“We thought it was spell based or talent based,” I said. “It’s not. It’s curse based, Jim.”
He waited. Oh. I probably made no sense. Sometimes my brain went too fast for my mouth.
“Most magic is very specific. For example, someone capable of summoning jenglots would have to be a practitioner of Indonesian black magic. He couldn’t also be an expert in Japanese magic or Comanche magic, for example, because to reach that level of expertise, he had to devote himself to Balinese magic completely. You can’t be a master of all trades. Makes sense?”
He nodded. “Yes.”
“So when I saw jenglots, I assumed that they had been summoned by a person skilled in spells or a person with a special summoning talent. But then we ran across the hag. The hag made no sense. She is of European origin. We knew it was connected to Eyang Ida, because it would be just too big of a coincidence otherwise.”
“Logically, that means two different magic users are involved,” Jim said.
“That’s what I thought, but then I saw the car. I don’t know of anyone who can summon killer cars. It’s not a mythological being. That’s something out of horror fiction. Then I remembered that first, Eyang Ida was afraid of jenglots because she saw a fake one as a child, then Mr. Dobrev told us that he had seen a hag in a painting, and then . . .”
“Amanda said her brother was killed by a car on his way from school,” Jim said. “I thought about that.”
“This magic isn’t spell based or talent based. It’s curse based. I know curses. They work like computer programs used to: they have a rigid structure. If a set of conditions is met, the curse does something. If it isn’t met, the curse lies dormant. For example, let’s say I am targeting a person whose left leg has been amputated. I could curse that doorway so any creature missing a leg would get gonorrhea.”
Jim raised his hand. “Wait. Can you actually do that?”
I waved my hands at him. “That’s not the point.”
“No, that’s the kind of information I need to know.”
“Okay, probably I could.”
Jim’s expression went blank. “Remind me not to piss you off.”
“Jim, will you stop worrying about me cursing you with gonorrhea? You can’t get it anyway; you’re a shapeshifter. Anyway, under the conditions of that curse, any one-legged person would come through and get the plague. If a three-legged cat came through, it would also get the plague.”
“Can cats be affected by human gonorrhea?”
“Not necessarily, but the curse would still try to infect the cat. If I wanted to make a curse more specific, I would define it as ‘any creature with only one leg,’ which would spare the three-legged cat. Even more specific: any man with one leg. There is a limit to how specific you can get. Back to our current situation. I believe someone has cursed these people to fall prey to their worst fear. I am not sure exactly how this curse was structured, but I think it manifests the irrational fears they had since childhood. The curse relies on them to supply it with the details of their worst fears. Eyang Ida was afraid of jenglots, so she got a giant swarm. Dobrev was afraid of a hag, so it gave him a hag. And when it came to Amanda’s fears, it made a living car. That’s what Amanda saw in her mind when she worried about her son.”
“Makes sense,” Jim said. “But wouldn’t that take a lot of magic?”
“Yes and no. Cursing is a pay-to-play magic. If there is a curse, there must be a sacrifice. My curses don’t always work, because the price I pay is smalclass="underline" special paper, special ink, special brush and the years I spent learning calligraphy. This”—I raised my index fingers and made a circle, encompassing the ruined shop—“this would take a real sacrifice. Blood or flesh or something.”
Jim frowned. “What’s so important about the building that makes it worth that kind of sacrifice?”
He read my mind. “Exactly. I don’t know. But whoever this person is, they are committed. This isn’t going to stop. There will be more. What is Brune afraid of?”
“Brune!” Jim barked.
The comic book owner stopped. “Yes?”
“When you were a kid, what were you afraid of?”
“Being short.”
“You are short,” I blurted out.
“Yes, but I’m ripped.” Brune flexed behind Jim. “So I’m okay.”
I had no idea how being short could kill you. My body still hurt all over as if someone had put me through a meat grinder and thinking about it made my head hurt.
An imperceptible shift rolled over us, as if the planet somehow turned over in its bed. The magic vanished. The electric lights came on in the shop.
Everyone exhaled.
I dropped Jim off near a Pack safe house. He wanted to take a shower and change clothes. I drove to the meat market and bought another big steak. And then I drove home. I needed to take a shower and make dinner.
Magic always had a price, but in cursing that price was very clearly defined. Pay the right amount of the right commodity—the more precious, the better—and get desired result. And whoever was cursing the store owners knew exactly how far he or she could push it. The curser had cursed for their worst fears to manifest, trusting that the manifestations would kill them. He or she didn’t curse them to die. That would’ve required even greater sacrifice, his life or the life of a loved one. Just any life wouldn’t do. A sacrifice had to come at a real cost to the one casting the curse.
All of this made me anxious. We’d stopped three attempts to murder the store owners. That meant three sacrifices wasted. The person would come after us. I had no idea what my worst fear was. Well, no, I knew. My worst fear was that I wasn’t good enough. That I wasn’t woman enough, sexy enough, hot enough. I’d analyzed myself to death. I had the kind of brain that refused to stay quiet, except when Jim was near. Then it shut up and let me bask in my quiet happiness.
I got home, took a shower, and inspected the kitchen. My mother had been through it. There was cooked rice and a vegetable curry on the stove, and the fridge had been restocked with everything from tofu and cucumbers to apples and watermelon.
I’ve learned that Jim, like most shapehsifters, didn’t care for overly spicy food. He would eat it heroically, but he preferred lighter seasoning. I filled a pot with water, unwrapped the steak and dropped it in.
Blood. Ew. The scent drifted to me from the water. I got a wooden spoon and swished the steak around to get all of the blood and possible contaminants off. I pinned the steak with a spoon and poured the water off, then I got a clean towel, laid it on the counter, slid the steak onto it and patted it dry with the towel. So far so good.
I transferred the steak to a cutting board; got some garlic, squeezed it through a press; added a little tiny bit of pepper, salt, and a little bit of olive oil; smushed it all with a spoon and spread it on the steak.
I could still smell the meat.
And now I reeked of garlic. Hi, Jim, I’m your sexy garlic-smelling date.
I went to the phone to call my mother. My purifying magic came to me from my father’s line. But the curses, spells, and the systematic approach, that was all my mother. She saw things clearly, the way I did, and she had more experience.
My answering machine blinked with red. I pushed a button.
“Dali, this is your mother.”
Like I wouldn’t know.
“Komang called. She says you were there with a man.”
I leaned against the island.
“She said the man was very dark and said he was your boyfriend! I want to kno . . .”
I clicked the next message.
“This is your aunt Ayu . . .”
Click.
“Dali!” My cousin Ni Wayan. “My mother told me that you have a boyfriend . . .”
Click.
“Boyfriend? What?”
Click.
Click.
Click.