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“Shamans,” repeated Lorenzo as he wrote it out. While his head was bent, Ashley caught Jo’s gaze and slanted her eyes toward him, clearly questioning.
It had been so long since Jo had hung with female friends, it took her a moment to understand the signal. Did Ashley want to know if she was interested in him?
Jo held up her left hand, just over the edge of the card table, and waggled her empty ring finger. He’s married.
Ashley frowned and shook her head, which didn’t make sense. Of course Lorenzo was married—and, now, looking up at them expectantly. At least he didn’t seem to have caught their exchange. “Other than shamans?” he prompted with mock patience.
“Rumors of Santeria, but that’s low key. A biker couple outside town practices Asatru. But there doesn’t seem to be any Candomblé or Quimbanda in the area.”
Jo fought the urge to dismiss all this as craziness.
Lorenzo shifted his weight in his chair. “Any voodoo?”
“Surprisingly, yes.” With a grace Jo had never possessed, Ashley brushed her hair back. She was the kind of woman who kept her nails polished, who wore earrings and perfume, who somehow managed to look accessorized even in a medical smock. The kind of woman who made Jo feel vaguely like a lawn gnome. Maybe Ashley was interested in Zack Lorenzo. “Good Vibrations—one of the local supply shops—has a Vodoun priestess who does rituals every other Friday. I don’t think she’s particularly powerful, though.”
“Maybe.” Lorenzo tapped his notebook with the pencil eraser, looking amused. “But if we’re dealing with…”
He caught Jo’s gaze knowingly. Zombies.
She nodded, catching on. “Good point.”
Ashley looked from one of them to the other. “Hello? If we’re dealing with what?”
“Too bad you don’t want to talk about the missing body.” Lorenzo had the nerve to look smug as he took a sip of coffee.
Jerk. Jo said, “One of the possibilities Zack suggested was….” Then she hesitated too. Up until now, they’d been talking about real religions—on the fringe, but legitimate all the same. Nothing downright fantastical.
But she’d committed herself now. “We’re wondering about…something like…zombies.”
Ashley stared at her blankly, just like she’d feared.
Then, instead of questioning Jo’s sanity, Ashley said, “But zombies aren’t really dead, they’re just given a neurotoxin to seem dead. Believe me, that boy who vanished was dead dead.”
Lorenzo said, “Yeah, well, that whole business about tet…tetro…”
“Tetrodotoxin,” supplied Ashley.
“—doesn’t mean there can’t also be living-dead zombies.”
The nurse shook her head. “In any case, Vodoun priestesses don’t create zombies, Vodoun bokors do, and I’ve never heard of a bokor in the area. Not that they advertise.”
“How do you know the priestess isn’t also a bokor in secret?” demanded Lorenzo.
Ashley rolled her eyes. “Oh please! How do I know you aren’t one yourself?”
Jo was risking a stiff neck, looking from one to the other. “I’m having trouble believing this and you two are arguing it?”
“You could just go home,” suggested the P.I. immediately, then grinned. He still looked almost handsome when he grinned, even when he was being an ass. “And sing.”
Ashley squinted at him. “Sing?”
“Inside joke,” explained Jo. “And no, I’m not going home, so stop trying to make me.”
“I’m not working with you if you’re gonna freak out.”
“I’m not even close to freaking, I’m just…disoriented.” Jo took another sip of the coffee. The instant stuff wasn’t good, but it had the benefit of at least being coffee. “This isn’t the sort of thing you expect normal people to discuss over drinks.”
“What isn’t?” Lorenzo held her gaze, daring her.
She lifted her chin. “Real magic. The walking dead.”
There. She’d said it. No qualifiers. No hesitation.
Neither he nor Ashley so much as gave her a strange look. Ashley appeared concerned, sure—the walking dead should concern a person—but all she said was, “I’d be more suspicious of a certain Santero who’s rumored to live a couple of hours out of town. He might be into big magic.”
Lorenzo held Jo’s gaze a moment longer, almost approving. It eased something that seemed stuck inside of her—for a moment, anyway. Why did Ashley think he wasn’t married?
The P.I. turned back to the nurse. “If it looks like a duck and smells like a duck and quacks like a duck, at least let me interview a few ducks. Call me crazy, but when I think zombie, I think voodoo.”
Jo and Ashley both obediently said, “You’re crazy.”
