The Flower Bowl Spell (18 page)

His mouth twists in thought. “Who wants to go
to Legoland before we hit San Diego?”

“Me!”

“Me, me, me, me, me me me me me!”

This is the hard part. I’ve carried on a
lively internal debate about what I should say to him, and I’m
still not sure. “Look, Tyson—”

“Who?”

“Sorry. Ty. I don’t think we’re going to make
the rest of the tour.”

His brow furrows above his sunglasses. “You
know what,” he says. “I need coffee.”

“I’ll get a refill too.”

The girls agree to stay put. They are still
savoring their dessert-like gruel.

Ty doesn’t look at me as we fill our cups.
“Is this sudden urge to jump ship because of what happened between
us?”

“No. Not at all.” Lie. “I’m probably going to
get fired, but I really need to find the girls’ mother.” I tell him
quickly about their dad and his search for their mom. I candy-coat
it like a professional confectioner.

“Jesus Christ?” Tyson says. “That’s his
name?”

“Let’s not be judgmental.”

“Damn, Memphis. What sort of people you mixed
up with these days?”

I glance at his bedeviled shades. “I could
ask you the same question.”

He shrugs and guffaws, like he gets the
joke.

“If anyone asks,” I say, “Chad or Cheradon or
anyone—don’t tell them anything, okay? Play dumb.”

He looks a little confused.

“Good,” I say. “Hold on to that
expression.”

“What exactly are you going to do?”

I wrap my hands around my coffee cup,
studying my toes for a good answer. I haven’t really figured out
that part yet, even after staying up all night huddled on the floor
next to my hotel bed with the girls’ soft breathing for
company.

Tyson swirls his coffee with a swizzle stick,
and I notice a fairy in one of the cereal dispensers behind his
head. It’s one of the Goth fairies from the concert, her azure
wings folded as she sits cross-legged on top of the cereal. She
holds a cornflake in both hands and bites into it with gusto. A
burp I can’t hear lifts her shoulders and she notices me watching.
With a scowl, she turns her back.

“Nice attitude,” I mutter, and Tyson says,
“Excuse me?”

“Nothing.”

“So, what’s your plan, Memphis?”

I decide on a partial truth. “Well. Jesus
Christ thinks Viveka might have been heading to her dad’s, so I
thought I’d start looking for her there.” Right after we stop by
Gladys Jones’s house in Santa Barbara.

“Where is her dad?”

I looked it up in the babysitting binder last
night. “Near Pasadena.”

“Great. I’ll go with.”

“Ha ha.”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I.”

“I can help,” he says.

I would like to pat him on the head and cast
a forgetfulness charm on him, but I’m trying to mend my deviant
magickal ways. At least, that’s what I resolved while I conditioned
my hair this morning. Of course, by kissing an engaged man while in
my own committed relationship, I’m creating all sorts of new
deviant ways.

“Rock star,” I say. “You have to rock
star.”

He shrugs. “We don’t have to be in SD till
tomorrow. And Pasadena isn’t too off the beaten path. We go. We
drop the girls off with their ma and pa. We continue on our merry
way.”

“But…” I think about Tyson and whatever he’s
involved with. I’ve narrowed it down to some sort of love spell,
which Cheradon probably cooked up to snag him. Why pull him deeper
into magick? Then there are the girls and what their father said
about taking care of them. I feel a need to keep them close to me.
Even if we find Viveka, I’m not sure I should give them back. “I
don’t know if their mom is really there. Or their dad.”

“Either way, we’ll go to the concert
afterwards. With or without your charges.”

“Tyson. Ty.”

“Memphis. Mem.”

We argue for a while, going back and forth.
Finally, because time is short, I lie and say fine, he can come
along. We agree to meet in half an hour out front. Tyson swallows
the last of his coffee and goes back to his room. The girls are
done eating, have cleared the table, and are reading books. I
notice the salt and pepper on our table and remember what Smarter
Me said about a witch always needing salt. I pocket one of the
saltshakers.

“Come on girls. Time to get in the car.” I
hustle them off to the elevator. Tyson will think I’m a jerk for
leaving without him, but I can’t feel bad about it—there’s simply
no time.

****

I don’t know what I expected to find at the
home of Gladys Jones, but the repellence spell enveloping her
property is more powerful than I would have given her credit
for.

