Mojo Queen Page 6

  Rozella was Christian. Most root workers were. When they petitioned for aid and protection, it was God and Jesus they were directing those prayers to. Even as a kid, being forced to go to church, I knew I was no Christian. Much as I liked the people at the Broom Closet, I was no Wiccan, either; too much ritual for my taste. I was pretty much agnostic on the existence of any goddess and god, but I believed with everything in my soul in the power of natural magic. With every breath I drew every bit of that belief and all of my intention into tight focus, pouring it into the little red flannel bag. I drew from the earth my house sat on, through layers of flooring, drew from the sun shining above the roof, the trees dotting the property, the wind that slipped through their branches. Deeper underground until I could feel cool water. My body hummed with energy. The candle flames swelled higher. Sweat broke out on my brow but I kept going, kept calling the magic to me and directing it into the mojo hand I continued passing through incense smoke. I didn’t stop until the cone was nothing but ash.

  I lay on the floor for awhile, exhausted, clutching the bag in my hand. As I sat up, my gaze fell on the At Folsom Prison cover. I said to Cash, “If that don’t work I’m gettin’ a flame thrower.”

  After a quick lunch I called Seth at the hospital to check in. Daniel had stayed as late as the approaching dawn allowed before leaving. Levi had gone back to his dorm room. Seth spent the day with Gabe, working on a history paper while his friend slept most of the time. I packed the grimoires into a box, which I tucked away in a hidden compartment behind the wall of the bedroom closet, gathering my notes before going to the office. I needed the internet on my office computer for more research. I spent a couple of hours with that then drove to the hospital. I needed to talk to Daniel about a lot but I wanted to check in with Seth in person first.

  I found him in the hospital cafeteria, hunched over a fat textbook, a slim laptop, and a cup of coffee, staring off into space. As we exchanged greetings I sat beside him. He had bags under his eyes the color of day-old bruises and I wondered if he’d ever get a good night’s sleep again after what he’d seen. I asked about Gabe.

  “They’re saying he had a mild heart attack. That he needs to watch what he eats and reduce his stress level. Can you believe that?” He shook his head. “Gabe’s twenty. Anyway, they’re gonna let him go home tonight. The doctor wants to see him one more time then they’ll release him.” He lifted the paper cup to his lips, grimacing slightly when he found it empty.

  “Seth, did Blake ever tell you guys what kind of magic he practiced?”

  His brow furrowed and he shook his head. “You mean other than black magic? No.”

  I thought about that for a moment. Despite the whole conjuring a demon thing, there was no indication in his journals that Blake worshipped Satan, or anything else for that matter. I’d found plenty of harmless spells and rituals, stuff designed for benign purposes. The old idea of black and white magic didn’t seem to apply here. “Maybe a better way to put it would be how did he practice?”

  Seth gave me a blank look.

  “Some people practice magic in the context of their religion. You ever heard of Wicca?”

  He nodded.

  “For some people religion has nothing to do with it. Or at least, not any kind of organized religion we’re used to in modern life. There are different systems of practicing magic. Thelemic, Order of the Golden Dawn. Any of this ring any bells?”

  Seth shook his head again. “No. I don’t remember him talking about anything like that. Levi asked him once if he practiced black magic or white magic. Blake said there was no such thing as black or white magic. There was just magic. It sort of made sense at the time, but now.” A mix of doubt and guilt and fear washed over his face. He closed the textbook and powered down his laptop.

  “I couldn’t find any photos in his apartment, and we need to know what he looks like. I know a sketch artist who can give us a good drawing, if you can describe Blake. And I want you to either give me addresses or drive with me and help me find the clubs and bars you guys went to with him. Or any other place you went to with him. How’s that sound?”

  “No problem. Most of the places I can just give you an address, but there’s one place we’ll have to drive around and look for, that place that didn’t have a name.”

  Something occurred to me. Blake may have made a lot of his own stuff, but he needed to buy ingredients somewhere. There was no evidence of a garden in his backyard. Not many places in the area carried mugwort and henbane, and my office happened to be right next door to one. What if I’d already seen this guy? “Where did he buy his stuff? His herbs and stuff like that? Did he ever mention a place called the Broom Closet?”