He closed his eyes and sighed, scrubbing a hand down his face in exasperation. It was his left hand, complete with wedding band. Jo noticed Ashley notice her noticing.
Not married, the nurse mouthed. Then, Ask him.
Jo shook her head. Yes, she wanted to stop feeling guilty about watching Lorenzo’s wrists—or at least enjoying it. But to ask about his marital status would show interest. She refused to be interested.
She’d just barely joined the living, again. She wasn’t anywhere near ready to think about dating them.
Not that she dated the dead.
No, she mouthed firmly back at Ashley. You ask.
She didn’t expect the nurse to say, “So, Mr. Lorenzo, why do you wear a wedding ring if you aren’t married?”
Jo especially regretted it when the P.I. stiffened, then leveled a look of pure annoyance at her friend. “To fend off nosy broads like the two of you?” he suggested. “Now, can you give me some phone numbers for these magic users we’ve been talking about, or am I wasting my time here?”
Ashley made a face as if to say, touchy! Jo, uncomfortable to have been lumped into the nosy broad category, wasn’t sure she agreed. Life was easier when people minded their own business.
“Just the ones you think will be okay with us visiting,” Jo suggested, more politely. “If there are any you’re unsure about, feel free to contact them first, to clear it with them.”
“You’ll go along and make sure this guy doesn’t turn the entire occult community against us, right?” Ashley walked to one of the filing cabinets that held up the break room’s sidebar. “Because it’s bad enough when the mundanes are ticked off.”
“I promise,” said Jo.
“Us again.” Lorenzo sighed. “Great.”
“So are you two best friends or something?” asked Zack, reaching the Ferrari a step ahead of Jo. Her hand collided with his as they reached to open her door.
She didn’t pull back, just met and held his gaze. Stubborn.
He let go first and she opened her own door. Did nobody outside of Little Italy learn how to be a gentleman, anymore? Or did the women in Texas just no longer appreciate it?
“To tell you the truth, Mr. Lorenzo,” said the sheriff after he got in on his side, “I don’t have a lot of friends.”
“Zack,” he corrected, bringing the sports car to life with a twist of his fingers. “Now the ice queen, I could understand. Not that you’re the pink of perfection, but compared to that one…”
“And you’re such a judge of congeniality?” But at least she came close to smiling. He liked that expression better than that worried look she’d been wearing in the clinic.
Not that it was any of his business whether Josephine James worried or not. Or whether she had friends. Or whether she, like Nurse Vanderveer, gave a rat’s ass about his marital status.
“Look, when I mentioned I wasn’t married the other day, it was no big deal. At least she didn’t go fishing with stupid comments about what my wife thinks, or where she is.” That had annoyed him even before Gabriella’s death; did a wedding ring mean nothing anymore? “But this time, that was just nosy.”
He turned a corner onto the old highway, in the direction Jo indicated.
“She could be my friend,” cautioned Jo, lest he criticize the ice queen too heavily. “If I start making friends again.”
He almost asked, Why wouldn’t you?
Luckily he caught himself. Taking care of her wasn’t his job, even if he did like her better than Mzzz. Vanderveer. And he did; unpainted nails, uneven tan and all. Jo James was solid, and real—and a distraction.
“All I’m saying is, you might want to aim a little higher for companionship.”
“I didn’t ask you,” she reminded him, stubborn.
“Your loss.”
“I’ll survive.”
He grinned and continued to drive toward the first address on Ashley Vanderveer’s short list. This lady, she’d claimed, was a Bruja who would talk to anybody who came by.
Even, Jo had teased, him. Which Zack kind of liked. The sheriff was a lot safer to deal with on an antagonistic level. If he didn’t glance over at her, he could almost pretend she was one of the guys. And if she was one of the guys, he wouldn’t have to worry about her.
Well, not as much.
They were heading out into the middle of nowhere to interview what sounded like Jo’s first, full-fledged witch.
Chapter 4
The last fifteen miles to the Bruja’s house were on a dirt road. State-of-the-art suspension or not, the car bounced enough to make Zack’s classic-rock CD skip. Almanuevo was so far out, the only radio stations that came in were AM. Pushing the scan button landed the radio on Spanish stations, sermons, commentary and—heaven help them—polka music. So they stuck with the CD.
Not for the first time, he wondered how the hell Josephine James lived out here. Then he reminded himself that, oh yeah, living hadn’t exactly been the lady’s priority. It sounded like she’d pretty much retired from life after that mining accident.
