Bone Dance

She raised her eyebrows again. “Sugar, we’re all hoodoo, aren’t we? Or whatever works.”

“What makes you think it works?”

“That it does, I suppose. I mean, you turn the fire on under the pot and it boils, doesn’t it?”

“Does it? What are you asking for?”

She smiled. “None of your damn business.”

This time she didn’t refill my teacup.

There was a car in front of the building when we got there: long as the course of history, black as a killer’s thoughts, and damnably familiar. “Wait,” I said, reaching for Dana’s arm. I missed it.

“They’re here. That’s the car.”

I watched her cross the street to the front door, and followed slowly after. Someone who’d been looking for Mick Ski

Two figures commanded the ruined grandeur of the lobby. One was a teak-brown man, nearly seven feet tall, carved with muscle and shining bald. He wore narrow trousers and a sleeveless double-breasted tunic with silver buttons; tunic and pants were black, and suggested a uniform without insisting on it. He had a baroque pearl hanging from his right earlobe. His arms hung loose at his sides, his hands open; he looked as if he was thinking about matters several miles away. On the floor at his feet was a leather case with a handle, like an old salesman’s catalog case.

The woman next to him seemed small only in contrast. She had to be the owner of the car — she belonged in something that long, that black, that silent. She was black herself; I’d never seen skin so dark. She wore a long dress, almost to her ankles, of dull dark blue chiffon over a dark blue slip. Her hair was hidden under a sheenless black scarf wrapped close around her head. Her long, angular face was interrupted by sunglasses with dark lenses and matte-black frames. Even her lipstick was black, and didn’t shine. I was afraid to look at her fingernails.

“Cherie,” she said to Dana with regal near-warmth. Her voice was low and hoarse. Against all that darkness, Dana, in a hyacinth-blue dress, looked like a faded print.

“Bonjour, Mattresse,” said Dana, in a startling schoolgirl voice. I glanced at her face and found an expression there to match. “This is Sparrow, who… has the problem.”

I was about to say something snappy — mostly to banish the urge to bob or tug my forelock — when I realized that the black woman had gone very still. I couldn’t tell what held her attention because of the sunglasses. I shot a look over my shoulder.

“Sparrow. Bonjour. What is your age?”

My heart gave one powerful beat and seemed to quit. “Old enough for most things.”

“Where have you come from?”

“I don’t think that’s relevant.”

“Sparrow!” Dana said.

But the black woman shrugged. “Keep your secrets, then, if you feel better. It doesn’t matter. Take me to this dead man.”

“Shall I call you Mistress, too?”

“When you need to call me anything, I will tell you what it will be,” she said pleasantly.

Gosh. Since there were no more cha

Again, I stood in the elevator in such a way that no one else could see what I did with the loose wires in the control box. I knew it was a delaying tactic; one of them could, with enough incentive and time, duplicate the process. I hated knowing that. Three more people who were aware that the elevator was not broken down. Mick Ski

The apartment door was still locked. The apartment, when I opened the door, was quiet as — well, perfectly quiet. Dana came in after me, followed by La Maitresse and the large man. He closed the door after himself, which made me uncomfortable.

When I opened the bedroom door, I knew immediately that something had changed state. Mick Ski

Dana was standing in the doorway, staring. The woman pushed her gently out of the way and came to the bedside. “How?”

“Well… deader,” I said.

I found myself staring at my reflection in the sunglasses, long enough to realize that my way with words had not impressed her. “I need more room,” she said at last. “Can you give it to me?”

“Oh. Yes, down the hall.”

“Mr. Lyle. Bring him, please.”

At that the big man came forward and took the body off my mattress with no apparent effort. I led the parade to the next room, wondering what she needed space for. Dissection, maybe. I ought to tell her I didn’t have a garbage disposal. Mr. Lyle laid his burden tidily on the floor, and went back to the hall. When he returned, he had the leather case. He gave the woman an inquiring look.

“Yes,” she said.

He took candles out of the case. Lots of candles, in black. They all had something sticky at the base, and stayed upright when he placed them on the floor — one at the top of Mick Ski

I turned to Dana, who sat cross-legged on the floor out of the way, her skirt spread out around her. “Maybe I gave you the wrong impression,” I told her. “I said I wanted the real-world version.”

“Don’t bother them when they’re working, sugar.”

“Does it bother them if I talk to you? I want him disposed of, not raised from the dead.”

“We will dispose of him,” the black woman said behind me. “When we are done with him.”

“I’d think the whole world was as done with him as could be. He’s dead.” The veves were going remarkably fast, for drawings done in flour; there was one elaborate triangle at the corpse’s head already, and another taking shape at its feet.

“In an ideal world,” the woman said fiercely, “the dead are left in peace. Do you live in an ideal world, do you think?”

I wasn’t even tempted to answer that.

When the veves were done, Mr. Lyle stepped back, and the woman began to take things out of the leather case. An unmarked bottle of clear liquid. A shot glass. A little dark glass vial. A square of red silk, embroidered around the edges. She spread the silk over Mick Ski

She was speaking, and so was Mr. Lyle — in unison, I realized only after a moment, because their voices were so different I had trouble listening to both at once. Hers was low and smooth; he might have had some damage in his throat, to judge by the whistling, broken, breathy sound of it. I didn’t recognize the words, or even the language, but the speech had a dance rhythm. I had to work to keep from swaying. Dana wasn’t bothering. Her eyes followed the woman in black, and her shoulders moved freely with the words.

It was taking a long time to light nine candles. The room was already warmer, and the points of light swam in halos before my aching eyes. By the time there were nine of them, bouncing in their golden auras, the speaking seemed to have a tune, and someone was patting a drumbeat on the floor. The woman produced the dark vial, unscrewed the cap, and held it over the corpse’s closed mouth.