Johannes held out the box, tilting it toward me. Griselda opened one of the top flaps so I could take a peek at the contents: a jumble of snarled chains and medallions, rings, and beads. When I reached out to touch, she yanked it back out of reach.
“Fifty dollars for the box, so I don’t have to take it home.”
“Thirty.”
She frowned, then gave me a reluctant, crooked smile.
“Forty, and I’ll throw in the piece you were looking at with the opals. I think it likes you.”
“Thirty-five.” I had learned never to accept the first counteroffer.
“Thirty-seven fifty.”
“Deal.”
Griselda snatched the bills I held out, and Johannes handed me the box.
It was heavy. Luckily the muscles in my arms and back were toned from the hours I spent every week laundering recently acquired vintage clothing. Nothing like hand washing, twisting, and hanging yards and yards of wet fabric to develop a little upper body strength. Last wash day Maya had suggested we produce a workout DVD: “Launder your way to toned biceps.”
Still, though I was sure I could make it out to the car with my burden, I didn’t feel like carrying it around the Gem Faire while I shopped. I considered asking Griselda if I could leave it with her, but her attention had already been diverted by a group of older women who were poking through her collection of antique school rings.
Our sale complete, she had no more use for me.
I glanced at my antique Tinker Bell watch; I was supposed to meet Bronwyn and Maya at the refreshment stand in fifteen minutes. Might as well go grab a cup of coffee and take a gander at the contents of my mystery box. As likely as not, it was a bunch of plastic junk not worth five bucks, much less thirty-seven. But one never knew. I slipped the medallion around my neck, gazed into the bright depths of the blue-green opals, and figured I’d made a good enough deal.
As I started down the aisle, I could hear Griselda saying to her new customers:
“Those there are gen-u-ine sweetheart rings, all of ’em given to their girlies when the boys went off to war. . . .”
Dollars to doughnuts Griselda had a romantic tale to tell about every piece of jewelry in her possession. What a character.
Chapter 2
Standing at a tall orange café table, I savored the aroma of a cup of dark French roast coffee and anticipated the energy boost from the caffeine as I looked out over the crowd.
I was already plumb worn out from shopping. How did women do this?
I enjoyed shopping under certain circumstances, such as open-air markets in North Africa and beach stands in Mexico. I had once spent an enthralling afternoon—and experienced sensory overload—at a parfumerie in Paris. But in general, I quickly grew weary of the crowds, the noise, and the competition for the best deals. Most of my acquisitions for Aunt Cora’s Closet came from thrift stores, garage sales, and one-on-one exchanges—low-key, low-pressure bargain hunting.
Several small groups of women were taking coffee breaks, sipping drinks, and oohing and aahing over one another’s purchases. A pimply teenage boy looked uncomfortable and out of place accompanying his fiftysomething mom, and I wondered what his story was. A couple of gray-haired women sporting neon yellow vendor badges were filling cardboard boxes with multiple cups of coffee, adding cream and sugar.
I noticed Griselda’s assistant, Johannes, take a place in the refreshment line next to Shawnelle, who had apparently ditched her tiara-shopping friend to chat him up. She ordered a Diet Coke while Johannes bought three hot dogs, which he proceeded to smother with onions, relish, and great gobs of ketchup, all the while nodding at whatever Shawnelle was saying. I smiled, wondering if he spoke enough English to understand her, or whether her beautiful green eyes said all he needed to hear. They didn’t notice me as they passed by with their refreshments.
“Mmm-mmm-mmm.”
A man was leaning on the high café table next to mine, sipping a bright red slushy through a striped straw. He gazed into his cup with a frown of concentration, as though lost in the experience. “Mmmm. Boy, that’s . . . yummy.”
He looked up, and our gazes met.
“Good?” I asked.
“So good,” he answered with a self-conscious smile, his lips stained pink from the slush.
