Rituals

by Mary Anna Evans

  Focus. He needed to turn his head and focus. Who else was barging into Myrna’s house? It was a slender man with graying hair.

  Samuel.

  Why was Samuel here? Joe didn’t like it. He put his hands on the ground, palms down, and shoved himself onto his knees. Without waiting to find his equilibrium, Joe staggered to his feet and used the momentum of his falling body to propel himself toward the door where Samuel stood.

  Joe had been sitting in front of the open front door while keeping watch, so it was still open. Samuel barged into Myrna’s house without knocking, without even pausing. Joe’s wife and child were in that house. He had to get in there, whether his body wanted to help him or not. He stumbled after Samuel as quickly as his uncooperative legs would take him.

  ***

  Myrna’s house was huge, far too large for Avery to cross the entire first floor quickly and silently enough to reach her assailant unseen. There he stood—and she was pretty sure she was looking at a “he”—wearing a jumpsuit so tight that it looked like he had been dipped in black paint. Even his eyes were covered by heavy black netting. He was sloshing gasoline around the nailed-shut séance room door. As Avery paused to plan her next step, he slid open the box of matches in his hand. He lit one, and all her firefighter instincts kicked in.

  She knew he could probably fling the match into the spreading puddle of gasoline before she got there. She knew he probably had her gun. She knew that being drugged had slowed her reflexes and that the agony of her broken hand would slow her even more. She didn’t care. Her only conscious thought was, “Get that match.”

  As if to prove to Avery that it was still possible to be more confused, a trim man with salt-and-pepper hair stepped through the open front door. What was Gilbert Marlowe doing here?

  Avery had no time to consider an answer to that question, because there was an open flame that needed to be doused. She launched herself at the unidentified killer in head-to-toe black.

  ***

  As Faye removed the stair riser that hid the room’s secret entrance, she refused to let herself think about what would happen if she couldn’t get Amande, Myrna, and Dara out. Her plan was simple. First, she had to get out of the séance room. If Willow was still in sight, she needed to dispatch him…somehow. That part of the plan was murky. Then she needed to find a tool that would get the door open. An ax. A hatchet. A crowbar. A magic wand. She didn’t care what it was.

  She slithered through the opening, then stopped with her feet still dangling into the séance room. Willow was not finished setting the fire that would kill them all. It would probably kill Avery, too, because the arson investigator was running past her like a linebacker hoping to sack a star quarterback. As she struggled to pass from one room into another, Faye watched a gray-haired man walk through the front door. She’d never seen him before, so she had no idea whether he had come to stop Willow or to help him kill people.

  The match in Willow’s hand gave off the scent of burning sulfur. It joined the odor of gasoline that rose from the wet, stained floor. Avery went after the match, leaving Willow with a free hand that he used to slam her against the wall. Faye, finally free of the tight access hole, launched herself at Willow’s slim, muscular form, carrying no weapon but the stout oak board that had once masqueraded as a riser in a grand antique staircase.

  Willow was at a disadvantage, caught off-guard by a law enforcement professional and a determined archaeologist wielding a stout board, but he was a trickster so he used what he had—the fuel can in his hand. He sloshed gasoline in Avery’s face, a lot of it. Her trained reflexes allowed her to fling her arm over her eyes in time, but this gave Willow an opportunity to struggle free.

  It also gave him an opportunity to douse Faye, too. A single spark would turn both women into walking torches. Faye and Avery locked eyes and achieved their own brand of mindreading. Silently, they agreed on the timing of the only blow they were going to have a chance to land. They tackled him, and all three went down in a puddle of gas growing ever larger as the toppled fuel can emptied itself.

  Straddling Willow’s torso and pinning his shoulders to the floor, Avery clapped the lit match tight between her bare hands. They were gasoline-soaked, but the fuel would not combust without oxygen. Faye knew that, in theory, Avery could snuff the match this way without going up in flames. In theory.

  Faye waited for Avery to ignite. She didn’t. Instead, she kept the hot match clutched between her palms and nodded. Faye responded by whamming the board down on Willow’s black-sheathed head. He lay still.

