He made a long hissing noise, sounding just like a snake.
“You wouldn’t dare,” it said at last.
“Don’t try me,” Desdemona said. “I’d kill for far less.”
The entity stared at her, long and hard. She realized for the first time that it didn’t blink at all. It was unnerving. That and the way Martin’s jaw hung somewhat slack and looked as if it were being pulled on strings when the thing spoke made it one of the more disturbing things she’d ever witnessed.
“Why do you want to find her?” it asked at last.
“You seem to know so much, why do you even need to ask?”
“Sometimes it’s best to hear and best to tell. Why?”
“Because she’s called me out. For months she’s been using me, manipulating me, and she’s stolen something from me. I want it back.”
He didn’t need to know that she intended to destroy the cross necklace as soon as it was back in her possession.
The thing swayed Martin’s head slowly from side to side, making the snake impression that much stronger. She forced herself to stay still and stand her ground without flinching. After all, she’d faced far worse than whatever it was. If it didn’t answer her she could always just walk out that door and leave Martin to his puppet master.
“If you wish to find her, you may do so at midnight at the tomb of Marie Laveau, where she will be paying her respects.”
She was actually slightly surprised that it told her. The threat to kill Martin must have worked. Still, it was a spirit and it might say anything just to get her to back down. It wouldn’t be the first time a spirit had lied to her. “How do I know you’re not lying?”
“All spirits lie. But I have nothing to gain and I have not lied to you yet.”
That was true, she had to admit. She stood, debating what to do next. She knew nothing of exorcism rituals. Everything her coven had ever done had been about inviting spirits in, not sending them away.
Something bumped her hand, nearly causing her to drop the sachet. She cursed and closed her fist tighter about it and then hugged it to her chest.
“Both times this fell from Martin’s pocket, you had something to do with that, didn’t you?” she accused.
“Martin is so much more careful than he used to be. It’s forced me to get . . . creative, but no . . . I cannot touch it. However, there are other entities that can.”
Desdemona called a fireball to her free hand and glanced hastily around, trying to see from which direction danger would next come.
The entity just cackled more. “Little witch girl thinks she’s a match for anyone. She is sadly mistaken.”
Rage rocketed through her and she could feel herself ready to explode.
Calm down! the voice inside her demanded.
“No!” she screamed as she spun in a circle, looking for something she could attack. She couldn’t see anything and she finally turned back to see Martin’s body, the jaws flapping as the entity continued to laugh through him. She could stop that laughter once and for all.
She raised her hand, preparing to launch the fireball at his head.
No! What it wants! The voice was urgent, pleading.
What it wants. The entity was trying to make her angry enough to destroy Martin. But why?
The answer came to her in a flash. It was tied to Martin just as Martin was tied to it. At least, it was for so long as Martin was alive. If Martin were to die, though, the spirit would be free. Who knew what kind of havoc it could cause then, who it could possess? Maybe even her, she realized with a wave of nausea. She had to force it out, stop listening to it before it goaded her into doing something foolish.
She glanced down at the small red bag in her hand and knew in a moment what she had to do. She jumped forward, took her hand, and slammed the sachet into Martin’s chest, careful to also keep contact with it herself.
There was one hideous scream that was choked off as suddenly as it had begun. Martin slumped back on the floor. She sat, panting, continuing to hold the bag against him while keeping a firm grip on it herself, mindful of what the entity had said about other things that could move the bag and help him return.
After what seemed a lifetime Martin groaned and his eyes flickered open. He stared up at her, uncomprehendingly, for a moment. Then he reached up and put a hand over hers, his fingers brushing against the fabric of the bag.
“What happened?” he asked.
“How about first you tell me what the thing is and how it possesses you?”
Martin nodded slightly and then closed his eyes. “Just give me a moment.”
She ground her teeth in frustration. She wanted answers now. The creature had told her where the witch she was hunting would be at midnight. She needed to get all the information she could before she confronted her.
She still wasn’t sure why the entity had tried to stop her from going into the theme park, had actually bothered to try to save her life. Maybe it had sensed an opportunity to change hosts and get an upgrade and hadn’t wanted her to run off and get herself killed before it could make the exchange.
Maybe it was lying about where the witch would be tonight. Or lying about not being in league with her.
All of it was just conjecture until she got some more answers, and she was about ready to shake Martin until he talked. She started to move her hands and froze as she realized she’d almost let go of the little red bag.
Sweat began to bead on her forehead. Had one of the other creatures planted that thought in her mind for just that reason?
“Martin, I need answers,” she said through gritted teeth.
He sighed heavily and then sat up. He started to take the bag from her and she clung on to it fiercely.
“It’s okay. He can only harm you if he is present, and he can only be present if he is possessing me,” Martin said.
“Not good enough,” she answered.
He nodded as though he had expected such an answer. “Tell you what. I have more of these bags throughout the house. If you help me stand we can go together to the kitchen and I can give you one of your own. Is that a deal?”