He wore an expensive-looking double-breasted suit, a silk tie, and polished wingtips. His dark hair, receding from his forehead, was slicked into place. East Coast, I decided. I didn’t see many movies, but I was pretty sure this guy fit the bill for Central Casting’s call for a Jersey-based mafioso. He was handsome in a sort of middle-aged, slightly thuggish way, but he looked wildly out of place in San Francisco, where people tended to dress casually, especially for occasions such as the Gem Faire. Still, he was so entranced with his incongruous little-kid slushy I couldn’t help but return his smile.
“Jelly Belly?” He extracted a bag of brightly colored jelly beans from his suit pocket.
“Oh, no, thank you.” After a youth spent being shunned by virtually everyone in my small West Texas hometown, I was always a little surprised when strangers struck up conversations.
Maya had told me recently that I had to learn to flirt with men, to engage them in “normal interactions that don’t include witchcraft or murder.” It was good advice. She and Bronwyn were trying to get me to stop moping over a certain dark-eyed psychic named Sailor, who had dropped out of my life several weeks ago. Our brief affair had flamed so hot and intense that I feared I had scared him off. Or maybe the problem was that Sailor and I were forever dealing with witchcraft and murder.
“They’ve got a factory not too far from here,” the man in the suit continued, popping a few candies in his mouth. “Went on the tour. Never occurred to me that jelly beans were made in factories. Kind of always assumed there were elves involved somehow.”
“I’ve been meaning to take that tour.”
“Highly recommend it. Dropped a few bucks at the retail shop, too, obviously.” He held the bag out and shook it as though to entice me. “Go on, help yourself. There’s a million flavors in here.”
“No, really. I’ll be getting lunch soon.”
He gave a conciliatory shrug. “You come to these shows before?”
I shook my head. “First timer. It’s . . . wonderful.”
He looked at me, a questioning half smile on his face.
I shrugged. “Maybe a little bit overwhelming.”
“You don’t like crowds.” It was a statement, not a question. His tone was understanding, his light brown eyes soft. But there was something about him . . . His guard was up. He was good at covering up. Like me.
“You from around here?” he continued.
My stubborn Texas twang usually warded off such inquiries. “Not originally, but I moved here a while back.”
“Like it?”
“Very much.”
“Me, I’m not from here,” he said unnecessarily. Definitely an East Coast accent, probably the Bronx. “Makes me a little nervous, all this”—he made a circular gesture with his free hand—“artsy whatnot, and everybody’s so . . . healthy. What’s with wheatgrass? And that whaddayacallit? Gluten?” he scoffed. “Don’t get me started.”
I smiled, remembering being taken aback by such things when I first arrived in California, too. Even here at the Cow Palace, alongside the typical junk food—like bright red slushies—the refreshment stand offered several vegetarian options, including one particularly dubious item labeled VEGAN BBQ RIB-ETTES. I was afraid to ask.
“They do have their own way of doing things. So, what brings you to San Francisco?”
He hesitated, just a fraction of a second. “Business. I’m Gene, by the way. I’d shake, but . . .” He held up a palm stained bright colors from the jelly beans. He gestured with his head to the beat-up cardboard box. “What’s in the box?”
“Junk jewelry. I have a resale shop.”
“Yeah? Where’d you find the junk? Thought everything out here was a, whaddayacall? L
ike a treasure.”
“One person’s junk is another’s treasure, as they say.” I was tiring of our conversation, and figured I had practiced my flirting plenty for one day. I wanted to examine my new purchases, but hesitated to do so in front of Gene. Just in case. I don’t know what I thought I’d find in the box, but as my mother used to say, “Don’t count your change in front of the poor.” Not that the man looked deprived . . . but figuratively speaking.
A loud gurgle signaled that Gene had finished his slushy.
A woman screamed.
Out on the exhibit-hall floor, people started shouting and jumping. A display of pearls was knocked over, hundreds of the exquisite gems skittering out in all directions. A tablecloth was dragged off of a display table, taking with it necklaces and rings that scattered on the concrete floor. Another scream was nearly drowned out by a babble of shouts and cries.
Finally the cause of the havoc rounded a corner.
Oscar.