  Avery leapt to her feet and took charge. “The place could go up any second. We need to get that door open. Faye, there’s an ax in Myrna’s storage shed. Get it.” She ran to study the board barring the door.

  The gray-haired man ignored Avery, running for the hinged side of the nailed-shut door. Faye tried to remember what Gilbert Marlowe looked like. Was this him? The fumes seemed to be snarling Faye’s mind, because she could not figure out why Marlowe would be here. When he hired killers, did he chase them around to make sure they got the job done?

  Joe shoved him away, hard. “Get away from that door, Langley. My daughter’s in there.”

  What on earth was he talking about? Had he mistaken Marlowe for their client, Samuel Langley?

  Joe was clearly less worried about the man’s identity than he was about Amande, because he merely shoved him to the floor and kicked the door off its hinges. Amande, Myrna, and Dara scrabbled out of the room on their hands and knees, just in time to see Willow roll over onto his belly. He was too stunned from Faye’s blow to do more than raise his torso and prop himself on his elbows. His white locks, no longer sleek, were matted into the dirt and gasoline that coated the old wooden floor.

  In a deadly act of sleight-of-hand, he made a match appear in his right hand. Then he struck it.

  ***

  Avery understood the thermodynamics of what she was seeing. The vapors rising from the puddle around Willow were highly flammable. The flame in his hand didn’t need to touch the gasoline visible on the floor. The vapors, invisible but inarguably there, would be igniting immediately. They were igniting immediately. And Willow’s hair was serving as a long and beautiful wick, drawing fuel from the puddles on the floor to feed the flame.

  Avery could see Faye preparing to be heroic. Joe would have been doing the same, but he had dropped to the floor right after he kicked the door open, cradling a foot that was probably broken. Marlowe, Dara, Amande, and Myrna stood behind him, thunderstruck by the sight of a man erupting in flames.

  Wrapping one arm around Faye to keep her from rushing to Willow’s aid, Avery used the other arm to yank Joe to his feet. “Go, go, go…go now…go!” They were all leaving the house together, and she didn’t intend for any of them to be on fire when they got out.

  Her eyes were screwed shut against the fumes and rising heat, but she knew Faye and Joe were with her, because she had a solid grip on them. And she knew without looking that Amande and Dara would be right behind her, keeping Myrna safe, because that’s who they were. Marlowe seemed to have a talent for taking care of himself, so she guessed he’d be with them, too.

  There was no help for Willow. The laws of thermodynamics said that he was doomed, and Avery had never seen anyone successfully break them yet.

  ***

  The swelling roar of the fire that was consuming Myrna’s home nearly drowned the sound of approaching sirens. Amande, Myrna, and Dara scrabbled out of the room on their hands and knees, just in time to see Willow roll over onto his belly and peel the black hood off his head. He was too stunned from Faye’s blow to do more than raise his torso and prop himself on his elbows. His white locks, no longer sleek, fell into the dirt and gasoline that coated the old wooden floor.

  Faye leaned on Joe’s shoulder with both arms wrapped tight around her daughter. Myrna stroked Dara’s tear-stained cheek. Avery wa
s using her broken and burned hands as best she could, gently palpating Joe’s injured foot.

  As the man who was neither Marlowe nor Langley watched her work, he slid off his wig and let a shoulder-length mane of gray-streaked hair fall to his shoulders. Or, rather, to her shoulders. The freed locks framed Toni’s face, still partially obscured by several layers of theatrical makeup.

  She gestured at Joe’s wounded foot, saying, “That wasn’t necessary. I had things under control.” Opening her hand, she displayed a collection of slender metal tools arrayed on her palm. “I’m a magician. Harry Houdini kept files and…other things…on him at all times, and so do I. I could have gotten the door open, and you could have spared yourself some time at the orthopedist’s office.”

  Then the tools vanished. It is possible that they went up Toni’s sleeve.

