Spellcasting in Silk: A Witchcraft Mystery

by Juliet Blackwell

  Handing my flashlight to Patience, I gave her one last hug.

  Then I knelt and, holding my medicine bag out in front of me in one hand, started wriggling through the tight passage. Until I got stuck.

  “Push,” I said.

  I could feel Patience’s hands shoving unceremoniously on my butt. I had to fight the panic that bubbled up, and wondered whether I would be found like this, dead from a gunshot, or exposure, or asphyxiation.

  But I kept chanting, concentrating on slipping through the rock crevice, using the panic to fuel my concentration, my focus.

  Finally, I was spurred on by a puff of fresh air on my face. I felt bruised and scraped, but I managed to squeeze both shoulders past the opening of rock and concrete. After that, the rest was easy. Relatively.

  “I made it!” I yelled back through the crevice.

  “Where are you?” Patience’s voice was muffled.

  “I—”

  A man loomed in front of me. I screamed.

  * * *

  I held my hand up and let out a blast of power just as Sailor said, “Lily! It’s me!”

  He fell back, striking his head on a jagged piece of concrete.

  “Sailor!” I cried, running to his side. “Sailor, I’m so sorry. Are you hurt?”

  “I was just hurled against a concrete wall. Yes, I’m hurt.”

  “I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize . . . But, if you’re complaining at least I didn’t knock you out.”

  “What’s going on?” Sailor asked as he sat up, cradling his forehead in one palm. When he brought his hand away, it looked black in the moonlight. Blood.

  “Sailor—”

  He batted my hand away. “I’m all right. Just a flesh wound. Are you all right? What’s going on?”

  His question brought me back to the gravity of the situation. I looked around but the sun was setting, and I didn’t want to use Sailor’s flashlight for fear of being spotted by the shooter.

  “Someone was shooting at us. We went through a tunnel to escape, but got stuck. We were afraid to go out the way we came for fear he was waiting for us.”

  “Who’s ‘we’? Is Selena here?”

  “No, Patience. She’s still inside, I barely made it out.”

  “Patience? Why is—never mind. We’ll straighten all that out later.”

  “How did you know to come here?”

  “I saw something. In my wine, believe it or not. I was at Renna’s for dinner, and I felt a wave of anxiety. I was about to take a sip of wine when I had a vision of the Sutro Baths.” He reached out and cupped my head. “Typical, plaguing me on a nice evening with my family. You sure you’re all right?”

  I nodded. “A few scrapes and bruises, that’s all.”

  Despite his fear for our safety, Sailor seemed pleased to have been able to sense that I—or we— were in danger. His abilities were growing under Patience’s tutelage.

  “Who was shooting at you?”

  I shook my head. “We didn’t see who, but Lupita mentioned a ‘he.’ Sailor, I have to get back to her.”

  “Lupita’s here? In the tunnel with Patience?”

  “No, she’s over there . . . Someone was casting over her to prevent her from telling me something important.”

  “Did she say anything at all?”

  “Something about him having her painting.”

  “So you think it’s the old artist, Fred?”

  “I have no idea. But I have to get to Lupita, now. I don’t know how much longer she has. Would you call 911?”

  “No need. The cops are already here.” He gestured toward the parking lot, where emergency lights flashed red and blue. When I stood and peered over the concrete bunker I saw uniformed officers with flashlights searching the ruins.

  Surely the shooter wouldn’t still be lurking, would he? Would he be willing to take that chance, or so arrogant he thought he wouldn’t get caught?

  “They’re going to want to talk to us,” said Sailor.

  I nodded. “I have to see if they found Lupita and were able to help her.”

  We made our way across the crumbling mounds of slippery concrete and twisted rebar until finally reaching the chamber next to where we had seen Lupita. Sailor and I sat with our backs against the wall for a moment, catching our breath. Sailor motioned to me and cautiously peeked over the top of the wall.

  He sat back down.

  “Anything?” I asked.

  “She’s gone.

  “As in . . . dead?”

  “As in, not there.”

