The Misfortune Cookie

“Max!” I shouted insistently. “Come on!”

Nelli’s barking got more ferocious, and then I heard her thudding footsteps as she thundered down the stairs toward us, evidently having decided to give her life to protect us from whatever this thing was that we had summoned.

As she reached the bottom steps, Max shouted, “Nelli, no! Esther, stop her!”

Obeying him blindly, I grabbed Nelli’s collar as she rushed past me, intent on attacking . . . the cauldron, I supposed. I threw my whole body weight in the reverse direction, trying to halt her. But Nelli outweighed me, as well as being more muscular than I, so this only had the effect of making her stumble sideways—which, in turn, offset my balance. I fell down on the concrete floor, banging my knees and elbows painfully, while Nelli lunged at the table, barking aggressively, her fangs bared.

“Stay back, Nelli!” Max commanded. “Look!”

Dazed, terrified, and in pain, I lay sprawled on the cellar floor as I looked up to see . . . a black piece of paper float up out of the cauldron, rising to the top of the wildly undulating white flames. As the walls of the laboratory reverberated with the throaty, menacing laughter coming from the pot, which was by now at deafening volume, the piece of paper—which I recognized as Benny’s death curse—exploded into flames and went up in smoke.

A second later, the ear-splitting, growling laughter ceased and the white flames vanished, disappearing into the cauldron, which now sat still and silent on the table, just an ordinary little black pot again.

Nelli stopped barking and, for a merciful moment, the room was quiet, except for everyone’s frantic breathing. Then our favorite familiar started whining loudly. I didn’t blame her.

I sat up slowly, my chest heaving, my heart thudding. Still whining, Nelli skittered over to me and tried to crawl into my lap. I clung to her, scarcely noticing the discomfort of having a dog the size of a small car sitting on top of me and panting anxiously into my face. As I watched, Max tentatively approached his workbench, gingerly poked the inert cauldron, then leaned over to peer into its contents.

Apparently satisfied that the danger was over, he breathed a little sigh of relief. Then he met my eyes and said with certainty, “Mystical.”

I nodded. “Evil.”

10 Bo

When things fall apart or deteriorate; when incompetent people gain power and make a situation worse.

It took a few days, but I finally found a good excuse to call Lopez. So good, in fact, that I’d probably have phoned him even if I hadn’t promised Lucky I’d try to find out why Lopez was investigating in Chinatown.

Shivering inside my heavy coat as the wind whipped down the street on a bleak January day, I pulled my phone out of my pocket and speed-dialed Lopez’s cell. (None of my vows to get over him had led me to delete his number.)

He answered on the third ring. “Esther?”

“Yeah, it’s me,” I said as another gust of icy wind blew down Doyers, the little L-shaped street in Chinatown that runs between Pell Street and the Bowery.

“Are you all right?” he asked. “You sound funny.”

“I’m just cold.” I tried to keep my teeth from chattering. Under my heavy coat, I wasn’t dressed for this weather.

“Where are you?”

“Chinatown.”

“Oh?” He sounded surprised. “Me, too. I’m working on a case here.”

“Really?” I said, as if also surprised by our proximity. “Oh, good!”

In fact, I had assumed Lucky would be right about that. He hadn’t survived all these years in his line of work by relying on bad information.

“Good?” Lopez repeated. “Does that mean you’re speaking to me?”

“Do you have to start right off with trick questions?” I said crankily.

“Sorry. I mean, no. I mean, uh . . .” He cleared his throat. “I’m glad you called.”

“Oh, really?” I hadn’t intended to be snippy with him, but I couldn’t seem to help myself.

I was standing outside of a well-known little eatery. Ted Yee was inside with the cast and crew of ABC. I looked through the restaurant’s big storefront window and waved to Officer Novak, the uniformed cop who was with them. Then I pointed to my phone and nodded, to let him know I had succeeded in contacting the detective I had told him I was going to call.

“Yes, really.” Lopez took a breath. “Look, can we talk? And I don’t mean that as a trick question.”

I turned my back to the restaurant so that Novak and my colleagues, if they were watching, wouldn’t see me scowling.

“If you wanted to talk,” I said, feeling incensed with Lopez all over again, “you could have called me.”

I was already way off script here, and I was kicking myself for it. But, well, he had that effect on me.

“I know, but when I put you in the squad car that night . . . morning . . . whatever . . . Well, when I said I’d call, you got so mad, I wasn’t sure I should call after that.”

“I got mad because—”

“And,” he continued, raising his voice, “it’s not as if talking was going all that well between us that night . . .” After listening to my stony silence for a long moment, he added, “Or right now.”

I sighed. “All right, look, I don’t want to talk about any of that right now.”

“Okay,” he said quickly.

His prompt agreement to drop the subject of his transgressions made me mad again. “What do you mean, okay?”

“Huh? You just said—”

“Oh, never mind,” I interrupted, in no mood to hear a reasonable rebuttal. I took a deep breath, refocused, and plunged in. “I’m calling you because I need your help. And you always . . . Well, you . . .” He had told me on several occasions, including the time he broke up with me, that he wanted me to call him if I ever needed his help. But although I had intended to remind him of that, I now found that the words stuck in my throat. Or formed a lump there. Or something. I gave myself a shake, gritted my teeth against the bone- numbing cold that was whipping down the street, and concluded lamely, “Look, I just need your help. So can you come here?”

“Yes. Do you need me there right now?”

In the background, I heard a man say irritably to him, “Now? We’re kind of in the middle of something here.”

So I said, “No, I guess not.” I didn’t want Lopez to drop everything, rush over here, and then be annoyed with me when he discovered that my problem wasn’t exactly a life-or-death situation. I wanted him to help me, after all. “Will what you’re doing right now take very long?”

“Hang on a second, Esther.” I could hear him conferring with someone, though I didn’t catch what the two of them were saying. Then he said to me, “I can be there within an hour. Is that all right?”

“That should be fine.” I hoped I was right.

“Where exactly are you?” he asked briskly.

“Doyers Street.” I gave him the name of the popular eatery where I’d be waiting.

“Sure, I know that place,” he said. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

“Okay. Good.” After a moment, I added, “Thanks.”

After we ended the call, I put my phone back in my pocket and stomped my chilled feet as I looked down Doyers, one of the oldest streets in the neighborhood, wondering which direction Lopez would come from. In