  “No, it was something else. I can’t remember the name of it.”

  “Do you know where? Or how far of a drive?”

  “It was online.”

  I blew my breath out in frustration. “Let’s go see your buddy.”

  We made our way out of the cafeteria and to the nearest elevator. Seth asked, “What about tonight? Daniel said we might not be safe at night.”

  I nodded. “That’s why the three of you are staying at his house tonight.”

  Seth gave me a dubious look.

  “Don’t worry, he’s cool. It’s a big house. Big flat-panel TV, cable, video games. Y’all’ll be fine. We’ll have to pick up some food after we get Levi, maybe a couple of pizzas.” Daniel’s kitchen was a shrine to the Beverage Gods. I don’t think he owned a single cooking utensil.

  We rode the elevator up to the fourth floor, several people getting on and off at each floor. When the doors hissed open at our stop I knew right away we had trouble. The air felt wrong somehow, disturbed. I stashed my glasses and took a look around. Smudges of black were smeared on one wall, as if someone had idly run a hand across the institutional green while heading down the hall. “Gabe in room four-seventeen?”

  Seth nodded. “What’s wrong?”

  The energy trail stopped at Gabe’s door. “I think he has a visitor.”

  I had to grab Seth of keep him from running to his friend. “No!” A passing nurse looked at us with interest and I pulled him to the side of the hallway. “Getting yourself killed isn’t going to help him.” I fished my keys out of my messenger bag and put them in his palm. “Go wait for me in my car. Keep your cellphone on. I’ll call you when it’s clear.”

  Keeping his gaze on the door to Gabe’s room as if waiting for Delia to come sauntering out, he said, “Don’t you need some kind of backup? Shouldn’t we at least call Daniel?”

  I would have liked nothing better than calling in my big bad cousin with supernatural strength and an absurd level of over-protectiveness, but it was daylight. Just coming out and telling Seth, “Hey my cousin Daniel’s a vampire,” didn’t seem like a good idea right now, so I took refuge in faux offense. “What, you think ’cos I’m a girl I need a man to protect me?”

  I reached under my shirt for the mojo bag attached to my belt, making sure he got a look at it even though he probably had no idea what it was. “Look here, son. I am the mojo queen. I don’t need Daniel to back me up, I back him up. So when I tell you to wait in the car for me, you need to do as you’re told. Understand?”

  There’s a certain flavor a woman can put in her voice, a certain Momma’s not putting up with your shit right now, most men will respond to, especially if they are younger. I used it as shamelessly as the lie that I didn’t need backup.

  It worked like a charm. “Yes, ma’am.” He even looked contrite and for a moment I felt bad. I got over that quickly at the thought that sending him away might save his life. I told him where to find my car in the underground lot and waited until he was safely in the elevator.

  The room was shrouded in darkness. I had no expectations about finding Gabe alive. He lay on the bed as if asleep, but a blue tint to his lips and the absolute stillness of his body told something different. He no longer had any aura to speak of, not so much as a hint of color. I touched the
side of the bed, wondering if he had a girlfriend, if his parents were somewhere in the hospital trying to ask some doctor why their twenty-year-old son had a heart attack.

  The lack of an aura told me his spirit was no longer in his body, but would I encounter it somewhere else? Dealing with ghosts hadn’t really taught me much about death. Some people moved on, some didn’t. As far as my experience told me the how and why of a person’s death didn’t seem to have much say in whether someone hung around. If I had known Gabe, really known him, I might be able to hazard a guess. It wasn’t something I had time to think about, though.

  Delia shined like volcanic glass in the corner. She stepped out of the shadows with a smile on her face and a swing of her long blond hair. Khakis and a pink twin-set really brought out the evil demon in her.

  In a manner I recognized from every obnoxiously fake cheerleader I had ever met, she said, “Well, hey there, you. Nice to see you again.”

