The woman looked blank. “Oh, you know . . . I’ll take it when my coven meets,” she said finally.
Wrong answer. Usually, only the priestess used an athame during a coven ritual. And if this woman was a priestess, Fiji was a hole in the ground.
Fiji had never faced a problem like this before. Wouldn’t you know it would be today, she thought bitterly.
“You have a coven?” she asked, trying to sound as nonconfrontational as she possibly could. “I’ve never heard of one around here. That’s so interesting.”
“Oh, yes,” the woman said vaguely. “You’d be surprised.”
I certainly would, Fiji thought. But what’s the harm? After all, it wasn’t like this woman couldn’t go into any Walmart or hunting store and purchase a knife even longer and sharper, right?
So Fiji extracted the athame, let the woman examine it more closely—which she did, but not as if she really understood what she was seeing—and then took the woman’s proffered cash.
While the woman’s billfold was open, Fiji caught a glimpse of her driver’s license. She was hoping for enlightenment, but the name Francine Owens was unfamiliar. Fiji was still cudgeling her memory for where she’d seen the woman before as she dropped the receipt and the knife into a bag. Fiji felt an overwhelming wrongness emanating from this customer. But she had no evidence, no proof, no information.
“Have you ever come to the class I hold on Thursday nights?” Fiji asked.
“What?” The woman stared at her, bewildered. “Maybe the first one you ever had,” she said, after a significant pause.
“Then I’m glad you returned to visit the store. Enjoy your purchase,” Fiji said automatically, and as Francine Owens walked out of the store, Fiji heard Kiki coming out to stand by her.
“Customer, huh?” Kiki sounded unmistakably surprised.
“Yep,” Fiji said, barely aware of speaking. She went to the front door without knowing what she was going to do, and she opened it just as, across Witch Light Road, Manfred Bernardo whipped open the front door of his house and began to run . . . toward Francine Owens, who was walking toward the intersection with her shoulders braced back and a ground-eating walk that seemed close to marching. She’d discarded the bag, which was bouncing east with the wind. The bare knife was in Francine Owens’s hand.
Fiji began running, too. Manfred had had a good head start, and before Fiji could reach the woman, he launched himself from the pavement to tackle Francine Owens just as she would have sunk the knife into her own abdomen. The north/south light had turned green, but thank the goddess, there were no cars coming from either direction.
Fiji reached the struggling couple within seconds. Francine Owens was fighting Manfred. She was a hefty woman and Manfred was a slight man. Fiji landed on her knees beside them. She performed the spell at which she excelled. She froze Francine Owens.
“God almighty,” said Manfred, rolling off the woman. “Thanks, Feej.” He sat back, panting.
“Don’t thank me, it’s my fault,” she said, her voice coming in jerks as she caught her breath. Fiji looked down at what she’d done. Owens was still and her eyes were open, and she was fixed in the position she’d been in when Fiji had cast the spell. Her right hand was up to slap the side of Manfred’s head, and her left hand had been gripping the athame, perhaps to bring it up to use on him.
Or herself.
“Thank you,” Fiji said. “Thank you, Manfred. So much. For stopping her.”
“She came out of your shop?” He was paler than ever, and his silver piercings glinted in the sun. She could see the black roots on his platinum hair.
“Yes, she bought the athame,” Fiji said. “The knife. But . . .” Fiji had to gasp in a huge lungful of air before she could continue. “But it seemed so strange that she was buying one, and she didn’t seem to know what she was doing. So.” Another heave of her chest. “I watched her, but you got it first.”
“I had a twitch on the thread,” he said, and after a second, she understood. Manfred had a strong psychic ability, which was unreliable but undeniable. He’d felt that he had to prevent a disaster, and he’d obeyed his instinct. “This woman coming up behind you must be your sister?” he said. “There’s a resemblance.”
“Damn, forgot about her,” Fiji said. “Brace yourself.”
“What the hell?” said Kiki, from behind Fiji’s back.
