I was angry on Lola’s behalf when I got back to her house, and having an extra helping of cherries in my crepes did not improve my mood. I complained in detail to Lola about how rude Mrs. Grayson had been, not even saying thank you or Happy Easter. “And, she didn’t care about my dress,” I added with the righteous finality of a prosecutor delivering the salvo that destroys the defense. “Why do you keep giving her things and being nice to her when she doesn’t even care?”
“She doesn’t have any family,” Lola said. “Probably most of her friends have died too; no one comes to see her. She can’t drive and it’s difficult for her to walk very far. I like to make sure she gets a visitor now and then, and check to make sure she’s not ill. And I don’t think she has very much money, so I give her things that make life a little nicer.”
“But why? She’s mean and she doesn’t even say thank you.” To an eight-year-old tirelessly reminded by my parents about manners, that was a grievous offense.
“Because it’s right,” she said simply. “Don’t do everything for thanks, Mariposa.”
Mrs. Grayson died that autumn. I was living with my mother in her new apartment. Lola told my mother to dress me for church, and she picked me up in her tiny, ancient purple car and didn’t tell me where we were going. We went to a desolate potter’s field, where Lola had learned that a pastor would be delivering a blessing on the plain fiberboard casket as it was interred. I was sulky and cold and prepared to pitch a fit to make Lola let me go wait in the car, when I looked up and saw that she was crying.
I’d taken her hand; I couldn’t bear the sight of her tears. “Why are you sad?”
“The dead need someone to weep for them, Mariposa. To pray for them and remember that they lived.” She wiped her nose. “Our tears help carry them to Heaven and wash them clean, just like baptism.” She looked down at me, her gentle eyes red-rimmed. “Do you ever cry when it seems like there’s no reason for it?”
I nodded, not sure how she knew that sometimes I shut my door and hid under the covers and cried into my pillow so no one would hear me.
“Sometimes, that happens because the dead who had no one to mourn them need someone to help them move on. Send them love and tell them it’s all right to go, and you’ll know that you comforted them and helped them find peace.”
I hadn’t managed any tears for Mrs. Grayson, but I’d stayed there and held Lola’s hand while she cried.
It had been a long time since I’d thought about that day, but I thought about it now as I lay in my tent in the early glow of morning. I thought of Charlie again, and my eyes burned. I squeezed them shut. No amount of tears would bring him peace, not wherever the demon had dragged him.
Sinking dread hollowed my gut as I recalled the face of the demon lit by Sarafina’s fire. If he was here, there was only one reason for it: Someone was going to die, someone who was bound to him as I had once been--as Suzanne, I knew now, had been, and Charlie too.
I had always thought it was suicide that he craved and cultivated. But Charlie’s death hadn’t been a suicide, just a stupid drug-fueled accident. I sat up and hugged my knees, rocking myself as I thought about it. Was it despair that he liked? Did there even have to be anything in common among his victims? Was there any way to tell who he was pursuing? And if I could figure it out, was there anything I could do to stop that person from dying? What if they had no idea?
What if it was me?
I had just wanted a few days of peace of mind.
I checked my watch only to realize I had somehow pressed the re-set button and it was flashing 12:00 at me. It was already getting warm in my tent and I felt like the walls were tightening around me. I steadied my breathing. Shower, I decided, then a little breakfast, and then I could figure out what to do next.
When I stepped out of my tent, it was surprisingly quiet. I could tell from the angle of the light and the lingering coolness of the breeze that it was still early; I must have slept hard to feel so rested after what couldn’t have been many hours of sleep. I clutched my towel around my torso and picked my way among the tents. There was no sign of anyone.
As I reached the path, my skin prickled. I can’t explain how the energy around me felt different, but I didn’t have a sense of the quiet of sleep around me, where there’s still the feeling of people nearby, or the sounds of shifting or breathing. It was like being in an empty room that ought to be full of people. As though everyone in the camp but me had gotten up and walked out and forgotten to tell me they were going.
