Mojo Queen Read online

  “You want me to babysit?” His lip curled.

  “For the time being,” I said, “that’s exactly what I want you to do.”

  He craned his head for a look at Seth. The kid sat on the floor, arms still wrapped around his legs, head resting against the couch. Right now he didn’t look like he could defend himself from a troop of Girl Scouts, much less a homicidal demon.

  Daniel said, “I don’t like the smell of this one, Roxie. It stinks.”

  “Like hellfire and brimstone,” I agreed.

  Chapter 3

  Blake the Dark Sorcerer lived on the far side of town, so I had several minutes’ drive to spend thinking things through. This didn’t really have much to do with religion, despite Blake choosing kids with Biblical names who all attended a Christian university. From what I knew of modern ceremonial magicians--admittedly not much--traditional religion wasn’t on the guy’s radar. My instincts said turning these four nice Christians into hedonists practicing black magic was more a joke than anything else. I wanted to know more about the ritual, and about the demon summoned. Did Blake need help? Was that the reason for getting these guys involved?

  And I really, really wanted to know more about Blake being able to light a circle of candles with nothing but magic.

  I pulled into a gas station to look at my directions again and sighed, glancing at the bars all over the little store. I needed a cup of coffee in the worst way but this joint didn’t look like it would have anything drinkable. Not that I needed to be carrying a cup of coffee when I showed up at Blake’s door. I checked the street signs, got myself oriented, and pulled back out into the road.

  Blake lived in what appeared to be an old house someone had renovated years ago to turn it into a duplex. Like everything else on this street, it looked run-down, ragged, in bad need of more renovating. No cars were parked in either drive. The adjoining unit looked as if no one lived in it so I parked there, making my way to the door with a flashlight in one hand and a taser in the other, messenger bag draped across my torso. No lights, no sound, no evidence of anyone home. I walked around to the side of the house, the beam of the flashlight showing me nothing but a yard full of dead grass and a central air unit. The back of the house looked just as empty.

  I felt pretty confident nobody was home but I knocked anyway then knocked louder, just to be sure. No response. I tested the doorknob, giving it a gentle shake. Locked. A car drove by, sheet metal rattling from a cheap stereo. If I was going to break and enter I should probably use the back door.

  Before I started my own business I had spent more than two years working for a private investigation agency. Usually divorce cases, sometimes a missing persons case, nothing at all like being a PI on television--mostly boring, with a side of shady. But it was steady work, it made me some invaluable contacts, got me my license and taught me some skills. Like, for instance, how to use lock picks. I couldn’t do it fast--something else movies and TV lie about--but I could, with enough time, patience and luck, pick just about any lock I needed to. With the flashlight and the taser between my knees, I knelt on the ground at the back door and fiddled with the lock until it sprung open.

  I stayed there for a moment, the door barely ajar, listening. No noise came from inside the house so I put the lock picks back in the messenger bag, picked up the flashlight and the taser and slowly pushed the door all the way open to reveal the kitchen. Small, functional, tidy. A faint whiff of something I couldn’t identify. I crossed the threshold, feeling the push of a magical warding spell trying to keep me out. As I barreled through it, the painful charge of static electricity popped over a dozen or more places on my body. Not entirely unexpected. The guy was a sorcerer, after all. This was just a lot more intense than anything similar I’d ever experienced.

  I stood in the middle of the kitchen, trying to shake off a serious case of the creepies, swinging the beam of the flashlight around to check things out. Standard appliances, a bare breakfast nook. Nothing on the outside of the fridge. I opened it to see what was inside: a plastic bowl half full of apples, nearly empty quart of milk, and a jar of jelly. I went through the cabinets next, finding peanut butter, a loaf of bread, coffee. The dark sorcerer wasn’t much of a cook. Surely there had to be an evil spice rack around here somewhere.

