At last they reached the door of the shop.
“It’s in me,” she said.
Damien spoke. “Go now, Jude. Caro has the elemental.”
Jude disappeared as if he had never been.
“Can you manage, Schatz?”
“A little longer. I’m so cold inside.”
He took her gently by the shoulders. “Imagine yourself as a vessel. A container for this thing. It cannot hurt the vessel that holds it. Like water in a jug.”
“It can’t?”
“Think of it that way. Believe it.”
Even as she shook from head to foot, and felt her lips stiffen from the cold, she got it. See herself as an inert vessel, holding it but not affected by it. She formed a mental image of a clear jug holding ice water, and as the image grew clearer, she felt the strangest thing. The cold didn’t leave her, but it felt a whole lot less threatening. It also didn’t get any worse.
“Ready?” Damien asked.
“As I’ll ever be,” she said, and she realized she had regained use of her lips, even though she was still shivering.
Damien reached out and pushed the door open. A bell rang, announcing their entrance but no one was in sight.
“Alika?” he called out. Then again when no one responded.
Finally the curtain at the back moved and a tall man stepped out. He looked to be in his thirties and resembled Alika, but only a little. His hair was almost white despite his youth, and his eyes, dark, held a burning intensity.
“My mother is unwell,” he said. “You need to come back another time if you wish to see her.”
“I just needed a book,” Damien said, apparently playing along. “Maybe you can help me.”
The young man shrugged. “I don’t know the store the way she does.”
Caro narrowed her eyes, wondering if she saw a bright red halo around him. It came and went so fast that she couldn’t be sure. “I’m so sorry Alika is sick,” she said. “How bad is it?”
“I’m sure she’ll be on her feet in a few days. But right now the store is closed.”
“Then you should have locked the door,” Damien said. He stepped closer to the man. “I’m Damien. You are?” He offered his hand.
“Who I am doesn’t matter,” the other said, refusing to shake hands. “I think I asked you to leave.”
“Well, unfortunately, we seem to have something that belongs to you. Or maybe it belongs to Alika.”
The man’s brows lifted. “What?”
“An elemental.”
“A what?”
But Caro could see something in the way he shifted that told her he was lying. Thank goodness for the street smarts she’d gained over the years. “Oh, come on. You know all about it,” she said. “I’m carrying it right now.”
“That’s impossible. You’re crazy.”
Caro closed her eyes and envisioned putting a stopper in the jug of ice water. As soon as she did it, she felt a little warmer. “It’s not impossible,” she said. “I contain it and it’s not going anywhere unless you’re willing to send it back to where it belongs.”
“What makes you think I can do that?”
“Because,” said Damien, “you’re the one who called it.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
But Caro could see his aura deepening. He was summoning power. She hoped Damien could see it, too. She had a feeling this was about to get very ugly, but she could hardly imagine in what way.
Moved by an impulse she couldn’t explain, she pulled the gris-gris Alika had given her from her pocket and showed it to the man. “We need to talk,” she said in her best cop voice.
“About what?” he demanded truculently.
“About how these murders are going to stop.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Did Alika give you that?”
“Yes, to protect me. Apparently she knew something was coming after me. You miscalculated on that. Your elemental is following me because I saw what it did at the Pritchett house. That was your mistake.”
He shook his head. “Are you crazy? What are you talking about?”
“We’re talking about you,” Damien said silkily. “And your very big mistake. You’re apparently not a very good bokor.”
The man took a step toward them. “I’m no bokor. No way. Crazy or not, you’re talking to the wrong person.”
“Someone here,” Damien said flatly, “called upon an elemental to kill people. That’s a very big mistake. Especially when it then turns its attention to a cop who had no part in Pritchett’s activities. Otherwise you might have left a trail of unsolved murders. As it is, you’re going to recall this elemental and stop murdering people now.”
“No one in his right mind becomes a bokor!”
“So I would have thought. But the power was called from here, so that leaves you, doesn’t it?”
Suddenly the curtain moved again, and Alika stepped out. She looked drained and unsteady, and at once the young man took her arm to help her. “Mother...”
“No, Jerome, I’m not going to let you fight for me.” She looked at Damien and Caro. “Yes, I called on the power. And I’m not going to stop, not while there’s a single person who might become homeless because a wealthy man doesn’t give a damn about the lives of the poor. You can’t stop me.”
“Mother...”
She patted the young man’s hand and settled onto a chair. “I tried to protect you,” she said to Caro. “I knew you weren’t part of it. And now my son tries to protect me. He cast a spell to keep you away. You should have stayed away.”
“Not while people continue to die,” Caro said. “I’m grateful for the gris-gris, Alika, but I nearly died anyway. How long do you want this to go on? How many have to die?”
“As many as it takes. In less than a month my son and his family will lose their home. Where will they go? What will they do? The rich never think of these things. Pah!”
Caro had to admit some sympathy with the woman’s view. “But there has to be a better way to fight.”
“We went to the meetings. We argued for our homes. They didn’t listen.”
“How does this justify murder? You took the law into your own hands. No one has that right.”
“Easy for you to say,” Alika spat furiously. “You won’t be sleeping on the street.”
Caro gave up the argument. The problem here wasn’t that Alika was wrong about what was happening to all those families. No, she was simply wrong in how she was dealing with the problem. Finally she said, “Leaving people homeless is wrong. But murder is even worse, and it won’t stop what’s happening. There has to be another way. I’m sure there are agencies—”
“Pah,” Alika interrupted. “Agencies. As if they care. Believe me, they don’t care the way I do, the way my son does. How many homes will be destroyed? You tell me where there are homes these people can afford to move into.”
Caro didn’t have an answer for that. Worse, she wondered if anyone did.
“No,” Damien said quietly. “Don’t weaken yourself.”
She looked at him and realized she had lost the image of the corked bottle. The cold was creeping through her again. At once she mentally reconstructed the container and slapped the stopper on it. The elemental remained contained.
“Please,” she said to Alika. “Innocent children died because of your anger at their father. I might have died and may still. You need to recall this thing. What if it slips your control?”
Alika smiled faintly. “It’s in your control now, woman. What will you do with it?”
Caro didn’t have an answer for that. She had the thing bottled up inside her, but with no idea of how to get rid of it. If she even could.