VenCo(61)

Ricky held up one torn paper above her head. “Okay, found it! Let’s do this. First, I’m going to need to revise it a bit. It’s for bringing back stolen goods, and since the spoons were technically stolen from Low and Company in 1892, it might work. But we don’t need the spoons to come back to us—that will take too long. We just want to know where to go and get the last one. Sort of a pickup-not-delivery kind of situation.”

Ricky started taking off her jacket.

“So, do I need to, like, prepare somehow? Like, take stuff off too . . .”

“Yeah, your pants need to come off,” Ricky responded, folding her blazer and placing it on the ground.

Lucky stared at her a moment, but then thought, fuck it, and started to unbutton her black jeans.

“Jeez, I’m only kidding.” Ricky laughed real big. “No, no, I just need to get to my kit. You relax for a minute.” She got down on her knees on top of the folded jacket. “Just keep your pants on.” Then she laughed at her own joke while Lucky pulled her zipper back up.

“A comedian, eh? If this . . . thing . . . doesn’t work out for you, you should get in touch with Comedy Central.”

Ricky took off her hat, revealing short hair streaked silver and black, almost skunk-like. She slipped out of her suspenders and unbuttoned her dress shirt, whispering prayers the whole time, glancing at the sky now and then. Lucky felt like she was intruding on something deeply personal and shifted her gaze to the skeletal truck, noticing small reflective eyes watching her from the fire-damaged chassis, a raccoon wary of their noise. Ricky reached behind her back and pulled a long roll of red fabric from her waistband. She placed it in front of her on the jacket and gave it a push, and it unrolled like a sleeping bag.

“Alright, I know I have it here . . .” She pulled out scissors and a whittling knife and tightly wound scrolls, branches, and test tubes with cork stoppers, each held in narrow pockets sewn into the fabric. She pulled a smooth black rock from one pouch and dug around in the space behind it, her fingers reaching to the bottom of the pocket.

“Ah! Here it is.”

She’d found a swatch of pink velvet, folded over like an envelope. She put it in the centre of one palm and picked the flaps open with her other hand. Lucky leaned in. There was nothing . . . almost nothing. Just some old slivers of wood. “What’s that?”

“Wood from the old Low jewelry store. It used to be a church and a meetinghouse, did you know that?”

“Yeah, but how did you get them?” Lucky didn’t realize they’d been whispering until Ricky spoke at a regular volume again.

“Prepared, is all. Knew it was coming. Where’s your car?” Ricky was back in her jacket and hat like a proper gentleman, with three small slivers cradled in her right hand. Lucky imagined Stella waking and coming outside at this exact moment. No one would blame her for feeling confused, walking in on this odd scene. She herself was confused.

“Since the spell is to bring back stolen goods—if we focus, both of us, now, on the theft of the spoons, the original gathering of the implements from their owner, then this will work.”

“But aren’t the spoons ours? Or at least Sarah’s? She was the one who hexed them.”

Ricky laughed. “Hexed. God, you are a newbie. Yes. The intent of the spoons belongs to Sarah. But the spoons themselves, as physical objects, were designed, crafted, and paid for by the Low company. We need to really understand that. Think on it.” She paused, watching Lucky in profile. “Come, girl, think on it!”

Lucky snapped her eyes shut and breathed out slowly. Okay, Seth Low came back from Germany. He had an idea, a directive, to make these spoons. So he drafted them up . . .

She could see him, sitting at a desk lit by an oil lamp. The office had electricity, but Seth didn’t want to waste it. People said it was abundant, electricity, this new thing. But he didn’t believe them. Everything but the Lord was finite . . .

Lucky opened her eyes. “I saw him. I mean . . . I heard him too. His thoughts.”

“Who?”

“The man who made the spoons.” Lucky was a little shocked. She had seen him as if watching a movie, clear, in colour. She understood his motives and methods.

“Good, good. You have a bit of a seer about you, then. Keep thinking on him. Go back.”

Lucky closed her eyes.

That is why only the Lord could be trusted. Lamplight would suffice. It was just a spoon, and he already had the basic design. He just needed to refine the lines of the witch and the broom and the pins, keeping it simple for the smithies’ sakes and for his own—the image had to project a warning.

Symbols of evil—the hag. Symbols of God’s ire—the pins. The tie-in to the historical events of his hometown and the way he would sell them—letters spelling SALEM down the handle. Yes, good. Perfect. He felt pride, ownership, a sense of purpose.

“Do you have it? His claim over them?” Ricky’s voice came from far away, somewhere outside of the simple office room where Lucky watched Seth work.

“Yes. He is proud. He thinks this will keep his name alive and make him important to important men.”

“Good, good, now come back, but bring that feeling with you.”

Lucky retreated from the desk, from the room, until the circle of light from Seth’s oil lamp was just a flickering speck in a larger constellation. For a moment she wondered what those other pinpoints of light were . . . Other rooms, perhaps? Maybe she could see other people, if she just moved around . . .