  I went to the doorway leading to the rest of the apartment and took my glasses off, hanging them on the front of my shirt. I slowed my breathing, reaching out through my feet and hands and head to ground myself. A long look around the entire place with my auric vision, opening my senses, showed me residue of magic, strong wards around every door and window, but no spirits of any kind. In fact, the entire place was pretty unremarkable on the surface. The furniture looked like it probably came with the apartment. The television was unplugged and turned haphazardly toward the wall. The bedroom closet was full of black clothes but nothing flashy or Hot Topic-y. Mystery novels and National Geographics had been neatly stacked in the living room. A computer in one corner I figured to be password-protected and probably pointless for me to try to mess with. The only thing vaguely resembling a clue that a magically inclined person lived here, other than the wards, of course, was the handful of physics textbooks in a corner in the bedroom. I flipped through them, looking for any notes in the margins, underlinings, turned down pages. Nothing, though the books did appear wellused.

  With nowhere else to look, I sat on the edge of the bed. Except for the wards, the place was normal, like just another lonely bachelor lived here. My brain buzzed with frustration. He had to have a place, some sort of sanctuary where he kept his grimoires, his supplies, where he felt safe practicing magic. But where and how did I find it?

  I could track down information about the house, find out who owned it to see if they would give me the tenant’s full name. Then search for other properties, and anything else, linked to that name. How long would that take me? It might get quicker results just keeping an eye out for signs of chaos and mayhem authored by Delia the demon playmate.

  I rubbed my forehead, fingering the bandage at my hairline, tired. My body was sore from getting thrown against a wall. I needed to check on Seth and his friends, sleep about twelve hours and drink at least that many gallons of coffee. I stood, stretched, and pulled my glasses from where they were hooked to the front of my shirt. When I was about to put them on I saw it, a disturbance in the air around a spot in the floor against a threadbare area rug, heavier than the other wards. Shining the flashlight on it, I found nothing. Flipping the rug over revealed a square trapdoor cut into the worn hardwood, warded like Fort Knox. “Can I get a boo yah?” I said with a smile.

  I used the lock picks to pry the square up. A wooden ladder led down into an inky darkness, smeared with the trace aura of past magic. The flashlight showed me a concrete floor, tables and shelves against the walls. It would sting like hell going through that ward, not to mention leave me incredibly vulnerable if he came home while I was down there. But, if I waited and came back with Daniel to guard the outside--not my home so I couldn’t invite him in--I might lose any chance of finding any valuable information down there. If Blake hadn’t already cleared everything out.

  I shook my head. The decision had been made as soon as I found the trapdoor. Why err on the side of caution when you can rush headlong into danger? I climbed down, one hand on the ladder while the other held the flashlight as I shoved my way through the ward with teeth gritted.

  The ladder stopped more than a foot from the ground and my boots thunked on the concrete as I landed. I looked the room over for anything that might become active before I put my glasses back on. The flashlight picked out a large worktable with a pot, a Bunsen burner, half a dozen or so jars and several candles. No lighter or matches in sight. I shrugged then lit the candles one by one, sending little shoots of energy out with the focus of my concentration. The last two candles I visualized lighting simultaneously and I was pleasantly surprised when they did.

  Against the wall at the back of the table were
four drawers from a chest used as containers. They were full of all sorts of different items, some from nature, some not. Taking a quick inventory, it looked like each drawer and its items represented the magical elements.

  In the middle of the floor were two smaller versions of the circle I’d seen at the church, including rings of candles and small metal cups to mark the quarters. I walked around them, not wanting to cross into them. Both gave off an unpleasant heavy feel of magical energy.

  This guy had at least as many books as I did, maybe more. They were arranged on shelves in what appeared to be the Dewey decimal system--categories in alphabetical order, and within that alphabetical by author--meticulous, and very clean despite being down here in this funky basement. Art, astronomy, astrology, history and mythology, science and math, every religion represented, plenty of general reference, a big section covering unexplained phenomena and esoteric subjects that included several I wished I owned. Hell, I wanted the whole library. The sight of this many books made me feel some serious lust.