  Chapter Thirty

  Youth is a state of mind. If Faye had ever needed proof of that adage, she had it now. She and Amande lurked beneath a tree near the lakeshore, watching Myrna push Sister Mama’s wheelchair down an uneven sidewalk and park it by a concrete bench. Myrna’s head was high and she was full to the brim with energy. After setting the chair’s safety brake and brushing the bench free of leaves, she solicitously helped Sister Mama stand and walk a few steps. The stricken woman looked overjoyed to sit someplace that wasn’t a wheelchair. As she relaxed on the bench, she didn’t look so stricken after all.

  Myrna bustled around, fetching Sister Mama’s coffee cup and spreading a shawl over her knees. Judging by the way she treated her friend like a treasured elder, one would think there was a huge difference between the ages of eighty-one and eighty-six. Maybe there was.

  Faye was startled to see Ennis standing a stone’s-throw away, watching the same scene. He met her eyes, and she could see that he’d known they were there the whole time. He walked over as if to speak to Faye and Amande, but when he got there, he paused. Silent, he watched the two women a moment more.

  At last, he said, “They’re doing better.”

  “Once Dara convinced Myrna to throw away the candy that was making her sick, she started looking stronger every day.”

  Ennis nodded in response to Faye, but he kept looking at the friends, sitting on a park bench and talking. “Not just Myrna. Sister Mama. She’s doing better, too.”

  “I’m glad,” Faye said. Then, though she didn’t know why she said it because she didn’t wholly believe it, she added, “You must have been taking good care of her.”

  “No. I wasn’t.” Tears welled in his eyes. “I was letting that bastard help me with her medicine. Miss Myrna’s, too. Willow made friends with me a while back, right out of the blue. I was never sure why, but it was good to have somebody to talk to. And he knew a lot about root medicine. He told me what tinctures to give Sister Mama because I don’t know shit about roots. I listened to him. And I was happy with what those tinctures did, because they made her quieter. She slept a lot. Life was easier that way. I hate myself for being happy about that.”

  Amande was eyeing him, but she didn’t say anything.

  “I want you to tell me something,” he said.

  Faye couldn’t tell whether he was talking to her or Amande, but Amande didn’t seem to be answering him. Wondering what Ennis was going to ask, she said, “Okay.”

  “Did Sister Mama have something Willow wanted? Do you think he might have wanted her dead, too? Like Tilda and Myrna?”

  “Does she own any property?”

  “Yeah, a big plot near the road coming in from Buffalo. Across the highway from Tilda’s land.”

  Faye heard Amande take in a little gasp. Ennis gave her a sharp look.

  Faye could see he already had his answer, but she told him anyway. “Marlowe wanted that land. I’d bet on it. Marlowe doesn’t seem to have done anything illegal himself, but we think he told Willow to do whatever it took to make his development happen. Willow decided that the easiest tactic was to kill everybody in the way. Tilda and Myrna, for sure. Probably Sister Mama, too, because Willow had to be the one who made the soporific sponge. Avery’s chemist friend found opiates on it, and she says he may kill himself with overwork because he won’t rest until he figures out what else Willow put on it. In the end, he went after his own wife, along with Myrna and the two of us. Joe and Avery, too, because they got in his way. There’s no way he’d have gotten away with killing us all. He must have just cracked.”

  “I threw away the medicines he told me to give Sister Mama a week ago, when he got arrested. Look at her now.” He nodded at Sister Mama, laughing with Myrna. “She can walk a little. She’s talking again. She’s talking a lot, actually. I don’t think there ever was a second stroke. Goddamn that man for using me to hurt her. And other people.”

  This time Faye was sure he was talking to her daughter.

  “I threw the rock at Toni’s window. It was stupid. Willow had filled my ears full of how evil Toni was. He’d looked her up on the internet and she scared him. He knew she was getting ready to expose him and Dara as fakes. I thought he was my friend, so it wasn’t hard to get me all riled up against her. The only thing that makes me better than him is that he set fires to kill people he didn’t like, and I threw a stupid rock. And I buried some lemons under the porches of nice ladies that never did me any harm, because I wanted to hex them into selling their property to Gilbert Marlowe. I didn’t think about hurting anybody. I just didn’t think.”

