He nodded slowly, holding my gaze. “I heard about that through the grapevine. Congratulations.”
“Thank you.” I was embarrassed that I hadn’t reached out to tell Carlos that Sailor and I had gotten engaged. But it had felt awkward to pick up the phone and call him to deliver the news out of the blue. After all, usually I called him about murder. Although I liked to think of Carlos as a friend, the truth was that ours was not a typical friendship. Also, although their relationship had progressed a little, he still wasn’t wild about Sailor. “I guess it’s been a while since I’ve seen you.”
He nodded.
“Speaking of engagements,” I continued, “my grandmother and her friends are set to arrive any day now. I’m not sure how long they’ll stay, so we’ve sort of moved up the wedding timetable. We’re having a handfasting in two weeks, in Bolinas.”
“What’s a handfasting?”
“It’s a traditional witchy wedding, usually held outside, in a natural setting. We’re not certain if Bronwyn will get her certification to officiate in time, so we might have to do the legal ceremony later. But the handfasting will be the real ceremony, the one that counts. I would love it if you would join us.”
His mouth kicked up on one side. I imagined he was thinking, What if Sailor is still in jail? I decided to cross that bridge if and when we came to it.
“I would be honored, Lily,” said Carlos. But there was something else in his eyes, something I couldn’t put my finger on. Sailor always insisted that reading minds wasn’t all it was cracked up to be, but I thought it would make my life a lot easier if I could do it.
“All right.” Carlos finished off his Irish coffee and wiped a little cream from his lips with a cocktail napkin. “So, a man you haven’t seen or heard from in fifteen years, whom you barely knew in the first place, arrived in town yesterday, stopped by your shop and threatened you, then got dead at the hands of someone who looks like your fiancé, walks like your fiancé, and talks like your fiancé but who is not, in fact, your fiancé. Is that about the size of it?”
I nodded.
“You know, Lily, if anyone else told me this story, I’d say they were full of it.”
“But you believe me?”
“I don’t not believe you. Did Dupree have any enemies in town that you know about?”
“I have no idea. But I’m going to find out, sure as shootin’.”
If only I knew how to get started.
Chapter 7
First things first: I wanted to see Sailor. I pleaded with Carlos. Cajoled. Threatened, even—politely, of course.
Carlos was unmoved. “Do you know what time it is? Visiting hours are over, Lily. You can see him in the morning, and that’s final. I’m sure you remember the basic rules: no head coverings, bare midriff, miniskirts, gang-related clothing, orange clothing that resembles inmate clothing, or anything that reveals undergarments.”
“You don’t know the regulations for visitation by heart?”
“I didn’t want to show off,” he said with a smile. “And by the way, if I hear there’s been any funny stuff happening there, I’m going to be most displeased.”
“Funny stuff?”
“Some member of the jail staff suddenly deciding to allow an after-hours visit between you and Sailor, for example. If I catch a whiff of you pulling some sort of magical shenanigans, I’m gonna be pissed. I’m your friend, but I’m also a cop. I’ll do what I can to help, but don’t push me.”
“No shenanigans, magical or otherwise, I promise. Could you at least check on Sailor, make sure he’s okay?”
“He’s fine.”
“Maybe give him a message?”
“That much I can do.”
I wrote a note and cast a quick comforting spell over it. Folded it, and sealed it with a kiss.
“I said no magic stuff.”
“It’s just a kiss, Carlos. It doesn’t actually do anything.”
“All right, then. You can see him at nine in the morning. I’ll leave word.”
“Thank you.”
“Lily.” Carlos hesitated. “I assume you’re going to try to find out what’s going on.”
“Yes. Please don’t try to talk me out of it, because it won’t work.”
“I wasn’t going to. Something weird is happening here, and you’re probably the only person who has the skills to find out what that is. But be careful. It’s a safe bet that whoever killed Tristan Dupree and framed Sailor for the crime has targeted you as well.”
After declining Carlos’s offer of an escort home, I waved good-bye to him and lingered outside the Buena Vista, gazing out at the dark bay waters and trying to decide what to do next.
Where in the world should I start?
A group of young people jostled along the sidewalk, stumbling toward the Buena Vista for a final nightcap before it closed. This area of the waterfront wasn’t as mobbed with tourists as Pier 39, a few blocks away, but it enjoyed its fair share of visitors, due to the terminus of the Powell-Hyde cable car line. Couples walked arm in arm, peeking into art gallery windows that displayed watercolors and limited-edition silk screens of the Golden Gate Bridge, Lombard Street, and other iconic scenes of San Francisco. Nearby stood the Cannery and the Ghirardelli chocolate factory, relics of a time when there was actual manufacturing in this part of town. The old redbrick buildings had long since been renovated and turned into boutiques, restaurants, and bars that teemed with people having a good time.
I wasn’t one of them.
The thought of Sailor sitting in jail—facing murder charges, no less—clawed at my belly with a mixture of dread and fear and anxiety about the future. He hadn’t done it, had he? Surely not. If Dupree had been immediately threatening to me, I could imagine Sailor being capable of violence. But beating a man to death with his bare hands, then calmly heading out of the building while casually checking his watch? No. That was not Sailor.
For want of any other bright ideas, I borrowed a cell phone from the bartender who stood on the sidewalk taking a smoke break. I called a friend, then headed over to the Hotel Marais, on Bush Street.
* * *
? ? ?
Sailor was the best necromancer I knew. Second best was Hervé Le Mansec, a voodoo priest who owns a nifty little magical-supply shop on Valencia. I didn’t know much about voodoo, but Hervé was a powerful practitioner; in a city full of charlatans, Hervé was the real deal. Also, he had become a good friend—the kind I could call and ask to meet me in the middle of the night.
“What’s up?” Hervé asked when we met on Bush Street, just down the block from the Chinatown gates. He looked relaxed and wide-awake, despite the hour. Luckily a lot of us magical folk are night owls.
“A man was killed here earlier in the evening,” I said. “I’m hoping you might be able to communicate with him.”
Hervé looked skeptical. “You know it hardly ever works that way, right? Even if I am able to make contact, trauma victims rarely remember what happened just prior to death.”
“I know. But he might be able to tell you if someone had been threatening him, or what he was after. He came to see me, searching for something he thought I’d stolen from him.”
“What was it?”
“That’s one of the very many things I don’t know. Just . . . Really, I’d rather not say too much ahead of time. But if you can make contact and get any information at all from him, I’ll be better off than I am right now.”
He inclined his head. Hervé wasn’t particularly tall, but he was powerfully built, with the thick physique of a rugby player. In his public role as a voodoo priest, he spoke with a lilting Jamaican accent, but in actuality he hailed from Los Angeles and had been raised Catholic.
“I appreciate your meeting me here at this hour. Please apologize to your wife for me. Again.”
Hervé’s wife, Caterina, was yet another person who didn’t like me, though in this case it was probably for good reason. This wasn’t the first time I’d asked Hervé for help after hours. Well after hours.