Mercedes stepped in through Nora’s front door and immediately slipped out of her shoes. With a graceful slide of her foot, she tucked the shoes—plain rope sandals—next to the door beside the brass umbrella stand. A large and slouchy crochet handbag was slung across her body.
She stepped away from the door and waited for Nora to lock up the house after her.
“I guess a certain vampire told you someone was looking for you,” Nora said.
Mercedes nodded. “Don’t be afraid.”
“I’m not afraid,” Nora replied. “A little surprised. Very confused. How did you know where I live?”
“If I said it was witchcraft, would you believe me?”
“Probably not,” Nora said.
Mercedes held her hand out low, palm open. Gmork lifted his head and pressed it into her palm. She stroked his ears, tentatively at first, but when Gmork whimpered happily, she squatted down to his level and put her face near his face. She let him lick her cheek as she scratched and stroked Gmork’s ears and head.
“Does she have a name?” Mercedes asked.
“He,” Nora said. “Gmork. It’s from The Never-ending Story.”
“He’s sweet.”
“He’s supposed to be a trained killer. Turns out, he’s just a lady-killer.”
“Loves the ladies?”
“And hates men.”
Mercedes laughed softly. “I like you, Gmork.” She patted Gmork one more time on the head before standing up straight again.
Gmork trotted back over to Nora, pressing his warm body to her legs. It comforted her. Nico had bought her the dog for protection, which she never thought she would need. Now she was grateful.
“I apologize for coming so late,” she said. “If you were looking for me, I assumed it was important.”
“My friend and I were going to stop by your shop tomorrow morning to see you.”
“Your friend, the man you were with tonight?”
“Yes, he’s a private detective.”
“I would rather speak to you alone than with a man. If that’s all right. I saw your porch light was on, but I’m happy to go, if you like. Would you like that?”
Her voice was low and soothing. Nora was too curious to turn the woman away, but she kept her guard up.
“No, you can stay. It’s fine. Let’s go into my office.”
Nora had converted the house’s formal dining room into her office. She led Mercedes there through the kitchen. Nora switched on the brass floor lamp. Six oak bookcases lined the walls. Nora’s big boat of a desk sat in the middle of the room, facing the French doors that looked out onto her jungle of a patio garden.
“Can I get you anything?” Nora asked. “Water? Wine? Whiskey?”
“Wine would be nice.”
Nora went into her kitchen and quickly poured two shallow glasses of Syrah. While alone in her kitchen, she thought about grabbing her phone to send Cyrus a quick text. But she had a feeling Cyrus would immediately come over, and Mercedes might not answer Nora’s questions with a man present.
When Nora returned to her office, she found Mercedes standing at the bookshelves, eyeing the titles with interest.
“Your wine,” Nora said. Mercedes took the glass with a nod of thanks.
“You have a very large library of books on Catholicism,” Mercedes said. “The Catholic Catechism. The History of the Catholic Church. Pope John’s Journal of a Soul. Thomas Merton. G.K. Chesterton. St. Augustine. St. Thomas Aquinas… Have you read all these books?”
“I like looking for the loopholes,” Nora joked. Mercedes didn’t smile.
“What do you mean?”
“Oh, nothing,” Nora said. “I’m just a bad Catholic.”
“Perhaps you aren’t a bad Catholic,” she said. “Perhaps you’re just a very good pagan.”
“Cradle Catholic.”
“You’re old enough to leave the cradle,” Mercedes said. “Aren’t you?”
“There’s someone in my life who would be very put out if I did.”
“If there’s someone in your life trying to control your faith, you’re the one who should be put out, Mistress Nora.”
Nora tensed. Not often another woman put her on the defensive.
“You can just call me ‘Nora.’ The ‘Mistress’ is for those who want to serve.”
“It’s a title of respect, yes?”
“Well, yes.”
“I respect your work, Mistress. But I’m happy to call you whatever you like. So Nora it is.”
“Mercedes,” Nora said. “Unusual name for an American.”
She shrugged. “I’m impressed you say it right. Nobody ever says it right, even after I tell them.”
“It’s a French name,” Nora said. “No accents. Not like we say the car brand.”
Mare-SED-ess, not Mur-SAY-deez.
“You know French?” the woman asked.
“Some. My boyfriend is French. One of my boyfriends, I mean.”
Mercedes raised her eyebrow but made no comment. No comment necessary.
“Sorry,” Nora said. “I say that stuff all the time. I forget it makes some people uncomfortable.”
“I’m a witch. Does that make you uncomfortable?” Mercedes asked.
“You know, I always thought if a witch showed up at my house in the middle of the night, it would be to tell me there was such a thing as a tesseract. That’s from—”
“A Wrinkle in Time. I know. And there really is such a thing as a tesseract.”
“Is there?”
She nodded. “A tesseract,” Mercedes said, “is a cube cubed. A hypercube.”
“I’m impressed,” Nora said. “I didn’t know witches knew advanced geometry.”
“It’s also known as ‘sacred geometry.’ Some believe geometry is God’s native language and that by learning sacred geometry, one can access the mind of God.”
