“I was thinking…” I say as she walks back to her computer.
Paige rolls her eyes. “Uh-oh.”
“Shut up,” I say defensively. “I was thinking… can you go on Facebook and track down all the locations Elizabeth had checked in? Then cross-reference it with all the places Sebastian checked in?”
“You were thinking this… when?”
“While I was sleeping,” I say, my mouth full of bread.
“I thought you were having nightmares.”
“It was a very busy nap. Can you do it?”
Paige’s fingers are already clacking along her keyboard. That’s all the answer I need. I take another bite of the sandwich and place a phone call.
“Fiona Flanagan’s phone! How can I help you?”
I immediately recognize the Oklahoma twang. “Hi, Eva Jean. It’s Darcy.”
“Well, hiya, Darcy! How’re you doing?”
Not wanting to get sucked into small talk, I get straight to business. “Is Fiona there?”
“I’m afraid not,” she says, drawing out the last word. “She’s in a meeting with her publisher to go over her upcoming book.”
Publisher? “Where are you guys?”
“Why, we’re in New York. Can you believe it? Fiona gets a call from her agent yesterday saying they’ve got cover art, and instead of—”
“Eva Jean?”
“Yes?”
“Just let her know I called.” I hang up just as Paige plops down beside me with her laptop. “That was fast.”
Paige mirrors her screen to our TV. “What’s the deal with Fiona?”
“She’s in New York. We’re on our own for a while.”
Paige pulls up an online map of Los Angeles. “I looked at all the check-ins for both, plus any posts in Instagram, Twitter, and anywhere else I could track down their digital footprints. Elizabeth, obviously, had more. This is what I found.”
On the map appears a collage of bubbles in three different colors—red, blue, and purple. In some bubbles are the photos they posted at the location. There it is, the history of all their photos, mapped out across the city.
“Blue bubbles,” Paige says, “are Elizabeth. Red bubbles are Sebastian.”
“Why isn’t blue the guy and red the girl?”
She sighs. “I’m making maps, not planning a baby shower. Can I continue?”
“Fine.”
The maps show a higher concentration of the red and blue bubbles across the Los Angeles area. Elizabeth’s bubbles are concentrated in the Pasadena, USC, and downtown areas. Sebastian is all over the map. I guess he’s a drug dealer on the go. The fewest bubbles are purple.
“Purple bubbles,” Paige says, “are where Elizabeth and Sebastian overlap.” She punches a key, and the red and blue bubbles disappear. The purple bubbles are concentrated in Central and South LA. “These are where they overlap. And this”—she punches another key—“is where they check in at the same time.”
Four purple bubbles remain. One is the La Lucha bar we first identified they’d checked in at, one is at USC, one is at the Cinerama Dome in Hollywood, and…
“Now,” she continues, “remember when Sebastian said that temple was in Whittier in East LA?”
The display zooms in to Whittier Boulevard with a single photo—the last purple bubble. A photo of an altar pops up. It’s blurry, but there are clearly several figures standing in front of the altar, lit only by candles. Their faces are obscured by digital noise.
“I bet you anything that’s your temple.”
She clicks back on the map and provides a street view. It’s a poor neighborhood with dilapidated buildings and vacant industrial lots. The building at the center of the image is a nondescript pale stucco commercial structure on Whittier Boulevard between a liquor mart and a discount clothing store. Two levels. On the bottom floor is a florist shop. Next to it is a grated door that does little to hide the steps leading up.
Paige points upstairs. “That’s your temple.”
Chapter 14
____◊____
PAIGE AND I STAND before a two-story building on Whittier Boulevard. A tattered sign on the first floor indicates that a florist used to occupy the street level. A rolling steel door is pulled down and locked, and faded graffiti marks the metal. There are plenty of storefronts here in Boyle Heights, but along this impoverished stretch, most of them have been closed for some time.
Beside the shop is an iron grate that blocks the entrance to an upstairs business. When I pull, it opens with a creak. The stairway is dark, but jarred candles provide some light. I scan Whittier Boulevard. Aside from the few cars that drive along the street, I don’t see anyone.
“What do you think we’ll actually find up there?” Paige asks.
I shrug. “I guess it would be too much to ask that Santa Muerte is actually up there, just hanging out.”
Hesitantly, I walk up the steps. Paige follows. At the landing is an open door on the left. Carved on the door is a strange and unusual symbol.
“Stop,” I say.
My arm holds Paige back as I inspect the symbol. It’s burned onto the wood, probably with a soldering iron. Though roughly etched, it holds a roughly geometric quality. In the center is an oval dissected by two perpendicular lines that extend out of it. The vertical line has two slashes at the bottom to form an arrowhead and nine slashes at the top to form the fletching—essentially, aiming the arrow downward. In the four quadrants of the oval are different symbols: a four-pointed asterisk, a cross, a heart, and a triangle. The horizontal line has two more lines at each end to form crosses. And to the right of the oval, crossing through the horizontal line, sits a single backward S with spiraling loops at each end.
“What is it?” Paige asks.
I pull out my phone and snap a picture. “A veve.”
“And what is that?”
“I’ve only ever seen this in voodoo. A veve is a religious sigil meant to act as a beacon for spirits. A way of summoning them or inviting their protection.”
“I can guess which spirit this is for,” Paige says.
I touch the wood, feeling the carving beneath my fingers. To my amazement, it’s warm, as though someone had
