Part 9 (2/2)
”Young lady, based on what we just saw I think you could moonlight as a medium. Please, we need to go inside the house. Your visit with your father made a lot of noise in the spirit world. Anyone who was listening would have heard it-and they might come looking for you.”
As they pushed her toward the house she said, ”So if I'm sensitive to ghosts I'm also sensitive to vampires. This explains how the vampire was able to hypnotize me so effortlessly last night.”
Arkeley confirmed it. ”I was surprised how little resistance you had. So I brought you here where we can do something about it.”
Polder stood before the hex sign over his front door and waved his arm at it, his real arm. He drew a complicated pattern on his forehead with his thumb and something invisible relaxed. Caxton could feel the hex sign let go.
”Urie is a hexenmeister. I imagine you know the term?”
”Mostly where I grew up we called them pow-wow doctors, because they were supposed to have all kinds of secret Indian magic.” Caxton had never taken the old stories that seriously but then she'd never really believed in vampires either. After her adventures of the previous night and what she'd seen in the barn she was willing to suspend a little skepticism.
They headed inside the house where a woman waited for them. She wore a long black dress with a tight collar around her throat. Her blonde hair stood out from her head in enormous frizzy waves. Her long white fingers were covered in dozens of identical gold rings. ”Vesta, it's been too long,” Arkeley said, and he kissed her cheek. The woman's eyes never moved from Caxton's face.
”I've got water on for tea. Darjeeling, just as you like it,” she said. ”With sugar, not honey, and a touch of milk. Please, don't be surprised, Laura Beth Caxton. I know a large number of things about you already. I intend to learn many more.”
Caxton didn't even open her mouth. She turned her head because she'd seen a flash of yellow out of the corner of her eye. It was the girl she'd seen in the window, and she vanished as quickly as she had before.
”Now you, Special Deputy, you should be kinder to this one. She's risking much to help you in your vicious crusade.” Arkeley almost hung his head.
”Don't look so glum. I have a little something for your wife's foot, here,” Vesta said, and handed the Fed a plastic bag full of a reddish, fibrous plant matter. ”Make it into a poultice and have her wear it every night until she feels better.”
”You have a wife?” Caxton demanded.
”I killed a vampire twenty years ago, and another one last night. I had to keep myself busy in the meantime,” he told her. He thanked Vesta for her remedy and then he and Urie Polder went deeper into the house. Caxton was not invited. Instead Vesta Polder lead her into a sitting room, a dark but tidy s.p.a.ce with a raging fire place and a lot of heavy, dark, wood furniture. Six straight
backed chairs stood against the wall. A round table with a velvet cloth sat in the middle of the room, a horsehair-stuffed armchair crouching behind it. Vesta took this chair, lounging across it with one leg hooked over an arm. Caxton stood before the table for a long while before she thought to take one of the chairs from the wall and put it across the table from Vesta.
On the table sat the teapot and a single tea cup as well as a large, carved wooden box with a Chinese dragon on its lid and a slim deck of cards. ”You've seen these before, in a movie,” she said, tapping the cards against her wrist and then shuffling them one-handed. ”But you don't know what they're called. They're Zener cards.” She fanned a few of them as if she were demonstrating a poker hand. ”They are used by parapsychologists to test extra-sensory perception. They possess other virtues, as well.” On one side they showed a single symbol in thick black lines: a triangle, a star, a circle, three wavy lines or a square. ”Now,” she said, ”your instinct is going to be to tell me what you see.” She cut the cards and held one up so that Caxton could see it-a star.
”It's a star,” she said.
”Yes, dear, I know it is.” Vesta put the card down on the coffee table and opened the carved box. ”I see all. Now, please. From here on don't say anything. Don't try to project, don't give me any clues. Just look at the cards.”
Caxton never touched the tea. One by one Vesta lifted the cards so that only Caxton could see them. After a moment she would put them face down on the table. Occasionally she paused to study Caxton's face as intently as if she were sketching it. Then she would reach into her Chinese box and take out a long brown cigarette and an equally long match. She would puff at the cigarette, filling the room with pungent, foul smoke until Caxton's eyes watered. Then she would draw another card. This went on until she ran out of cards: then Vesta would shuffle the cards and start again. With each shuffle there were new instructions. Caxton should try not to look at the card. She should speak the card's symbol in her mind, rather than visualizing it. She should try to clear her mind of thoughts altogether. Time seemed to slow down, or perhaps stop. Maybe there was something more in the cigarettes than tobacco.
Vesta gathered up the deck and shuffled it again. ”Alright. This time, try to think of a symbol other than the one you see.” Caxton nodded and got to it. After they'd gone through five or six cards, Vesta surprised her. ”You're worried about Deanna.”
It was hard to concentrate on the card in front of her but Vesta rattled it between two fingers and she looked away from the other woman's face. ”She's been out of work for a long time.”
”She's been having bad dreams. Violent dreams-you had to wake her up last night because you were scared she would hurt herself. She's scared too, scared that you'll be killed.”
That makes two of us, Caxton thought. ”Focus on the card in your head, even when you look at the card in my hand. She is afraid of the future, it sounds like to me. Afraid because she does not know if you will let her stay with you. Yet you have never even considered asking her to leave.”
Caxton bit her lip. It was hard to even see the card in Vesta's hand when she thought of Deanna. ”You can read her mind, too? But she's fifty miles from here.”
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