The max porter box set, p.35
The Max Porter Box Set, page 35
Before they reached the front door, Cheryl-Lynn said, “Excuse me. Did you say you had a witch’s hand?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Sandra said over her shoulder. “We don’t have an appointment.”
“Let me see what I can do.”
Minutes later, Max and Sandra were escorted into the basement — a spell-casting room decorated like a medieval dungeon. Off to the side, a panel opened up leading to a wide but low-ceiling passage.
“Sorry for the confusion,” Cheryl-Lynn said as Max and Sandra ducked their heads. “If you need anything at all, I’ll be upstairs.”
“Thank you, dear,” Sandra said, laying on her own Carolina accent.
Crouching as they moved, Max and Sandra made their way across the dark passage. A single, bare bulb hung in the distance. When they reached the light, they stood before the blue dilapidated door of Madame Yan’s real home. They knocked.
“Enter,” Madame Yan said in her sing-song voice.
Max opened the door but only a little — he remembered that the bottom would scrape on the uneven floor and if he pushed too far, it would be like trying to open a wall. Sandra slipped in, and he followed. The room looked much the same as before — normal ceiling height, lots of furniture, and an overall claustrophobic feel.
Books cluttered the furniture. Boxes had been stacked against the walls. Max recalled a stack of birdcages in one corner. They were gone — replaced with a variety of lampshades. Three open boxes of candles — one box of white, one black, one red — sat flush against shelves of porcelain animals. It looked like Noah’s ark — lions, bears, elephants, giraffes, monkeys, penguins, and more all cluttered the shelves.
Madame Yan sat atop a mound of books. She wore a black lace dress that fit her heavyset shape well. Max had yet to figure out what part of the world she came from — she had characteristics of practically every major culture and spoke with an equally unidentifiable accent — but he found that mystery rather charming. Her constant grin and frazzled eyes added to her pleasant demeanor, though she had a joint in her hand, so that may have had something to do with it.
“Welcome,” she said. “It’s been awhile. I started to think I might never see you again. Care for a hit?”
“No, thank you,” Max said, wanting to casually lean back but unsure of what would be safe to lean against.
“Your loss. Cheryl-Lynn has a great connection. Gets me some powerful stuff.” Pinching the tip of the joint between her fingers to put it out, she said, “You want to talk about the Dardens?”
“You know?”
“Of course, I know.” She gave a little shake of her head to Sandra. “How do you put up with him? He doesn’t seem too bright.”
Sandra elbowed Max. “He’s really good in bed.”
“That explains it.” Madame Yan pulled a rusted sardine tin from a pile of rusted metal and gently placed her joint inside. “Yes, Max, I know about the Dardens. We live in precarious times. Well, all times are precarious to a witch, but recent events — some caused by the two of you — have made life rather unpredictable. It’s good for me to know where all the pieces are on the board. Tell me what you know, and I’ll try to fill in the gaps.”
Max held back. Dealing with a witch, even one as amicable as Madame Yan, always posed dangers. In one breath, she said she knew all about the Dardens, yet in the next, she wanted him to provide information. Plus, and this was most important to remember, nothing from a witch ever came free.
“What do you know about this strange man that put a curse on the house?”
“Oh?” She looked genuinely surprised. “Is that why they’ve hired you?”
“Can you tell us what the curse is?”
“Dear, it’s me. I can tell you lots of things. The question I have is what is it all worth to you?”
“I’d say I already paid you with information you didn’t know.”
Madame Yan laughed. “Normally, I’d say tough crapola on that one. You gave me something for free there. But, I’m going to be nice — mainly because I’m going to cast a spell to see what’s happening there anyway. And I have a feeling doing you a little favor is a big favor to me. Sit tight. Let me go take care of this.”
She pushed off the stack of books, toppling three to the floor, and scuttled behind a large dresser. Sandra craned her neck in an attempt to see the witch at work. Max meandered around the room, inspecting one pile of strangeness after another — a box of feathers, a can filled with chewed chewing gum, and an expensive camera from before digital took over.
