“Give me your wallets,” Chancho says. “And put your guns on the table. Like slow, though. Super slow.”
They do.
Chancho looks in the wallets, grunts.
“Lotta money in these wallets. If I still stole I’d be real happy about these wallets.”
The Russians stay quiet.
“But I don’t steal, not no more,” he says. “Not money, anyway.”
He takes the driver’s licenses out of both wallets, gives the wallets back, always behind the Russians, and they do not look at him.
Now he tosses the driver’s licenses on the table. Georgi’s lands in pico de gallo.
“My cousins, they gonna keep those. They could be fake, but I don’t think so. If something bad happens to me, something real bad’s gonna happen to you. ¿Comprende, pendejos?”
“Ponymayu,” Sergei says, nodding.
The Mexicans walk them outside.
Chancho asks them to open the car doors.
They do.
Chancho pulls out a large, brutal-looking knife and cuts long slashes in the upholstery. He does this impassively, taking his time, like fucking up car seats is just another service they offer at North Star, like it’s something he wants to do well.
He motions for them to get back in their cars.
They do.
“Adios, pendejos. And don’t come back.”
Before the disgraced Volkswagen pulls out of the North Star Garage, Sergei Alexandrovich Rozhkov looks at Georgi.
“You let a woman tell you what to do, and this is what happens.”
“But…”
“Be quiet. Misha drowned. You’re an idiot. I’m going back to Brooklyn.”
66
Night.
A new moon, the sky and the lake beneath it as black as oil.
The woman stands naked atop the cabin, naked but for a canvas bag slung over her shoulder. She readies two bottles, vodka bottles now filled to the neck with blood.
One contains rooster’s blood.
One does not.
She takes a swig from that one, then empties both into a bucket from which a birch broom juts. She ties the empty bottles together and hangs them around her neck. She uses the broom to drizzle and flick the blood on her roof, knowing she’ll have flies tomorrow, but there’s nothing for it. This is how it’s done. She doesn’t have to coat the whole roof—there isn’t enough for that anyway—but she must not leave two handsbreadths unbloodied.
This is an old spell, and the old spells are particular.
She walks backward toward the ladder, walking the bucket with her, sweeping behind so she doesn’t get any on the bottoms of her feet. Every yard or so she rests the broom, takes hen feathers from her shoulder sack and sprinkles these on the roof, repeating a verse in Russian and concentrating on what she wants.
The bottles knock together tenderly sometimes, reminding her how testes, breasts, and ovaries—all the genitive organs—come in twos. Three is the number for gating, invocation, and killing. Four is for protection and weather. But two is for creation.
Two babes, a boy and a girl.
Two chickens, a rooster and a hen.
Down the ladder now, and she gives the Man Who Will Not Look At Her the bottles. He puts them in the garbage bag with the bones. The hen and rooster bones, and the bones that are not hen or rooster bones.
And the clothes.
The little clothes.
In the bag that will be rowed out to the lake.
She stands now on the porch watching the Cold Man row.
Moroz.
The Man Who Will Not Look At Her will not row—he will go back to his room hooded like a bird and sitting somewhere between sleep and waking. He learned quickly, hoods himself obediently, goes to town to run errands and never dares to run. Knows the Cold Man would come for him, and for his. He took to it so naturally because he is a coward. Not like the thief.
Things are beginning to move against the thief.
He is strong now, not like then.
He has killed the Baba in the woods, or caused her to be killed.
His bitch in the water killed sweet Misha.
His house is full of tricks.
He has friends, many friends.
First, the friends.
Then the fear will come to him, weaken him.
And then she will close his eyes.
Take back what is hers.
He hid himself, but that magic is waning.
She knows his town, even what road.
He has spread himself too thin with other spells.
She will find him soon.
Tonight’s magic must sleep, but it will awaken when the moon waxes fat and full.
“Wait a moment,” she says. “The potatoes.”
The Man Who Will Not Look At Her is tying up the bag, putting it in the boat. He hears her, says,
“Potatoes? Do you need potatoes?”
“Yes. That might be enough for him. You will go tomorrow and find me a bucket of potatoes. Other things, too.”
“Of course.”
“Are you hungry?”
He shakes his head, looking at his feet.
“You’ll have to eat.”
He shakes his head again.
A tear falls on his feet.
“Go to your kennel.”
He leaves, still looking down, his shoulders folded in on themselves.
She smells the air.
Smiles.
Garlic, rosemary, wine, black pepper.
And meat.
She salivates.
The first roast is done.
67
Andrew drives Salvador to the North Star Garage, where Radha’s car waits to be driven north to Chicago. Salvador will drive it in a day, needing neither rest nor sleep, looking to all but the very luminous like a handsome young Latino. And the very luminous will be used to seeing strange things; will not think much of seeing a portrait of Salvador Dalí swiveling in the window of a Mini Cooper, checking the blind spot twice as it changes lanes. He will return through Radha’s shower, perhaps in time for lunch tomorrow.
Chancho shows Andrew the final touch. Zebra skin seats. He had seen on her Facebook page her post about her new zebra-skin pillow, how much she liked that particular pelt.
She’s going to squee.
Chancho looks ashen, distracted.
“You still thinking about the Russians, Chanch?”
“Them? No. One was a pussy, the other didn’t care. Not enough to tangle with us. They ain’t comin’ back.”
Andrew is thinking about the Russians, though. He thinks it might be prudent to acquire a pendant that turns bullets, a lovely bit of sorcery made from Kevlar, lead, silver, armadillo blood, and the ground tooth of someone who died of natural causes, but the user who makes these lives in Rio de Janeiro and doesn’t care for tapes of the dead or cars.
What the Brazilian wants is a cloak of feathers that will change him into a hawk. Andrew could make such a cloak, but it would take him weeks, maybe months. Birds are hard, and this is not his specialty. The user in Brazil doesn’t know Andrew and has a reputation for being kind of a prick—very QPQ. Quid pro quo. Reputation is everything between users, so they tend to trust each other. Not bullet guy. QPQ. He wants payment upon delivery. And Andrew wants the protection pendant stat.
The best shapeshifter, the one who taught Andrew, lives near Québec; she could make the hawk cloak in days, probably has one or two ready for trade. He doesn’t know what she might want, other than a really mighty youth potion, and those are in high, high demand. She has asked for stone spells before, though. If so, back to Michael Rudnick, who is sequestered with Anneke until the full moon. Luckily, the Québécoise trusts other users, knows Andrew, and would be willing to wait. Unluckily, she’s old, very old-school, and doesn’t use the Internet. Thinks it’s evil. So he’ll have to call her on her landline. Again. She didn’t answer last night, but that’s not unusual; she shifts and spends days at a time as an animal. It’s widely thought she’s close to opting out permanently, rebooting into a young critter and spending her last years on earth flying or running on all fours.