Unsympathetic Magic - Laura Resnick [101]
“And why would the Lord of Death let anyone raise a zombie?” I demanded. “Doesn’t he want to, you know, keep the dead on his team?”
“Baron Samedi is a trickster,” Puma said. “He does what amuses him. And the bokor’s offerings to him may be very generous.”
“However, most of the names Shondolyn recalled were those of Petro loa,” Max said.
“Petro,” I said. “Those are the violent, dangerous spirits, aren’t they?”
“Very dangerous,” Max confirmed. “Dark, angry, and unpredictable. In some cases, genuinely evil.”
“Marinette was one of the Petro loa that the girl named,” Puma said. “Marinette is a sworn servant of evil. Invoked strictly for black magic.”
“This is, of course, the sort of spirit we would expect to find the bokor serving and petitioning for favor.” Max added, “Even so, our adversary is daring.”
“Also ambitious,” said Puma.
“How so?” I asked.
“The darkest Petro demand a very high price for their blessings,” Puma said. “Permanent, steadfast devotion and, more to the point, expensive sacrifices and rich offerings.”
“In exchange,” Max said, “they can work impressive feats of magic and confer great power on their worshippers.”
“But invoking them is perilous,” Puma said. “They can turn on their followers.”
“The Petro loa may even kill a servant who disregards a vow to them or who breaks a pact with them,” said Max.
“So that’s why you think we’re looking for someone who’s daring and ambitious,” I guessed. “The bokor has chosen dangerous partners in hopes of securing great power.”
“But a crucial unanswered question,” Max said, “is why has the bokor exposed a teenage girl to these influences? What is the goal or the intention?”
Biko said, “Whatever it is, it probably intersects with the reason zombies are being raised.”
“I do wish we could communicate with Jeffrey’s missing colleague,” Max said anxiously.
“I’ve convinced Detective Lopez that it’s important to track down Frank Johnson,” I said. I had left a phone message for Lopez earlier today asking for an update, but he hadn’t called me back yet.
“The cop?” Biko looked doubtful. “Is that such a good idea, Esther?”
“We must pursue every possible avenue for finding Mr. Johnson,” Max said. “His information could be critical. Well done, Esther.”
“You see?” I said to Biko.
“Whatever.”
“Meanwhile,” said Max, “if I am correct in my theory and Darius Phelps was murdered, then my researches in recent days have led me to understand how it could have been done.”
He had our full attention now.
“Poor Darius may have been murdered via a fairly arcane form of sympathetic magic,” Max said.
Considering that I was pretty sure the bokor now possessed strands of my hair, I didn’t like being reminded that sympathetic magic could be fatal.
“You begin by taking wrappings from food that the victim has partially eaten,” Max said. “Such as sausage casings or banana leaves. There are no doubt many equivalents in contemporary New York, including sandwich wrappers and cannoli tubes. In any case, you fill the wrapping with certain rare ingredients, exercise dark magic to create a mystical bond between the object and the victim, and then you, er . . . stomp on the object. Linked in sympathetic symbiosis with the victim’s intestine, this causes a rupture.”
“That’s disgusting,” said Biko.
I clutched my gris-gris pouch and prayed that it was working effectively to ward off the bokor’s dark magic.
Then I realized what Max’s theory meant. “Darius knew the bokor,” I said.
“I believe so.”
How else would the killer have obtained the victim’s partially eaten food? And, indeed, why go to that much trouble unless . . .
“It was personal,” I said aloud. Based on the number of empty graves Lopez was discovering, the bokor didn’t need to kill an acquaintance to create a zombie. Bodies were available. “So killing Darius was the point. Creating a zombie after the murder was just sort of . . . a bonus.”
“A maliciously satisfying one, no doubt,” said Max. “Few murderers have an opportunity to enslave the victim after death.”
“If