Upstairs I fixed Oscar some pasta with marinara sauce before taking a long shower, scrubbing myself until I was pink and glowing. I washed my hair twice but it still smelled vaguely of pungent, acrid smoke. I was glad the damned place had gone up in flames, I thought to myself. Bitterness started to edge out the sympathy I felt for Frances as a mother. The apparition had confirmed that Frances made a deal with La Llorona to get Elisabeth back. Had she cast the power of her life force in with the demon? Had her maternal anguish led her to do the unthinkable, keeping the cycle of violence alive? Could she have led neighborhood children to their doom, essentially feeding them to La Llorona?
By the time I emerged from the bedroom Oscar was snoring on top of the refrigerator. I pulled his covers up around him, smiling to myself. He’d been with me only a few days, but already he had his routine, had made himself a place in my home . . . and in my soul.
My heart fluttered in my chest. I was going to go up against La Llorona tomorrow. I had no way of knowing the outcome. Provisions had to be made for Oscar, just in case. Bronwyn would love to take him, but he wouldn’t be able to revert to his natural form around her. I wondered how difficult that would be for him. Perhaps he’d best go back to Aidan.
Which reminded me . . . I was going to need Aidan’s help even to summon La Llorona, much less to fight her. I also needed for him to arrange for the addition to the Wax Museum. My original plan to steer clear of Aidan and local witchy politics now appeared naive, laughable. By virtue of the powers I was born with, I was involved, whether I wanted to be or not. You can’t run from yourself , m’hija, Graciela used to tell me. But that was exactly what I had been trying to do for years now.
I was going to be in Aidan’s debt, no matter how I looked at it. Best make sure he had his mandragora, at the very least. I reached into my backpack and pulled out the little wrapped root at the bottom of the satchel. I was out of my league with humans lately, but herbs and roots I could handle.
I unwrapped him very gently. My whole life I’ve had an affinity for plants. As a small child I had coaxed juicy tomatoes, plump chiles, and fragrant herbs from the unforgiving, hard-packed west Texas soil. Plants give us clean air and beauty and sustenance, and, perhaps most important, they represent eternal life. Even when they die they rise again. Their vibrations are green and bright. All as it was meant to be.
I brought out my Book of Shadows and opened it to the page for creating a mandragora. I read:Would you like to make a mandragora as powerful as the homunculus so praised by Paracelsus? Then find a root of the plant called mandrake. Take it out of the ground on a Monday (the day of the moon), a little time after the vernal equinox. Cut off the ends of the root and bury it at night in some country churchyard in a dead man’s grave. For thirty days water it with cow’s milk in which three bats have been drowned. When the thirty-first day arrives, take out the root in the middle of the night and dry it in an oven heated with branches of verbena. Then wrap it up in a piece of a dead man’s winding-sheet and carry it with you everywhere.
One thing about spells: Sometimes they have to be modified. Like any recipe, you make substitutions. You don’t have access to a dead man’s winding-sheet, you might use some gauze blessed with juniper and rose of Jericho instead. My blood would do instead of drowning the bats, and rather than actually burying the little guy in a dead man’s grave, all we needed was some freshly overturned cemetery dirt.
Luckily the mandrake root is not poisonous to handle, unlike wolfsbane, which is so toxic that even touching the plant can cause irritation. Still, mandrake is a member of the nightshade family, so its berries, especially, can be deadly. I’d best not leave any lying around, lest Oscar decide he needed a snack. Funny that Frances had both wolfsbane and mandrake growing in her garden. Thinking back on it, I had even noticed lethal mistletoe clinging to a few of her trees.
I spoke to the mandrake root as I handled him, then hummed a snippet of a long-ago lullaby while I carefully carved just a little here and there to free his arms and give him facial features. His legs were already fully formed. He would be a cute little imp. Finally, I brewed an appropriate milk bath with herbs, seeds, and several more drops of my blood, and bathed him carefully. I wrapped him in clean black silk, thanked him, and put him to bed in a little wooden cigar box.