My nutshell memory of Bright Vixen is a woman
who needed to eat more, with long hair of no particular color
pulled back into a bun, and an accent my mother told me was from
Queens. In the coven she was Gru’s second in command, the high
priestess in charge of setting up our sacred space as well as
breaking it down when ceremonies were over, and she kept track of
Gru’s magickal appointments and such. A sort of Wiccan personal
assistant. By day she was some Silicon Valley corporate honcha. I
never heard what happened to her after the coven dissolved, but I
guess she eventually made her way to Santa Barbara and started
selling jewelry online as Foxy Lady. I wonder what incarnation of
herself makes her happiest—the vixen or the lady?

Her house is a ranch-style on a residential
street that’s pleasant yet slightly decrepit. The neighbors own
American cars or older Japanese models, a few with sun-bleached,
peeling paint. Several lawns have gone weedy, and there are toys
and car parts scattered in the driveway of the house next door.
Gladys Jones’s house stands out in that it looks freshly painted.
The flowers out front—dahlias, sunflowers, wild roses—bloom with
health. There’s even a pretty wind chime tinkling near the front
door.

We’re standing on the sidewalk at the
beginning of the front walk, and my pulse quickens with what I
recognize is dread.

A fat gray-and-white cat sits on the front
stoop, its tail swishing. It’s wearing a thick, awkward collar with
some sort of attached box nestled under its chin. Some of my
dog-walking clients use collars like that to cure a barking dog
with puffs of citronella oil or a high-frequency whine. This cat
looks at me and yowls low in its throat. I take on its
staring-contest challenge. I think I’m about to win when it
suddenly drops onto its belly and slinks away under the
oleander.

“Where are we?” Romola asks.

I toy with various answers. “An old friend of
Gru’s—your great-grandmother—lives here.”

I touch the necklace lying at the hollow of
my throat. It buzzes under my fingertips. It’s both drawn to and
repelled by the house, or what’s inside. I let go of it and reach
out, like I’m going to touch an invisible wall, and I do. There’s
an incredible, shocking pain in my fingertips that travels up my
arm—what I imagine it would feel like to have the skin and flesh
burn and melt off my bones. Quickly, I withdraw my hand and the
pain disappears.

“Let’s go back to the car,” I say.

We sit for a few minutes with the windows
rolled down and the doors open, the day’s heat fanning over us in
unsympathetic waves. I close the moon roof against the broiling
sun.

Back in the day, I carried an emergency store
of magickal tools stuffed in an old gym bag in my trunk. Most of it
was for Auntie Tess—she’s always running out of supplies. Now I
wish I hadn’t been so hasty in throwing it away. I take off the
necklace and open it up. The face that isn’t mine is back, and at
first I’m not sure what I’m seeing. Maybe a fairy? No. It’s not
anyone I recognize although he seems familiar. It’s a man with cold
eyes. A scruffy older man.

My heart begins to race and I am suddenly
covered in sweat. Without thinking, I fling the necklace out the
open car door towards the house. There’s a faint noise—like a
switch being clicked off and then a whoosh that sends the hairs on
my arms standing at attention. The necklace falls onto the lawn. I
get out of the car and pat at the invisible wall. The repellence
spell has vanished. The house is just a house now. But I still
dread it.

I pick up the locket and toss it into the
gutter next to my car. The girls hang out the window, looking down
at it. They seem a bit worried about the way I’m treating this
bauble that looks like their mother’s.

“Why did you do that, Memphis?” Cleo
asks.

I beckon them. “Come on, girls. Let’s
go.”

They climb out of the car obediently.

“Hold my hands.”

They put their hands in mine and we walk up
the path to the front door. I let go of Romola and knock. There’s
no answer, but that doesn’t surprise me. I jiggle the lock, willing
the tumblers to tumble, and they do. We go inside and stand in a
modest foyer. The fat cat with the funny collar trots in behind us.
He looks around before sitting on the welcome mat and begins
grooming his face.

Something is beeping, and I understand why
Gladys doesn’t feel the need to use a deadbolt. There’s a security
system mounted next to the front door. It’s been triggered and will
call a central office and the police if I don’t think fast. I study
the keypad and quickly enter 3699, the numerals that correspond to
the letters F-O-X-Y. I hit the off button and it works.

