The Master merely raised his eyebrows.
Alejandro said defensively, “Natividad is upset.”
Grayson sighed. “She is,” he conceded. “Perhaps with cause, though we shall hope not. Come in, Alejandro.” He considered the others who clustered warily in the doorway: Absolon and Ian and Rip Jacobs—an interesting little group, Miguel thought. They seemed pretty tolerant of one another, considering.
“Grayson—” Natividad began, and broke off. “Master—”
Grayson held up a hand, stopping her. He said, “We will leave as soon as seems practicable. Not immediately, but soon. We shall work out the remaining details with all due haste. Since haste does appear to be an issue...” he nodded toward the door. “Miguel, please explain the basic outline of our intentions to your brother and sister. James, Frédéric, please see to arranging matters with our wolves. Étienne, if you would please remain.”
And that would seem to be that, at least for now. Miguel grabbed his twin by the arm, patted Alejandro’s arm, and said to them both, “We’ve got a plan, come on, I’ll tell you all about it, you might even like it. Parts of it. Gemela, have you had a chance to see what Stéphanie Callot might have around, maybe already set up? Let’s find out. Toma lo que te haga falta.”
“I already have all kinds of stuff—I brought lots of things with me—”
“Yeah, but take anything you want, if you suddenly decide you need something it’ll be tricky to come back for it—”
“Puede que tengas razón,” Natividad said, in the kind of earnest tone that meant Stop trying to tell me my business.
“Right,” said Miguel, lifting a pacific hand. “Right.” He just wished he could be a fly on the wall when Grayson called Colonel Herrod with an update. He was sure that phone call was going through right now. With Étienne to advise Grayson. Yeah, Miguel just hoped that worked out.
“So, tell us this plan we will like parts of,” Alejandro ordered, and Miguel dragged his brain back to the actual moment.
MigTol: Hey Prophetess u awake?
Prophetess: Ok lay it on me. What clever plan have you all dreamed up?
MigTol: … Looks like G wants to hop into bed w C Herrod
Prophetess: Ew stop not an image I need
MigTol: Ur mind, it is in the gutter.
Prophetess: U started it. U think H is really on board or setting u up?
MigTol: That’s the q. I guess it’s worked out bf? ??? G’s not likely to be overtrusting u think? Not a blk dg kind of mistake. I figure probably we’re really teaming up. U should know in case it turns out 2B a bad bad bad idea.
MigTol: I told G abt skinwalkers. Also abt Assyrian witchcraft
Prophetess: It’s sknwkrs
MigTol: Kristoff’s still not a Navajo.
Prophetess: I know u don’t agree. Lotsa || tho.
MigTol: More || w Assyrians. And God knows about Ashanti witchcraft cause we still don’t. U find anything else?
Prophetess: No but hey give me time. U have time to look in records there?
MigTol: Sure if all the records were scanned! No. Paucum.
Prophetess: stop w the Latin
MigTol: U started it
Prophetess: That was a long time ago and hey I didn’t know u were so easily influenced. Try to get into the records. U can skim real fast.
MigTol: I’ll do my best but damn records go back alllll the way & we’re leaving RSN. U keep looking? I’ll keep googling.
MigTol: G is leaving Etienne in charge, if we don’t come back he will be on ur doorstep w cousin + 1 more
Prophetess: I’ll pass that on Don’t u let that happen
MigTol: Absit
-7-
Everything was taking so long. Natividad wanted to lean forward and say Go faster to Grayson, who was driving. Of course she couldn’t.
Well, she could. She was directly behind Grayson. She could easily lean forward and urge greater speed. But he would not welcome advice about his driving.
Also, more important, Natividad was not supposed to be worrying about things like how fast they were going. She was just supposed to make sure they kept heading toward Ezekiel, and at the same time make some kind of aparato that would protect Dimilioc’s black wolves from the witch that had caught him.
Stéphanie and Natividad were each supposed to think about this problem separately, and make the best aparatos they could think of, then share ideas and see what else they could make. Making something that would do exactly what they needed it to do, when they didn’t even know for certain what that would be . . it seemed impossible. But important.
Natividad had let Miguel tell her all about every kind of witch he and Cassie had learned about and besides that she had spent time talking to Justin and Keziah and Amira and Nicholas and even Justin’s grandmother. Who seemed like a nice woman. Luckily she was perfectly all right, or she would be once she’d had a little more time to recover from all the terrible things that had happened. Also, the way she’d met Keziah and the others, at least she wasn’t too upset about Justin joining Dimilioc and being friends with black dogs.
They were so lucky Justin’s grandmother turned out to be the kind of old woman who was really sharp, who paid attention to everything and remembered details, even when the details were awful. So Natividad knew about human sacrifice and banefires and white candles, and she knew witches used horrible things like finger bones in their magic. She couldn’t see how it would be helpful to know about things like finger bones, but maybe it would turn out to be good to know such things.
None of that awful witchcraft sounded anything like Pure magic. Except it sort of did in some ways. Circles might be important. Maybe some kinds of witchcraft might be deliberate perversions of Pure magic, the same way a Black Mass was a deliberate perversion of the real mass. Not that Natividad knew much about the details of a Black Mass. Miguel had looked up stuff about that, but she hadn’t let him tell her much about it.
