Unsympathetic Magic

by Laura Resnick

  “We didn’t. But realizing that Dr. Livingston’s talents for murder, mayhem, and victimization covered a broad territory, we brought a substantial supply of mystical solutions with us, not knowing what sort of problems we would face.”

  “You saw the salt,” Biko said to me. Then to Max, “Boy, are we lucky that worked! And that those zombies didn’t turn on us when they were awakened.”

  “An awakened zombie, though quite unpredictable, is most likely to turn on the person who enslaved it,” said Max. “Not some passerby who’s just trying to escape a cataclysmic event.”

  “Good to know,” said Biko. “Though I hope I never to need the information again.”

  “Me, too.” Realizing one of our group hadn’t been mentioned, I asked, “You left Nelli at home?”

  “Yes,” said Max. “The storm frightened her terribly, and she’s been vulnerable to possession during the course of this investigation. So I thought it best to leave her to guard the fort tonight.”

  “Oh.” I suddenly realized what their story of the night’s events meant. “Wait! Lopez still doesn’t know I’m all right!”

  “We should hasten to the foundation,” Max said, quickening his pace. “He will be most eager to see you.”

  We were approaching the front doors of the building when Lopez came out, moving fast. Puma was running behind him, warning him of the possibility of a relapse. Then they both saw me. Puma stopped speaking and gave a big smile. I saw Jeff bringing up the rear.

  Lopez looked stunned for a moment, then so relieved his whole face looked younger. He crossed the distance between us, seized me in his arms, and held me tightly, not saying a word.

  I returned his embrace, clinging to him, trying to sink inside of him. I inhaled deeply and realized he smelled rather pungent. I made a little snuffling noise and blinked.

  “It’s the antidote they gave me.” His voice was husky. “It smells weird.”

  His kiss was long and deep, and then he covered my whole face in kisses before hugging me again. “God, I was scared.”

  “Me, too. She told me she had poisoned you. She told me you’d be dead.”

  “Where is she? I need to arrest her.” He pulled away and looked at me. “And why are you in your costume?”

  “I don’t even remember,” I said.

  “Whoa.” He noticed the bruises and love bites around my neck. “Did I do that?” He kissed my neck gently and whispered, “Sorry.” He kissed my mouth again, then said, “Now I’ve got to go arrest Catherine Livingston.”

  I pointed up to the watchtower. “She died in . . . a lightning strike. I got away.”

  “She’s dead?” When I nodded, he gazed up at the tower with a disappointed frown. “Damn. Just when I finally had plenty for an arrest. She murdered Mambo Celeste, she poisoned me, and you sure look like she tried to kill you.”

  “Well, she’s gone now,” I said. “And good riddance.”

  “Are you all right?” he asked with concern.

  “Yes.” I smiled. “I’m fine.”

  “I’ve got a police car around the corner,” Lopez said. “Come on. I’ll take you home.”

  “Um, no.” I backed away from the hand he put under my elbow, and I shook my head. “No.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  I heard the bokor’s voice in my head: “Would he be lying in agonized paralysis awaiting his death now if not for you?”

  This was the second time I’d nearly gotten Lopez killed. The Lord of Death would never have come so close to claiming him tonight if it weren’t for me. He’d only gotten involved in this because I had dragged him into it.

  “Esther?” he prodded. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

  “I’m not good for you,” I said.

  He brushed my hair way from my face. “After a day like this, I don’t really care. Let me take you home.”

  “I brought Baron Samedi to your door,” I said. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Who?”

  “I think . . .” I said with real sorrow, “I have to give you up.”

  The rain started coming down. Soft and gentle warm summer rain.

  “Detective?” Puma smiled as she joined us. “I’m really sorry to interrupt, but someone’s calling your name on your police radio. The one that was in your jacket pocket when we found you.”

  “Thanks,” he said absently, accepting it from her. The radio crackled with static, and now I heard it, too: someone looking for Lopez. The city was in a state of emergency, and they needed to find him.

  “And Esther, this was in that room, too.” Puma handed me the little wax voodoo doll with the Star of David on its stomach. “It’s lost its power, now that she’s gone, but you should take it home and destroy it.”

  “Thank you,” I said with relief, recalling how this thing had led to my abduction.

  I ignored Lopez’s inquisitive look; and he evidently decided not to ask what this bizarre thing was that I was clutching to my chest.

  As Puma turned away, Lopez said, “Wait, uh . . .”

  “Puma,” she said with a smile.

  “Puma. Thank you for your help tonight. I think I’d have wound up in the morgue if not for you, your brother, and Max.” He reached into his pocket for his card and gave it to her. “You have a friend on the force now.”

  Puma beamed her beautiful smile at him. “Thank you, detective. But it was my pleasure. It was our duty. And you’re Esther’s friend, after all.”

  “By the way, what was in that antidote? I smell a little funky now.” He added to me, “They sprinkled it all over me before they poured it down my throat. I was pretty out of it by then.”

  Puma looked embarrassed and said, “Actually, Max is the one who mixed it. I just . . . uh, excuse me, detective.” She went and rejoined Jeff in the doorway of the foundation.

