Secondhand Spirits by Juliet Blackwell

Author:Juliet Blackwell [Blackwell, Juliet]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin USA, Inc.
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 12

“What is all this?”

The photos brought the horror of last night back to me in living color. At the time I had been involved and concentrating, operating on a different level. That was one reason I wasn’t watching out for Max, intent only on what I was doing. But now, the animal sacrifice seemed even more gruesome when taken out of context. The blood, the candles, the blackened bones, the dirt and stones . . . it was all just plain old creepy.

“It’s . . . pretty bad, right? I found that altar . . . It’s kind of hard to explain.”

She handed them over with two fingers, as though they were a noxious item, or a snake. “Better you than me; that’s all I can say.”

Suddenly an odd sensation came over me: I didn’t want to be alone tonight. Having never had friends before, I didn’t quite know how to ask Bronwyn and Maya to stay. So I just blurted it out.

“Bronwyn, Maya, would y’all hang out with me tonight?” I felt myself blush.

“Sure,” said Maya. “What do you want to do?”

“I’m free,” said Bronwyn. “My granddaughter can’t make our movie night; she’s at a sleepover with some friends.”

And it was as simple as that. After closing the store at seven, we ordered Chinese food to be delivered and I grabbed a bottle from the collection of California wines I was slowly acquiring. This one was a zinfandel from Seghesio Winery. The man at the wine shop couldn’t stop raving about it. One of these days, I promised myself, when I wasn’t so swamped with all this demon business, I was going to take a day trip up to the Napa and Sonoma valleys to go wine tasting. I heard it was just like Tuscany.

Once the food arrived we brought everything up to my apartment, lit some candles, and sat in the living room around the coffee table. Oscar had trotted upstairs with us, and since he couldn’t transform in front of Maya and Bronwyn, I made him a couple of grilled cheese sandwiches and put them on a plate for him on the kitchen floor.

I brewed a pot of loose-leaf green tea to go with the Kung Pao tofu and gluten-based mock Mongolian beef—which tasted much better than it sounded—and then Bronwyn volunteered to read our tea leaves. We giggled over her outrageously incorrect readings, and then I started making the leaves form funny shapes, which led to some rather obscene interpretations. We laughed some more.

“Why do women’s private discussions always devolve into sex talk?” Bronwyn said, wiping her eyes.

“You think men’s don’t?” asked Maya, smiling. She was lying on her stomach on the rug, her feet waving in the air, her chin on an orange satin pillow. “I’ve got brothers; I know how bad they can get. Okay, so we know that Bronwyn has a million guys in love with her, most of them half her age.”

“Not in love,” Bronwyn clarified. “More like in lust.”

“I tell you what, Bronwyn, you give fiftysomething a good name.

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