She wished Justin was with her now. And Keziah, because after last summer Natividad knew that when things got really bad, Keziah was exactly the person you wanted on your side. But Keziah hadn’t been able to protect herself from the witches that had kidnapped Justin’s grandmother.
Of course it was Natividad’s job to fix that little problem.
Although they weren’t even certain the enemies they were heading toward were witches. Natividad had to be careful to remind herself of that, because she was actually pretty sure. Everybody was pretty sure. Otherwise it was a huge coincidence that Justin and everyone had run into trouble at about the same time as Ezekiel.
Besides, Natividad knew how angry and actually just completely consternado Ezekiel was. Maybe it was just Justin and Keziah putting the idea in her head, but she couldn’t think of one single thing that could upset Ezekiel so much, other than falling into a witch’s trap.
So probably their enemies were witches. Unfortunately, Mamá hadn’t taught her about witches or witchcraft. Even Dimilioc just didn’t know very much about witches. Yet she and Stéphanie Callot were supposed to come up with aparatos of some new kind, something that could protect black dogs from witches. And free them, because Natividad definitely wasn’t going to leave Ezekiel trapped like he was right now. Definitivamente, no.
She and Stéphanie had brought along everything they could think of that might help. For Natividad, that meant a couple more silver chains and a brass doorknob and a palm-sized silver locket with a tiny silver-alloy key.
Natividad was proud of herself for thinking of the doorknob. That was a thing-that-opens-other-things, symbolism she hoped would prove useful. But the locket had been Stéphanie’s idea. “Because it locks,” Stéphanie had said, showing it to Natividad. “Because it has a key.” Stéphanie was smart, even if Natividad didn’t like her. The locket was a clever idea. They’d each taken one. Stéphanie had the one with a flower engraved on the front and a pearl inside because the lockets had been her idea. Natividad’s was plain, and she was pretty sure from th
e feel that it had a lower silver content. But the key was the part she really thought was important anyway.
A crowded van was a stupid place to try to work out some new aparata mágica. But Natividad couldn’t complain about that because she had argued so hard for haste. Now she had to come up with something.
Silver chains and silver keys and glass beads...silver and light were what you needed to draw the right kind of protective circles and pentagrams and other figures. Witches used some kind of dust or ash.
When you worked the Aplacando, the Calming, what the Dimilioc black wolves called the Beschwichtigand, you used sunlight or moonlight to draw a pentagram around the black dog. Or if nothing brighter was available, starlight or firelight, but that was harder. You had to braid light into a cord to bind the black dog’s shadow, and brighter light was easier to work with. The Aplacando was very important to help a black dog rule his shadow, to help him separate his own self from the monster that shared his soul. But if the Aplacando was all about enhancing a black dog’s control, maybe what a witch did was something like that, too. Only it gave someone else control. How would you set up the Aplacando if that was what you wanted?
Natividad could not quite imagine.
Well, but the kind of witch Justin and the others had run into was evil. Miguel said mostly witches were supposed to call on demonic powers to curse rivals and things like that. The demonic entity, that was the one with the power. The witch was just the person directing the demon to do things. Which still sounded just awful, but never mind, what that meant was that Pure magic ought to be able to protect someone from a witch because defending against demonic influence was exactly what the Pure did. It was what they were for.
Except that Justin had described how his own magic had gotten muffled or blurred or suppressed when he’d come too close to the witches’ hideout. How his grandmother’s magic had been muffled as well. Justin had said he wondered if that muffling was why his grandmother and her friends didn’t know much about their own magic or what it meant to be Pure; he said maybe witches had actually been doing stuff in that part of the country for a long time, interfering with Pure magic somehow and maybe that was why his family hadn’t known enough to tell he was Pure himself or warn him what that meant.
None of that suggested in any way that Pure magic could be very effective against this new kind of witchcraft. Or this old kind, whatever it was. No one knew. That was the problem.
Still, assume witchcraft used dark things, opposite things. Ash instead of fire, darkness instead of light.
Natividad balanced her pink sisal handbag on her knee and took out a silver chain, poured a couple glass beads out of their bag, and then found her new locket with its little key. She frowned at it, thinking. Things that could be shut tight...things that could be opened and freed. A locket, a mind, a heart.
The locket wasn’t magic. Not yet. But it could be. Lots of things could be made into magic if you did it right. Silver was already adverso to demonic influence. There was enough silver in the alloy that had made this locket and key that they would easily take up a little bit of magic.
When you did the Aplacando, you made a cord of light to bind the darkness of the black dog’s shadow. You could say that was locking away the shadow. Or you could say you were opening the person’s soul to the light. Really you were doing both. Or either. You could look at it either way. Natividad held up the locket by its chain—that was also silver, of course—and studied it.