  “Are you going to stay here?” The tone in Amande’s voice said she actually cared about the answer to her question. Her face gave away nothing.

  “I got to. I can’t leave Sister Mama to be taken care of by somebody who won’t even do the piss-poor job I’ve done. And I got to get her to teach me about roots and herbs, while she still can. While I’m at it, I have really got to figure out what part of her business is legal. Opium poppy juice? It’s a miracle the Feds haven’t already come to get us. And I don’t even want to think about what would happen if they found out about the home brew. Mostly, I’ve got to learn what Sister Mama knows, while she’s still here. How’m I going to keep her work going when she’s gone, if I don’t understand it?”

  “You’ll have to start by figuring out how to keep people out of her garden,” Faye said. “Willow stole licorice from you, for sure, plus all the stuff he put on that soporific sponge. God only knows what he put in the tinctures your aunt and Myrna were drinking.”

  “I’m looking into electric fences.”

  Amande laughed out loud.

  “No, seriously. I am. I don’t think anybody but my great-aunt understands what some of that stuff can do. She told me one thing that’s gonna make both of you laugh. I know how Miss Tilda made her séances…special. All these years, Sister Mama’s been a big help to her. More than either of them knew, actually.”

  Faye tried to picture Sister Mama slipping through the secret staircase entrance to help Tilda fake metaphysical magic. She couldn’t, so she asked, “How was she a big help?”

  “Sister Mama said that she steeped calming herbs in oil, and that Miss Tilda would rub them on her crystal ball and let the warm lamp underneath spread the essences around for people to breathe.”

  “I remember that!” Amande said.

  “Sister Mama was quick to say that using her oil wasn’t cheating. Tilda never cheated. She’d grown up helping her father fool people, and she hated it. Hated it. She believed she had real talent. I believe she did. But my aunt’s herbs helped her put people in the mood, and Tilda didn’t consider that cheating.”

  “What about the incense?” Amande asked. “Did she make that, too?”

  “She did, and that’s the part that’ll make you laugh. Sister Mama made it out of wild lettuce sap. We were about to run out of it when Tilda died. Sister Mama was too sick to tell me how to make more, so I looked it up on the internet. And you know what? Wild lettuce sap’s perfectly legal, and it’s g
ot an awful lot in common with opium juice. I really got to put up an electric fence.”

  He’d been right when he said they would laugh.

  “So those things we saw during Tilda’s séance weren’t real?” Amande asked.

  “Maybe they were and maybe they weren’t, but you were flying high when you saw them. No doubt about it.”

  When Ennis laughed, his whole face came into focus.

  “I’m not sure there’s any reason Miss Myrna needs to know that,” he said.

  Nodding at them both, a quick agreement for Faye and something slower for Amande, he said, “I need to go now. I need to see if either of those two ladies need anything. I’m all Sister Mama’s got, and Dara can use some help keeping up with Miss Myrna. Dara’s got a show to run, and she’ll be doing it by herself from here on out.”

  As he walked away, Faye gave Amande the same silent eye contact that her mother had given her long ago, when she’d been sneaking around with boys at seventeen. “Is there anything about that man you want to tell me?”

  “He wanted to ask me out. I didn’t encourage him, so he didn’t.”

  Faye’s continued silence asked for more of a response, so her daughter said, “He’s just a boy. I’m waiting for a man to come along.”

  ***

  Joe began closing the open books scattered over Samuel’s desk. “Are you convinced?”

  “Yes. It’s hard to accept that my treasures aren’t what I thought they were, but you laid out the facts. You walked me through those books. You showed me pictures on your computer. You showed me lab reports from rock taken from American and European quarries. I’m not stupid. You’ve convinced me. It’s not that I thought the people in America couldn’t have built all those pyramids and mounds on their own. It’s just that I thought that they didn’t.”

  Joe let that statement rest as he placed the books, one by one, in an orderly stack. “Now I want to explain something else and I want to ask you a question.”