  “Well aren’t you just the cheerleader from hell. Speaking of which, why don’t you go back where you came from?”

  “You know if you don’t learn to mind your own business it just might get you killed.”

  I took a step closer, something she clearly had not anticipated. She didn’t move away but her eyes and mouth narrowed. I looked her over, searching for signs of anything breaking through that black. There was nothing. “You in there, Delia?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Oh, honey, please. You’re in so far over your head. You just have no idea what you’re dealing with, do you?”

  She sounded so pleasant, so cheerful. Even if she weren’t an evil demon I wouldn’t be able to stand her. “I know exactly what you are. Honey.”

  She arched an eyebrow and I had to confess, she did it better than I could. A curl of jealousy stabbed me.

  Pointing at her with more confidence than I felt, I said, “You are a raven mocker. And I have seen your true visage, which means you’ve only got seven more days to live. Actually, six, I saw you yesterday. So it doesn’t matter what you do. You’re already on your way out of here.”

  Delia giggled. Now it was time for me to be disconcerted. “Like I said, you have no idea. Now Roxanne, it is Roxanne, isn’t it?”

  Well, damn. It’s never good for the nasties to know your name. I nodded since there was no point in lying.

  She continued. “I like you, Roxanne.” She stretched out a hand and stroked the air in front of my chest. I could feel her touch in my mind, in my soul, in whatever that part where my magic emanated from might be called. It made me shudder.

  “You have a lot of potential in you. I could teach you so much.”

  She twisted her hand into a claw. Nausea churned my insides. I reached for the mojo hand, pulling it out from under my shirt. “There’s nothing I want to learn from you.”

  I raised the little red flannel bag in front of me like a shield, sending my will into it and prodding it into action. Immediately I felt relief as she snatched her hand back. A web of indigo lines spread from the bag, crisscrossing into a protective wall through the auric spectrum.

  Delia’s eyes turned to slits, anger twisting her beautiful face into a nightmare. For a moment the black of her aura overtook her, a pulsing obsidian emptiness all I could see. She recovered quickly and the perky cheerleader gave me a toothy smile.

  “You’re pretty good at amateur hour, sweetie, but do you really think roots and leaves are any match for me?” A nasty derisive laugh slipped from her cotton candy mouth. “I mean, seriously? Do your friends call you Polk Salad Annie?”

  Something flared out from me, cracking through the mojo hand’s protective wall and slicing open a cut across Delia’s cheek. It happened so fast I didn’t realize it until blood welled on her skin and fury turned her eyes black. I wobbled a little. That unintended spike of energy had cost me.

  Delia stepped as close as the mojo hand allowed. “I don’t need to kill you.” A slight shrug of her slim shoulders dismissed me, my abilities, my very existence. “Don’t particularly want to, either. You know why that is?”

  She waited, intending to make me ask. Finally I did, wanting this over so I could breathe normally again. “Why?”

  “You don’t matter, Roxanne. You’re just a bug. If you get out of my way, fine. If you don’t, I’ll step on you, and I won’t think twice about it, you insignificant little bitch.”

  Fire burst from her aura, framing her in angry red flames. I jumped back, shouting. The flames twisted around her in a tight coil, increasing in speed and covering her completely. Heat slammed into me, knocking me down, wind whipping the cheap hospital curtains. In seconds the flames collapsed in on themselves, tunneling into a ball before disappearing in another rush of hot wind.

  There was no sign of Delia. After a few shuddery breaths I got to my feet. So much for my theory about her being a Cherokee raven mocker. Raven mockers didn’t do that. I didn’t have time to think about it right now, about her threats or anything else. I had to get Seth and Levi safely tucked away at Daniel’s, pronto.

  I shoved the mojo hand in my jeans pocket and headed out. One foot nearly went out from under me and I glanced down to see what I had slipped on. Sand. There was a scattering of sand on the floor, in the spot Delia had stood before disappearing in a ball of fire.

  The what the hells were really adding up.