Desdemona nodded. Together they stood up, both holding on to the little red bag. Then they walked slowly into the kitchen. From a drawer nearest the door he removed an identical-looking sachet and handed it to her.
She shook her head. “How do I know it’s the same, that it works, too?”
“Okay, you can have this one, then,” he said, letting go of the one they had both been holding.
She thought about putting it in her pocket and then had a vision of the two times she had seen it falling out of Martin’s. She turned around and stuffed it down her shirt and into her bra. There was no way she wouldn’t notice movement there.
She turned back around and he waved her to a seat at the kitchen table. “After everything that’s happened today, you certainly deserve some answers,” he said as he sat heavily, groaning like a man twice his age.
“Does this all have to do with voodoo?” Desdemona asked, pointing to the bag he was clutching in his fist.
“No, with hoodoo.”
“Aren’t they the same thing?” she asked, blinking.
“While there are some similarities, they are not the same. While voodoo is a religion, hoodoo is folk magic mixed together with Catholicism that involves heavy reliance on superstition and spiritualism.”
“Okay. So this is hoodoo.”
“Yes.”
“And what is that thing, a spirit, demon, ghost?”
“It is . . . complicated. It is all of these and none of these at the same time. It is the result of a curse being placed upon me when I was but a child.”
“Why?”
“A family feud gone very wrong that I ended up the sole recipient of.”
“That’s messed up.”
“Something tells me you know a thing or two about messed-up family dynamics.”
“What gave you that idea?” she asked coolly.
 
; “Not what, who, as in it.”
“Ah. It does seem to know quite a lot about just about everything.”
“Yeah. You have to be careful, though. It lies.”
“It wasn’t lying earlier when it tried to save my life.”
He shrugged. “Maybe it likes you. I don’t know.”
“I got the distinct impression that it could jump from one person to another.”
“It’s attached to me. It can only possess a person it’s in the same room with, and it can only be in the same room with anyone if it’s possessing me.”
“And these little bags keep that from happening.”
“Yeah, filled with lots of good stuff.”
“It smells like sage,” she noted.
“Among other things. Sage is often used in purification rituals, keeps out the evil spirits, that sort of thing.”
“Why did you tell Nala where to find me?”
He paused. “Nala? Is that the homeless girl I saw outside the amusement park when I went back to see if you were there?”
“Yes.”
He shook his head. “I didn’t. I started to talk to her and the next thing I knew I was all the way across town and she was waving from down the street. I found the bag on the seat next to me. That’s been happening a lot lately. I’m not sure why.”
“Your spirit told me that there were other entities it had basically enlisted to try to get the bag off your person so he could have his way with you.”
Martin swore under his breath and looked shaken. “I had suspicions, but I didn’t want to believe it was true.”
“There are other protection rituals you can do. Maybe you need to guard yourself against other kinds of spirits as well.”
“Apparently so.” He looked at her thoughtfully. “Do you have any idea why I, it, sent Nala to your house?”
“It said that she could ask me what happened to her friends at the amusement park.”
He dropped his eyes. “All those people. They’re dead, aren’t they?”
“Yes.”
“Sometimes, after he’s gone, there are images, impressions left behind. I try to ignore them, but after you left I got the most terrible ones. They haunted me. That’s why I went back later. It was stupid. I don’t know what I expected to find, you standing on the curb waiting for a taxi or something.”
“Instead you found Nala.”
“Yeah. I need a drink. You want something?”
She shook her head.
He stood and got a beer from the refrigerator, then sat back down. She felt herself growing impatient, but she told herself to just take a deep breath and try to calm down. He had valuable information, and his spirit tormentor might be of use to her in the future. There was no harming him now. She leaned across the table. “Do you have any images or impressions now?”
He set the beer on the table. “Why, did he tell you something?”
“Perhaps,” she said, not wanting to reveal what she knew just yet.
He nodded slowly. “I keep seeing a figure in black in front of a grave.”
Maybe the creature had been telling the truth about where she could find the witch she was hunting for that night.
“Was it daylight?” she asked.
“No, dark. Moon was shining, though.”
She nodded. “Can you tell me who Marie Laveau is?”
“You’re joking, right?”
“No, why?”
“She was known as the Voodoo Queen, very famous. Her tomb’s in St. Louis Cemetery One.”
Desdemona sat back, contemplating that bit of information. “What can you tell me about her?” she asked at last.
“She died over a hundred and thirty years ago, but people still make pilgrimages to her grave. They draw three X’s on the side and ask her for things, hoping her spirit will grant them what they want.”
“Does it?”
“I don’t know, but I’m a guy who has his own private demonic curse. I tend to believe in just about anything. Personally, I don’t know anyone who has tried.”
“I’m hunting a witch.”
“Okay.”
“He told me she’d be there at midnight tonight.”
“Don’t listen to him. Don’t go. It could be a trap meant to kill you or capture you. It could also just be a huge waste of your time, but I wouldn’t trust a thing he said.”