“Manfred Bernardo, this is my sister Waikiki Ransom,” Fiji said. “Mostly known as Kiki.”
“Your parents had a thing about islands and beaches,” he said.
“I’m lucky I wasn’t named Capri,” Kiki said. “So, what happened to the crazy woman? Didn’t look like she got hit, thanks to Speedy Gonzales here, so what’s up with her?”
“Your sister put a spell on her,” Manfred said, pushing slowly to his feet. “If this lasts as long as the last time she used this one, the woman will be out for maybe five more minutes. So what do we do with her?”
Fiji stood, too, with considerably more effort. She glanced up at the window of the pawnshop to see Bobo staring out at them. He opened his hands, wordlessly asking if he should come help.
The last thing Fiji wanted was another encounter with him. She shook her head vehemently.
“Oooooh, who’s that?” asked Kiki. “He’s cute!”
Fiji stood and turned to face her sister. “Don’t go there,” she said, in a deadly voice. “Just. Don’t. Go there.”
Kiki nodded, her eyes wide. She took a step back.
“Manfred,” Fiji said, wheeling back to the psychic. She wanted to make it clear the subject had changed. “We need to get this lady in her car and get her out of town. Lest she wake up and try to kill herself all over again.”
“So you think this was a deliberate . . . ?”
“Sure,” Fiji said. “In the next few seconds she would’ve stabbed herself, right at the intersection. With the knife she bought from me. Dammit.”
Kiki said, “I guess you’re going to explain this to me later?”
Grimly, Fiji said, “I guess I will.”
“Seems like all we do is haul unconscious women around,” Manfred said, getting to his feet. “This is beginning to seem weird.”
“I agree,” Fiji said. “But I don’t know what else we can do. Wait . . . let’s get her into the shop!”
Diederik made a timely appearance just then. If Kiki had been smitten with lust at the sight of Bobo, Diederik made her mouth fall open. But even Kiki had to be mindful of how young Diederik was, though she could never have guessed quite how young. Diederik said, “Miss Fiji, can I be of help?”
“Yes, you certainly can,” she said. “We’re going to pull this lady upright and see if we can get her into my place. I’m hoping she can wake up there naturally.”
It took the three of them (Kiki stood a distance away and offered verbal supervision) to get poor Francine Owens in an upright position. They managed to sort of lift her and move her a few feet, then a few more, until they got her up the porch steps and into the Inquiring Mind.
“Shall we just lay her on the floor?” Diederik said brightly.
“Yeah, I think so.” Fiji got a cushion from one of the chairs and put it under Ms. Owens’s head and put a light throw over her legs. “Now she looks cared for,” she said, checking the effect. “Kiki, would you get a glass of water?” Fiji had chased down the store bag with the receipt still in it, and now she placed it and the athame behind the counter where they could not be seen. She put the purchase price of the athame back in Francine Owens’s purse.
Fiji was actually a little surprised when Kiki returned with the water. But she accepted the glass without comment, and when Francine opened her eyes, Fiji was squatting beside her looking solicitous.
“Oh my goodness,” Francine Owens said. “What happened?”
“Do you know where you are?” Manfr
ed said, his voice gentle.
“Why, no, I don’t believe I do.” She looked terrified, even more so after she gave a second glance at Manfred’s glinting silver piercings and spiky platinum hair.
“You’re in Midnight, in a store called the Inquiring Mind,” Fiji said. “You came in to look around, and I think you fainted.”
“But I’ve never done that before,” Ms. Owens protested weakly. “My gosh, I must have scared you to death! You . . . haven’t called the ambulance or anything, have you?”
“We were just going to,” Fiji said. “You’ve only been out for a few seconds. Maybe you’d feel better if you got checked out?”
“Oh, please don’t call,” Ms. Owens said. “The fuss . . . and all over nothing, I’m sure.”
Fiji felt like the lowest form of life possible.
“Really? Because we’d be glad to.”
“I’m absolutely sure. Here, help me sit up. If you wouldn’t mind.”
