Booke grabbed my arm, forceful when he had to be. “None of that,” he cautioned me in an undertone. “We’ve a job to do.”
“Yes, sir.”
He cut me a chiding look for the sarcasm and led the way toward the private sales floor. Though he’d never been to this shop before, apparently he was familiar with the premise. The room was filled with short shelves covered in esoteric supplies: wands, chalices, athames, and spell components, cunningly arrayed. There was a young woman at the counter this time, and I let out a small sigh of relief. Not subtle, it seemed, as the clerk focused on me.
“You’re glad not to see my great-aunt.” She had strawberry blond curls, blue eyes, and she hardly looked old enough to be out of high school, but something told me her baby face was deceptive.
So I didn’t bother to dissemble. “Maybe a little.”
“She’s retired now. In recent years she’d gotten a bit . . . odd, which makes for poor customer service.”
Too many demons wandering in and out of her head, I thought, but didn’t say so out loud.
The girl went on, “I’m Karen. If you need anything specific, have questions, or can’t find what you’re looking for, let me know. If we don’t stock it, I’m sure I can special order what you need.” There was a reassuring solidity behind her prettiness, making me think I wouldn’t converse with any demons through her anytime soon.
“I have a list,” Booke cut in.
His accent made Karen take notice, as did most Texan females. She brought him colorful powders, stored in glass vials, small ceramic figures, various herbs and liquids. It was like watching an alchemist prepare to transmute lead into gold—while carrying on a courtly flirtation. At the end of the transaction, she slipped him a business card, and I didn’t think it was for special orders. I grinned at him as we went out to the Pinto, parked at a meter a block away. We passed Popeyes on the way, so the air smelled like fried chicken and biscuits. He didn’t notice, too busy smirking.
I teased gently, “You should be ashamed, the way they tumble for you. What about Dolores?”
“She and I shared an amicable, somewhat calisthenic evening, not to be repeated.” He held up a hand as I swung into the car, forestalling my commentary. “At her request, not mine. She knows I’m leaving and isn’t interested in playing at a long-distance romance.”
“I’m glad you were up front with her.”
“I don’t lie to women to get what I want. I’m not a scoundrel,” he said in an aggrieved tone, but his word choice made me laugh.
“I think you mean ‘dog’ or ‘player.’”
“My original point stands.” He changed the subject, becoming brisk. “Is there a safe place where I can craft my foci?”
Starting the Pinto, I thought about that. There was no way I’d condone any magickal shenanigans where I was staying; no more complications for the Ortiz family. At one point, I’d used an Escobar safe house, but I wouldn’t go there without the boss’s sanction. My options in Texas were limited . . . and then I had it.
“If you’re not picky, yes.”
“I just need quiet and room to work,” he said.
“Then this will suffice.”
Making a decision, I put the car in gear, backed out of the parking space, and drove toward Ramon’s trailer, where Chuch had stashed me when I was laying low after a long day of driving the Montoya cartel crazy. Hopefully, nobody had rented the place. If so, I’d claim to be lost, and try to find an alternative. But from what I remembered, it was more of a crash pad than a home.
Booke and I bickered amicably as we rolled toward our penultimate destination. I teased him about his lady-killer moves and he gave as good as he got. It was good to see him acting normal, a man with a future instead of one who had given up on happiness. When I found him at the ghost cottage, he’d seemed so beaten, so hopeless. I never wanted to see him that way again.
The Pinto rode like a horse wagon, no shocks to speak of, but at least if I lost this ride or it got blown up, Chuch wouldn’t stroke out over it. Given how things were shaping up, either possibility seemed plausible. I was lucky I remembered the route Chuch had taken when he delivered me here, past the highway, past town, past everything worth seeing.
This RV park was a little slice of hell. Trash lay in moldering heaps, rusted carburetors and engines up on blocks. As I recalled from my last visit, one trailer nearby had license plates all over it, and the diagonal neighbor collected hubcaps. Stolen, I was sure. Trees featured sparsely in the landscaping, but on the plus side, if you were looking for broken glass to do an abstract mosaic, you only had to look down. Plastic bags blew in the wind, tangling in the scrubby bushes. As I parked in front of a run-down single-wide, Booke stared.
“Do they even have trailer parks in the U.K.?” I wondered aloud.
“Yes, but they’re called caravans . . . and they’re nothing like this.”
I imagined not. The cracks in the underpinning had gotten worse, so that the vinyl hung completely askew on one side. For obvious reasons, the door wasn’t locked. Since I’d been inside once, I thought I was prepared; only I wasn’t—but not for the reasons I expected. Someone had hauled off the plaid purple couch, and the stained brown carpet had been removed too. The subfloor had been covered in new vinyl, and it wasn’t catastrophically ugly. Nobody would ever mistake it for real Italian tile, but it was a big improvement. All of the rubbish had been hauled away, and it now smelled of orange cleaner. Judging by his remodeling efforts, Ramon was seriously trying to rent the place out; the area was undesirable, but price it low and somebody would jump at it. This wasn’t a large trailer, but it had a kitchenette, along with some typical mobile features like a table and dinette, a small living area, minuscule bath, and a bedroom large enough to house a queen-sized bed.
Booke surveyed the space, then gave an approving nod. “I can work at the pull-down table.”
“Go for it.”
I went into the bedroom to find the stained mattress had been removed and the walls scrubbed down. It smelled clean in here too. Strange to think while I had been in Sheol, people I knew had been going about their ordinary lives. Yet that didn’t sound boring to me at all. I longed for the day when work and paying the bills constituted my biggest problem.
Since there was nowhere else to wait, I returned to the main room and sat down on the dining bench, careful not to disrupt Booke. His hands were quick and elegant as he laid the sigils that would protect his work. Not that it was demon magick, but you could never be sure what spells would attract attention. Best not to put all that shimmering energy out as a lure.
I’d worked as a witch and witnessed Tia crafting some impressive charms, but it was nothing like the hermetic tradition. Often our magick was sympathetic, invoked with one thing that represented something else. There was a precision to this; and I wished I could see how he was channeling the energy. Unfortunately, witch sight was closed to me, so I could only feel a faint, residual tingle as he poured power into his focus objects, storing them for future use. His items of choice were ceramic figurines, which would shatter on impact, unleashing the spell. Each statuette correlated with the chosen effect, though sometimes in ways I didn’t understand.
“What does the mouse do?” I asked, after he finished.
“Increases stealth.”
“Really?”