Then I realized I wasn’t alone. Ahead, the path I was on intersected with one of the slightly bigger dirt roads. At the spot where the paths met, a woman was stretched on a chaise-style folding beach chair, right there in the middle of the walkway, lounging and smoking.
I approached her with caution, my heart beating faster. As I got nearer, I saw that she was astonishingly beautiful, so exaggerated that it was almost cartoonish, like a Tex Avery character come to life. Her skin was flawless bronze with a rosy tint; her black hair spilled down her shoulders and off the edges of the reclining chair like melted tar. Her bright red t-shirt scrawled with black designs had the collar cut out wide to reveal her smooth shoulders and sculpted collarbones; black satin hot pants with fine silver pinstripes hung onto the generous curve of her hips for dear life. From a wide black studded leather belt, a bustle skirt in a vertical patchwork of red and black fabrics fanned out over the chair like a sort of peacock tail. Her legs and feet were bare, her toenails painted sparkling red. Her long, pointed fingernails, however, glittered black. She had several red silk roses pinned in her hair by her ears, and big silver hoop earrings. Her face was partly masked by large movie-star sunglasses, but her cheekbones were high, her nose straight and slender, her mouth a crimson kiss, a beauty mark ascendant above her lip.
Her cigarette was in a long, carved black holder and she inhaled with it balanced on her fingertips, her other hand tucked behind her head and her face tipped up as though I had simply caught her sunbathing. I stopped several feet from her, staring at her without even thinking to hide it. She lowered the cigarette holder, blew out a slow curl of smoke, and slid her sunglasses off her nose in a gesture so teasing that I felt an embarrassing heat in my groin. It didn’t help that the eyes she revealed were green-gold and large, tilted up slyly at the corners, accented by luxurious fans of jet-black lashes beneath high arched brows.
“It’s about time you got up, lazy bones,” she said in a honeyed-whiskey, accented voice. “I been waiting to talk to you.”
“Where is everyone else?” I clutched my towel tighter around me, hugging my bag of toiletries.
She waved her cigarette dismissively. “They’re here. They’re just not here.”
Sure. Made perfect sense. I had a feeling I knew the answer to my question, but I asked it anyway, because the way she responded mattered. “Who are you?”
For a moment I thought I’d insulted her--I’d asked the rude question, not the one I was supposed to ask. She stared long and hard at me, tracing her lips with one stem of her sunglasses and then taking it between her teeth. The tip of her rosy pink tongue slid back and forth along its edge. I couldn’t take my eyes off the motion. The corner of her mouth turned up in a secretive smile and I thought that she was doing it on purpose to mess with me. It was working, if she was.
Finally she said, “You know who I am. When your lover came to me looking for help to save your life, I gave him what you needed in order to live, and told him if you accepted my gift, you were gonna come work for me as long as I want you. Well, you had plenty time to rest, now it’s time to get to work.” Her eyes pierced me. “I am the whirling dove. I am the queen at the crossroads. I am La Libertina, She with seven husbands Who is always free. I am the rose and the thorn. I am the star of the night and the reason for music. I am the teller of secrets. I watch the door and I give the key.” She pointed at the key on the chain arou
nd my neck. “La chave. That is from me, so you could unlock the portão back to life. I am Exua. I am Pomba Gira. You were told to know me as Rosa Vermelha.”
She was right. I had been. And I had accepted her gift, procured for me by my Beloved at the time when I most needed it, knowing it meant I owed her my service even though I didn’t know what she would ask of me. In all the time I’d spent wandering in the three years since the accident, I waited to hear from her, knowing that one day she’d decide it was time I made good on my promise. I can’t say I was eager for that day to come, but now that it was here, I found I was hopeful that I wouldn’t be completely on my own for the things I needed to do.
“I do know who you are,” I said in as respectful a tone as I could offer. “But, I’m sorry. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do right now. How to speak to you.”
