Unsympathetic Magic - Laura Resnick [150]
“Well, she’s gone now,” I said. “And good riddance.”
“Are you all right?” he asked with concern.
“Yes.” I smiled. “I’m fine.”
“I’ve got a police car around the corner,” Lopez said. “Come on. I’ll take you home.”
“Um, no.” I backed away from the hand he put under my elbow, and I shook my head. “No.”
“What’s wrong?”
I heard the bokor’s voice in my head: “Would he be lying in agonized paralysis awaiting his death now if not for you?”
This was the second time I’d nearly gotten Lopez killed. The Lord of Death would never have come so close to claiming him tonight if it weren’t for me. He’d only gotten involved in this because I had dragged him into it.
“Esther?” he prodded. “Tell me what’s wrong.”
“I’m not good for you,” I said.
He brushed my hair way from my face. “After a day like this, I don’t really care. Let me take you home.”
“I brought Baron Samedi to your door,” I said. “I’m so sorry.”
“Who?”
“I think . . .” I said with real sorrow, “I have to give you up.”
The rain started coming down. Soft and gentle warm summer rain.
“Detective?” Puma smiled as she joined us. “I’m really sorry to interrupt, but someone’s calling your name on your police radio. The one that was in your jacket pocket when we found you.”
“Thanks,” he said absently, accepting it from her. The radio crackled with static, and now I heard it, too: someone looking for Lopez. The city was in a state of emergency, and they needed to find him.
“And Esther, this was in that room, too.” Puma handed me the little wax voodoo doll with the Star of David on its stomach. “It’s lost its power, now that she’s gone, but you should take it home and destroy it.”
“Thank you,” I said with relief, recalling how this thing had led to my abduction.
I ignored Lopez’s inquisitive look; and he evidently decided not to ask what this bizarre thing was that I was clutching to my chest.
As Puma turned away, Lopez said, “Wait, uh . . .”
“Puma,” she said with a smile.
“Puma. Thank you for your help tonight. I think I’d have wound up in the morgue if not for you, your brother, and Max.” He reached into his pocket for his card and gave it to her. “You have a friend on the force now.”
Puma beamed her beautiful smile at him. “Thank you, detective. But it was my pleasure. It was our duty. And you’re Esther’s friend, after all.”
“By the way, what was in that antidote? I smell a little funky now.” He added to me, “They sprinkled it all over me before they poured it down my throat. I was pretty out of it by then.”
Puma looked embarrassed and said, “Actually, Max is the one who mixed it. I just . . . uh, excuse me, detective.” She went and rejoined Jeff in the doorway of the foundation.
Jeff caught my eye, nodded toward Lopez, and gave me a thumbs up.
“All right,” Lopez said. “If you really don’t want me to take you home, then I need to go back on duty. By now, they probably think I wandered off a cliff in the dark.”
“Going back on duty is a good idea,” I said. “Even with the wind dying down, I’m sure it’ll take a while for all the power to come back on and order to be restored.” Catherine’s greed had done an awful lot of damage, both tonight and in the past.
“All right.” He frowned, looking puzzled and concerned. “And when things calm down, I’ll call you.”
“I don’t think you should.”
Would he be lying in agonized paralysis awaiting his death now if not for you?
He said, “Esther—”
“I don’t want you to call,” I said.
He sighed in frustration, then looked up at the watchtower, which glinted in the night sky as lightning fluttered in the clouds overhead.
“I’m the only cop here right now, so I’m probably the one who’ll get stuck writing it up. There’s a body in the foundation’s basement that we’ve got to process, murdered by the woman who died on that hilltop tonight.” Looking at the watchtower he asked me, “What are we going to find up there that I don’t know about?”
“Besides Catherine Livingston’s ashes or charred remains? I’m not sure.”
The cops might also find remains of the four bodies