A minute later, a sharp bang like a firecracker went off. The air smelled of burnt paper. Madame Yan came back with her bangs singed.
“I don’t like this at all,” she said, fumbling through several piles of books next to two buckets. “Not one bit. Do you know what I found? Of course not, how could you? I cast a spell — easy thing, really — and I found nothing. Which means this man’s curse is either extremely powerful, something strong enough to cloak itself, or his spell is weak enough that it blends in with the other spells on the house.”
That stopped Max. “Other spells?”
“Sure. A house as old as that is going to have seen a lot of magic. Ah, here.” She lifted out a dusty volume and set it atop a diaper changing table. “This is a general history of magic used in the South before the Civil War. That was a strange, dark time for witches and black people alike. And if you happened to be both — life could be short. That happened at the Darden home. Their slaves would figure out that the Dardens had witches in the family, and some of the slaves who practiced magic thought that gave them a common bond. But white people back then did not see black people as human. To them, a negro slave using magic was at best a curiosity and at worst, a threat. The Dardens tended to see it as a threat. Disgusting, if you ask me. If I had the power to do it, I’d see all those plantations destroyed. Maybe leave one to remind and warn people of how horrible we can all be. But live in one? Makes me want to vomit. Here, look.”
She turned through several pages of the book. Max had seen photos of lynchings before. He had read copies of slave auction ads and seen the metal collars those men had been forced to wear. But in these pages, he saw photos and drawings of slaves being sacrificed, carved with symbols, and cowering beneath the frightening gaze of witches.
“Not our finest hour.” Snapping the book shut, she said, “All those spells back then were not as well-crafted as they are today. Lots of them didn’t work. But sometimes, even when a spell fails, residual energy remains. The Darden house is soaked through-and-through with leftover spells.”
Max knew the time had come. With Madame Yan caught up in her history lesson, Max hoped she would let slip the answer he sought. “I wonder how that relates to the Kalinski hand we found.”
Madame Yan froze. All sound seemed to halt, too. Max couldn’t even hear his own heartbeat. Until, finally, she said, “What do you know about that?”
While not the reaction he had wanted, he could work with it. “I know a lot. But as you say, nothing is for free. Care to make an even trade of information?”
Her eyes shifted from Max to Sandra. Then she cackled. “Oh, I like your man. I can see why he’s good in bed. He’s got big, brass balls.” To Max, she said, “You got me with this. But you divulge first. And I want everything you know.”
With a nod from Sandra, Max pulled out his cellphone and brought up the pictures he had taken of the hand. Madame Yan pulled back with a gasp when she saw it. Then she approached the phone again, her eyes widening, the tip of her tongue darting along the edge of her lips.
“Holly Darden had the hand in her room,” Max said. “Now, I guess Chelsea or Lane will want it. From what I’m hearing, probably Lane.” He decided to risk a question, if only to confirm his suspicions. “Do you think this hand is what the man is after?”
As if watching a hypnotist’s candle, Madame Yan’s eyes never left the photo. “No. Not the hand. It’s the ring that’s important.”
“Your turn. What about the ring?” Max pocketed the phone and noted Madame Yan’s dismayed look.
She turned away from Max and picked up the metal sardine tin. After fishing out her joint, she lit it up and inhaled deeply. Pushing aside a box filled with various kinds of salt, she sat on a cushion perched on a stool.
“Are you hungry?” she asked.
“Only for answers.” Max wanted to lean heavy on her, make sure she didn’t break their deal, but he could see that her stalling came from fear rather than an intent to defraud him. So, he waited.
After another hit off her joint, she pointed to Sandra and then to the box of salt. “Be a dear and put that on the floor.” Sandra complied, revealing a second, cushioned stool. “Now, sit next to me.”
As Sandra sat, she said, “Are you okay?”