She laughed, big and loud. “Just have a fucking conversation with me, girl.” She looked me over head to toe. “You’re a mess. We’re going to have to work on...all this.” She waved her fingers in my direction, the sunglasses swinging from them. “Why are you cringing like that? I’m not going to hurt you, for fuck’s sake. You can let go of the towel, I won’t be offended.”
I tried to straighten up and shifted my weight from one foot to the other. “I’d rather not, right now.”
“Too exposed?” Her eyebrow shot up in amusement and she shook her head. “Selective modesty. So funny, you people. One day you’ll dance naked in front of me and be proud to be beautiful and free. But no rush. Or I could join you, if it makes you feel better to have company...?” She pulled up the hem of her shirt, revealing her belly with a red jewel in her navel, and not quite baring her breasts, but taunting me with the possibility. I exhaled a sigh that had a little hint of a moan, and my face flamed. That seemed to entertain her even more. “Shit, girl, you need to get laid.”
I thought of my Beloved. “I wish I could.”
“Him?” She waved it off. “Why would you think you could only have sex with him? He claimed your heart, not your cunt.”
“Wait--do you know where he is?” An electric thrill ran through me.
She stared at me again, hard and cold. I shrank back. “No.” Her tone was absolute. “You shouldn’t even know about that. Nobody should. And you damn sure better stop wandering around spirit worlds trying to get to him and asking any old body you meet about him. He don’t need you messing with his business and blabbing about it.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I just, I miss him.” My heart crumpled in me.
Her expression softened. “Whatever happened, it’s his business and ain’t no one been told about it. Leave it alone, girl.”
I still had the same nagging, uneasy feeling I’d had all this time, that something was wrong, that I needed to find him. But it didn’t seem like the moment to push the issue. “You said it was time to get to work. What is it you want me to do?”
“Just a little thing first, to see how good you do,” she said, stretching languorously, so that her belly hollowed under her ribs. “You met my girl Sarafina last night. Well, she doesn’t know she’s my girl, but I want her for mine. You tell her about me. Tell her I know she wants to be able to dance all the time and I want that too. So she needs to give me seven performances in a row--new dances that she makes for me, with new outfits, red or black ones. You tell her to make them nice for me! And before she goes on stage, she’s gonna drink a shot of anisette from a bottle that had twenty-one red rose petals soaking in it for at least seven days, you got that? Last, she’s gonna go out on a night with no moon to someplace ugly in the city--maybe a door to an old building, something like that. And she’s gonna make it beautiful. Roses, black candles, shells, perfume, even paint it, whatever she thinks she wants to do. She’s gonna make it look good for me. After that, I come talk to her and help her out.” She turned one sleek thigh and showed me the trident tattooed there. “Give her my symbol to know me by.”
“That’s it?”
She studied me. “Not important enough for you, huh?”
“No--of course not. I just--” I ran over it all in my head. “I’ll tell her. But what if she says no?”
Rosa Vermelha shrugged her lovely shoulders. “She got free will. She can choose. But you do a good job telling her about me, yeah?” Her eyebrow arched again.
“Yes. I will.” I realized she was about to get up out of her chair. “Wait! Can I ask you about something?”
“You can ask.” The corner of her mouth curved up.
“You know the...demon...the one who wanted my death?” It was easier to talk about dying than about him. I waited for her nod. “I came here because of him. Because of visions that told me to come here because I needed to stop him. Last night I saw him--like, physically saw him. Doesn’t that mean that someone’s about to die, if he’s strong enough to do that? Does it mean--that I’m going to die?” I blinked back sudden tears. I didn’t want to end up like Charlie.
She swung her feet to the ground and sat up, leaning her elbows on her wide-spread knees. All amusement was gone from her face. “Why you think you’re gonna die?”
“The only time I ever saw him like that before, saw him in the room with me, was right before I...” I shrugged because I couldn’t say it.
“You listen to me, girl.” Her gaze burned with fury. “He can’t take you no more. He can’t do nothing to you. Nothing. You got it? You’re mine now.”