  “Maybe the police got to her, took her to the hospital.”

  “Maybe. But I doubt it.”

  I stood and peeked over the edge.

  Lupita was gone. But someone had left a note under my backpack.

  * * *

  We extricated Patience from our hidey-hole and then gave our statements to the police, a process that, I can say from experience, takes far longer than one would expect.

  By the time we left the Sutro Baths, it was late. Sailor insisted we go to my place to talk everything through, Patience included.

  Once Patience got over her teary gratitude at being rescued, she regained her haughty mien. Still, she elected to leave her car in the parking lot for the night. The police had found bullet casings on the ground nearby, and were treating it like a crime scene.

  Sailor followed closely behind the Mustang, on his motorcycle.

  “Stop it,” I said to Patience as she yanked the rearview mirror toward her, for the second time, to fix her makeup. “I need the mirror to drive.”

  “What’s with this old jalopy? A normal car would have a vanity mirror.”

  “You ever think about the literal meaning of ‘vanity mirror’?” I asked in my most innocent tone.

  She didn’t deign to answer. Still, I was impressed that despite everything, she not only had hidden an eyeliner pencil somewhere on her person, but had managed not to lose it at the bath ruins.

  I, on the other hand, had been lucky to hold on to my medicine bag. I seemed to have lost an earring, and though I had recovered my backpack, the extra scarf I had brought was gone.

  Probably taken by whoever left the note.

  That thought chilled me to the core. I had worn that scarf, so it carried a trace of my energy with it. Not much, but enough for a skilled practitioner to focus intent upon me, to cast against me.

  “I don’t see why I have to be here,” whined Patience when I refused to take her home, insisting we follow Sailor’s suggestion and reconnect at my apartment. I wasn’t wild about letting Patience into my personal domain, but under the circumstances. . . .

  “I think Sailor’s right; we need to work together to figure this out.”

  “I don’t have to do any such thing. I agreed to meet you at the Sutro Baths, which just goes to show no good deed goes unpunished. I’m too nice, that’s my problem. It gets me into trouble.”

  I glared at her, but she was too intent on her reflection in the rearview mirror to notice.

  We arrived at my apartment to find Oscar and Selena bickering over a game of poker. From what I was able to tell, Oscar was trying to teach Selena Five Card Stud, but she turned out to be a much better cheat than he was.

  I asked Selena whether the Sutro Baths meant anything special to her or Lupita. She shook her head. I didn’t want to scare her by letting her know what had happened there and instead put in a DVD of The Jungle Book and tucked a blanket around her. She and Oscar, in his piggy form, sat on the couch and watched our trio with wide, cautious eyes.

  I poured three shots of tequila and Sailor, Patience, and I settled in at the kitchen table.

  Sailor unfolded the note. On some kind of strange parchment was a message written in code:

  X i,

  J I f tpn h pg st. Zpv l j dbo u zpv.

  Hj m, p f.

  —b g e

  “What kind of an extortionist writes in code?” asked Patience, in a scathing tone. “The fool’s criminal career is
doomed to be short-lived, I say.”

  “Can you read it?” I asked her.

  “Of course not. It’s gibberish.”

  “I mean ‘read’ it. With your third eye, or whatever.”

  She sighed and picked up the note, closing her eyes, releasing a long breath through her nose. After a moment she opened her eyes and shook her head. “Cloaked. You’re dealing with someone who has some knowledge.”

  “It looks like . . .” I held the note up to the overhead light. “Yes! I think it’s invisible ink. Probably lemon juice, or vinegar.”

  “Or urine,” said Patience.

  “That’s disgusting,” I said.

  “What? It works the same way as lemon juice. Everybody knows this.”

  “Why invisible ink?” Sailor interrupted. “Are we dealing with a ten-year-old?”

  “Good question,” I said.

  I lit a candle and carefully held the note over the flame, not so close it would catch fire but near enough to heat the ink.

  Sure enough, more letters emerged. Still, they made no sense.