  * * * *

  I waited in the car while Seth went to his room to pack a bag then collect Levi. I waited partly because I still didn’t feel like walking around, and because members of the opposite sex were not allowed past the lobby of the dorms. I slumped in the seat, leaning against the door with my forehead on the window, watching all the college kids--lots of tanning bed tans, preppy clothes, manicures on the girls, clean-cut boys like Seth and his friends. Nicelooking kids, like the nicelooking families in the ghost-filled cul-de-sac.

  I didn’t think of my parents often anymore but this brought them to mind, knowing this nice, clean, normal life is what they wanted for me, what they expected of me. I glanced down at my ripped, grubby jeans, black Nine Inch Nails t-shirt over a white long underwear shirt, stained boots. They didn’t like it but they were able to handle it when I had gone to work for a private investigative agency. When I started my own business, and had the poor taste to call myself a paranormal investigator--that’s when I lost them. I heard from them less and less, and now we were down to a few holiday cards a year, maybe one visit. They were embarrassed by me.

  They wanted--needed--a daughter who could be like the sweet-faced girls walking around this campus. Like the young mothers in that subdivision, letting themselves be swallowed by a tidal wave of diapers and toys, soccer games and play dates. That wasn’t me, would never be me, and I’d had sense enough to know that early on. It hurt, knowing I was not what my parents wanted, knowing I was nothing but a symbol of regret and perhaps even shame to them. I couldn’t help that, though, couldn’t change their opinion of me, of my life. What I could do was throw everything I had--magic whoop ass, my vampire ancestor, whatever else I could come up with--at keeping Seth and Levi alive, and stopping the demon in Delia.

  We drove to Daniel’s in silence. He lived in an outlying community called Stone Fort, in an antebellum home with acreage and only woods for neighbors. When I first started hanging out at his house I alternated between calling him Lestat and Scarlett, until he flashed fang at me in a fit of pique. It made me giggle but I stopped teasing him, figuring I’d poked the bear with a stick enough.

  After depositing Seth and Levi in the living room, I found Daniel in the kitchen, one of the few rooms in the house without any windows. We hashed things out over iced tea at the table.

  “So now you don’t think she’s this Cherokee raven thing?”

  “The way she disappeared, the fire and all, that doesn’t fit with a raven mocker. But the way she killed Gabe and that first boy does. Sorta.”

  “What do you mean, sorta?”

  I refilled our glasses. “I don’t know. I mean, it
seemed to fit, but not really. And now there’s fire.”

  “I don’t like fire at all.”

  “And sand. Why was there sand?”

  “Wait, there was sand?”

  “After she disappeared. There was sand all over the floor. I nearly slipped on it.”

  “Is there anything else, clue-wise?”

  I thought about that. Did her offer of tutoring services count as a clue? Probably not, but as I thought about it I realized it was time to tell Daniel what I’d been hiding. Or show him. I stood, made my way to a pantry that was bigger than my entire kitchen, and found the shelf where he kept spare candles. I brought a fat pillar candle I’d made to the table and set it in front of him. He looked at me, eyebrows raised. I pointed at the candle as I sat, not sure if I’d be able to do this. After several seconds of concentration a nice little flame popped out of the wick.

  Daniel crossed his arms, still staring at the candle. He jerked his chin to point at the candle. “Well, ain’t that cute.”

  His low-key reaction was not what I expected. “I’ve seen auras since I was a kid, been lighting candles since I was a teenager. I always knew whatever let me do those things helped me with the root work and all that, but I’ve never really taken it out for a test drive before.”

  “Can you control it?”

  “Yeah.”

  He looked at me. “Yeah, you know for a fact you can control it, or yeah, it hasn’t gotten out of control yet?”

  “Er.”

  He let out a nice big sigh to let me know of all his suffering. “Can you do anything else?”

  I shrugged. “Not that I know of.”

  “We get this mess with these kids dealt with, I’m going to start reaching out to some contacts. See if we can get you some help.”

  Something about that rubbed me the wrong way, as if I were contagious or something in me wasn’t normal, and needed fixing. I’d had about enough of that growing up. “I don’t have some kind of condition.”