Unsympathetic Magic - Laura Resnick [38]
“I know.” I touched my skull gingerly. “I think it’s just pain. Not a concussion.” I opened my eyes once more, and I saw that Jeff was hauling himself slowly to his feet.
“What the hell . . . ?” Then Jeff saw the snake. “Oh!” He looked at me. “Maybe I should have warned you about that.”
“You think?” I snapped.
I’m not hysterically phobic, but—like a lot of people, I thought irritably—I’m scared enough of snakes to have a strong startle-reflex if I suddenly come face- to-face with one without warning.
Holding my hand over my aching skull, I glanced up at Catherine, who was standing nearby. She looked down at me with an expression that suggested she doubted my mental stability. Her gazed moved over me, and I realized that in my fall and subsequent agonized huddling, my tiny vinyl skirt had ridden up to my waist. The flimsiness of Jilly’s purple fishnet stockings ensured that everyone in the room had an excellent view of my underpants.
The skirt was too tight for me to pull it down while I was in a sitting position, so I tugged on Max to signal to him that I wanted help standing up. With his assistance, I rose to my feet, then straightened my little skirt while he averted his gaze.
“Mambo Celeste,” Catherine said. “Are you all right?”
There was a short, heavyset black woman standing in the doorway. Her expression was wide-eyed with astonishment as she stared at me, apparently as stunned by my tawdry appearance as she was surprised by my dramatic reaction to her entrance. There was a big, thick snake draped around her shoulders. Both of her hands protectively cradled it, as if my antics might disturb or harm the reptile—which was at least six feet long, maybe eight.
“Hmm? Oh. Yes, I’m fine.” The woman patted the snake and spoke to it soothingly. “And Napoleon is all right, too, aren’t you, mon petit?”
She spoke with a slight accent, and she gave the snake’s name a distinctly French pronunciation.
All of my attention had been claimed by the snake’s face coming straight at me when Jeff had opened the door and shoved me through it. But now that I got a good look at Mambo Celeste, I was a little surprised that she had faded into the background even for that shocked instant. A broad and round woman, she wore a colorful, floor-length dress of beautiful, brightly patterned blue, black, and white cloth sewn in a pattern of cascading folds that emphasized her girth with regal results. A scarf of matching material was wrapped around her head. Beaded earrings dangled from her ears, and a simple gold cross hung around her neck. I thought she was probably somewhere in her fifties. Her face was jowly and lined, and she looked like someone who frowned more often than she smiled.
“I’m fine, too, thanks,” Jeff said sourly. “But you should stop carrying that damn snake around the building, Celeste. People get startled, go figure.”
“Mambo Celeste,” she corrected him coldly. “And I did not know there were strangers here.”
“I’m not a stranger,” Jeff said, “and I don’t like bumping into that thing. Neither do half my students.”
Mambo Celeste’s eyes flashed. “Napoleon is not a thing. And if people are afraid of him, it is only because they do not understand.”
Jeffrey scowled. “What I don’t understand—”
“Jeffrey,” Catherine said anxiously.
“—and what my aching sacroiliac doesn’t understand . . .” He rubbed the recently-insulted portion of his anatomy. “. . . is how you can think it’s a good idea to have a reptile that’s taller than I am on the loose in a building that’s always full of kids!”
“Jeffrey, this isn’t the time—”
“For God’s sake, Catherine, what if that thing suddenly gets hungry? Or feels threatened?”
The snake turned its head and looked at Jeff. He noticed and, perhaps as creeped out by this as I was, seemed to lose his train of thought.
Max sought to ease the tension with a polite question. “Your pet appears to be a boa constrictor, I believe?”
“He is not a pet.” Mambo Celeste seemed determined to be disagreeable.
“He is a servant of Damballah,” Catherine said, giving Jeff an admonishing glance, “and, as such,