  Xjudi,

  J ibwf tpnfuijoh pg zpvst. Zpv lopx j dbo vtf ju bhbjotu zpv.

  Hjwf nf uif mkffq, ps fmtf.

  —b gsjfoe

  “Xjudi? Could it be . . . the Basque language, or Navajo, maybe? Something obscure like that?”

  “I don’t think so,” said Sailor. “There aren’t enough vowels. Every language uses vowels when it’s written in our alphabet, right?”

  Patience shrugged and poured herself another shot of tequila.

  “Wheel within a wheel,” said Selena. Apparently overcome with curiosity, she had left the couch and was now hovering near the table, looking at the note over our shoulders.

  “Wheel within a wheel?” I asked.

  “It’s a simple Caesar shift,” she said.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “A Caesar shift. It’s a cipher. Rot one.”

  “You can decipher this?” I asked. “Is that what you’re saying?”

  She nodded. “You just shift the letters over. In this case you would rotate the wheel one letter. That’s why it’s called Rot one.”

  “It’s that simple?” Sailor asked.

  “A is b, b is c. Like that.”

  I grabbed a pencil and replaced each letter with the one next to it in the alphabet. Translated, the note read:

  Witch,

  I have something of yours. You know I can use it against you.

  Give me the ljeep, or else.

  —a friend

  “Told you,” Selena said, and returned to watch the movie with Oscar.

  “Well, there you go,” said Patience, reaching for the tequila again. “Just give him the ljeep, and everything’s fine.”

  Sailor moved the bottle out of her reach. “Don’t you think you’ve had enough? We need to keep our wits about us.”

  “You’re not the one who got shot at tonight, fell off a wall, and shoved into a black hole. You wanna see my bruises?”

  Sailor poured her a half-shot.

  “So, the question now is: what does he mean by ljeep?” I asked.

  “Maybe he made a mistake,” said Patience. “He meant to write ‘Jeep’, by which he means your precious Mustang. Vanity mirror or no.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” I said.

  “You have a better idea?” Patience said tartly.

  Sailor was looking up ljeep on his smartphone.

  “Anything?” I asked.

  “There’s a big sale on Jeep Wranglers at the dealer on Van Ness.” He scrolled through the rest of the search results. “That’s about it. That can’t be his meaning. Maybe he got it wrong.”

  “I want to go home,” Patience whined.

  Sailor and I exchanged a glance. I nodded. “I don’t think there’s anything more to be done right now. I’ll cast a protection spell, but I doubt I’ll be threatened again tonight. Apparently I have an ljeep this person wants, so I should be safe in the meantime.”

  “Then why was he shooting at you at the ruins?” Sailor asked.

  “That was related to Lupita. I think he was trying to keep her from telling us something.”

  “Probably something about the ljeep,” Patience muttered. “Funny word. What rhymes with Jeep? Peep, cheap, leap, creep, weep. . . .”

  “I’d better get her home,” said Sailor. “You sure you’re all right?”

  “Oscar’s here, and my apartment’s the safest place I know of. It’s like Fort Knox around here.”

  He smiled. “A magical Fort Knox.”

  He gave me a hug, a kiss, stroked my head, and looked into my eyes. “Take care of you, hear me?”

  I nodded. “Thank you for coming to my rescue. You’re my hero.”

  “Not that I did much . . . but, I’ll take it,” he said with a warm smile. One more kiss, and then he got my motorcycle helmet out of the closet and tossed it to a sour-looking Patience.

  “Let’s go, cousin,” said Sailor. “I’ll take you home.”

  “On the motorcycle?”

  “Limo’s in the shop.”

  “Why can’t we use the witch’s Mustang?”

  “Take it if you want,” I told Sailor.

  “Nah. Then I’d have to come back and change vehicles again. C’mon, Patience. I can see into the future: You’re going to be one heck of a motorcycle mama.”

  “For the record, at this moment I hate you both.” Patience took another swig of tequila, slammed her glass on the table, and swept regally past Sailor, snatching the helmet from him.

