Silver Nitrate(74)

“Someone has to try and figure it out.”

“You don’t know the first thing about witchcraft.”

She didn’t like the tone he was using. It reminded her of her co-workers and her boss at Antares who were constantly underestimating her.

“Yes, I do,” she said. “Ewers wrote it in his book, and I can tell you that you don’t stop a hex by pretending it didn’t happen.”

“So we are cursed?”

“Ewers talks a lot about cycles, circuits, things that are interconnected to each other. That’s why he loved movies. They were an endless loop. Magic, trapped forever and forever spinning through a projector. Magic fixed in time and space with silver.”

“It’s a simple question. Are we cursed?”

“Not quite. I don’t think so.”

“See! You don’t know anything!” Tristán said and he raised and dropped his arms dramatically in the air.

“For fuck’s sake, I’m trying to be honest with you. I don’t know exactly what’s going on, but Clarimonde Bauer and José López might, and we are going to find them. I have no idea where he is, but I have her address.”

“Sure, Montserrat. Let’s walk into the house of a witch and ask her about the ex-leader of her cult. You know what, you go alone. I’ll head to the market,” Tristán said, and he took two steps back from her.

Montserrat couldn’t help herself. She did not try to contain her words—they came out fast and furious. “You fucking coward! I knew I couldn’t count on you. You always leave me alone!”

“What are you talking about? I’m here, no? Even after I saw my dead girlfriend in the shower.”

Montserrat crossed her arms and shook her head with a scoff. Tristán took off his sunglasses and pointed at her with them. “What?” he asked, exasperated.

“You always leave, you do. You find a new fling and off you go, merrily forgetting I exist, and then you come back six months later once that’s done and you need attention. You’re never there when I need you.”

“Oh, okay. We’re going to quarrel about my love life again?”

“You lousy bastard, you stupid—”

“I’m the smart one. You’re the one who wants to investigate all this paranormal crap! Did you sleep through all the horror movies we rented?”

“We’re part of Ewers’s spell now. You don’t undo a spell by pretending it was never cast. Fear is not going to help us.”

“Fear is a natural reaction to seeing ghosts.”

“It doesn’t matter if it’s natural. Fear gives a magician power over their rivals. It’s reflected back at you, like looking into a mirror.”

Tristán shoved the napkin back into her hands. “You have no idea what I’ve been through. I saw Karina, with blood dripping down her body. I’m not going to star in this episode of Bewitched for you.”

Montserrat stuffed the napkin in her pocket. “You didn’t ask what I saw in the building.”

“What?”

“Back there, you didn’t ask what I saw. You don’t care. It’s the Tristán show, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.”

“What did you see? Your German boyfriend?”

“You’re an asshole.”

“I’m asking because you’re awfully fond of his writing and ideas. Oh, look here and look there, Ewers this and Ewers that,” he said in singsong. “Maybe you have a schoolgirl crush. God knows you have a tendency for those.”

Montserrat opened her mouth in shock. Tristán meant her crush on him. Of all the low blows to throw, that was the lowest one. Sure, when they were young she knew the other kids made fun of her for it. Montserrat, trailing like a dog behind Tristán. But Tristán had never said anything about it. Until now.

“Fuck you, Tristán,” she said, giving him the finger.

“Very mature, Montserrat.”

She lifted her other hand, now holding up two fingers, before turning around and walking away from him. Tristán did not follow her. She heard him huff and his steps moving in the opposite direction.

Montserrat made it back to her apartment without any delay. Ewers’s book and letter and her notes on his work were on the desk where she’d left them. Angrily, she pried the book open. It landed on the chapter called “The Opener of the Way,” with its drawing of the great eye in the heavens.

“I’m not reading you,” she told the book and headed into her bedroom, but it was too early to slip into bed. She stepped back into her office and riffled through the vinyl records and CD cases. She pulled out videotapes from the shelf where they were lined up—The Keep, Lifeforce, Little Shop of Horrors—then returned them to their place. Irritated, she stomped back to the desk.

“For fuck’s sake,” she muttered and leaned over the book, her hand sliding down the page.

    Magic is the alchemy of soul and desire, the rarest of fusions. You can dig into the earth and find hundreds of pebbles, but diamonds are scarce. Equally rare is the Opener of the Way, the sorcerer that may rise above all other sorcerers, his willpower so mighty that he may control all aspects of magic. Recall the words Nietzsche spoke: “You must be ready to burn yourself in your own flame; how could you rise anew if you have not first become ashes.” The truest form of sorcery requires the sacrifice of the self. Transmutation: it is the key to the highest echelons of existence.