We all take a deep breath. The girls look at
me and we smile and chuckle.

“Phew!” I say, wiping real and imaginary
sweat from my brow.

“This is Gramma Gru’s friend’s house, right?”
Romola asks. “And your friend too?”

I give it a think. I was a child when last I
saw Bright Vixen, and she never seemed interested in children.
“Depends on your definition of friend. But sure, in a way.”

We look around. The walls are papered in
pink-and-cream stripes over a cream-painted wainscoting. To our
left is a living room full of mid-twentieth-century furniture.
Everything is impeccable. Everything is still.

From the back of the house I hear an
appliance buzzing steadily. I tell the girls to sit on the couch
and walk past a dining area into a breakfast nook and kitchen. The
buzzing comes from the refrigerator, like every other refrigerator
in the world. Sliding glass doors lead out to the garden. There’s a
swimming pool, aquamarine and kidney-shaped.

Something floats in it, something larger than
a leaf but smaller than a child. I unlatch the door and slide it
open. I unhook a long-poled net from the fence and use it to fish
the thing out. It drips, sodden, in my hands. It’s a doll, a woman
with yarn hair wearing a brown suit. I squeeze it and water gushes
out of its lifeless, bloated body. I squeeze it again and again and
the water keeps coming. Something falls out of it—a lock of wet,
bland hair. In my hands, the doll’s painted-on eyes regard me with
an expression that tells me I’m too late.

I run back into the house and search through
the rooms—a bathroom, a workshop, a guest room. At the very back of
the house is the master bedroom. Gladys is lying in bed face up,
her arms up on either side of her head the way Cleo sleeps.

“Gladys?” I say softly. “Bright Vixen?”

Already, I know she’s dead, and I become very
aware of everything I’ve touched. I take a handkerchief from my
pocket and use it to turn Gladys towards me. The whites of her eyes
are blood red, and water sloshes out of her nostrils and mouth,
smelling lightly of chlorine. Her skin is blue and puffy, yet she
is dry. She is bone dry.

My throat clenches, my stomach heaves. I’m
just deciding whether or not to give in to my body’s reaction when
I hear a small voice behind me.

“Memphis?”

I turn and start to say, “Go back to the
living room, girls,” before I realize that it’s not them.

It’s her. Gladys stands near the bedroom
doorway—
stands
being a general term, since the only parts of
her that I can really make out are her face, shoulders, and hands.
The rest is obscured in a darkening fog that I realize is my own
vision.

“Who would do this to me?” She is crying,
chin trembling, lips pressed together.

“Don’t you know?”

“No.” But she hesitates, looks away. Can
ghosts really lie?

“You have an idea.”

She looks at me imploringly. “We thought we
were going to be strong again. Together.” She shakes her head. “I
miss my life. I want it back. I want all of it back.”

“I’m so sorry,” I say.

“I didn’t know it would go this far.” She
fades away and I am left alone with her body. I run to the bathroom
and vomit my continental breakfast into the toilet.

****

Like any disciplined witch, Bright Vixen has
a well-stocked magickal cabinet. Under normal
circumstances—whatever those are—I would not rummage around in a
sister’s stuff, never mind use any of it, but she is gone. She
won’t mind.

The cabinet is in the kitchen, among her
everyday cooking things. I toss her effigy on a chopping block and
sort through the bottles of herbs, spices, and brews. Not all are
labeled so I have to use my nose, sniffing about like a hound to
raise the memories and recognize what I need. My hands tremble, and
I knock over some of the containers more than once.

Romola wanders in from the living room,
trailed by her sister. “What are you doing?”

“Nothing exciting. Go back to the living room
and watch some TV, okay? Whatever you want.”

They comply and the sounds of a late morning
PBS kids’ show relax me. I take a big breath and pull out a jar of
dried basil, a tin of dried white rose petals, and a vial of
cypress bark. Along with a bottle of olive oil from the pantry and
a mortar and pestle on the countertop, I think I have everything I
need.

A pinch of this, a sprinkling of that, and I
grind everything up into a paste. With a basting brush, I paint the
doll with the concoction, light the gas stove, and set it on fire
in a pan. In the ensuing smoke, the highlights of Gladys’s life
unfurl.