The Flower Bowl Spell (17 page)

“But she was in your room.”

“You mean here at the hotel? My room here?” I
look over to Bill, but he just shrugs. “That’s not possible. I
would know.” I say this more with more bravado than I feel.

“I saw her!” His voice is full of
desperation. “She was lying on the balcony.” He looks at his hands,
the cuts and nicks. “I tried to open the latch but my hands shook
too much. So I picked up a chair and I threw it.” He pauses, his
eyes tracking the memory. “But she was gone. When I got out there,
she was gone.” He looks up at me. “So my question to you, witch, is
what did you do with my wife?”

I swallow. “Non-practicing witch,” I say.
Even breaths
, I remind myself.
Steady heartbeats
.
“And Viveka was one too, you know. And I’ve done nothing with her.”
But someone has. I give Bill a good cosmic going-over, but he’s
clean.

I turn back to Jesus Christ. “I wish I could
tell you where Viveka is—” I do a quick magickal check, just in
case. Nada. “But I don’t know. She’s not here, though. I’m sure I’d
sense her.”

His eyebrows raise. “Sense her? You know, she
was never a believer.” J.C. slumps back down to a sitting position,
the fire gone from his eyes. He glances at me with heavy lids and a
tear streaks its way down his cheek. “You must be Memphis.”

Hm. My reputation precedes me. “Yes. How did
you know that?”

“She has spoken very little of the past she
renounced in the name of the one true God, but she has mentioned
you. A powerful witch, she told me.”

Well, I can’t deny that I’m flattered.

“I’m a sinner and a heretic to you, if I
understand Viv’s current religious course,” I say. “You must have
felt triumphant in converting her.”

He smiles a sad, weary smile. “We’re all
sinners, Miss Memphis. We’re trying our best to be one with
God.”

His words give me pause. Not about God, but
about being one. “Do you think that’s why Viveka disappeared? Is
she trying to become one with God?”

His features cloud, the lines on his face
casting ashy shadows on his brown skin, and his apprehension
becomes more palpable. “I’m sure it’s more mundane than that.” Viv
said they were having problems. He sits for a while in silence with
his thoughts. “If you will pardon me, I must pray.” He bows his
head and clasps his hands.

“Of course.” I turn back to Bill, who is
trying to clear his still sore throat discreetly.

“Okay Bill, don’t lie to me.” I turn fully on
him. “I know there’s more to your story than letting this guy into
my room for a fat gratuity. Spill.”

Bill coughs freely now. He appears to be
wracking his pea-brain, and I crack the knuckles in my fingers. And
then—ding ding ding!—his face brightens. “There was a guy—a scruffy
older dude. He wanted into your room—your old room, I mean—before
you checked in this afternoon. He said he had stayed there a few
nights ago—when I wasn’t on duty—and that he’d forgotten something.
So I let him in.” He shrugs. “That’s all.”

I concentrate a moment, but Bill’s aura is
bullshit-free. “All right. I believe you.” A scruffy older guy. For
some reason that rings a bell, but I can’t remember which one.
Damned expired memory enchantment!

“Are you really a witch?” There is awe in
Bill’s voice.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” I sigh.

Jesus Christ stands up, startling both Bill
and me.

“Please,” he says. “I must apologize for my
outburst earlier. It is God’s will that I am a passionate man. It
is my cross. Tell me more of what you know.”

I’m not sure what he wants, so I explain my
need to go on a business trip, about my reluctance to bring the
girls along, about my inability to figure out an alternative that
Viveka would approve. I tell him everything, leaving out only our
magickal encounters—those would probably only raise his “passions.”
He listens, his eyes glued to a place far away, and I’m glad. He
only looks up when I pull from my pocket the permission slip to
take care of the girls that Viveka gave me.

Jesus studies it intently, holding the paper
up to his face with both hands, then away, like Cooper does when
he’s too lazy to put on his glasses. “That is her handwriting,” he
says, sounding regretful. “She has been much distraught since her
mother’s suicide.”

“Sadie committed suicide? Viveka said she
drowned.”

“In the bathtub.” He frowns. “It was
strange.. Most suicides slash their wrists before the bath. How she
managed to keep herself under so long without resisting the urge to
breathe…” He trails off and looks at me. “Viveka is convinced it
was an accident. She does not want to think her mother has not gone
to her reward in Heaven.”