  “Good night, Patience,” I said. I doubted we would ever be best buddies, but we’d shared something tonight. I grabbed a small jar from a kitchen shelf. “This is mugwort salve—it will help the scrapes and bruises. And . . . thanks for meeting me at the Sutro Baths. It was interesting.”

  “Oh, yeah, sure, it was a hoot. Do me a favor? Lose my number.”

  I didn’t point out that she was the one who had called me. I got her meaning.

  Chapter 26

  I fixed Oscar and Selena a snack of cheese and crackers and fruit, and left them to finish the movie.

  While they were occupied, I slipped into my bedroom, closed the door, and dialed Graciela.

  Tonight I had been shot, chased into a dark hole, left a mysterious note to decipher, and still had a crime—or several—to figure out. But what was really weighing on my mind, what was eating away at me, was what Aidan had said: that I was not destined for love.

  So when Graciela answered, I recounted what Aidan had told me. I prayed she would tell me what I wanted to hear: that Aidan was messing with my mind, probably as part of some Machiavellian plan.

  “I think he’s right,” she said without hesitation.

  “About my needing to work with him, or . . . that I shouldn’t have a relationship with Sailor.”

  “Both.”

  “What you mean by that?” I could hear her eating something, and felt a deep stab of annoyance.

  “I heard some rumors. I think something is building in San Francisco. Think about it, m’ija, you have seen a lot of supernatural situations since you arrived in that city—a lot of trouble, even for the likes of you. And it was a parrot who told you to go, no? You know how birds are. Listo. Very smart.”

  “It was just a fluke—he was repeating something he had heard, probably.”

  “It was a sign, and you knew it. It is no accident that you were drawn to the city by the bay.”

  “Okay, well, be that as it may, what about the other thing? The . . . love thing?”

  “You have always had difficulty understanding that the path of power requires sacrifice.”

  “So you’re saying powerful people can’t experience love? My friend Hervé is married and adores his wife.”

  “His path is not yours.”

  I heard crunching sounds, and some rustling around. I lost my temper.

  “What in the world are you doing?”

  “Eating chips, and making chiles
rellenos. They used to be your favorite.”

  “It’s the middle of the night in Texas.”

  “Como se dice? What is it you kids say? I’m a ‘party animal.’”

  “This is serious, Graciela. I have to know: What will happen? Will I hurt Sailor if I stay with him?”

  Even though my witchy intuition was compromised by telephone lines, I could sense that I finally had her full attention. When she spoke, she sounded irked.

  “M’ijita, I am just an old woman. I am not an Oracle. You have to find your own path. There are no easy solutions. Yes, you can try to walk away from the truth, from the hard path, just as you did when you were a girl. But you are no longer a child: You are a woman. So deal with it. My dinner’s ready.”

  * * *

  I tucked Selena into her bed on the couch, kissed her on the forehead, and wished her good night.

  “Is everything going to be all right?” she asked, her serious eyes searching my face.

  “Of course it is,” I said, trying to convince myself as much as her.

  She seemed doubtful, so I tried again. “You’ll be okay, Selena. I promise you that I’ll do everything in my power to make sure of that. And I don’t mean to brag or anything . . . but I’m a pretty kick-ass witch.”

  She didn’t return my smile but rolled over and closed her eyes.

  I went into the kitchen to reconnect with my familiar.

  “Oscar, do you have any idea what this is all about?” I whispered.

  “Sorry, Mistress. I got nothin’. And you’ve got me on loony girl guard”—he gestured toward Selena,—“so I haven’t even had time to work on my karaoke, much less go out and scout or anything.”

  “Okay, thanks. I want you to know I really appreciate your being here. It puts my mind at ease to know you’re on the job.”

  “Aw, shucks.” He waved off my thanks and puffed out his chest. “She’s just a slip of a girl, no match for the likes of me.”

  “I guess we should all get some rest. No doubt this will be here waiting for us in the morning.”

  Oscar crawled into his cubby over the refrigerator, and I sat and gazed at the strange note for a while. Ljeep? Could it be a typo, a mistake?