I hugged myself. “Are you sure? How do you know?”
“Because your love, he don’t make no half-ass shit deal. He sent you away to me because I could keep you safe. He did what he had to do so you wouldn’t never have to be afraid of that monster no more.”
“He took my friend. When I was traveling here. He saw me. He didn’t seem like he thought he couldn’t hurt me.”
Rosa got up and stood in front of me. She smelled like smoke and roses. She put a finger under my chin; my skin tingled where she touched. “He’ll try to mess with your head, sure. Try to get you out from my protection and let him back in. But you don’t let him, right? You be strong for me. What your love gave you, what I gave you, that’s why you can fight him now. You got what you need. Remember that and stay strong.”
On impulse, I reached up and clasped her hand. She held mine in both of hers. “But why is he here, if he’s not after me?”
“I don’t know, querida. It’s bad news, whatever it is. You’re right that he chases death, picks over the corpses of people he got his hooks in.”
I thought about my visions. “They said to stop him, not to let him take another soul. But he took my friend. So I failed already.”
“Could you have stopped that?” Her voice was gentle but unyielding.
“I don’t think so,” I admitted.
“I don’t know who told you what, girl. But if you got pointed here, then the job is here, okay?”
“How do I keep someone from dying? How do I even figure out who it is? Can’t he just kill them if he wants them that bad?”
She took a step back and wagged her finger. “No. Well--sort of no. He could pull it off if he really want to. Any of us could. But to straight up kill a person? Mm-mmm. Not worth the trouble it makes. Even the gods don’t fuck with death if they can help it. You wanna make someone die, you try to get someone or something here to do it, or you wait for it to happen natural. We got all the time in the world.”
I thought about that. “So maybe I need to stop someone from dying this weekend?”
“So I can tell you this,” she said. “There are lots of times in your life you can die. But not just any time. They are times like this,” and she held up her hands, making a cross with them. “Intersections. Crossroads. That’s when there’s a path in front of you that goes out of life. They don’t ever last long. Sometimes just minutes, sometimes hours, maybe a day or two, no more. Things are always moving, changing, so bef
ore you know it, you took your path and moved on. But sometimes, the crossroads, they keep coming and coming till you answer that call. Maybe all you can do is buy them some time. Maybe all you can do is help them get free of him so they can go peaceful. Maybe you can keep him away long enough, bind him with salt and iron, if you got his true name.”
“I don’t know his true name,” I said. Fuck. “I don’t suppose you do?”
“What, you think we’re in the same country club? I told you what you gotta do for me. Take care of that and maybe I find something else to help you out. You wanna take on a side project, fine. Figure it out. But don’t you forget you work for me first, okay? I put a lot on the line for you and I ain’t wasting that.”
“Thanks,” I said, not without a hint of sarcasm.
“De nada,” she said, turning away. I felt pressure in my ears like I had suddenly climbed altitude and heard air rushing as the world rotated around me, and then I felt like I was falling and my body jerked like I was waking myself. My vision went from slow and dreamlike to suddenly sharp. I blinked. I was standing in the same spot, right there in the middle of the path, but now there was life around me, people strolling, cooking, chatting.
I dry-heaved a couple of times. Painful tension stiffened my shoulders and shot up to bloom into a dull heavy ache across my head, like a bad hangover. I hoped Rosa wasn’t going to pull me into her presence like that too often. Everything around me seemed just a little off, a little too strange.
What made it worse was that no one around me seemed to have noticed anything. I wondered what they’d seen. If they’d seen anything. Maybe I’d just been standing here staring into space as far as they were concerned.
I walked the rest of the way to the porta-johns and then the showers with rubbery legs. I still had no idea what time it was and it made everything feel a little unreal. I didn’t talk to anyone, but it was comforting to hear bits of happy, normal banter and to be surrounded by people who weren’t worrying about death demons coming to claim a soul.
MetamorphosUS: Book 1 of the Mythfit Witch Mysteries Page 9