“It does seem odd,” I murmur. My thoughts
dart around. “I still don’t understand why Viv left the girls with
me.”

“I was at a church leadership conference in
Belize,” he says. “I’m a minister. Did you know that, Miss
Memphis?”

“Holy Revival Redeemer.”

“That’s right.” He smiles. “I returned home
early to an empty house. I was not expecting this. There was a note
from my wife saying she had taken the children to California to
visit some friends of her mother.”

“Did you try calling her?”

“Yes, I called her.” His voice grows
impatient.

“’Course you did, dude,” says Bill
soothingly. I nod in agreement—it’s best to keep this one calm. I
reach out to J.C. with my mind and catch a flash of his hand
whipping through the air connecting with warm skin and, underneath
it, muscle and bone. I feel the ghost of a sting across my cheek
and remind myself that this has not happened, that this is only
what he wants to do.

“I called her,” he says, his tone now more
miserable than heated. “She never answered. I waited a day. Then I
decided to find her.”

Indeed. I never knew she and Sadie were that
close. I try not to envy them, as I do others, their close
mother-daughter bond. I know I’ll grieve for my mom when her time
comes, but I can’t imagine needing to go off somewhere by myself
because of it.

“Did you try Gru’s?”

“My wife and her grandmother had a falling
out years ago.”

“What about?”

He gives me a look that says,
do you
really have to ask?

“Religion,” I guess.

“Me.”

Same diff. “They were never really
close.”

“That’s what my wife has told me.” He shakes
his head at some private thought. “It must be her father she is
visiting.”

I try to find her with my mind again. Still
nothing.

“I will go.” J.C. starts to stand but stops
and looks at me. “Unless…you want to prevent me.”

I shake my head. “Why would I do that? I want
to know where she is too. But what about your daughters?” He should
take them, I tell myself, even as I’m not convinced. What am I,
family court? Then again, maybe children don’t always belong with
their parents.

He straightens up, a frown on his face. “I am
not—I am not the one who cares for them, primarily. I travel so
often. Miss Memphis, can I impose on your maternal generosity a
while longer?”

This sounds suspiciously chauvinistic to me.
I suppose anyone with female plumbing will do when it comes to
watching out for his girls. Even a witch.

“Besides,” he continues. “I don’t know what I
might find once I locate my wife.”

This is true. I try not to imagine the
possibilities. They seem boundless.

“All right.” I sigh. I must be insane. But
the fairy is nodding his head in approval. I look at Bill, who
seems riveted by our conversation now. All he needs is a bowl of
popcorn. “I’ll be back in San Francisco day after tomorrow. Will
you come to my place and take the girls home?”

“I promise, Miss Memphis. I love them. They
are my children. They are God’s gift to me.”

I nod politely and look away. I feel his eyes
on me and look back. He is staring at my locket.

“It’s not hers.” I open it up and show him
the empty inside. “My boyfriend gave it to me.”

He nods. “Hers was a gift from her
mother.”

“From Sadie.”

He nods again.

I think about what this might mean. Sadie
must have stayed friends with Gladys Jones aka Bright Vixen. I
wonder what Gladys knows about Sadie’s “suicide.” Before we head
down to San Diego tomorrow, I’ll stop by her place for a little
chat.

My eyes wander over the drying blood on
J.C.’s arms. “You should get those cuts taken care of.”

Bill comes alive, holding out the bandages
and gauze. Jesus Christ takes them. “Thank you. Thank you both.” He
starts to leave, then turns back. “May God exalt you.”

I smile. “Thanks.”

Jesus Christ sprints over to a big SUV and
climbs in. We watch him drive away.

“Hey,” Bill says after the roar of the car’s
engine has faded away. “Are you, like, all-powerful?”

“Do you think if I were all-powerful I’d be
in this mess?”

He doesn’t say anything. I look up at the
shelves, but the fairy is gone.

Chapter Sixteen

Tyson is covering my breasts with hot, wet
kisses. We are naked, pressed up against each other, and I open my
legs to encircle his torso. We grind a little, our sweat making us
more slippery, and he reaches up and kisses me deeply. I am holding
onto his hair with one hand, grabbing his ass with the other. With
delicate probing, I guide him inside me. We are trying to be
quiet—there are others nearby and we can’t wake them up, but it
makes what we’re doing even sicker and therefore hotter. I groan,
open my eyes, and the dream is over.