“Do you believe that?”
“I don’t recognize your god,” Mercedes said. “I serve the Goddess.”
“I thought everyone in this town was Catholic.”
Mercedes smiled. “Not everyone.”
She gestured toward her stomach. She was wearing a long red skirt that flared at her hips and a white top, cut off a few inches above her waist so that Nora could see the tattoos on her lower stomach. A sliver of moon on one side, a sliver of moon on the other, a full moon that surrounded her bellybutton.
Nora had seen that symbol before but couldn’t say what it was. “What’s your ink?”
“It’s the symbol of the Triple Moon Goddess,” Mercedes said. “Everyone in my coven gets marked with Her symbol. Not necessarily on the stomach, though. I just did that to cover a stretch mark. I made my daughter pay for it.”
She smiled and Nora knew she was joking.
“It’s pretty.”
“Thank you.” Mercedes nodded toward the armchairs set in front of Nora’s desk. “Shall we talk about why you came to see me?”
“Sure. Let’s do that.”
Mercedes sat in one armchair. Nora took the other. Gmork sat at her feet, on her feet.
“I’m trying very hard not to demand you tell me how you know where I live,” Nora said. “I’m not sure how much longer I can stop myself.”
“Zillow,” Mercedes said.
“What?”
She pulled her bag into her lap, covering the bare inches of her stomach, and crossed her legs at the ankle.
“Zillow. It’s a real estate website.”
“Yeah, I know what it is. You used it to find me?”
“When you came for your reading with me, you said you were waiting to hear about a house you wanted to buy. It was in the Garden District, a red house, and you’d put in a lowball offer. A week later, I checked the website. A red house in the Garden District was now under contract for twenty-thousand less than the original asking price. Didn’t take sacred geometry to put two and two together.”
“You told me I’d get the house. Were you checking to see if you were right?”
“I knew I was right.”
“Then why—”
“My turn,” Mercedes said, and Nora sat up, alert. It wasn’t often another woman cut her off. Or anyone, really.
“Okay, go on,” Nora said.
“Lord Chaz said you were looking for a missing girl. I don’t think that’s true, is it?”
A fair question, but not so easy to answer.
“It isn’t. But I can’t tell you the whole story.”
“Please tell me what you can.”
“A man was found dead recently. He’d shot himself.”
“Accident? Or suicide?”
“Suicide. And I don’t know this man from Adam, but for some reason, I was the last person he tried calling before pulling the trigger. The man was found with my business card in his pocket, so we know it wasn’t just a wrong number—for some reason, he was trying to reach me. Unfortunately, that’s no longer my number. It was an old card from when I worked in New York. He never reached me. For days, I’ve been beating my head against the wall trying to think who I might have given one of my cards to while I was down here. Earlier this evening someone mentioned witches. I finally remembered…you. I gave you a card.”
“Only me?”
“Only you. As far as I can remember. Is it possible you gave my card to someone?”
“No.”
“Are you sure? I know I told you what I did for a living.”
“Writer. Dominatrix. I wouldn’t forget that even if I’d wanted to.”
“Did a friend of yours, a client, a stranger…did anybody mention they were trying to find a dominatrix?”
“No.”
“Could one of your coworkers at the shop…did they maybe take it?”
“No.”
“Did you throw it in the trash?”
“No.”
“Recycling?”
“No.”
“Come on,” Nora said, exasperated. “It must have ended up in the trash at some point, right? If you know anything at all, please tell me. It’s driving me crazy knowing a man reached out to me, wanted me for something, and when he couldn’t reach me, he killed himself. You’d want to know why, right?”
“I suppose I would,” she said. “But in this, I’m afraid I can’t help you. You see…”
Mercedes paused and opened her bag and took out a large book—black, leather-bound, with two skulls embossed on the cover. Mercedes set it in her lap and opened it carefully. Carefully because the book was full of odds and ends—scraps of paper, recipe cards, photographs, pressed flowers and leaves. The pages themselves were thick, soft cotton, covered in black, red, blue, and green ink. Some of the pages bore elaborate drawings of triangles within circles, circles within squares, animals, trees, moons, and stars.
Other pages bore only writing, nearly as ornate as calligraphy. Back, back, back, Mercedes turned in the book, and Nora saw some dates written on top of the pages. Journal entries. Back she went through this year, then last year, before reaching the November she’d been in New Orleans house-hunting. Two years and ten months ago.
Mercedes stopped at last and took from the book a small slightly-crinkled envelope. An ordinary envelope. She slipped her fingers under the flap and from inside pulled out a red rectangle, no bigger than the palm of her hand.
She held it out toward Nora, who took it with the slightest quiver in her stomach.
“This is my business card,” Nora breathed. “You kept it.”
“I did.”
“But…why?”
“I used it,” she said. “To cast a spell of protection.”
“Protection? I don’t need protection.” Søren, Nico, Kingsley, Gmork…the last thing she needed was more people trying to protect her.
“You misunderstand me, Mistress Nora. I wasn’t trying to protect you. The spell was for protection from you.”