Oscar is my witch’s familiar. Most witches have familiar familiars, like owls or frogs . . . or the proverbial black cat. Not me. Mine is a strange, shape-shifting critter.
At the moment he was in his Vietnamese potbellied-pig form, but as I’d tried to explain to him so many times before—without noticeable effect—this porcine guise was only slightly less disturbing in most crowds than his natural goblin-crossed-with-a-gargoyle appearance. I adore Oscar, but he isn’t what you’d call easy.
What in the world was he doing? And, most important, why was he doing it here?
“Oscar!” I called out, but the shouting of the crowd drowned out my voice.
Bronwyn and Maya joined me at the refreshment stand, their canvas bags bulging with purchases.
“What in the world . . . ?” Bronwyn asked, as Maya looked on, bewildered. “How’d our little Oscaroo get out of the van?”
“I, uh . . .” I trailed off, at a loss for words.
In truth, Oscar was more than capable of letting himself out of the van when he transformed—in his gobgoyle form he had humanlike hands. But neither Bronwyn nor Maya knew that.
It was rare for him to disobey me so blatantly, however. Though we had an unusual witch-familiar relationship, Oscar generally followed my orders . . . unless there was a powerful reason not to.
As I looked on, helpless, Oscar careened through the aisles, wild as a June bug on a string. Onlookers screamed and jumped, laughed and chased, and one or two seemed about to cry. Two security guards, radios crackling, tried to trap him by approaching from opposite ends of an aisle. One guard was noticeably overweight; the other small and very young. They looked determined but clueless.
Oscar evaded the pair by slaloming this way and that, before ducking under a display counter topped with trays of glass and metal beads. In the process he struck one of the supporting legs and the flimsy table folded in on itself, spewing beads every which way. The chubby security guard slipped on the rolling beads and fell flat on his butt, while the younger one, more agile than his partner, tried to cut Oscar off. My familiar ducked under yet another display table, catching the cloth on his little hooves and pulling down racks of necklaces, pearls bouncing thither and yon.
“Oscar! Stop!” I stood on my chair and called again, but I doubted he could hear me over the shouts and cacophony.
Over the loudspeaker a crackling voice hailed the security force, calling a Code 571.
“A 571?” Maya murmured. “Suppose that’s the code for ‘out-of-control porker’?”
Whatever it was code for, it was bad news. The last thing I wanted to deal with was animal control; I wasn’t even sure it was strictly legal to keep a pig in the city limits.
“Maya, Bronwyn,” I said, “let’s triangulate and catch him.”
Before we could put our plan into action, Oscar barreled down the wide central aisle, heading straight for the refreshment stand.
“Hell’s bells, Oscar. Stop!”
Oscar stopped.
• • •
Ten minutes later four rent-a-cops, one sheepish pig, and one fuming, embarrassed witch sat in the windowless security office, which, despite its formal title, looked a whole lot like a converted utility closet. It was outfitted with half a dozen beige folding chairs, a utilitarian metal desk covered with stacks of papers, and a plastic-topped conference table.
Compared to the law enforcement professionals I had become accustomed to dealing with over the past few months—the San Francisco Police Department—these men were rather hapless. Despite their neat uniforms and shiny badges, I imagined they had been lured into their jobs by the promise of minimum wage plus overtime, the looming threat of a high unemployment rate, and the possibility of one day perhaps qualifying for health insurance. Since presumably they weren’t particularly invested in their careers, much less in bringing someone like me to justice, I felt confident in my ability to influence them.
I concentrated, shook their hands one by one, and spoke.
“This was all a simple misunderstanding. My pig and I are going to go now, and we won’t come back. No need to write up a report.”
“I guess she’s right,” said the self-proclaimed chief of security, who looked as though he’d graduated from high school this past June. His chubby cheeks were covered in peach fuzz, and his face was absent the lines and hard planes common to those of us who’d seen a few years. “There’s really no need to write this up.”
The guards who had chased Oscar around the floor nodded.
One rebel, a pear-shaped man whose plain features were arranged in what appeared to be a permanent sneer, wasn’t as easily swayed. He hitched up his pants and said, “Now, hold on there just one minute. I still think we need to—”
The radios on their hips squawked.
