Jo, as if she’d peed in his yard. “Si,” he mimicked awkwardly. “Bruja.”
The woman asked, “Por qué?”
“She wants to know why,” translated Jo quietly. It’d been hard enough asking about magic at the clinic. Now she had to do it in Spanish?
Before she could try, Zack said, “Look, ma’am, we think there’s something evil in Almanuevo. We think it’s desecrating the dead. If it is, I’m gonna stop it. Can you help?”
“You can pay?” challenged Doña Maria cagily. So she understood English after all.
“Twenty dollars,” offered the P.I.
The Bruja eyed the Ferrari. “Fifty.”
Well, he was the one who insisted on the expensive toys.
“With all due respect,” Zack said dryly, “thirty.”
After a moment’s pause, the old woman nodded—and opened the door wider. “Come in,” she granted, so solemnly that Jo wondered if they could have entered without permission. Trying to think magically was starting to mess with her head, wasn’t it?
The mix of abnormal scents was almost overwhelming.
“Thank you, ma’am,” said Zack, extending one long arm to hold the door open for Jo to go first. For a pushy guy, he sure was polite about doors.
Then Jo noticed the older woman nodding satisfaction to herself at the gesture. Ah.
Suck up, she mouthed at the P.I., who grinned.
Instead of the apple-peddling wicked witch from Snow White, the Bruja now looked more like Aunt Bea from the Andy Griffith Show…if Aunt Bea were Mexican. She wore a long, embroidered white dress, a black lace shawl piously covering her neatly braided white hair.
“Mi santuario,” she directed, taking them through her portrait-lined kitchen to what looked like a lean-to or pantry—or it did until they entered. Then Jo, again going first, saw that it was some kind of magic room, complete with a wooden table covered with a black cloth, shelves of strange-looking supplies and a shrine to what she assumed was the Virgin Mary.
Other statues of saints, as well as little cards with religious pictures, were set neatly about the room alongside flowers and candles and several rosaries. Though no expert on Brujeria, Jo knew it was a Mexican religio-magical system that worshipped Mary as Guadalupe. Just this afternoon, Ashley had suggested that Guadalupe stood for a more ancient Aztec goddess, providing a safe way for native women to continue their worship after their long-ago conquest by the Spaniards.
Ashley had also suggested not casually mentioning that theory to the Brujas, many of whom considered themselves devout Catholics, not goddess worshippers.
Jo noted the stranger items in the room—old jars holding mysterious mixtures, sewing needles and what looked to be three dead and partly mummified hummingbirds. A human skull in one corner startled her. A second look showed it to be plastic.
Not that this made it normal or encouraging.
“Are these your grandchildren?” asked Zack from the kitchen, and the old crone, in the doorway between them, smiled.
“Si,” Doña Maria said, and began to list children and grandchildren alike. She’d gone through at least twenty names before she and the P.I. deigned to join Jo in the santuario.
Not that Jo needed Zack here. But she felt more at ease in his presence, anyway. She’d already sat, but when Zack settled onto the bench beside her, she felt his size and warmth and presence like an anchor in otherwise unsteady waters.
It occurred to her that the strange feelings might in fact be magic, filling the room, surrounding them. Was that possible?
“We were wondering if you’d noticed—” Zack began, but the Bruja held up a commanding hand, then bowed her head and began to pray.
“Ave Maria, gratia plena…”
It took Jo several more lines to recognize the Latin version of the “Hail Mary.” At the end, Zack crossed himself when the witch did.
Jo tried crossing herself, but—not being Catholic—sensed that she’d done it in the wrong order. She glanced at Zack, who shook his head. Then she glanced uncertainly back at the witch—
Whose head snapped up so suddenly, Jo stiffened.
“The Virgencita shows me great evil,” announced the Bruja in a hollow voice.
Could She could be a little more specific? Since that would come out more sarcastic than she meant it, Jo kept her tongue.
Zack asked, “Can the Holy Virgin help us learn more about this evil?” Look who’d just grown some people skills!
The older woman’s words sounded hollow, distant. She rocked slightly on her bench, as if focusing on something only she could see. “You will not find your way to this malvado, this evil, through Nuestra Señora La Guadalupana, nor of her angeles or santos. This is not of their working. This hides from their light. They can only provide protection for you.”
“That’s nice,” said Zack. “Protection from what, exactly?”
The old lady startled Jo again by suddenly grabbing her hand. The Bruja’s hand felt dry, strong for her age. “You wear the disguise of a marimacho,” she murmured. “But you are not evil. You think because you were robbed, you have nothing, but Guadalupana sees the truth in your heart. She wants for you what all virtuous women want.”
“That being…?” asked Jo, wary. She didn’t know the word, marimacho. She wasn’t sure how she’d been robbed. Diego…?
But the old woman was turning to Zack, using her free hand to take his. “You too were robbed of your life,” she murmured, still rocking. “But you, you chase it. You are a good husband, but you seek too far, too deep into the darkness. You strain even the protections of Nuestra Señora in this chase.”
Jo felt torn between concern and confusion. Zack had been robbed of his life?
“Still, Guadalupana smiles on you both,” the woman continued. “For you must face this darkness together.”
Zack slanted a look down toward Jo, less than enthusiastic.
“I will make you a protection,” announced the Bruja, releasing their hands. Even her normal voice felt tinged with power. “By the grace of Nuestra Señora and her santos and her angeles, a powerful protection against the evil you seek.”
“Thanks for that,” said Zack, while she stood. “But what we could really use is some idea of who or what we’re hunting.”
Doña Maria lit a candle, murmured a prayer over it, then set to work. She took a wooden bowl from her cupboard and began to add ingredients from unlabeled jars. She measured the way Jo’s grandmother had cooked, by practice and guess. A pinch here. A dollop there. “You are facing a diablero.”
“A devil,” translated Jo uncertainly. “The devil? No, that would be a diablo, right?”
“The
