Unsympathetic Magic - Laura Resnick [131]
“Oh, no!” Max cried.
“So we’re going to go stop the bokor,” I said firmly.
Max looked at me, and a grim, resolute expression hardened his normally gentle features. “We certainly are,” he said in a deadly voice.
“You go get a cab,” I said to him. “I’ll catch up in a minute.”
Max met his familiar’s glowing red eyes. “I will not return until I have freed you, Nelli!” He squared his shoulders, collected his belongings from where he had dropped them, and walked down the street. I had a feeling it would take him a while to find a cab at this time of night. Especially since he was carrying a machete.
“Jeff,” I said into my phone. “You need to distract Nelli.”
“You want me to distract the vicious two-hundred-pound dog that just tried to kill me?”
He was exaggerating. She wasn’t that heavy.
“This street’s pretty empty this late at night.” It was well past midnight now. “But we can’t have Nelli standing here terrifying the few people who do pass. Someone might call the cops. And we especially can’t have her breaking down this glass door and killing someone.”
“What the hell do you want me to do?”
“Just keep her attention fixed on you,” I said. “Keep her at the back of the shop.”
“Oh, for God’s sake!” He gave a heavy sigh. “Okay. Right. Fine.”
A moment later, I saw the door to the stairwell open. Jeff stuck out his head and called, “Nelli! Oh, Nelli! Over here, girl!”
Nelli whirled around and went bounding across the shop, roaring with fury. Jeff slammed the door again. The enraged dog scratched on it, barking and snarling.
Fortunately, the possessed Nelli seemed to be as dimwitted as the regular version.
“Good work, Jeff,” I said into the phone. “I’ll call you later.”
“Be careful,” he said. “And don’t let anything happen to Puma.”
“I promise.” I ended the call and went after Max.
Thanks to Max’s skills, breaking into the foundation in the middle of the night didn’t present a challenge. The building was silent and dark. Tonight’s Vodou ceremony was obviously over, and all the celebrants were gone.
Once we were inside, we crept into Biko’s training room in search of a weapon. Max had his machete, but since our departure from the bookstore had been unexpected, he had brought nothing for me. And I didn’t like the idea of facing the mambo, her snake, zombies, the baka, or a possessed Biko without a sturdy means of defending myself.
The weapons in the supply cabinet that Max used his power to unlock were all for young people to practice with, so there was nothing sharp or intentionally lethal there. But as I grasped a heavy wooden practice sword in my hands, I thought it would be pretty useful for beating the stuffing out of a baka.
“I’ll take this one,” I whispered to Max in the dark.
“Let’s proceed.” His voice was like steel. Someone had messed with Nelli. Someone would pay dearly for that.
Fortunately, Max’s modification of my gris-gris bag had made it less peppery, so now I could move around without it making me sneeze or choke. It bounced harmlessly against my chest as we trotted down the stairs to the hounfour, moving quietly in the dark building.
We passed through the space where I had seen Lopez possessed by a loa hours earlier. The shattered pieces of the glass cage he had destroyed still lay on the floor.
“Where’s that damn snake?” I wondered nervously.
We soon found out. We crept down the hallway that Frank had described to the room he had told us would be there. On the other side of the closed door, we heard chanting. Max clasped my hand and squeezed briefly. I squeezed back to let him know I was ready. I let my purse slide off my shoulder and onto the floor so that it wouldn’t encumber me. Then with a fierce war cry, Max kicked open the door and plunged into the room, waving his machete. I followed right behind him, with my wooden sword in my hands.
I took a few long strides into the room, then stopped and stared. Mambo Celeste stood before an altar that was draped in red cloth and covered with frightening objects. My gaze briefly took in a dead snake in a jar of fluid, black candles, a desiccated