Trio of Sorcery (11 page)

She called the number on Tamara's card. She wanted to do this before the Scooby-Doo team woke up and decided to go with her.

The woman who answered Tamara's phone had a curiously deep, throaty voice and a Slavic accent that was as phony as a plastic flower. Yes, there might be a booking free. She would go and see if someone had canceled. Why, Susan was in luck, one of Tamara's clients had phoned in to say she was ill. If she hurried, she could just make the appointment. “And bring a fresh egg,” she added.

Well, well. I know where this is going.

The first, the
very
first thing she did was to write several identical notes saying exactly where she was going. She distributed the copies around the apartment. There was one pinned prominently to the bulletin board, one on the kitchen table, and in case something happened to her and Tamara actually figured out her real address, one under the pillow on the bed, one in the stack of manuscript, and one rolled up and stuck into the laundry hamper. She'd
never had much patience for the sort of book or movie where the hero wandered off into danger without telling anyone where he was going.

Then she called Lavinia and told
her.

With that done, Di packed the shoulder bag she'd bought at Goodwill. First in were the perfume bottle and the salt shaker, plus the egg, wrapped in tissue to protect it. Besides that, for verisimilitude, she dropped in a pack of gum from which she removed two sticks; a new (cheap) lipstick and matching nail polish; a new, unused comb; a freshly opened pack of tissues; a used paperback romance; and a bandana with peace signs all over it. Plus the three things that she actually needed—enough money for bus fare, Tamara's fee, and maybe a cup of coffee and a donut; her keys; and a wallet with a phony ID. She had a stash of them from when she and Memaw had gone after the phonies. This one was from when she was seventeen—perfect for the purpose now.

According to that ID, her name was Susan Rutherford and she lived in Boston. In the wallet were more things from those days. When you expected that a crook might be going through your purse, pictures were very important in firming up your faux self. She chose a few from a whole box of photos she'd picked up at flea markets; a kid in a high school football uniform, a generic middle-aged couple, and someone's granny. She also had a boy's class ring she'd gotten at the same place, wrapped with angora to make it fit; she wore that on her right hand.

She shielded herself to a fare-thee-well. No way she was going to walk into that snake den without every protection she could muster. She even had her
atheme
tucked into the top of her boot. She hoped she wouldn't need it, because it would be bloody awkward to get at if she did, with the boots being under the bell-bottoms of her jeans. Still, it wouldn't show that way, at least.

Simple turtleneck sweater, black of course. Nondescript gabardine jacket. And gloves, the all-important gloves. If she managed to get any evidence, she didn't want her own fingerprints on it, and it was cold enough that thin gloves wouldn't raise any eyebrows and they stretched over the class ring, showing the shape underneath. One thing she totally refused to do, not even to complete the disguise of being a high school senior. No way in hell was she going to totter around on a pair of three-inch platform shoes.

So Susan got on the bus, and read her used romance book all the way to her stop while thinking very hard about being Susan.

If Tamara's house had been creepy before, she had to force herself up the steps now. And that made her wonder…what had changed? Was it just that the woman was sucking so much misery off Chris Fitzhugh that she was getting more powerful by the day? Or was there something else going on?

The door was answered by someone who could only be Tamara herself. She ushered Di into a nondescript entry-way, maybe five by five, painted beige, with a little bench
too narrow for anyone to sit on against one wall. If there was a Richter scale for “something weird,” Tamara pegged it at ten.

Physically, she wasn't tall, but she gave the impression of being tall. She had shoulder-length black hair cut in a Mary Tyler Moore flip, square, Slavic features, and deep-set dark eyes. She wore a purple turtleneck tunic over a black, calf-length Gypsy-hippie skirt with a print of tiny purple flowers, and black moccasin boots. She had a fringed purple sash around her waist, a tangle of amulet necklaces and love beads around her neck, big gold hoop earrings, and a dozen Indian bangle bracelets on each wrist.

She was a fraud. The fact she had asked for the egg proved it.

