Unsympathetic Magic - Laura Resnick [142]
Catherine towered above me, wearing a long robe of red silk. I was surprised, because her fashion sense had really seemed more subdued and classic than that.
She kicked me in irritation. “After what happened with Frank Johnson, I told them to tie your legs. But I forgot to specify that your hands should be tied behind you so that you couldn’t remove your own gag!” She made a guttural sound of frustration. “Take my word for it, don’t work with zombies!”
I rolled away from her. Venting her frustration, she followed after me, kicking me again. I grunted in pain.
“It’s like working with children!” she raged. “Delinquent children! That goddamn snake was smarter than these creatures are!”
“So get rid of them,” I snapped. “Why keep them around?”
She shrugged. “They do the heavy lifting. I’ve got brains, not brawn.”
“They’ve got to be hard to keep hidden,” I said rubbing my aching ribs where she had kicked me. “Where do you hide them?”
“Sometimes in the basement. Sometimes in the woods on this hill. One of the few good things about a zombie is that it’ll sit in total silence and stillness—not even breathing, obviously—for days at a time. So they’re easier to conceal than you’d suppose.”
While she talked, I looked around the plaza. There was a small bonfire in the spot where I had previously noticed charring and ashes. And in its dim glow, I could see several vévés drawn in red on the paving stones.
Now I remembered—it was in those books Puma had given me. Red was the color of a Petro ritual.
Catherine, the bokor, was invoking dark gods on this isolated hilltop, beneath the thundering, lightning-streaked sky.
This could only be a bad thing. So I needed to stall her. No, it wasn’t much of a plan, but it might give me time to think of a better one.
And the best way to stall her was to keep her talking. One of the first things I’d noticed about this woman was how much she loved the sound of her own voice.
“Raising zombies from the grave sure couldn’t have been easy,” I said, struggling surreptitiously with the bonds on my wrists. “That’s some major mojo. Plus a lot of logistical problems. Sneaking in and out of grave-yards, digging all that dirt, getting them from the cemetery back to Harlem. You put a lot of talent and hard work into creating these, um, lads.”
“You have no idea.”
“But you failed with the first one, didn’t you?” Yes, I rubbed it in a little. There didn’t seem to be much point anymore in trying not to offend her.
“It was my first experiment. I was new to raising the dead.” She sounded a little defensive. “And I made some mistakes. So that one was unpredictable. Too hard to control. I had to get rid of it. Darius was desperately afraid that we’d be exposed because of that one.”
“So he was in on it with you?” I was wriggling my ankles, trying to loosen the bonds.
She made a little waggling gesture with her elegant hand. “Sort of.”
It hit me suddenly. The poppets. The handsome man whom Jeff and Biko had been sure was gay. What Puma had told us about love spells.
“Oh, my God!” I said. “You seduced Darius with voodoo! You made a poppet of him and—ugh!—rubbed bodily fluids into it! Didn’t you?”
“It’s not as easy as they tell you,” she said. “Saliva doesn’t work. Neither does sweat. For a man, it’s got to be semen.”
Tired of talking to her from my prone position, and also afraid she’d kick me again, I sat up. “You used his semen? Okay, that’s too much information.”
“I could make you a poppet like that to secure the detective, in exchange for your silence.” She added, even as I was opening my mouth to pretend to agree to this proposition, “But you don’t need one for him, do you? That was obvious even before you walked