Once again I wondered why Aidan wanted a mandragora. Was it for a client? Or could he have been telling the truth—could he be lonely? It was hard to believe, but then, I hadn’t realized I was so lonesome until Oscar barged into my life.
I went to bed, fell right asleep, and dreamed of fire and Frances’s deadly garden.
Chapter 17
“Mistress, quick! You have to come!” Oscar yelled, jumping on my bed at a little before eight in the morning.
Bleary, I rushed after him into the other room. He had opened the mandragora’s cigar box and stood gaping at it.
“Why did you wake him, Oscar?”
“What is he?”
“He’ll be a mandragora, but he’s not finished yet.”
“Why are you making that?” Oscar whined. “I don’t like him.”
“You don’t know him. He’s not even born.”
“Yeah, but I know I don’t like him.”
“You sound jealous.”
He shrugged and looked away, pouting. I tried not to laugh.
“Oscar, I’m not making him for myself. You’re more than enough for me, I promise you.”
He looked up at me.
“Really?”
“Really. It’s actually for Aidan.”
“What for?”
“Good question. Maybe you could ask him next time you talk to him.”
He stared at me for a moment.
“What’s for breakfast?”
I whipped up some biscuits, which we ate with strawberry jam. Presuming I survived the day—or, more specifically, the night—I would have to start shopping more regularly, keep food on hand. Not only for Oscar, but for friends dropping by. I’d had only wine to offer Maya and Bronwyn the other day. People who had friends over offered things like cheese and crackers, right? It was the neighborly thing to do.
I felt a stab of fear, and dread, and yearning. I was finally starting to fit in here in this crazy San Francisco neighborhood, making friends, creating a sort of family. Suddenly I wanted to meet Bronwyn’s coven, to celebrate the good, the strength and kindness of the Goddess and sisterhood. As a natural witch I couldn’t really cry, but that didn’t keep tears from stinging the back of my eyes. What would happen tonight, when the sun went down? How could I possibly be strong enough? Would Aidan Rhodes’s help be sufficient to vanquish La Llorona, presuming he agreed to assist me? And if so, what would he demand in return? At the very least, I needed to tell him his mandragora was in the process of being born.
Speaking of which . . . I needed dirt from a fresh grave. It occurred to me that I hadn’t noticed any grave-yards since I had moved to the City by the Bay.
“Are there any cemeteries in San Francisco?” I asked Oscar.
Oscar shook his head. “All the active ones were moved out to Colma and Oakland to make room for living people. Now there’s only the military cemetery out at the Presidio, and a little historic one at Mission Dolores.”
“I guess it’s lucky I’m headed to a funeral in Oakland this very afternoon,” I thought out loud to myself.
“Why do the Catholics name their places after sorrow and pain?” Oscar asked as he followed me down the stairs to the shop.
“What?”
“Mission Dolores. It means ‘Mission of Pain,’ right? And there’s a church called Our Lady of Perpetual Sorrow. It’s kind of a downer.”
I smiled. “I guess I never thought of it that way. But it’s important to remember the supreme sacrifice. I think that’s what it refers to.”
“It’s still kind of a downer. What time do we go to the funeral?”
“I’m sorry, Oscar, you can’t come today.”
“But I l
ove cemeteries!”
“It’s a solemn event.”
“How come he gets to go?” Oscar gestured to the mandragora-to-be, which I carried in its box, under my arm.
“He has to stay with me until he’s buried. Besides, he’s not even alive yet. He sits quietly in his box.”
“I’ll sit quietly.”
“Oscar, how am I supposed to explain bringing my potbellied pig to a funeral?”
He sat back on his haunches, his glass-green eyes huge, hurt, and filling with tears.
“Look, it’s nothing personal, it’s just . . .” His jowls began to tremble. I knew I was being manipulated, but my heart couldn’t take it. I relented. “All right. But you’ll have to stay in the car.”
“Thank you, mistress! What time?”
“I’ll open the shop and then Bronwyn’s coming in early. We’ll leave in about an hour.” I consulted my cuckoo clock. “I have to talk to Aidan today after the funeral. Do you know if there’s any way I can get in touch without going all the way downtown to his office?”
