'A rip. A long slit, like a cat's eye.' I watched her for a clue. Her face was impassive. 'And then,' I said, 'we ducked into that apartment complex and everything stopped as long as we stayed inside.'
She nodded and smiled. It was a cagey, smug sort of smile. 'That has nothing to do with your problem. A pair of quite powerful witches once lived there. They stayed long enough to create a zone of safety. Many circles such as that exist. You don't see any blood drizzling in here, do you?'
'Can you determine the source?' Ann asked.
Bridget shifted her position and sighed. 'That would require some effort to discover.'
The customer bell rang. Kasmira stepped out front to handle it. Paying trade, after all, came first.
The old woman stood her ground. 'You still haven't given me a reason I consider sufficient. It's not as though I can rattle off a quick prayer and an angel pops in with the answer by special delivery. Results vary according to the time and energy invested. You're asking quite a lot of an old woman.' She stared at us, waiting.
I figured that she wanted her palm crossed with a little silver. I was wrong.
Ann's lips tightened to a thin line, then parted. Her voice took on an edge I hadn't heard before. In a low, cool tone she spoke, gazing at Bridget with a chilling gaze.
'
'
The old crone stared back for a long moment, a silent communication ping-ponging between them. In that time, the lines from decades of frowns appeared as deep furrows above her eyes, only to fade when she broke into a warm, assured smile.
A wrinkled hand tightened and loosened around the cane's grip. Bridget nodded for a moment. Her eyes closed lightly, then opened. She turned to reach for the doorknob behind her.
'In.' She pointed toward the darkened room.
Ann stepped in. Bridget followed, snapped on a light. I brought up the rear, wondering what sort of mystic
would happen next. Only I wasn't too sure that the word nonsense worked as well for me as it used to.
The room enclosed an area not much larger than the waiting room of my office. Dark, heavy curtains bordered three walls, including the one with the door. Bridget closed the door and drew the drape across it.The wall to the left was covered with a bookcase stuffed ceiling high with books-old and new-and rows of computer plaques, each hand-labeled with its contents. In front of the draped wall opposite the bookcase squatted what looked like a cluttered coffee table. It supported candles and wooden carvings of deer and crescent moons. The obligatory crystal ball sat in a bronze eagle's claw right next to a ceramic incense burner shaped like a dragon. Every so often, little puffs of smoke snorted from its nostrils.
The wall across from the door had a low, Japanese sort of table near it. Bridget sat down on her heels and beckoned us to follow.
Ann sat in the same fashion. I creaked down on my backside and folded my legs in front of me. The parquet floor hadn't been waxed in decades. It felt cold, but not chilly.
'I'll do this for you,' the old woman said. 'Just sit there and be quiet.'
I finally found my pack of Camels-they had migrated into an inside coat pocket I'd forgotten existed on the newer styles. Before I'd even pulled one out of the package, Bridget eyed me.
'No smoking.'
I nodded and returned the pack to its hiding place. It was a reasonable request.
A second later, she lit up enough incense to fumigate a flophouse.
Ann straightened up to take a deep breath of the stuff. She closed her eyes. The only indication that she'd been through any sort of ordeal was her kinked and tangled hair. The rest of her bespoke the outer calm of a resting feline.
Bridget slid a deck of cards from the table's edge to its center. Her fingers nimbly shuffled the deck.
