Night Film(137)

“My daughter had this in her pocket. What the hell is it?”

Cleo rose, stepping toward me. She was wearing a white embroidered peasant blouse, jeans, her red Doc Martens, her hands and wrists laden with the same silver bracelets and rings as before. She scrutinized the serpent without getting too close to it and then turned, stepping to the cluttered shelves in the back, returning with a pair of latex gloves.

She snapped them on, carefully took the figurine—as if it were a dangerous explosive—and took it over to the table.

“You just found this?”

“Yes.” I pulled up a metal folding chair, sitting across from her. “But I’ve seen it once before. Another child I encountered recently had it.”

She turned it over in her hands, shaking it, listening to the interior.

I could see now, in the strong red light overhead, the wood was intricately carved, every scale, fin, and tooth polished and pointed. The beast’s leering expression looked lecherous, lips curled back, tongue protruding.

“Could it be used to mark a person?” I asked. “Give them some type of, I don’t know, devil’s marking? Have you heard of something called huella del mal? Evil’s footprint?”

Cleo didn’t seem to hear me, setting the serpent down at the center of the table. Bending forward, with great concentration, she grabbed it by the tail—which coiled up and over the body—sliding the figurine in a slow counterclockwise circle. She did this three times, the only sound in the room the figurine’s jarring rasping on the wood.

Suddenly she whipped her hand away as if she’d been scalded, the snake falling onto its side.

“What?” I asked quickly.

She looked disconcerted. “You didn’t see that?”

“No. What?”

With a deep breath, Cleo reached out again, grabbing the tail.

“Watch the shadow,” she whispered.

I was so flooded with adrenaline, I could hardly bring myself to focus on the deliberate movement.

And then I saw what she meant.

The shadow—resolutely black on the table—did not naturally follow the object. Instead, it froze as if snagged on something invisible, quivering with tension, the shadow’s tongue elongating, pulling far out behind the figurine before swiftly snapping back into place and moving normally. Amazed, I blinked, leaning in, certain my eyes were playing tricks on me, but within seconds, it happened again.

And again.

She reversed the direction, moving the figurine clockwise, and the shadow behaved ordinarily.

“How is it possible?” I asked.

“I don’t know.” She set down the figurine. “I told you I’m not proficient in black magic. I’ve never seen anything like this.”

“But you’ve read something about it. In your extensive witch education.”

She looked at me. “I can’t help you. You need to visit a real practitioner of black magic.”

“I don’t know a real practitioner of black magic. I only know you, so you’re getting to the bottom of this, even if it means we sit here for two weeks figuring it out.”

I leapt to my feet, the folding chair falling backward with a crack as I raced to the back of the room. The counters were disordered, burnt candles and ashtrays, scraps of paper scribbled with recipes for spells, battered notebooks, plastic sachets of powders marked YES and NO, jars of black ashes. The shelves were crammed to the ceiling with musty texts.

Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage. 777 and Other Qabalistic Writings of Aleister Crowley.

Cleo was suddenly beside me. “Calm down.”

The Evil Eye. Book of Tobit. The Essential Nostradamus. I yanked down Encyclopedia of Popular 19th Century Spells from the top shelf, black paperbacks showering the floor, a red pentagram on the cover.

“You’ll make it worse,” Cleo said. “Potent black magic around an unstable mind is like enriched uranium near a fuse.”

I opened the encyclopedia, scanning the contents page.

“There might be another option,” Cleo said. “But it’s a long shot.”

I looked at her. “What the hell are you waiting for?”

She looked grudgingly at her watch, sighed, and moved to the back corner, where there was a small sink, stacks of notebooks, and a bulletin board propped on the counter laden with papers. She lifted the pages, looking for something, riffling through hand-drawn maps of Witch Country, Pennsylvania, a pamphlet from The Crystal Science League, the timeline of John the Conqueror, photographs of Enchantments employees, the Magical Practitioner’s Code of Ethics. She inspected a small scrap tacked underneath a postcard of a demonic-looking man and took it down, grabbing the cordless phone off the counter.

I stepped beside her.

It was a faded classified ad circled in red pen and torn from a newspaper. It read simply FOR THE GRIMMEST SITUATION ONLY, followed by a phone number, the area code 504.

“That’s your expert? Are you kidding?”

“I said it was a long shot,” Cleo snapped, dialing the number.

I took the paper. On the reverse side there was a half-torn headline that read FLOODING SUSPENDS, and above that, The Lafourche Gazette, November 8, 1983.

“No answer,” Cleo said.

“Try again.”

Sighing, she pressed redial.

After another three tries, she shook her head.