  Jeff caught my eye, nodded toward Lopez, and gave me a thumbs up.

  “All right,” Lopez said. “If you really don’t want me to take you home, then I need to go back on duty. By now, they probably think I wandered off a cliff in the dark.”

  “Going back on duty is a good idea,” I said. “Even with the wind dying down, I’m sure it’ll take a while for all the power to come back on and order to be restored.” Catherine’s greed had done an awful lot of damage, both tonight and in the past.

  “All right.” He frowned, looking puzzled and concerned. “And when things calm down, I’ll call you.”

  “I don’t think you should.”

  Would he be lying in agonized paralysis awaiting his death now if not for you?

  He said, “Esther—”

  “I don’t want you to call,” I said.

  He sighed in frustration, then looked up at the watchtower, which glinted in the night sky as lightning fluttered in the clouds overhead.

  “I’m the only cop here right now, so I’m probably the one who’ll get stuck writing it up. There’s a body in the foundation’s basement that we’ve got to process, murdered by the woman who died on that hilltop tonight.” Looking at the watchtower he asked me, “What are we going to find up there that I don’t know about?”

  “Besides Catherine Livingston’s ashes or charred remains? I’m not sure.”

  The cops might also find remains of the four bodies that Catherine had stolen from a graveyard, and perhaps some baka remains—and I could only imagine what they would think of those. But I decided it would just extend this painful conversation unnecessarily if I mentioned any of that.

  Max evidently sensed a cooling of emotion between us. Having made himself scarce earlier, he now joined us. “How are you feeling detective?”

  “Almost like normal.” The two men shook hands. “Thank you, Max. I think you saved my life tonight.”

  “I was delighted to help!” Max asked, “What will happen to the foundation now?”

  “It may be shut down for a few days as a crime scene, and there’ll probably be a minor scandal,” said Lopez. “But then it’ll go back to normal.”
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br />   “Catherine was never what made the foundation tick, after all,” I said. “It’s always been Martin’s money.”

  “And Martin himself, before she killed him,” Lopez said a little grimly.

  I had made my heart-wrenching decision about him, and now I wanted to get it over with. So I said, “Max, Lopez wants to know what was in the antidote you gave him.”

  “Ah! It’s a fairly complex recipe, concocted to address a wide range of threats, and some of the ingredients are things which I’m not really at liberty to discuss without a more extensive knowledge of your heritage.”

  “Excuse me?”

  I said to Lopez, “You’re not Lithuanian, are you?”

  “What?”

  “However, the primary ingredients,” Max said, “the base of the formula, if you will, is a concoction of excrement mixed with holy water that has been used to wash the external genitalia of an adult human female. The additional—”

  “What?” Lopez said.

  I realized now why Puma had been embarrassed. I suspected she was intimately acquainted with the water she had poured down Lopez’s paralyzed throat tonight.

  Max blinked at Lopez’s tone. “Water used to wash the ex—”

  “No, not that part. Though that part is bad enough. What female . . . No, I don’t want to know. Go back to the other thing you said.”

  “Ah! Excrement,” Max said with enthusiasm. “We used the excrement of a canine familiar—specifically, Nelli—which has the properties of dejecta from both a physical being and a mystical one, and is therefore—”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa! You gave me Nelli’s excrement?” Lopez shouted. “While I was lying there paralyzed and helpless, you poured dog shit down my throat?”

  Realizing that his recipe was not being met with the intellectual enthusiasm that he had hoped to inspire, Max said, “Well, it was also mixed with—”

  “Oh. My. God.” Lopez looked at me. “I need to go to a hospital. I need an emergency room. I want my stomach pumped. I want a boatload of antibiotics. I want three—no, four tubes of toothpaste. And a gallon of mouthwash. I may want laxatives, but the night is young, so I’ll dwell on that question for a while longer.”

  I said, “So I guess you’re leaving?”

  “You knew this would happen,” he said accusingly.

  “Well . . .”

  “You can get home by yourself,” he said sternly to me. “Good night!”

  “Er . . .” Max raised his fist in the gesture that Biko had taught him. “Peace out.”

  As Lopez stalked away, I heard him saying into his police radio that he was on his way to an emergency room for treatment and wasn’t immediately available.

  Max and I looked at each other.

  “You must be very tired, my dear.”

  “I am. Will you see me home?”

  “I would be delighted. It may take us quite a while to get there, though. The city is in chaos.”

  “Hey, Esther!” Jeff called, coming over to me. “Henry keeps a little portable radio at the reception desk. Puma and I have got it on to a news station that’s able to broadcast, and . . . Well, it’s pretty upsetting news. You should brace yourself.”

  “What?”

  “Mike Nolan had another heart attack tonight. He’s alive, but back in the hospital.”

  “Oh,” I said. “And he was taking such good care of himself, too. It’s a mystery.”

  “I guess this means your scene will be rescheduled again,” said Jeff. “And probably rewritten.”

  “Or my mother will get her wish and the episode will be canned,” I said morosely. Once the city was functioning normally, I’d contact Thack about this. And also nag him about The Vampyre. After my adventures in Harlem, nineteenth-century vampires sounded very restful.