“You know what I think? That you are going to be a very great witch someday. You’re a novice, getting your feet wet, but because of what you do with your husband, you keep bumping into powerful magic. That kind of experience forces you to either advance quickly with your skills or perish. I like you. I do. And I hope you advance quickly. So, trust me now — this is not magic you should ever try to work with. This is magic nobody should touch.”
“You certainly know how to give a buildup. What’s with this ring?”
Madame Yan paused to look at Max and Sandra once more. Max got the feeling she wasn’t trying to play the part of dramatic witch but rather that she truly needed to know that they were both paying full attention to her. He saw it in her eyes — what she had to say, she feared saying, so she didn’t want to ever repeat it again.
“Have either of you ever heard of The Malleus Maleficarum?”
Max had no idea what she was talking about. He glanced at Sandra. She shook her head.
Madame Yan continued, “The title translates to The Hammer of Witches. It was written by a Catholic clergyman named Heinrich Kramer and first published in Germany in 1487. It went on to become one of the most widely sold books for hundreds of years. Only the Bible outsold it. And it is, without a doubt, one of the most evil books ever written.”
Sandra held Madame Yan’s hand. “Go on.”
“On the surface, it is an instruction manual for witch hunters. It explains how to spot witches, how to test them, how to apprehend them, torture them, force confessions from them, and kill them. Some consider it a work of pure evil because of all the innocent people throughout history who suffered and died based on its pages. Women burned at the stake who had no interest in witchcraft and had done nothing wrong other than educate themselves or dare contradict a man’s view of the world.
“But there’s a darker side to this foul book. The real evil lies between its pages. You see, the original book — the master copy — the handwritten manuscript by which the publisher created the book, that document was bound with great forces of malicious magic.” She tightened her grip on Sandra’s hand. “I’m talking about the kind of powerful magic that would make demons and angels jealous. The kind of thing that would make gods flinch and mortals cringe. To some, to most, there is no greater evil in the form of a book.
“The exact details of what happened have been lost to history, but according to witch lore, there was a fight for the manuscript. In the end, a group of thirteen witches cast a spell to confuse or seduce their enemies — I’ve heard both versions — so that they could steal the book. They succeeded and disappeared. These witches formed a new coven devoted to protecting the world from the book. They hid it, warded it, cast spells around it, and tasked themselves with guarding it with their lives from any who attempted to take it.”
Max hated to interrupt, but he had to ask, “Why didn’t they destroy it?”
“It can’t be destroyed. Or if it can, nobody has figured out how to do it yet. But it can be used. The magic it contains can be unleashed, wielded as if you held a divine sword. In order to do that, you’d have to open the spellbound locks that surround it. And for that, you’d need a key.”
“Like a ring attached to a witch’s hand?”
“Oh, yes. That ring is one of the fabled keys.”
“I take it that ring would be worth a lot.”
“It’s beyond value. People will kill for it. Or, in this case, curse an entire family. If that ring is truly one of the key rings, then the Dardens are in great peril. The fact that this man has come after them means word has gotten out about the ring. It won’t be long before witches and occultists and others start streaming into North Carolina, each bent on bribing, bullying, or destroying the Dardens.”
Sandra said, “But why? What good is a key without the lock to fit it?”
“Because that lock, the original manuscript, is out there. Somewhere. Probably in the archives of a museum. It doesn’t matter where. Many witches believe the ring itself holds great power, even without the book. I personally disagree, but that’s not a conversation for today.”
“Thank you. I’m sure this will help us immensely.”
Sandra stood as Max readied to leave. Madame Yan clenched her hand. “You’re not listening. This is not magic you want to get near. Either of you. But Sandra, what you have inside you is too precious, too potential, for you to risk messing with this kind of thing. It could destroy you. I don’t simply mean kill you. It could rip apart every atom of your soul.”