He guessed she’d been going for safety. But most safety-conscious women wouldn’t leave her mobile phone in her truck.
“I forget I have it,” she’d explained, after she caught him sliding his glance toward her lap, looking for a belt-clip, and demanded an explanation. “It’s personal anyway. My brother signed me up. Spur doesn’t provide extras like that.”
Extras?
So if they got into trouble it would be up to him, his Nokia and the Ferrari to get them out. Peachy.
Zack was used to visiting scary, out-of-the-way places by now. He doubted Jo, what he and his partner called a “civilian,” was as prepared. Even if she was as tough as she made out, this was no thief or drug dealer. This was a witch. Old school. Unlike Wiccans, Brujas weren’t above the occasional curse.
Something about owls eating out one’s innards came to mind.
Not a standard stop on the safety-conscious tour of Texas.
Zack kind of hoped the old crone would scare Sheriff James right out of helping with his investigation. But he also hoped Jo would get over her fright without losing years and moving to an even smaller town—if such a thing existed—to do so.
At least he had a life…albeit one devoted to hunting down and killing things most people didn’t even believe and therefore didn’t see. Things he once hadn’t seen or believed himself.
Gabriella’s young death, even her body’s disappearance, hadn’t been enough to open Zack’s eyes. First he’d tried investigating through normal channels—despite the lack of witnesses, security footage, fingerprints or hair. Only when that proved a dead end did he turn, reluctantly, to the death itself.
He’d found her drowned in their bathtub. The front door had been locked and her clothes were where she had always hung them. Even in shock, he’d noticed those things; he’d been trained to notice. He’d dragged her from the water, so strangely beautiful even in death, and he’d called 9-1-1, her long black hair soaking him, and he’d cried, wanting her back, barely believing—but some damned cold part of him had still noticed the other details. Nothing pointed to suicide or murder. An autopsy revealed that she’d had some kind of mild heart attack and passed out. If she hadn’t been in the bath… If he’d just been home… It was an accident.
Or was it?
Her corpse’s disappearance upped Zack’s suspicions. He began to ask the M.E. how a bright, healthy woman of twenty-three could have even a mild heart attack, and whether it could have been drug induced, and whether drugs existed that were new enough to not show up in the tests. Then, needing more answers, he went after her new friends. The Life Force, they’d ironically called themselves. He hadn’t known she was even in a club until some of its members, other college students, showed up at her funeral. And if the death hadn’t been an accident…
Murdered women generally die at the hands of family or friends, not strangers. Zack had known Gabriella’s family his whole life. But these new kids—they were into reincarnation and near-death experiences, stuff he’d laughed at while Gabriella was alive. Was that why she hadn’t told him? With her dead, he found himself tracking her friends down and asking so many questions that they began to whine about police harassment.
His captain told him to let it go, and Zack quit to become a private investigator. There was something suspicious about the Life Force, even if most of its members were goofs.
Something dark. Something beyond the normal world, even.
And at the point that Zack finally tracked down the club’s president, that something tried to kill him. Either that, or in one weekend he developed the worst luck in human history. Three car accidents. A runaway bus. An electrical fire. Dizzy spells. A nurse in the E.R. came within a needle-prick of giving him penicillin, despite his chart labeling him as deathly allergic. His Nona began to babble about the evil eye. After his pistol went off by itself, grazing him and barely missing a three-year-old nephew, Zack didn’t dare disbelieve.
Out of possibilities, he’d turned to impossibilities—and to Cecil Taylor, the young man he’d met at the cemetery. Instinct said to trust Mr. If Anybody Respects the Dead, It Is I, and Zack’s instinct proved right. Taylor knew some honest-to-God, twentieth-century, Windy City magic users who managed to break the curse that was haunting him.
Barely.
When Zack went back to find the sonovabitch who’d run the Life Force Club—certain that nobody would freakin’ curse him unless they were guilty of something—the boy had vanished.
Unlike Gabriella, he’d done it alive.
He’d been searching ever since, Cecil’s help becoming a partnership. That’s when he’d learned that once you started looking, really opening your eyes, monsters and dark magic lurked everywhere. Lorenzo Investigations began to specialize.
Bringing him here. With a civilian woman.