  Quite a few titles were out of print, some old enough to qualify as antique. I saw a lot I’d probably never be able to afford, unless someone reissued cheap paperback copies. I lost track of how many I pulled from the shelves and leafed through. At some point I pulled a notebook out of my bag and started making notes from some of the ones I’d never come across before. I could have spent some very happy days, weeks, months even, reading and studying all these marvelous books. Though it told me a few important things about Blake, it didn’t give me what I really needed. Reluctantly, I replaced a book on ancient Egyptian magic on the shelf and went back to searching the room again.

  What I really needed was his grimoires. I looked over the shelves again, the work table and its four drawers. Sweeping the flashlight under the table, I found a large black trunk with a heavy lock. This looked promising. I went at it with the lock picks and, after a while, thought it might not be a bad idea to start carrying around a bolt cutter in the trunk of my car. After what felt like half an hour, hands shaking with exhaustion, the lock opened and I found what I was looking for--neat stacks of fat spiral notebooks, all black, all with dates written on the covers in silver. I flipped through a few to make sure they were what I needed. There must have been fifteen, twenty of them, too many for me to cram into my messenger bag. I looked around for something else in which to carry them, not wanting to have to make more than one trip. There were no bags of any kind.

  “Hell with it,” I said as I put a few of the recent notebooks, including what looked to be the current one, in my bag. I would make a few trips up and down the ladder then I could probably take all of them to my car. I stood, suddenly curious how long I’d been down here. I fished around in my bag for my cellphone. I was still looking for it when someone called my name from the top of the ladder. Swinging around, I aimed the light above, one hand still grasping for the cellphone.

  “Can you get that out of my eyes, please?” Seth. I breathed a sigh of relief, my heart started working again and I lowered the flashlight.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Your cousin got worried so he had me lead him here. But he said he can’t come in.” Seth sounded like he wanted to ask about that, but wasn’t too sure he really wanted an answer.

  I retrieved several more notebooks and started up the ladder. “I’m gonna pass these up and then we’re getting out of here.”

  When I had all of Blake’s notebooks, I locked the trunk and gave the place a once-over. Was there anything else I should take since I was already in a thieving mood? I grabbed a book at random then blew out the candles and went up the ladder for the last time.

  Seth helped me get the trapdoor back in place and the rug on top of it. I asked him how Gabe was doing and he told me they were keeping him overnight in the hospital, but he’d probably be able to go home tomorrow afternoon. Levi was staying with him and Seth wanted to go back as soon as we were done here.

  “Daniel said we shouldn’t leave Gabe alone at night. That none of us should be alone at night. He was pretty worried about you, though.”

  “Yeah, I guess I stayed a lot longer than I should have. Come on, let’s get out of here and get you back to your friends.” We each carried a stack of notebooks to my car.

  Daniel was waiting for us, looking none too happy.

  “Don’t say anything. It’s all over your face.” I opened the trunk and tossed in the notebooks.

  “What’s on my face? Disapproval? Impatience? Do you even know how to use your phone?”

  I didn’t like the tone of his voice. Sometimes he had a real daddy complex about me I didn’t care for. “Yeah, and I would have used it if I had a problem. How about we get out of here?”

  His glare softened and he gave me a shrug by way of apology. I nodded in return, accepting. One thing I valued about Daniel, he might not be able to stop himself, but at least he knew when he’d gone too far. That was more self-awareness than most people possessed.

  Daniel and Seth headed back to the hospital while I went home. At the four-way stop where I turned off the street to go back across town, I pulled my glasses down for just a moment to rub my tired eyes. For barely a second, I caught a glimpse of that star-filled darkness at the edge of the broken sidewalk. Then it was gone again, so quickly I wondered if I’d imagined it. I sat at the stop sign, letting the car idle as I scanned the night, unwilling to get out of the car, though, despite my bravado with Daniel. When a car pulled up behind me I gave up and left.