Neither Max nor Sandra spoke another word until they drove off toward Highway 52. Even then, they might have stewed in their thoughts for the entire way home, but Drummond popped up in the back seat. His sudden appearance nearly caused Max to drive off the road.
“I swear we need to get a bell around your neck. Don’t do that.”
“Got something interesting to tell you,” Drummond said with all the exuberance of proud child. “I followed Enrique like you asked and instead of going straight to the Darden house, he detoured to an apartment south of the city. Pretty shabby place sitting on top of a dive bar. He goes into the bedroom and pulls out a suitcase from underneath the bed. I thought he was skipping town, but that wasn’t it. The suitcase is filled with wards — each one on a string for a necklace or bracelet. He takes at least eight or so, shoves them in his pocket, and goes to see Chelsea. I’m telling you, he’s prepping for a fight.”
“Good,” Max said. After everything Madame Yan had told them, Max’s brain had kicked into overdrive. He had a glimmer of what the truth would be, and if he was right, Enrique might need a lot more than some wards to protect him. “I need to check a few things, make sure I’m seeing all of this right.”
“You’re not hearing me. Enrique is ready to bust heads. We have to get to the Darden house and either stop him or help him — depends on how you want to play it. Personally, I think you should confront them with as much as you know but make them think you have the full story. Nine times out of ten, they’ll start singing the rest of it for you.”
“Maybe, but there are still too many gaps for me to be satisfied. Things we need to understand first. Otherwise, we won’t know their lies from the truth.”
“If you don’t get over there soon, you got a good chance that Enrique’s going to blow the whole thing. Doll, back me up.”
Sandra gave Drummond a warm smile. “Sorry, but I think Max is right.”
“Sure. Side with your husband.”
“Enrique’s not going to do anything,” Max said. “He wants to impress Mother Hope and screwing up his cover won’t do that. He’ll try to make up with Chelsea.”
“But the wards.”
“He’s protecting himself, not picking a fight. If we go in there now, we’ll be blowing everything because we don’t understand it all.”
Sandra said, “From everything we just learned, I don’t even understand why the Dardens hired us in the first place. I think we need to hit the books. Go back over the case and find what we’ve missed.”
Rather than take the exit for Silas Creek Parkway that would lead home, Max headed into the city toward their office. “I agree,” he said.
Sandra watched the exit zip by. “I meant in the morning.”
Chapter 22
FUELED ON CAFFEINE AND ADRENALINE, Max and Sandra scoured through every detail of the case. They reviewed it in the order of events they had experienced. They reviewed the facts they knew and the things they suspected. They reviewed the various histories they had uncovered. Though nothing jumped out as the key missing detail, Max felt better by seeing all the pieces they did have fit together with some perspective.
Drummond hovered by one of the windows and watched the few late-night drivers roll down the street. “This book, The Malleus Maleficarum, you think the Dardens have it?”
Sandra lifted her head from the floor and tried to appear as if she hadn’t fallen asleep. “If they had it, they would have used it. And if it’s got half the strength that Madame Yan suggested, it would have been like a nuclear bomb going off.”
“You mean this could level a city?”
“Not literally. Maybe. I don’t know. But amongst the world of witches, I think we all would have felt the shift in energy.”
“Then the Dardens are trying to find it. They’ve got that hand and they need the book.”
Max joined Drummond by the window. The city had an empty look to it as if an apocalyptic virus had swept through, taking all the populace and leaving only the buildings behind. But unlike a zombie nightmare scenario, Max could see hints of life and he could sense the slumber of the city. That’s what this case felt like to him — a slumbering city waiting for the sun to rise so that it can become active again. Except, he didn’t want whatever slumbered in this case to awaken.
“See,” Max said, “that’s part of what bothers me. Why hire us to deal with this man and his curse when they should have hired us to find the book? They’ve got the ring and the hand. With the book, they’d have no trouble dealing with this man.”
“Why even bother with the hand?” Sandra said. “It’s the ring that’s important.”