Pulling up in front of the Bruja’s adobe hut, braking to avoid some scrawny chickens, Zack made a grudging stab at shielding Jo. “Wait in the car while I see if she’s home.”
“Hah,” said Jo, climbing out unaided.
So much for that plan.
Jo doubted she’d ever met Doña Maria Ruiz, but in her job as small-town sheriff she’d visited several homes like this one—dry, sparse and proudly neat for a house made of baked clay. The curtains in the open window were white and starched.
So this was how Brujas lived.
Zack knocked on the wooden door, and Jo rubbed her hands nervously down her jeans. These old Latin ladies could be pretty disapproving of a woman in pants, even in this day and age. It was daunting even when they weren’t witches.
The door cracked, revealing only a narrow shaft of the shadowy interior. One rheumy eye regarded them from a visible strip of dark, craggy face—classic witch. A potpourri of candles and herbs and something strange wafted out, something that sent shivers of warning through her. “Quién es?”
“Uh, hi,” said Zack. “Do you speak English?”
The one rheumy eye seemed unimpressed.
So he didn’t need help, huh? Jo stepped closer. “Buenos dias, Señora. Estoy…él está…nosotros…” I am, he is, we are—freshman conjugations! She hoped her pidgin Spanish was up to the occasion. “Buscamos a la Bruja. Por favor.”
We seek the witch, please.
“La Bruja?” That one eye looked plenty suspicious.
Zack slanted a dry gaze down at Jo, as if she’d peed in his yard. “Si,” he mimicked awkwardly. “Bruja.”
The woman asked, “Por qué?”
“She wants to know why,” translated Jo quietly. It’d been hard enough asking about magic at the clinic. Now she had to do it in Spanish?
Before she could try, Zack said, “Look, ma’am, we think there’s something evil in Almanuevo. We think it’s desecrating the dead. If it is, I’m gonna stop it. Can you help?”
“You can pay?” challenged Doña Maria cagily. So she understood English after all.
“Twenty dollars,” offered the P.I.
The Bruja eyed the Ferrari. “Fifty.”
Well, he was the one who insisted on the expensive toys.
“With all due respect,” Zack said dryly, “thirty.”
After a moment’s pause, the old woman nodded—and opened the door wider. “Come in,” she granted, so solemnly that Jo wondered if they could have entered without permission. Trying to think magically was starting to mess with her head, wasn’t it?
The mix of abnormal scents was almost overwhelming.
“Thank you, ma’am,” said Zack, extending one long arm to hold the door open for Jo to go first. For a pushy guy, he sure was polite about doors.
Then Jo noticed the older woman nodding satisfaction to herself at the gesture. Ah.
Suck up, she mouthed at the P.I., who grinned.
Instead of the apple-peddling wicked witch from Snow White, the Bruja now looked more like Aunt Bea from the Andy Griffith Show…if Aunt Bea were Mexican. She wore a long, embroidered white dress, a black lace shawl piously covering her neatly braided white hair.
“Mi santuario,” she directed, taking them through her portrait-lined kitchen to what looked like a lean-to or pantry—or it did until they entered. Then Jo, again going first, saw that it was some kind of magic room, complete with a wooden table covered with a black cloth, shelves of strange-looking supplies and a shrine to what she assumed was the Virgin Mary.
Other statues of saints, as well as little cards with religious pictures, were set neatly about the room alongside flowers and candles and several rosaries. Though no expert on Brujeria, Jo knew it was a Mexican religio-magical system that worshipped Mary as Guadalupe. Just this afternoon, Ashley had suggested that Guadalupe stood for a more ancient Aztec goddess, providing a safe way for native women to continue their worship after their long-ago conquest by the Spaniards.
Ashley had also suggested not casually mentioning that theory to the Brujas, many of whom considered themselves devout Catholics, not goddess worshippers.
Jo noted the stranger items in the room—old jars holding mysterious mixtures, sewing needles and what looked to be three dead and partly mummified hummingbirds. A human skull in one corner startled her. A second look showed it to be plastic.
Not that this made it normal or encouraging.
“Are these your grandchildren?” asked Zack from the kitchen, and the old crone, in the doorway between them, smiled.
“Si,” Doña Maria said, and began to list children and grandchildren alike. She’d gone through at least twenty names before she and the P.I. deigned to join Jo in the santuario.
