by Robin Danner
“Oh, don’t worry. I’ll ask you some questions here in a minute,” the man replied.
Salem smiled. And he smiled right back at her.
“When did your family immigrate to the United States?”
“Recently.”
Salem sat upright. “You don’t have an accent, Mr…”
“Call me Kane. Oh, and I’ve worked very hard to blend in.”
Salem held out her hand. “Nice to meet you, Kane. So, tell me, in your professional opinion, which charms should I remove?”
“I was teasing. I can cross the rune charms as long as I am invited to enter. At least that’s what my father taught me. All I need is an invitation from the owner.”
“I thought I’d already done that,” Salem replied. God…she hoped she looked attractive in some way. After passing out in an alley and vomiting, she doubted she looked her best. Jesus Christ. She wasn’t even dressed. “You a vampire?” Salem asked. “I mean…needing to be invited in sounds awfully Bela Lugosi to me.”
“Nothing as grand as that. I’m just an aide car driver. The morgue bus picked up Ms. Pomona’s body. The police have the place taped off. Your friend Misha closed his shop for today and went home. I’m off the clock. I said I’d stay with you until you were ready to return to the living. No hurry,” Kane replied. “Are you going to open your shop today?”
“Life and death are opposite sides of the same coin. If I don’t open my shop, I don’t make rent.”
Kane helped Salem to her feet. His touch inflamed desire in her. “Well, let me walk you to your door. Maybe I'll get that cup of tea if you invite me properly.”
“What time is it?” Salem asked. “I’m not wearing my watch.”
“Nearly nine.”
“I need to open in about an hour,” Salem replied. “Misha’s rear door locks automatically. We can go out that way. You don’t have to walk me to my shop. I need to shower and change.”
“I can wait.”
Salem mused over Kane's comment for a moment. She wasn’t used to men wanting to be around her; to protect her. She needed to know if this was the result of her Freyja ritual, or just another horny crazy. “You know, Kane, I’m grateful you waited here with me while I recovered from my visceral reaction to having a dead body in the alley behind my shop, but I can manage from here. Why don’t you drop by later?”
“I really don’t have anything better to do right now,” Kane replied.
Salem shivered. This guy was now going from teasing to possessing. “I have things to do. I’ll see you later, all right?”
Kane smiled. Oh, goodness, he has a beguiling smile. Salem felt like melting into his parted lips. She reached up and squeezed the amulet around her throat. Her protective touchstone. “I’ll see you later.”
“I need a proper invitation. Old custom,” Kane replied.
Salem ran her thumb across talisman emblem on her amulet. “I’ll see you later, Kane.”
“My pleasure.”
“Until then,” Salem said, backing away. She exited Misha’s shop, fighting a pounding headache and muscle tension that seemed to concentrate in the area right between her thighs.
She dashed as quickly as she could up the fire escape to her little apartment and locked the door.
Salem slumped down onto her sofa where she’d been sleeping quite soundly until Misha’s frantic cries had awakened her. A quick, shadowy image darted out of her line of sight as she scanned her front room. Something felt funky. Out of place. “I don’t have time to acknowledge you right now. Come out when I have more time!” she called after the shadow. “Damned Revenants. What the Hell are they doing out of the woodwork?” she said aloud.
A loud thud from the wall separating her living room from bedroom alerted her to the fact that the Revenants were, indeed, awake. What had caused them to stir? She had this place so well spelled that nothing should be able to say boo without clearing it with her first. Salem rose and stripped as she headed toward her shower. She knew she was being watched. Horny old whore-spirits.
“Can’t you ladies move on to that great big cathouse in the sky?” A second loud bump from inside the wall and soft giggling like the sound of wind rustling through trees gave Salem her answer. Her house spirits liked it right where they were, thank you very much.
It was hard not to feel a tad bit paranoid behind the shower curtain, nude, vulnerable and soapy. Everyone has one thought that, when played over and over, can frighten the living daylights out of them. Salem’s was the shower scene from the original Psycho. The murder, the awakening spirits, the damned fine horny dream—and that heavenly ambulance driver who had left her with too much to sort out. Her personal defense grid was down. That’s why the spirits were restless.
