That’s disgusting,” said Biko.
I clutched my gris-gris pouch and prayed that it was working effectively to ward off the bokor’s dark magic.
Then I realized what Max’s theory meant. “Darius knew the bokor,” I said.
“I believe so.”
How else would the killer have obtained the victim’s partially eaten food? And, indeed, why go to that much trouble unless . . .
“It was personal,” I said aloud. Based on the number of empty graves Lopez was discovering, the bokor didn’t need to kill an acquaintance to create a zombie. Bodies were available. “So
killing
Darius was the point. Creating a zombie after the murder was just sort of . . . a bonus.”
“A maliciously satisfying one, no doubt,” said Max. “Few murderers have an opportunity to enslave the victim after death.”
“If Mr. Phelps knew the bokor,” Puma said anxiously, “then that means
we
might know the bokor, too.”
“I’m glad I’ve got a sword,” Biko muttered. “And when I find out who created those creatures that killed Gilligan . . .”
“Well, I know who gets my vote,” I said. “The nasty voodoo priestess who doesn’t seem to like anybody, and who could easily have an agenda of her own.”
“What?” Puma shook her head. “No! Absolutely not. She’s a
mambo.
”
“I wish everyone would stop saying that as if it makes her a saint,” I said irritably.
“She’s not a saint,” Puma said. “But I can’t believe that she’s an evil bokor who’s committed murder.”
“That’s because you have trouble believing ill of people,” I said. “And although that’s an admirable trait, it’s not very practical.”
Jeff entered the room. “Ah! So this is where they keep the beautiful women!”
Looking upset, Puma said, “We should go downstairs. It’s almost time for the ceremony to begin.”
She brushed past him and ran out the door.
Jeff looked puzzled. “Did I do something wrong?”
Biko said to me, “I don’t like Mambo Celeste, either, Esther. And that snake gives me the creeps. But she’s been a mambo a long time around here. And Puma studied with the same teacher as she did. I just don’t know.” He shrugged. “And now we’d better go attend the service, or Puma will be hurt.”
He followed his sister out the door.
“Hi, Biko,” Jeff said. “Bye, Biko.”
“Max,” I said. “Are we really going to attend a ceremony where someone who might be an evil bokor is raising spirits? Doesn’t that seem a little dangerous?”
“Our adversary is secretive,” Max said. “And secrecy is the usual nature of a bokor. If Mambo Celeste is the guilty party, she will not risk revealing that identity to her community by doing anything untoward at a public ceremony. I believe her behavior at the ceremony will be exemplary, either because she is innocent, or else because she is determined to seem so.”
“All right.” I resigned myself to it. “I guess we might as well go downstairs now.” I took Max’s arm and exited the room. On our way out the door, we greeted Jeff.
Following us, he said, “I’m getting the impression that I’ve missed a lot.”
“You have. But do you really want to know what?” I said.
“Come to think of it, no.” He obviously had other things on his mind. “I wonder if Mike Nolan has talked to the casting director about me yet?”
I didn’t feel like talking about that right now, so I ignored the implied question.