Unsympathetic Magic - Laura Resnick [98]
So if Lopez’s theory—that the hand might belong to Frank—motivated him to find out what had happened to the missing instructor, well, I supposed that worked out well for everyone.
After a few stops, I changed trains and caught one that would take me to Little Italy. There was an empty seat on this train, and as soon as I sat in it, I saw that my shoes and ankles were still covered in Nelli’s blood, now dried to a rusty brown color. I realized some of her blood was on my left hand and both of my knees, too. I’d need to clean up when I got to the restaurant.
I was already in danger of being late, and washing off the blood would take some time. So I decided to tidy my hair and start putting on my makeup while I was still on the subway train. Since my mind was on other things—including the memory of Lopez’s lips pressed again mine, moving seductively as his breath caressed my cheek—I did quite a bit of rummaging around in my purse before I realized my hairbrush wasn’t in there. Nor was my makeup.
I sat staring into the depths of my handbag with bemusement. The baka had not stolen or destroyed any of the items that I had worried about: money, phone, ID, keys. So why had they taken my hairbrush and my . . .
Cold fear exploded inside my torso and rapidly spread outward to engulf my limbs.
The baka who had stolen my purse served the bokor. So if personal items of mine were missing from its contents, then the bokor must have those. And some of my hair could certainly be extracted from my brush.
The mysterious dark sorcerer now had the ingredients needed to make a voodoo doll whose fate I would share.
17
On Sunday afternoon, as bad weather was moving into the area, Jamal was waiting for me outside the Livingston Foundation. He was wearing yet another baggy outfit, so I supposed Shondolyn had been too preoccupied to convey fashion advice to him the other day. As the boy approached me, I saw that his forehead was shiny with sweat from standing around on the sidewalk waiting for me to arrive.
The sky was overcast today and the air felt heavy with tension. I thought the suffocating temperature ought to break, given that the sun wasn’t out and there was a fair bit of wind today; but, no, it was still unbearably hot outside. I wore a sleeveless cotton dress and sandals, and my hair was in a topknot, but I was still sticky and wilting.
“I heard there was gonna be a big ceremony here today,” Jamal said to me. “So I thought you might show up, since you’re into this voodoo shit.”
I was about to protest that I wasn’t even remotely into “this voodoo shit,” but I decided to hold my silence when I realized how unconvincing that would sound. Not only had I sent Shondolyn to Puma’s Vodou Emporium for help, as Jamal well knew, but I was also currently wearing a rather large, unattractive, and somewhat smelly gris-gris bag around my neck.
After receiving my frantic phone call on Friday, Max and Puma had worked together to concoct this protective charm for me. Max and Biko had brought it to me at the restaurant later that same night. Since then, I had only taken it off to shower.
Its comforting presence around my neck, however, did not keep me from worrying that every little itch, twinge, or twitch that I felt was terrifying evidence that the bokor had made a poppet in my image, using my hair and makeup, and was now tormenting it—and me—with lethal intent.
Jamal said to me, his expression a mixture of concern and accusation, “Dr. Livingston says Shondolyn is gone.”
“Gone away to stay with relatives,” I said with a nod. I had talked to Max at length yesterday, and he said that Puma had received a call from the girl saying she was leaving for Maryland that same day and would probably stay there until she had to return to New York to start school in a few weeks. Her mother had informed the Livingston Foundation that she was withdrawing