She towel-dried herself quickly and applied a little eyeliner and mascara to brighten her face. She looked tired. Really, really tired. If she even had any customers, she’d likely frighten them off.
She dressed simply in khaki pants and a white t-shirt. She wrapped the Odin Stone and the Viking Member in towels and slipped them into a plastic sack.
Her first step onto her fire escape stairs made her skin crawl. It felt like she was walking on beetle shells. Black beetle shells. She bent over to examine the gritty substance covering every step from landing to alley. “The black salt. Someone has sprinkled black salt all over my…” she paused. “Oh, crap. Someone’s trying to cast a spell of banishment—on me!”
Her first thought was to sweep the stairs clean and hose down the alley to melt the salt. That would only send the spell further into her environment as the water trickled into the cracks and crevices of the concrete alleyway and building foundations. Sweeping it up and burning it would be no better. The salt fumes would permeate the air and saturate her environment. Salem stood on her landing, paralyzed with indecision. And that meant the spell was working.
Advice she often shared with customers seeking to cure a curse put upon them rang through her head. “If it’s not within your belief system, it’s not going to work.”
No wonder the Revenants were acting out. They were frightened. A dark spirit had oozed over the alley last night and left its slime behind. And while she was out of it, someone had salted her stoop. She needed to re-charm her shop, or she’d be out of business in a week. Something wicked this way comes—and it was centering around her!
Salem closed her eyes, concentrating on her years of knowledge. There was a way to combat a black salt curse. Agrimony, lavender, and sage. She re-entered her apartment and reached for her mortar and pestle. “I am going to fight fire with fire.”
Her thoughts turned momentarily to the fire department medic who had flirted with her after she’d fainted. Salem tried desperately to clear her mind of carnal thoughts. Hard to do when she’d invoked Freyja’s passion. She couldn’t take anything to chance with a Freyja ritual working its magic, a murderer on the loose, and a damned whalebone dildo wanting her to drop everything to play hide the boner. However, the counter-charm had to be true and pure, or she’d end up a blithering idiot singing “My bologna has a first name…” in a corner somewhere. Black salt curses could send a person on a little holiday…from themselves and everyone else.
She dismantled her makeshift altar and chopped up a portion of the sage bundle, adding it and dried lavender and agrimony to her mortar. “I invoke the power of the Helm of Awe to protect my travels on dark roads,” she said softly, grinding the herbal mixture to a fine powder. Salem stopped. “All this started happening when I received the Viking Member. There are strong spirits trapped in that thing.”
She opened the plastic sack and unwrapped the bone and the stone. Salem reached for a dinner plate and placed the Odin Stone on its side so that it resembled a doughnut made of rock. She poured the herbal powder from her mortar into the center of the doughnut’s hole. “I invoke the power of the Helm of Awe to protect my travels on dark roads,” she began, this time using the Viking Member as her pestle and the Odin Stone as her mortar.
“In darkness and in light I repel and avert all souls who would trick, tease or hinder me.”
As a girl, she’d once played with an Ouija board. The planchette had rocked and swooped across the board seemingly moving with the aid of some unseen hand. Frightened the crap out of her, while at the same time giving her the impetus for her career. The Viking Member now buzzed and rippled in her hand as she used its boney head to further grind the herbal powder welled within the Odin Stone. Though she was not moving her hand forcefully, for both artifacts were too valuable to abuse, the bone pulled and tugged, wanting to break through some invisible barrier within the circle of the Odin Stone. Salem forced her hand open as the dinner plate under the stone cracked from the weight of the bone’s strikes against it.
The Viking Member slipped from her hand and onto the counter, spinning wildly. A soft blue glow enveloped the bony beast. Moments later, every metallic object in her kitchen throbbed to life with a rich, bluish fire. The electrical current sparked by the spell had ushered forth the miracle of St. Elmo’s Fire…in her kitchen.
“Holy shit,” Salem cursed. She knew better than to touch anything metallic as the blue ball of lightning arched and jetted from toaster to blender to oven to ladle. The Revenants reacted to the electrical charge, too. Salem turned her head to see a doxy in turn of the century cotton bloomers standing transfixed in her living room. The spirit’s mouth opened, as if to ask, “What the Hell is going on here?”