“Of course not.” Fiji took one arm and Manfred the other, and in a jiffy Ms. Owens was sitting up and smiling with relief.
“That’s better. I feel just fine. I’m sure I can get myself home.”
“No, ma’am,” Manfred said firmly. “One of us will drive you in your car, and one of us will follow to take the driver home.”
“Thanks for taking such good care of me,” Ms. Owens said, genuinely surprised. “Though . . .” She looked hard at Fiji. “I feel like we’ve met before. I mean, recently.”
“I felt just the same way when you came in,” Fiji said. “But for the life of me, I can’t recall where. Have a drink.” She handed the glass of water to Ms. Owens, who took a long gulp and handed it back.
“Thanks. If you wouldn’t mind, I know I’d feel even better at home,” she said.
“All right, we’ll get you up then,” said Manfred, and he signaled for Diederik to take Fiji’s place at Ms. Owens’s side. She was up on her feet before she had time to worry about the procedure.
Fiji asked Diederik to help customers if any came in while she was gone, and then she grabbed her keys and purse so she could follow Manfred to Ms. Owens’s house in Davy.
“What am I supposed to do while you’re gone?” Kiki demanded.
For a few pleasant moments, Fiji had forgotten all about her sister’s presence. “I won’t be gone long,” she said. “Unpack. Or fix lunch. That would be nice. And helpful.” And then she started out back to her car, only to spin on her heel.
“And leave the kid alone,” she said.
“Oh, for God’s sake. How old is he?” Kiki was partly angry, partly curious.
“Younger than you think.”
“Too young to drive the woman back to her house?”
“No driver’s license,” Fiji hedged.
“Why?”
“He’s foreign.”
“He sure doesn’t look Mexican.”
“He’s Dutch,” Fiji said. “Now, I’ve got to go.” And she made good her very temporary escape.
3
Manfred gave the sister—Kiki?—a nod and a wave as he got into Francine Owens’s car. The sister nodded back, but without enthusiasm. That was okay with Manfred. She wasn’t impressed with him; he surely wasn’t impressed with her, either. And he’d seen the way she looked at Fiji when Fiji’s back was turned.
Manfred couldn’t drum up much conversation with Francine on their short drive to her house. She asked if he’d lived in the area long, seemed relieved that he hadn’t (so presumably he wouldn’t gossip about her fainting in the store), and thanked him several times for helping her, though his appearance clearly made her very uneasy. She had no idea how much he had helped her, but that was okay with Manfred.
Her house was a small ranch in a neighborhood of similar homes. Gardens and basketball goals and barbecue grills and the smell of cut grass, though it was the tail end of mowing season in Texas.
After Francine Owens had thanked them both several more times, and they had reassured her that they’d been glad to help and they hoped she recovered completely, they were all able to part ways with ill-concealed relief.
Manfred climbed into Fiji’s car and leaned back, heaving a sigh. He didn’t feel like talking about Francine Owens again. It was simple to think of another topic of conversation.
“So how come your sister showed up after all this time?” he asked. “Didn’t you tell me none of your family had come to visit you in Midnight since you inherited?”
“Truth. Kiki says she’s here now because she’s broken up with her second husband. And also, my dad has Alzheimer’s. So she doesn’t want to stay with Mom and Dad.”
“Two reasons, huh? One wouldn’t do? You don’t have a telephone; she couldn’t call ahead?”
“Yeah, it seems pretty weak to me, too,” Fiji told him. “I can sort of see her not wanting to go to my mom and dad’s if Dad is getting hard to handle. She never has liked to take responsibility for someone else. But the split with her husband—that seems pretty hinky to me.”
“I don’t know what ‘hinky’ means, but the situation does seem kind of suspicious. More explanation called for.”
“Right.”
“Doesn’t she have a job?”
“Good point, Manfred. Yes, last I heard, she was working at a Banana Republic or something. A mall clothing store. And even if she and her husband split up, it seems like she’d need to work. Maybe especially.”