Fortunately, I didn’t wake Viveka’s girls
with my X-rated reverie. They are already in the bathroom brushing
their teeth and getting dressed.

I sit up in bed. I really need to pee, and I
hope that when I do all this pent-up sexual tension will go away as
my bladder shrinks.

What the hell am I going to do?

****

The girls are going to town on bowls of
oatmeal, which they’ve doctored with copious amounts of brown
sugar, honey, banana slices, and cream.

“Mama never lets us have this much bad
stuff!” Romola says, licking her lips and spoon.

“Live it up.” I sip a cup of scalding black
coffee and reach for a piece of dry wheat toast from the hotel’s
continental breakfast bar.

We’re surrounded by a heady mix of fellow
travelers in the lobby’s breakfast room: rotund vacationing
families who barely speak as they turn their docile gazes to the
TV, tuned to CNN; Middle Eastern businessmen wearing suit pants and
white, open-collared shirts; aged bus-tour folk. None of the Yeah
Right/Arsenic Playground posse has made an appearance yet. I would
have slept until our 12 p.m. checkout as well, but the little
lasses under my care had other ideas. To look at them, you wouldn’t
know they’re operating on fewer than six hours of shut-eye. That
can’t be healthy for little girls. Me, I’m used to insomnia nights,
but I can’t tolerate hangovers and this is what I feel now, even
though I didn’t drink a drop yesterday. This is a magick
hangover.

After Bill scurried off to his bellhop post,
I went back to the room and stayed up into the wee hours. I read
tarot cards, meditated, and threw every revelatory spell I know at
that damn locket. Someone really wants me to work hard at getting
it open, as it were. Is it to protect that someone, or to protect
me? I wonder. I even checked all of our hotel room’s vents for
traces of fairy. Not a speck of pixie dust. Around almost four, I
fell asleep only to dream about getting caught in an avalanche as I
skied down a mountain toward a giant, pool-sized hot toddy.
Underneath the rocks and snow and ice, I was paralyzed and could
barely move or breathe, until Tyson miraculously pulled me out.
Then the porno portion began.

As I blow on my burnt coffee, my dreamland
Lothario slides into the seat next to me. His sunglasses are on,
his shoulders hunched under a black cowboy shirt. He looks the way
I feel. I make a point of giving him a friendly smile.

“Tyson!” Cleo squeaks. “Tyson, Tyson, Tyson,
Tyson, Tyson.”

“Ladies.” He holds his hands up and the girls
high-five him, the sounds of their glancing slaps like kitten
sneezes.

“So what happened last night?” he asks me in
a low voice. For a minute, I think he means the kiss or possibly
even my horny little nightmare, but he says, “Chad said someone
broke into your room. That’s not cool.” He points his thumbs at the
girls.

“A misunderstanding.” I keep my voice quiet
as well, even as I feel my cheeks starting to flame. “It’ll all be
cleared up soon, I’m sure.” I have to wonder at these half-truths
I’ve gotten so used to telling. Do I have a bottomless bag of them,
or will I someday run out?

Tyson doesn’t press me. He turns to the
girls. “How you pipsqueaks doing?”

“Our Daddy is sad,” Cleo says in the same
voice she might report what goodies Santa left in her stocking.
Romola, looking embarrassed, grabs her sister’s arm and shushes
her. I stare at Cleo.

“What—how—what makes you say that, Cleo?” I
have trouble spitting out my words.

“Because he is. I looked at his dream.” She
nods. “He thought he saw Mommy sleeping but that was my dream. I
left it here yesterday. On the…what’s that called outside our
room?”

“The balcony,” Romola says.

“The balcony.” Cleo nods again.

“What?” Tyson looks at me.

“Toddler talk,” I mutter. But my mind is
working OT. I’ve heard of some witches that can remove their dreams
from their memories and play them back for others or themselves. If
Cleo is saying what I think she’s saying, Jesus Christ mistook his
daughter’s dream for his wife. Well, that would explain
that
.

“Hey, space cadet.” Tyson snaps his fingers
under my nose.

“Sorry.”