Salem bit her lower lip and closed her eyes. Hoping her next move would not be her last, she reached for the contents of the Odin Stone. Though her eyes were tightly shut to avoid being burned by the electrical current dancing around her countertop, Salem managed to get a pinch of the herbal mixture between two fingers. She released it into the air, hoping the good magic of the herbs would cleanse the space.
She opened her eyes as the popping sparks dissipated. The blue glow faded. Salem exhaled. She quickly sprinkled the herbal powder on the floor, slipped off her right clog and made the sign of the Helm of Awe—the Ægishjálmur—with the tip of her bare toe.
She snatched up the bone and the stone and jetted down the fire escape in one breath’s time.
The hair on her forearms was singed. The distinct aroma seemed to permeate her airspace. Salem lit a few sticks of sandalwood incense hoping to dispel the noxious odor. Oy, Mr. Hottie should be dropping by today, too. Well, she was sure he’d smelled burnt flesh before. But how did she explain it? Oh, I was casting a spell of protection and my giant whalebone dildo decided to go St. Elmo on me and nearly burnt down my kitchen. But I’m fine. No damage done. I whipped out my magic powder, made the Helm of Awe on my floor, and opened the shop like nothing unusual happened around here, at all. Everything is copasetic. Just peachy. And how are you? Wanna fuck?
* * * *
She opened her shop two hours late. Disappointingly, there was no throng of wealthy wiccans outside the door to enter in droves to buy beeswax candles and books on Egyptian rites. However, a quiet day would afford her time to research and price her new acquisitions. And re-grow her arm hair.
Salem had no problem pricing, tagging, and setting up a display for her new Italian toys. Italian and French sex toys were fairly commonplace. The history of the piece is what made the sale. Unscrupulous purveyors often fabricated fanciful tales to market their wares. Salem figured the truth was usually more interesting than fiction—especially when it came to the whys and wherefores of buggery and illicit sex.
She moved her current display of early twentieth century whips to her secondary curio and set about making a fabulous display for the boys—her two Italian dilettos. Of course, that would leave the problem as to where she should display the Viking-age artifacts. She looked around her shop.
“Of course,” she said aloud as her eyes fell over the tank used to house her pet rats. “Look, ladies, I need to move you to your habitat for a while and clean out your tank for a display.”
Dax and Pheelyx spread out across their wheel in defiance.
“You’ll have little tunnels to play in. You like that! I’m not going to go buy another fish tank, ladies. You two are just going to have to let me use your tank.” Salem shook her head. Why was she arguing with rats? She knew why…they were smart…and they saw things she couldn’t. But that didn’t alter the fact that she needed their tank. Sorry, girls!
Salem retrieved the plastic habitat from the closet and set it up on her work table in the back room. After filling the habitat with paper litter, little treats, and fresh water, she moved her rats. Her unhappy little white rats with their pink eyes flashing at her as brightly as if they held St. Elmo’s fire in their skulls. “Enough of that, girls. I’ve played with enough fire for today.”
She took the tank out back and hosed it down with bleach water, then polished the glass sides to a high shine.
Using tempera paints, she designed a seascape on the outside back of the tank, filled it with polished rocks, some inscribed with runes, and a bit of dried purple moss for show, and then placed the Odin Stone and the Viking Member in their new home.
It looked fabulous. Eye-catching. She set the tank on a little table next to the diletto display and affixed price stickers that read, “Serious inquiries only.”
As she finally sat down at her computer to research her new toys, the bell on her shop door chimed.
She couldn’t believe her eyes. An angel just walked into her shop. Salem took a few steps back to check out the girls. Like dogs begging for a treat, both chubby white rats were up on their haunches facing the entrance to the store, their tails curved around them and their pink eyes flashing. The customer smiled at Salem and nodded.
Angel-speak. The gentle nod of his head was all he needed to say. In fact, if he didn’t open his mouth and say anything at all, she could die happy, entranced by the tall, blond man with his magnificent blue eyes and graceful, fluid movements.
“Hi,” Salem said, hoping he wouldn’t reply so that her fantasy bubble wouldn’t burst just yet. She checked out his ring finger. Clear! She checked out his package. Lovely! Thank you, Freyja!