“I can get word to him.”
“You can? How?”
“Er . . . I’ll just, sort of, like, use telepathy.”
“You have telepathic powers?”
“Hmm?” Oscar suddenly found his toenails very interesting.
“Why do I get the feeling you’re not telling me something?”
“Are there any more biscuits, mistress?”
First things first. Before opening the store, I wanted to check in on Sandra Schmidt. I dressed in a simple early-1960s skirt and sweater and drove to San Francisco General.
When I arrived on the third floor I found Inspectors Romero and Nordstrom were in the room, talking with Sandra. My first impulse was to run away, but I squelched it. While I waited for the police to finish up their questioning, I asked a nurse for Sandra’s prognosis. The nurse hesitated, but after I told her Sandra was my sister she informed me the doctors were running some tests to try to figure out what had happened, but the outcome looked good, no lasting effects. I sagged in relief.
The SFPD inspectors came out of Sandra’s room. Romero’s dark eyes looked me over and he nodded in greeting.
“Fancy meeting you here,” he said.
“Hello, Inspector Romero, Inspector Nordstrom. How’s Sandra doing?”
“Better now. She says you saved her life.”
“I . . . uh . . .” Had Sandra told him about my going to Frances’s house to find the poppet? Did they now suspect me of arson on top of everything else?
“She says you found her and called an ambulance.”
“Oh! Right. I guess I was in the right place at the right time.” Something occurred to me. “But why are you here? I thought you were homicide?”
“Sandra was able to tell us a few things pertinent to the Frances Potts case.”
Best to deal with this up front.
“Look, Inspector, I know the whole inheritance thing looks bad, but I think you should know I’m renouncing it. I don’t want it.”
“Inheritance?” Romero glanced over at Nordstrom, who shrugged.
“From Frances Potts.”
Still no recognition.
“Her lawyer came to see me and told me Mrs. Potts rewrote her will the night she died. I assumed you knew.” By the look of surprise on both the inspectors’ faces, I now guessed not.
“It just happened. You probably haven’t heard yet.” I felt kind of bad for them. It must be a professional slap in the face to have your murder suspect feeding you important pieces of evidence. “You would have turned it up soon enough, I’m sure. The pertinent point here is that I’m renouncing the inheritance, so it’s not a real motive, per se.”
Romero shook his head and blew out a breath. “Relax. The death has been ruled a suicide.”
“Frances killed herself?”
He nodded. “She used some poisonous plants she was growing in the garden. Seemed to know what she was doing, according to the toxicologist. But it was clear from the evidence that she processed the stuff herself, and then prepared the meal. Her lawyer was sickened as well.”
“But she seemed all right when I saw her that night . . .” I protested, thinking back on the last time I had seen Frances. She had been moaning slightly, and holding her arms over her stomach. But I had no idea she had been dying, slain by her own hand.
“Like I said, the toxicologist said she seemed to know what she was doing, and came up with a slow-acting cocktail of poisons, which she used to spike the meat.”
“Oh.”
“We’re less clear on who laid her out in the pentagram, and why. I don’t suppose anything’s occurred to you . . . ?”
I shook my head.
“Miss?” I looked up to see the nurse I had spoken to earlier. “If you want some time with your sister, you should see her now, before the doctors come by on their rounds.”
“Thank you,” I said. She hurried off.
“Your sister?” Romero queried.
“I asked her about Sandra’s prognosis. If you don’t say you’re a relative, they won’t tell you anything.”
“It makes me nervous that you lie so easily.”
“I don’t actually. I’m terrible at lying about anything important. It makes me sick to my stomach.”
He chuckled. “Well then, best to tell the truth, I guess. Talk to you soon, Ms. Ivory.”
“Inspector Romero . . .”
He turned back to me.
“Never mind. Bye.” It had been on the tip of my tongue to ask him about the process tonight. Presuming we found Jessica, did we bring her to the police or straight to her family? For that matter, how would we explain her rescue? But like my mother used to say, Don’t borrow trouble. We would figure that part out when, and if, I had the little girl safe in my arms.
