Crime Spells

Sarah reeled, then stumbled backward as the girl tore herself free, spreading upon the air, now white, now black as a mantle of the deepest starless night-and flung herself over Dickert’s body.

And yet I could see everything, and I knew that what I saw now was tit for tat. Death dealt out in equal measure.

Dickert’s back arched, yet no sound issued from his wide open mouth. He was slowly suffocating, and I knew just what that felt like. His legs flexed and pedaled to nowhere. His hands were at his throat, his fingers clawing his own flesh to bloody ribbons. His face was going plummy purple, eyes bulging now not in rage or triumph but terror.

Still holding the girl, I knelt beside Sarah. Touched her shoulder. She pulled her head around, and with my strange new sight, I saw that her eyes were still green, but for the moment, there was no one else there.

I looked at Dickert. His legs were shivering, his hands fluttering in death tremors.

“It’s over,” Sarah said. “Until next time.”

VII

When Rollins and Arlington ’s finest showed up at Dickert’s rentals, they found a clutch of seven girls in each. The youngest was ten, the eldest seventeen. Each had either been sold by their families or simply kidnapped. Of the twenty-one girls, thirteen were from South Vietnam, seven from Thailand, seven from Cambodia; all were smuggled in by way of the Canadian border into Mi

They never found Call-Me-Bob. But the girl’s name was Tevy.

Cambodian for “Angel.”

In time, the DA saw the wisdom of not stringing up Lily Hopkins as an example. A smart DA, he got her remanded to a psychiatric facility and from there, probation and home.

I’m told Lily wasn’t in an institution very long. Her father came to be with her. They probably have a long row to hoe before they’re a family again.

But.

We live in hope.

Never did figure out who that poor Vietnamese girl had been. Sarah didn’t get a name, sorry, but she thought the girl might have been a collective Presence. Many villages in Vietnam and Cambodia had spirits attached to them. So perhaps the girl was the village, and the monk was dead. So.

What was past was past.

We couldn’t have taken it further, anyway. When I went back to look at the DVD, the disk was empty. Poof. Like magic.

As if I’d been allowed to see only what was required to act.

All accounts balanced.

And Sarah Wylde:

“A seer?” I asked. This was five days later. We were drinking good coffee-excellent coffee-at a little Ethiopian bakery-café off U in the Shaw District. “I’m no prophet.”

“Not a seer. A See-er. You’ve got the gift of Sight, not Future Sight, not clairvoyance, but the ability to see manifestations no one else can-and probably more abilities you don’t know. It’s what makes you a good detective. Your hunches? Those sudden aha moments when everything clicks into place?” She gave a lopsided smile, but her lip was almost normal. “That’s part of it. You’ve got something special.”

Then she touched her fingertips first to my forehead and then my chest, over my heart.

The place where, a year ago, another woman-different and yet somehow the same-placed her hand and told me why she’d waited around until I’d figured things out. Her mission, you might say.

“There and there,” Sarah said. “You’ve been… marked. You’re different.”

“But I’m just a cop.”

Who’s been touched by a woman who might have been an angel.

“If you were just or only a cop, you couldn’t have seen my avatars. Dickert would have been just a man. You’d never have found him. I’d never have found him either. Oh, I was… drawn to a certain point in time just as you were, and Dickert and MacAndrews and Lily Hopkins. But I don’t necessarily know a Malevolent when I see it. That’s why I mantled myself, so I could remain invisible until you’d found him or… you needed me.”

I touched the place where the amulet nestled against my skin. “Do you think the rabbi… that Dietterich…?”

“He sounds pretty intuitive. He must’ve sensed something, then given you the amulet, not really knowing how it was going to help.”

“And how did it? I still don’t get that.”

“Let me see it again.” She took the charm I proffered. Stared at it. Then she made a little aha sound and started digging through her purse. Fished out a compact. “Not gibberish. I just wasn’t looking right.”

“A compact? I didn’t know you were vain.”

“Don’t be mean. Look.” Opening the compact, she held the amulet so I could see its reflection in the compact’s mirror. “It’s a mirror script, like da Vinci’s handwriting. That’s ancient paleo-Hebrew from before the First Temple Era. Say, five thousand years ago. That one in the center with hooks like a bull’s skull?”

“Yeah. I thought of Georgia O’Keeffe.”

“Close. It represents an ox head, but it’s also an ‘aleph,’ the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet. In their modern equivalents, the letters spell Elohim no matter if you read them right-left, diagonally, or up-down.” She paused expectantly, and when I didn’t jump in, she said, “God, Jason. It’s God, or whatever power you want to call on. And the gems, these are all from the high priest’s breastplate, each letter associated with a specific jewel. The amethyst in the center: Purple is the color of spirituality. Amethyst is the stone of clarity and transformation. Coupled with aleph, it is the power of one, the power of that which is unique and like none other. It’s you, Jason.”

I chewed on that a minute. “What about those things I conjured up in my hands? What were those?” But what she’d said was already triggering associations I’d look up later.

“Du

“How do you know so much?”

“I read a lot. And when you’re in a family as odd as mine…”

“Uh-huh. Tell me something: Your dad being a demon hunter. Is that all hype? Or are we talking like father, like daughter?”

Her emerald eyes sparkled. “I have a very interesting family. Want to meet him?”

“What are you offering?”

“This.” Then she cupped a hand to my cheek, and I felt something almost unbearably sweet, and yet also like pain, loosen in my chest. As if by losing one thing I had gained something much greater, even if I could put no name to it. Not yet anyway.

“A door, Jason,” she said. “All you need is the courage to open it and step through.”

It was going to be complicated.

Later, in my apartment, I Googled: Ummin. Thummin.

Read and Googled some more.

Thought: Hmmmm.

Two days later, on Saturday night:

I watch as Rabbi Dietterich blesses a cup of wine to begin the ritual of Havdalah, marking the end of Shabbat. The word means separation, and he once explained the ceremony as not only signaling the start of a new week but as a literal separation of one state of being from another. The Orthodox believed that all Jews received a second soul for the duration of Shabbat, and so this ritual marked that separation as well.

What is this second soul? Who? Always the same one, or can any restless soul come calling? I don’t know. I suspect it’s complicated.

Someone passes the spice box, and I sniff the heady aroma of ci

People don’t like to let go, even when they know they have to.

Chanting the blessing, Dietterich lights the long braided candle with its two wicks. The flames leap heavenward. The light is full and rich and makes Sarah’s hair shimmer with sudden startling flashes of ruby and gold. When she looks at me, I see the light reflected there.