“Good morning,” the customer replied. Salem took a breath. He had the voice of an angel, too. Smooth, rich. Like warm, melting chocolate. “I am new to your city. I wondered what you have in your fine collection of sins.”
“I sell occult practices merchandise and historical objets pour réjouir les sens,” Salem replied.
“Ah, yes, it does sound better in French. Saying you sell antique sex toys does come off a bit crass, does it not?” The customer held out his hand in introduction. “I am Ketiljon Heraldsson.”
Ketiljon. She knew that name from somewhere. Where? Salem slipped her hand in his, feeling his large, warm palm and fingers wrap around hers like his legs should have been doing to her body. On the floor. Right now. Angel-sex. “I’m Salem Grier, owner. Is there something I can help you with?”
Ketiljon smiled. “I’m sure there is. I am a collector of certain artifacts. Norse Age. I don’t suppose you have any? Oh, but you do! Look at this lovely Odin Stone and my…you have a flannfluga. And a very nice one at that. How much for the set?”
“What’s your offer?” Salem asked. “And what is a flannfluga?”
“Ah. It is a term not used too often, even in Iceland. It is the word used for a woman who flees from a man’s sexual organ. A man’s living member. She turns to the bone. We also call it níðstông—the scorn pole. It insults a man when a woman turns to the bone for pleasure.”
“Well, that’s something I didn’t know about my Viking Member. I do know it is very valuable, however.”
“Of course it is. Do you see the markings—the scrimshaw? They depict acts of true love between the gods and humankind.”
Salem nodded. “Yes. I’ve studied the carvings. Odin and Loki. Odin and Frigga. Odin and Freyja. Freyja and everyone. Loki and everyone—as a man, a horse, a serpent, and I’m not sure what that is, but I don’t think I’d want to sleep with it.”
“Fly fucking. How lovely,” Salem commented, realizing she shouldn’t have used such a vulgar term in front of a customer. “Oh, I’m sorry. My language…”
“I am not offended. There are other stories on the bone, too. The tale of two Berserkers—blood brothers who loved and fought side by side. They shared everything—until a woman tore them apart and they died at Berserkerhraun, the Berserker’s Lava Field.”
“Oh, my. Do tell,” Salem said. She slipped on a white glove and came around the corner.
“Ah, it is nice to see more of you,” Ketiljon said. Salem didn’t reply. Was he flirting with her, too? Happy days!
She reached into the tank and carefully withdrew the Viking Member. Of course, she’d used it more aggressively than this on herself, but she didn’t want a potential buyer to know that.
“Roll it around. Yes. There’s the tale. It is very famous. How did you come by it?” Ketiljon asked.
“My buyer picked it up at an auction. Tell me the story, please” Salem replied.
“Ah, yes. It is a good story. May I sit?” Ketiljon asked.
Salem offered him a chair. “Would you like some tea?”
“Yes, thank you.”
Salem wandered back around the counter and plugged in her electric kettle. “Please begin.”
“Once, many years ago, there were two brothers. Blood-brothers. Their father cut their arms and mixed their bloods to quit the bickering between them, proclaiming them of the same flesh and, thereby, full kin. He claimed both boys as his own, and he wished everyone to know that. One son was born and bred in Iceland on the Snaefellsjokul peninsula in the western region of the country. Life was very hard there. The boy’s mother died of lung fever one winter and the next summer his father placed him with relatives while he went off in search of fortune. The father stayed away for many years. When he returned home, his son had grown into a fine young man with a bright mind and a good hand for working what little fertile soil there was on his father’s land. With him, the father brought a new mother and a new child. A boy of mixed blood. The woman was as black as night and had been wooed by a fellow Norse mercenary in far away Byzantium where he and the father had served as a mercenaries for a potentate. Her eyes glowed like coal embers and her hair was as soft as lamb’s wool. In the land of the midnight sun, her dark beauty radiated like a star-filled night. Her son was strong and quick. He took to the tundra like he’d been born there. He had his mother’s coloring, dark skin and hair, but his father’s eyes. Green like a fertile plain. Green like new shoots of barley.