It wasn't
just
that—There was no doubt about it, Di could already sense the emotional whirl pool there, the woman was a psychic vampire. And it wasn't just that she was no more a Gypsy than Di was. Nor that there was a whiff—just a hint—of real magic about her, and it was not nice.

There was something else that was completely off about her. And Di, normally able to put her finger on the cause of
any
weirdness, could not pinpoint this.

Tamara looked at her for several minutes in absolute silence. Then without a word, she crooked her finger at Di and led her into the “consultation room,” which in any other house would be the living room.

As Di had expected, it was dim and lit by candles; the curtains were drawn across the windows and the air was
smoky and thick with patchouli incense. The only way in which it really differed from the far too many rooms of the same sort that Di had been in over the course of her life, was that this room had been decorated in purple, rather than the usual red.

Di noticed the strategic placement of mirrors behind her, near the ceiling. In the dim light, and with all that dark purple, it was very difficult to spot them unless you were looking for them. The way that the few lights were placed, anything in the “client's” hands would reflect very nicely in them.

The table, covered with a purple cloth, was bare except for an eggcup and a white saucer set to one side. Those were for later.

“Please,” Tamara said with a toothy smile. “Sit.”

Di sat in the indicated chair and put her purse on the table next to her. Tamara looked at it with arch significance, so Di pulled out her wallet and put the requested fee on the table. It was quite modest, only ten dollars, but for Tamara, this was a starting fee—she undoubtedly expected to make a good deal more from this particular pigeon. Tamara nodded, took the two five-dollar bills (which Di had marked, though Tamara wouldn't know that), and tucked them somewhere under the tablecloth.

What, not down your cleavage? You missed one of the Gypsy clichés? You haven't been watching nearly enough bad horror movies.
Of course the cleavage would be hard to reach wearing a turtleneck.

“Take out of your bag some object that means much to you, and that connects to the problem you have come to me about,” Tamara continued. “But do not show it to me. Merely hold it in your hand. The spirits will tell me all that I need to know.”

That, and the mirror behind me.

Di pretended to fumble through the bag, going through the photos until she came to the one of the boy. She pulled it out of the bag and held it in her hand, shielded from Tamara's direct gaze—but no doubt visible in the mirror mounted above and behind her seat. Tamara gazed over Di's head, as if looking off into the distance. But Di was well aware that she was looking at the mirror.

“You have a lovely grandmother and loving parents,” said Tamara. “They care much for you. So much that they are concerned about your love for a boy. No?”

Di faked a gasp. “They want me to go to college,” she whispered. “But if I do—he's not going, he has to go to work for his dad. If I go away, will he forget me?”

Her response had told the Gypsy that there was money enough to send her to college. That would probably be bait the woman could not resist. Tamara closed her eyes and began to sway. “There is another, a rival to you,” she intoned.

Di allowed a tiny whimper to escape.

“She has designs on this boy. She is not good for him, this girl. She does not love him. She only wants the things he will have, when he takes his father's business. But he does not see this.” There was a sly little smile on Tamara's lips.

Di really, really did not like her. If there was ever a story designed to make a young girl paranoid and fearful, it was one like that. It didn't even matter if there
was
no other girl in the picture. Given a story like this, the victim would find
someone
she knew who matched the description of a man stealer.

“Oh, and she is, is not good for this boy. She will get him to do things that are wrong. To steal from his father so he can buy her presents. To go to places with her that he should not. You are a good girl; she will make him to think that good girls are dull. You know her, she is taller than you, not so pretty, sly, and—” Tamara made a cupping gesture at her own breasts that seemed faintly obscene. “Big bosoms.”

“Juliet Whately!” Di exclaimed, making up the name on the spot.

“Yes…yes…but there is more…” Tamara frowned. “The spirits tell me there is more about this girl than you know. She has bad blood. Bad Gypsy blood. There is good Gypsy blood, and bad Gypsy blood, and hers is bad, bad, bad….”