She needed a flat place where she could set down the locket and then draw a pentagram around it. A van didn’t offer a lot of possibilities...she shuffled through her bag, looking for inspiration...of course. Her mirror. It wasn’t very big. Only about three inches across. But the locket was only about as long as Natividad’s thumb, and the key was tiny. Also, silver-backed glass was a good surface to draw on. Very amenable to magic. She’d used this mirror as a trouvez lots of times, but that should be all right...it might even be helpful. A trouvez was for finding people. If a witch had taken control of Ezekiel, couldn’t he be said to have been lost? In a way? And setting him free was kind of like finding him. She was pretty sure that if the mirror remembered having been a trouvez, that would be fine.
Finding someone who was lost, freeing someone who was bound, unlocking someone who had been locked up tight...Natividad took the silver chain off the locket and dropped it in her bag. Then she put the key into the locket—it just fit—and shut it. It locked automatically, so that was kind of an interesting structure: the key closed away inside the locket that it ought to unlock. Yes. That felt right.
Setting the locket in the center of the mirror, she drew a pentagram around it. It was hard to fit a pentagram on so small a surface. Justin could have just made any size pentagram as one whole shape, but Justin was special. Natividad had to draw hers with the tip of her finger, which was tricky because the locket took up so much space. The motion of the van didn’t help either.
At least the mirror was round. Round was good. Round was like a protective circle. Though protection was not exactly what Natividad had in mind. Or maybe...maybe a really aggressive kind of protection.
She finished drawing the pentagram, leaned back, and looked at it critically. It was all right. The locket had jiggled a little off-center, but it didn’t lie across the lines of the pentagram. So she gathered a handful of sunlight and poured the light into the pentagram and into the mirror and across the locket.
“Sea libre,” she murmured. Justin said the priest had said some words from an exorcism. Natividad wasn’t a priest and didn’t know those words. But she knew what she wanted. She knew what an exorcism was for. She murmured, “Que el mal salga. Que el mal sea expulsado. Que el demonio sea frustrado. Que lo sea expulsado. Que ésta persona sea libre de él.” It did seem a little peculiar to say May the demon be thwarted, may it depart, may this person be free of it, because after all a person was only a black dog at all because a demon had attached itself to his soul. But a different kind of demon or attached a different way or something.
She added, “Que Dios ponga su mano entre la alma de ésta person y el mal.” But that still wasn’t quite right. She didn’t exactly want to ask God to set his hand between Ezekiel and evil; not all evil. She didn’t want to put any kind of barrier between Ezekiel and his own shadow. She said instead, still in Spanish, “May God guard this person’s soul from the witch’s demon.” There, that was better. That was what she wanted the aparato she was making to do. An aparato for the casting out of demonic influence, but only the influence of the witch’s demon. Now that she had framed her wish properly she could pour that wish into her new aparato.
She tilted the mirror so that the light she’d poured into it pooled and gathered and ran back and forth across its surface, across the locket. Which was part of the mirror now. It had melted into it, kind of. Yet the mirror hadn’t become convex. Rather, the edge had risen up a little all around the mirror, so that its overall shape had become a little bit concave. The better for gathering light, maybe. The better for catching an image, or a shadow, or a soul.
Natividad tilted her new-made aparato again, considering the flow and ebb of light, the heft and warmth of it in her hand. Maybe it would work. She thought it might.
“A key’s in it, right?” Miguel said, looking over her shoulder. “Yeah, that’s clever. I see what you did there.”
“Sí,” Natividad said. “Yes. I think this may be right. Mostly right.” She turned her new aparato para expulsar los demonios over in her hands. “I think it will work. I think it should work. Only I’m not sure how to use it.” It wasn’t like a knife, or an aparato made from a knife. It was always obvious how to use something that started out as a knife. But you didn’t stab someone with a mirror. She said, “I think he needs to look into it, so he will find himself and the demon’s hold will be broken. But I think it might take a minute. I mean, if anybody holds it up he will look into it. But just for a second, probably. I don’t know how to make him l
ook into it for long enough.”
“I will see to that myself, if necessary,” Grayson told her. His voice had deepened to a flat-toned growl.
Natividad nodded. She was sure he would. “I don’t know it will work,” she reminded him. She wondered what Stéphanie Callot had come up with. Something very different, she hoped. She liked this new aparato of hers. But she would feel better if they had several different things they could try, just in case her creation didn’t work, or didn’t work well enough, or didn’t work exactly the way she had intended.
Miguel nodded. “If our enemy isn’t a witch after all this, I for one am going to be seriously disappointed.”
Natividad poked him, but she knew exactly what he meant. If she’d made an aparato that was all wrong for the enemy they actually faced, that would be bad.
Then she shivered, blinked, and leaned forward to pat Grayson urgently on the shoulder. “That way, that way, I think this exit, can we take this exit?”
Grayson braked, signaled, and slid into the exit lane at the last moment. The sign said Walsenburg, which meant nothing to Natividad. The Master met her eyes in the rear view mirror. “Which way shall we turn? West?”
Natividad pointed to their right. “That way. Is that west? Where are we?”
Grayson didn’t answer, but her twin tapped his phone and held the map over for Natividad to see. “Nowhere,” he said. “The middle of lots and lots of nowhere. We’re heading toward Fort Garland. There’s not much else over this way. Mountains and national parks and stuff, that’s all there is out here.”
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