  * * * *

  This frustration has put me on edge, made me even more nervous than usual, so nervous I feel like I could crack into little pieces. But how am I supposed to force something like this? I can’t. He keeps telling me to have patience, but I can tell he’s beginning to question his decision to take me on as a student. If I can’t even master simple energy work, the most basic of elemental spells, if I can’t even do a simple meditation--how do I have any hope of reaching the level to which I aspire?

  The level to which I aspire? What a major doofus this guy must be. I took another sip of coffee, flipping through more pages of Blake the Emo Sorcerer’s first grimoire, journal, sordid volume of True Confessions, whatever. I had the entire Time Life set arrayed in front of me on the kitchen table, with a pen and a fresh notepad of my own. So far the only thing of interest I’d found was the tale of his pathetically sad and woefully brief first sexual experience, and all that was good for was a laugh. He was careful not to identify his mystery teacher. I set this one to the side and pulled the latest one from the stack. I could look for more things to mock later. Right now I needed information about the demon in Delia and the ritual that put it there. I needed to know these things because it might help me devise a way of getting that demon out of the girl without killing her.

  I finished off that cup of coffee and got up to pour another. After a few hours of pseudo-sleep full of nightmare images and starburst auras, I had started skipping around in the journals before putting them in order and trying to form some sort of cohesive idea about this guy and his practices. Some of his writings were so disjointed I wasn’t sure if he was a candidate for full-time residence in a mental hospital or just a flaky dilettante.

  I did find one thing worth making a note of, Blake’s “magical” name. I didn’t know much about ceremonial magicians doing this, but Wiccans and other Pagans will frequently take another name they use only in circle and with their coven, if they have one--the name their gods and goddesses know them by. Usually it will be something that has some significance for the person, symbolic of some kind of kinship, or how they see themselves on the inside. In his magical life Blake went by the name Kalidas and I wanted to know what it meant.

  I found the ritual. From what Seth told us, it went pretty much according to plan, until Delia killed one of the kids. Blake had detailed notes of the entire planning process, including all his research on astrological correspondences so the rite would take place on a date offering the great
est chance of success. He made all of his own anointing oils, the incense, even the black robes that had been worn, made the candles himself, with soy wax, black dye and molds. Ooh, and here was something neat; the watchtower candles with their colored flame corresponding to each element were created by having different chemicals in each cauldron. Mostly wood alcohol, mixed with a few other things, which didn’t tell me how he lit the candles and chemicals.

  I flipped further back, scanning the pages carefully for references to the demon. Finally I hit pay dirt and started filling up my notepad. Pretty quickly I realized some things were not adding up and had to start going through the older journals with a bit more care.

  In my line of work it was not unusual to get knocked around by various oogie boogies, but Delia had a lot more power than what I was used to. After what I saw last night, I had an idea of what kind of demon she might be, but I’d have to confirm it with research and figure out how to stop her. In the meantime, I needed some protection.

  After gathering supplies I sat on the floor in the library. First I lit several candles in a circle on a tray, without a lighter. The first few were work but once I got rolling it was easier. Angelica root and some other protective herbs went into a small red flannel bag. Pulling the drawstring tight, I dressed the flannel with oil then placed it in the middle of the candles. I lit a cone of incense with one of the candles, giving it time for the smoke to flow. After a moment I picked up the bag and began to pass it through the smoke.

  I’d been making mojo hands since I was a teenager. Creating a classic hoodoo spell bag was the first thing Rozella taught me. She showed me how she made them then she told me to figure out my own method. That turned out to be par for the course with her. Every person is different, she said. They’re made up of different things, and their energy runs in different ways. I could follow her methods exactly but I’d never get the same results, so I had to work out spells that suited my strengths, suited my energy. It took a lot of trial and error but I was damn good at protective spells now.