  Jeff said, “I wonder if we should try to get to the hospital tonight?”

  “For what?” I asked blankly.

  “To see Mike.”

  I just didn’t have the heart to tell him that Nolan had refused to speak to the casting director about him. Let Jeff hear it directly from Nolan

  “The hospital? No way,” I said. “D-Thirty bullied me into one hospital visit with that man, but that’s my limit. Anyhow, it’s too hard to get around the city tonight. Just getting home will be a challenge for me and Max.”

  “Cabs are running along Fifth Avenue,” said Jeff. “If you walk down a few blocks from here, you can probably get one there and take it all the way downtown.”

  “Thanks. We’ll do that.”

  I couldn’t bring myself to go inside the foundation again; not until the lights were back on and I was sure nothing evil lurked in the building anymore. And certainly not until the cops got Mambo Celeste’s corpse out of the basement. On the other hand, this experience had certainly taught me the danger of being careless with personal possessions. So I asked Jeff to go get my purse and my duffle for me. After all, what are old boyfriends for?

  Max and I walked slowly toward Fifth Avenue, both tired, and neither of us minding the soft summer drizzle that fell on us. I remembered that I had an umbrella in the duffle, but I didn’t bother to pull it out. Jilly C-Note’s costume was ruined, anyhow, and I’d just have to think of a plausible explanation for this when I called D30 to tell them so.

  But it probably wouldn’t be, “An evil bokor tried to turn me into a human sacrifice for dark loa while I was wearing my hooker costume.”

  “Max, I have a question.”

  “Hmm?”

  “I know that Catherine Livingston was a ruthless, evil, narcissistic liar, but she said something this evening that I believed.” I took a breath. “She and Mambo Celeste had nothing to do with my bed bursting into flames while Lopez and I were, um, in it together.”

  “Oh?”

  “So taking off the gris-gris pouch right before that happened was unrelated. A coincidence.”

  “And so you’re wondering what made the bed explode?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well.” Max thought it over. “May one ask, without being too intrusive, what Detective Lopez’s mood, demeanor, or intent was at the time?”

  “He was, er, agitated. He very angry with me. And also, I think, with himself. He was also very, uh . . .” I cleared my throat. “He felt a compelling urge to remain in my company, but clearly didn’t think it was necessarily wise to do so.” After a moment, I added, “Oh, and he was supposed to be on his way to work, and I think he felt conflicted about that, too.”

  “I see. Hmm.”

  “Max?” I prodded.

  “I’m recalling that, at a moment when he feared for your life in Little Italy and wanted light, there was light. And at a moment when the local community needed reassurance from the Rada loa that there was protection at hand, the god of fire and war chose Detective Lopez as his vehicle for manifestation,” Max said. “Now you tell me that at a moment when he felt angry, conflicted, and, er, romantically volatile, there was a spontaneous combustion.”

  “What does it mean?” I asked.

  “I don’t know, Esther. But this incident does strengthen my suspicion that there is more to your young man than meets the eye, and that it behooves us to monitor him for signs of . . . interesting, albeit, unconscious talent.”

  “He’s not my young man,” I muttered unhappily. “I don’t know what to do, Max. It’s no good. I’ve nearly gotten him killed twice, and . . . and . . .” I sighed, too tired even to continue following this depressing train of thought.

  “My dear, if I may make a suggestion?”

  “Yes?”

  He raised his fist and made a little bumping motion. “Keep it real, dude.”

  I smiled and bumped my fist with Max’s. “Peace out.”

  Glossary

  Vodou Terms

  baka: an evil spirit in the form of a small monster

  bokor: a sorcerer who practices black magic

  cheval: a horse; one who is “ridden” by a loa during a possession trance

 
Creole: a dialect of French and one of the two official

  languages of Haiti

  drapeau: a brightly decorated ceremonial flag that’s

  used to salute the loa during a ritual

  Gédé: the family of Vodou loa that deal with death and the dead

  gris-gris: a magical charm

  hounfour: a Vodou temple or place of worship

  houngan: a Vodou priest

  loa: a Vodou spirit or deity

  mambo: a Vodou priestess

  Petro: a family of aggressive, violent Vodou loa

  Rada: a family of benevolent Vodou loa

  vévé: symbolic designs which represent and invoke the loa

  Vodou: a syncretic religion that developed in Haiti, arising from a blend of West African faiths and Roman Catholicism

  zombie: a body that’s reanimated and raised from the dead to work as a slave

  Vodou Loa

  Ayida-Wedo: symbolized by the rainbow, she is the wife of Damballah

  Baron Samedi: the Lord of Death and guardian of cemeteries

  Damballah: the serpent loa who created the world

  Erzulie: the loa of love and beauty

  Erzulie Dantor: the Petro aspect of Erzulie, this is the loa of jealousy, heartbreak, and vengeance

  Mama Brigitte: the wife of Baron Samedi, this Gédé loa presides over cemeteries, black magic, and ill-gotten gains

  Marinette: a Petro loa of evil and black magic

  Ogoun: the loa of fire, war, and masculinity

  Papa Legba: the spirit who guards the crossroads where the spirit world intersects with the physical world

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19