Okay, here it comes.

“This girl—bad things follow her. Bad things come when she calls. That is how she will get this boy, not just with her bosoms and letting him do what he wants with them. No, no. She has more.” Tamara leaned over the table now, and stared into Di's eyes. “She is evil! Quick, take out the egg I told you to bring, and the spirits will show you!”

Di fumbled out the egg and handed it to Tamara. Tamara was as good or better than Marshal; Di knew what she was doing and was watching closely, but she didn't see the Gypsy swap it for her own egg, one she had prepared earlier, probably after Di's initial call.

But Di had no doubt that it was Tamara's egg, and not her own, that was placed in the incongruous little eggcup on the table between them, with the white saucer to one side.

“Think about the boy!” Tamara urged. “Think about the girl! The spirits will show us if he is in danger!”

Di clutched the picture hard enough to crease it, and stared at the egg as Tamara chanted. It was all she could do to keep from breaking up laughing when she recognized the words.

“Ue o muite aruko-, namida ga koborenai yo-ni, omoidasu haru no hi, hitoribotchi no yoru.”

Ten years ago she'd learned that song. The only song sung in Japanese to ever hit the bestseller charts in the United States. It was called “Sukiyaki,” a nonsensical title that was probably one of the few Japanese words that Americans would have recognized in 1963. Di supposed that, droned as the words were and without a tune, there weren't too many people who would realize where they came from.

All they would know was that it sounded exotic, nothing like any language they'd ever heard. Tamara was supposed to be a Gypsy, they would assume it was a Gypsy spell, and
not that she'd learned the words from some sheet music she'd probably picked up at a used bookstore.

Tamara repeated the words three times more, each time getting louder. As she finished the chant the last time, she picked up the egg, and on the final
yoru,
she cracked it into the saucer.

Di faked a shriek, as any teenager would have, seeing the blood, the black sludgy stuff, and the hairy fibers, along with the half-formed chicken embryo, splayed out over the white china. Most teenagers from the heart of Cambridge wouldn't even know that it
was
a chicken embryo; all they would see would be something fetuslike.

“You see! You see!” Tamara said in triumph. “Already she has him! Already she places her curse on you and your love for him, and on him to draw him to her! Oh, you are in danger, and he is in danger, terrible, terrible danger!”

“Oh, God! Oh, God!” Di cried hysterically. “Tell me what I have to do! You must know what I have to do!”

“Fear not, I can save him, and you,” Tamara crooned soothingly. “Listen to me—I will tell you what to do.”

But Di feigned more hysteria, her hands shaking, repeating only that Tamara had to tell her what to do, had to write it down for her, finally convincing Tamara to write down her instructions when she shook and wailed too hard to “listen.” With her lip curling a little in a veiled sneer, Tamara printed everything out on a sheet of paper on a yellow pad before tearing it off, folding the paper in half, and sliding it across the table.

Di made
very
sure that not only did their hands not touch, they didn't even have their fingers on that piece of paper at the same time.

“Do not tell your parents,” cautioned Tamara. “They will not believe, and they will not understand. But you must find someone who can help you get enough money to take the curse away. We will give the money back, of course, but this girl, she puts the curse on money, for money is all she cares for. Your grandmother, maybe—?”

“Oh, yes! My gramma is the one who told me to find a Gypsy!” Di babbled, scrubbing at her face with the tissues from her purse—which she put right back in the purse when she was done. “Gramma will help me!”

There was a sly smile. “Trust in your grandmother,” Tamara crooned. “The old ones, they know. They have seen. They believe in curses, in the power of evil ones. Your grandmother will help you.”

Di babbled some more thanks, still sobbing, then grabbed her purse and rushed out before Tamara could tell her the time of her next appointment. She literally ran out the door, down the steps, and down the street, and only stopped running when she knew she was out of sight.

Not that Tamara would be concerned about her victim returning. She knew that the sort of child that Di appeared to be would phone as soon as she had her hands on the money.