Manfred didn’t know a lot about conventional families, since he’d never known the name of his father and he’d spent a bit of his childhood and almost all his adolescence with his psychic grandmother, Xylda Bernardo, who’d never met a camera she didn’t like. “So are you thinking she’s come here for some other reason entirely? Or that she’s got bad news about your mother, too? Or what?” He glanced over at Fiji, who was clearly mulling over possibilities.
“I’ll find out, I’m sure,” Fiji said. “Even if I’d rather not.”
“And your parents picked a theme to name their children?” It was time to lighten the atmosphere.
“Beach people,” Fiji said, with a shrug.
“They actually went to Fiji?”
“On their seventh anniversary. Saved for five years. Mom got pregnant with me while they were there.”
“And Waikiki?”
“Third anniversary.”
He choked back a laugh. “Really?”
She tried not to smile. “Really.”
“I never had a sibling—one I knew of, anyway.” Maybe he had six brothers by his unknown father. Just with other women. “But it’s got to be weird to be obliged to stick by someone you didn’t pick as a friend. Or am I crazy?”
He glanced over to see that Fiji looked taken aback.
“I never thought of it that way,” she said slowly. “You have to stick by family, unless they’ve done something truly terrible to you. I know there are families who are sadistic or neglectful. I suspect Olivia’s was.”
Manfred was careful just to nod, because he didn’t want to interrupt the flow of Fiji’s thoughts.
“There’s a bond when you’ve been brought up in the same household together,” she said finally. “Whether you want there to be or not. There are times, growing up, when you get into trouble together. When it’s kids versus parents. I love Kiki, but that love is tempered with . . . a lot of wariness.”
“Interesting,” was all he could think of to say. After they drove a few more miles, he said, “We have to tell everyone about Francine Owens.”
“Yeah,” she said, without enthusiasm. “Maybe you could take care of that?”
Again, Manfred was surprised, and not in a good way. Keeping everyone in town on the same page was a Fiji thing. Something was going on with his friend, something beyond the unexpected arrival of her sister. Cautiously, he said, “There anything you want to talk
about?” He half hoped she’d say there wasn’t.
“I think having my sister turn up, on top of suicides and a suicide attempt, is enough,” she said, after a pause that was just a little too long.
“Okay,” he said, hoping his relief didn’t show. “But you know where I am if you need me.”
The adrenaline that had fueled his great tackle of the about-to-be suicide had long faded, leaving him dragging and dull. Now that they’d gotten rid of this last body (fortunately, still breathing), Manfred found himself longing for his computer and his telephone and his privacy.
“If your sister stays for any length of time, I’ll take you two out to dinner one night,” Manfred offered as Fiji dropped him at his house. “And not at Home Cookin. All the way to Davy, or even Marthasville. I spare no expense!”
“Thanks, Manfred,” she said, sounding surprised. Fiji threw the surprise back over to his side of the fence by giving him a hug.
Manfred knew his return of the hug was a bit awkward, but it was sincere. He was pleased. Unfortunately, as soon as he touched her, he knew what Fiji’s secret was. She had had a falling-out with Bobo—or rather, with her dream of the possibility of a relationship with Bobo. That made him sad, but he was not about to comment on it.
Fiji let go and leaned back in her seat. “Oh, I just remembered!” she said.
“Remembered what?”
“Where I’d seen Francine Owens before.”
“Where was it?”
“The last time I went to the grocery store in Davy. She was ahead of me in line.”
“How can you possibly remember who was ahead of you in line at the grocery store?” Manfred shook his head disbelievingly.
“You’d remember her, too,” Fiji said, though she wasn’t completely sure about that. In her limited experience, men remembered different things than women did, at least sometimes. “She was one of those shoppers who had a coupon for every item. And she asked the cashier about a dozen questions. Like if the second package of napkins had to be the same style as the first one for the coupon to be good.” She’d also waited until the items had been tallied to begin writing a check, which was one of Fiji’s pet peeves. If you’re gonna use a debit card, fine. If you’re gonna write a check, by golly, start filling it out.