“Lily? Is that you?”
I went into the room. Sandra was sitting up in bed, her gaze darting around as usual, like a nervous bird. It was good to see her back to her old self.
“I tried to stop Frances,” she said in a fierce whisper. “I think she was an evil witch.”
“She wasn’t a witch, exactly . . .” I began, though Sandra wasn’t listening.
“Those poor kids. Even after Frances died, they still weren’t safe. None of us are safe. . . . I figured it out as I got to know her, spent time in that house. I found some of her witch’s paraphernalia. Then I read the Malleus Maleficarum. I’ve been studying, you know. I thought I could stop her myself with the help of that sculpture from the auction, and then the dresses.”
“That was brave of you, Sandra. She was very powerful.”
“She asked me about you, you know. But her daughter Elisabeth—she’s the one who did this—tried to shut me up.” Her voice dropped and she leaned toward me. “I think she still lives.”
A chill coursed through me, running up my extremities and settling in my core. My mind flitted back to the invisible presence that challenged me while I cast my useless spell of protection over Frances. I was almost sure now it had been Elisabeth herself.
“Sandra, who is she? Do you know who Elisabeth has become?”
She shook her head. “But I know what she isn’t. She isn’t human.”
An hour later I had opened the shop, turned it over to Bronwyn’s care, and headed to Frances’s funeral. Maya was conducting an interview in Piedmont in the morning and said she’d meet us at the cemetery, so I drove over alone with Oscar. I made it across the Bay Bridge with no problem, but then I started to get nervous—each time I exit the freeway in Oakland, I get lost. Apparently they don’t have much of a budget for street signs. Though Oakland is a smaller city than San Francisco, population-wise, it covers a vast amount of acreage. There are plenty of beautiful, historic, and quaint neighborhoods of Oakland, but I had wandered around the sordid underbelly enough to know that there are sections where it is best not to leave the freeway. Particularly in a bright red vintage Mustang convertible.
Today was no e
xception. I clamped down on my frustration and tried to reframe the whole thing as an educational experience: For instance, I learned that goblins can’t read road maps. Oscar tried his best, I’ll give him that, but he wound up wrapping himself up in the unfolded map and screeching. By the time we circled downtown for the third time the map was a torn, wadded up ball on the floor of the Mustang.
We wandered past humble apartment buildings and elegant mansions, skirted the charming Lake Merritt, and finally pulled over in Chinatown at a little factory store that advertised custom-made fortune cookies. I had a pleasant chat with a kind man of very limited English skills who showed me the way to the cemetery on a map pinned to the wall, handed me a brochure, and gave me a small sample sack of adult-themed fortune cookies just for stopping by.
Back in the car Oscar nabbed the cookies and crunched loudly, reading me a few choice fortunes as I turned around and headed northeast on Broadway. I turned right at Pleasant Valley and then hung a left onto Piedmont Avenue. At long last I spotted the formal wrought-iron gates of Mountain View Cemetery straight ahead.
Some of the fortunes Oscar was reading were pretty funny, but it felt somehow unseemly to be hearing dirty jokes from a goblin as we drove through a cemetery. I told him to transform into his piggy mode—that way no one would see his natural appearance, and I was spared his running commentary. Pigs can’t talk.
The main cemetery drive was newly paved, almost stark, and wound in a circle around a simple, gushing fountain. But in contrast to the newness of the pavement, the historic roots of the park were evident in the gothic revivalist architecture of the main buildings and the fascinating, lichen-encrusted hodgepodge of headstones, markers, and crypts. To the left I noticed a large plot of land with all the markers huddled to one side, and a new irrigation pipe running across the recently turned earth. I considered stopping to gather some dirt for my mandragora, but then realized this was a very old plot. It would be better to find fresher dirt. Each monument was tagged with blue tape indicating a number, and I found myself hoping they had a workable system. I couldn’t even keep my invoices straight at the store. If it were up to me, I would mix things up and wind up returning half the headstones to the wrong graves.
Secondhand Spirits Page 22