Not that Jo needed Zack here. But she felt more at ease in his presence, anyway. She’d already sat, but when Zack settled onto the bench beside her, she felt his size and warmth and presence like an anchor in otherwise unsteady waters.
It occurred to her that the strange feelings might in fact be magic, filling the room, surrounding them. Was that possible?
“We were wondering if you’d noticed—” Zack began, but the Bruja held up a commanding hand, then bowed her head and began to pray.
“Ave Maria, gratia plena…”
It took Jo several more lines to recognize the Latin version of the “Hail Mary.” At the end, Zack crossed himself when the witch did.
Jo tried crossing herself, but—not being Catholic—sensed that she’d done it in the wrong order. She glanced at Zack, who shook his head. Then she glanced uncertainly back at the witch—
Whose head snapped up so suddenly, Jo stiffened.
“The Virgencita shows me great evil,” announced the Bruja in a hollow voice.
Could She could be a little more specific? Since that would come out more sarcastic than she meant it, Jo kept her tongue.
Zack asked, “Can the Holy Virgin help us learn more about this evil?” Look who’d just grown some people skills!
The older woman’s words sounded hollow, distant. She rocked slightly on her bench, as if focusing on something only she could see. “You will not find your way to this malvado, this evil, through Nuestra Señora La Guadalupana, nor of her angeles or santos. This is not of their working. This hides from their light. They can only provide protection for you.”
“That’s nice,” said Zack. “Protection from what, exactly?”
The old lady startled Jo again by suddenly grabbing her hand. The Bruja’s hand felt dry, strong for her age. “You wear the disguise of a marimacho,” she murmured. “But you are not evil. You think because you were robbed, you have nothing, but Guadalupana sees the truth in your heart. She wants for you what all virtuous women want.”
“That being…?” asked Jo, wary. She didn’t know the word, marimacho. She wasn’t sure how she’d been robbed. Diego…?
But the old woman was turning to Zack, using her free hand to take his. “You too were robbed of your life,” she murmured, still rocking. “But you, you chase it. You are a good husband, but you seek too far, too deep into the darkness. You strain even the protections of Nuestra Señora in this chase.”
Jo felt torn between concern and confusion. Zack had been robbed of his life?
“Still, Guadalupana smiles on you both,” the woman continued. “For you must face this darkness together.”
Zack slanted a look down toward Jo, less than enthusiastic.
“I will make you a protection,” announced the Bruja, releasing their hands. Even her normal voice felt tinged with power. “By the grace of Nuestra Señora and her santos and her angeles, a powerful protection against the evil you seek.”
“Thanks for that,” said Zack, while she stood. “But what we could really use is some idea of who or what we’re hunting.”
Doña Maria lit a candle, murmured a prayer over it, then set to work. She took a wooden bowl from her cupboard and began to add ingredients from unlabeled jars. She measured the way Jo’s grandmother had cooked, by practice and guess. A pinch here. A dollop there. “You are facing a diablero.”
“A devil,” translated Jo uncertainly. “The devil? No, that would be a diablo, right?”
“The diablero works the magic of El Diablo,” explained the older woman, still mixing and measuring. Jo only half watched, not wanting to know if any dead hummingbird got added.
“So it’s human, anyway,” said Lorenzo, as if that had even been in question. Or maybe it had.
“Perhaps,” hedged the Bruja. “Or no. Hombres son brutos.”
“Men are beasts,” translated Jo, trying not to grin.
“Thanks a lot,” said the P.I.
The older woman finished her mixture, then measured dollops of it into two squares of red silk, tying them with red cord.
“Keep these with you,” she instructed, giving a pouch to both Jo and Zack. “Pray the Ave Maria on them every night and morning, and together you may carry enough of the Lady’s light to shine upon and destroy this evil. You understand, si?”
“Sure.” But Zack warily sniffed the pouch.
“Si,” agreed Jo politely. “We understand.” Then she mouthed at Zack, Pay her. Which he did.
As they moved to leave, the Bruja stopped Jo with a hard grip. “For you,” she whispered, pressing a second pouch into her hand. This one was made of white silk.
“What is it?” asked Jo, watching Zack go ahead.
“A charm of love,” murmured the witch. “Pray to lead him from his darkness.”
To lead…Zack Lorenzo?
“Oh no,” said Jo quickly. “I mean, that’s nice of you, but I’m not interested….” The woman’s dark eyes brooked no deception. “Not in that way,” Jo qualified weakly.