“Report to sector 4,” came a scratchy voice. “I mean, sector . . . wait . . . ah hell. That place behind the right rear corner of the show. Behind the partitions. All units. Except—Jimmy, you wait out in front and show the paramedics where to pull up in the rear.”
As though relieved to have something important to do, all four men leaped up and ran out of the room so fast that two of them got stuck briefly when they tried to squeeze through the door at the same time. It was a fair imitation of an old Keystone Kops movie. I was relieved to see them go so that I could join Bronwyn and Maya, who had agreed to haul my heavy box of jewelry out to the car.
The young chief was the last to leave. Upon realizing I was still there, he turned back at the door and said, “Please take your livestock and leave the scene, ma’am.”
“Yes, sir,” I said, holding tight to the prickly rope one of the officers had tied around Oscar’s neck. I yanked him down the fluorescent-lit utilitarian service hallway, his hooves clacking loudly on the worn gray linoleum tiles as he hurried to keep up.
He kept casting me sidelong glances, his pink eyes hangdog and imploring.
“What in tarnation did you think you were doing?” I demanded, though I knew full well that in his porcine guise, Oscar had no way of answering me. Which was just as well, since at the moment I was madder than a wet hen and in no mood for his excuses. “Don’t you realize what could have happened? You could have been impounded. I don’t even know if it’s legal to keep a pig in the city. What if animal control shows up and takes you away from me? What’ll we do then, huh?”
Now he looked up and, despite his piggy form, gave me a disgusted look, as if to say, “Are you kidding me?”
Oscar was so much more than an average pig, and he had gotten along just fine without me for centuries. He certainly wasn’t worried that the police—much less animal control—could keep a tricky guy like him behind bars.
“Okay, you’ve got me there,” I muttered. “But I’m still furious with you. What were you thinking, coming into the fair like that? You should have known you’d cause a stink.”
Unless . . . it dawned on me that Oscar needed to tell me something. Why else would he have disobeyed me, and taken such a chance?
Just ahead of us, a door to a broom closet stood ajar. I ducked in and pulled my pig behind me.
For a few seconds Oscar just stared at me.
“Now transform and tell me what’s going on.”
He obeyed and assumed his natural form, in which he stood about three feet tall, with greenish gray scaly skin, huge bat ears, and a monkeylike face. But then he folded his thin, scaly arms over his chest and glared, pursing his muzzle.
“Okay, okay,” I grumbled. “I’m sorry. You’re right. I should have realized you had something important to tell me.”
“Uh-huh,” he said, waggling his head like he’d seen Maya do when she was angry. “Why else would I risk my neck coming into this zoo? Not like there’s anything in it for me. I didn’t even get a lousy order of French fries.”
“Oscar, I said I was sorry. What is it?”
“Something bad, mistress,” he said, then paused like the scaly green drama queen that he was. He glanced over both shoulders, as though worried the mop bucket might be harboring spies. He leaned toward me and continued in a loud whisper, “Something . . . demonic.”
“As in . . .”
“A demon.”
“Yes, I get that. But what particular kind of demon?”
He shrugged.
“I thought I felt something odd, too. But . . . Oscar, you sure you’re not just being a bit melodramatic? Because that’s a very serious—”
I was cut off as a fire alarm rang out and the overhead sprinklers started spewing water.
“What in the—”
Oscar transformed again as I stuck my head out the door and peered down the corridor. A pair of security officers ran down the hall toward the huge exhibit floor.
“Get out of here!” one of them yelled at us, pointing behind them, toward the green glow of an Exit sign. “Fire! This is no drill!”
In general when someone suggests you leave a burning building, you should follow orders. But something told me this wasn’t your average fire at your typical Gem Faire. And I, being neither average nor typical, felt compelled to find out what was going on. Instead of exiting, Oscar and I burst through a service door that led into the heart of the massive, hangarlike structure.
Tarnished and Torn: A Witchcraft Mystery Page 3