“Nothing else he said to me was a lie.”
“That doesn’t mean anything when dealing with spirits. They have their own motivations and we cannot always fathom what they are. They don’t look at things the same way as we do. Life, death, people. It’s all just a big game to them. We’re the pawns they push around the board to amuse themselves, and they think nothing of sacrificing us on a whim.”
“This is the best lead I’ve had. I can’t pass it up.”
She didn’t know why she was telling him, confiding in him. Maybe it was because she already knew she wasn’t going to kill him. Maybe knowing how screwed he was made her feel a sort of connection with him. She hunched her shoulders. She didn’t need anyone. She was a witch without a coven, and she was just fine with that.
Covens only got in the way and got themselves killed.
She stood abruptly. “I have to go. I have a lot to prepare for.”
“You don’t have to do this,” he said.
“Yes—yes, I do.”
She headed for the front door, eager to end the conversation. Once in her car, she set the GPS to head back to the house she was using. She had no idea where she even was, let alone how to get back after all the crazy turns she’d had to take.
The trip looked as though it was going to be much shorter returning. In her head she started playing scenarios for her meeting that night in the graveyard. She would plan to get there at least an hour early so she could get the lay of the land and be prepared for anything the witch could throw at her.
The more she thought about it, the more she was tempted to drive straight to the cemetery. There were things she wanted to get from home, though, and she needed a few minutes of quiet to center herself and reenergize after her experiences with Martin and his demon.
That was exactly what she needed, a few hours alone to recharge and just focus on the task at hand with no outside distractions.
She turned down a street. Her GPS was telling her she was less than ten minutes from her house.
A sudden pulse of energy rippled around her. Before she could react, a man’s body came arcing through the air and crashed into her windshield.
6
Desdemona slammed on her brakes as glass exploded inward, showering her. The body stayed lodged in her windshield, brown eyes wide-open, staring at her. Blood had sprayed over the glass that was still intact.
She sat for a moment, stunned. The eyes flickered briefly. The man wasn’t dead, at least, not yet.
She leaped from her car and spun around, her eyes sweeping the street, searching for whatever had caused the man to land on her car.
“Help me!” came an agonized cry. There, a few yards away, she spotted a small figure. She lifted her hands, prepared to fight, but a moment later recognized Nala. She quickly scanned the area for other signs of life but saw none.
She moved over to the girl. “What happened?”
“I don’t know,” she said. She was crying and shaking. “He attacked me. I freaked out and I felt this burst of energy as I pushed him away. He went flying and hit your car.” She looked up at Samantha with anguished eyes. “Is he dead?”
Samantha turned and walked back to the car. The man’s wounds were extensive, difficult for even a seasoned witch to heal, and he was bleeding excessively from a dozen cuts from the glass, but he was still breathing.
She reached out, yanked the power from him, and let go just as he died.
“He is now,” she said, turning back to the girl.
The girl collapsed on the sidewalk, looking as though she was going to be sick, and began to cry harder.
Des
demona wasn’t sure exactly what to do. Since it didn’t look as if she was going to get Nala to move anytime soon, she turned and put a glamour up around the car and then around herself and Nala so that any passersby would avoid them but would see nothing unusual.
Then she sat down next to the crying girl. Though Nala claimed not to be a witch, she had lost the equivalent of her whole coven just a few hours before. Desdemona understood how that felt and knew the girl must be feeling alone and frightened.
Don’t trust her, that other self whispered deep inside.
Desdemona rolled her eyes. “You say he attacked you?” she asked.
Nala nodded.
“Can you tell me what happened?”
“He was like us, you know? I felt someone coming and I thought it was you, but then I turned around and it wasn’t. He smiled, acted friendly, wanted to know if I was okay.”
“Then he got close to me, and he—he grabbed me, tried to kiss me. When I told him to get off me, he tried to grab my chest. He was ripping my shirt. I freaked out and pushed him as hard as I could. That’s when I felt the energy surge and he went flying.”
She broke down sobbing.
Liar!
Desdemona blinked, startled. That other self was usually so kind and compassionate, but the word came with such vehemence that it shook her.
She looked at the girl and then at the body of the man on the car. Why would she make a story like that up? It wasn’t as if the world wasn’t filled with predators just waiting to get their hands on young girls.
Liar! the inner voice insisted again.
Desdemona gritted her teeth, wondering what Samantha wanted her to do about it. After she had saved them at Martin’s house, though, maybe it was best not to ignore her.
She glanced around. It was far from an ideal place to be having this conversation with Nala, let alone try to be still enough and vulnerable enough to have a conversation with her other self. That would just have to wait.
She got up and walked back to the car. The dead man was wearing a dark suit with a shirt and tie. He looked like a businessman.
Check his pockets.
She grimaced but went ahead and did it. She found nothing, not even a wallet or any kind of identification. That seemed sort of odd to her, especially given how he was dressed.