Silver Nitrate(77)

“Something like that. Magic is willpower made tangible,” she explained. “You must immerse yourself in it, so to speak. The warding charm I made is easy enough. Prick your finger and draw a rune. Or well, a word, I guess.”

“What is it, a rune or a word?” he asked, frowning.

“Ewers used runes, but I used words. I think you could use a stick figure and it might work.”

“Isn’t that like changing ingredients in recipes? Why would it work?”

“Why not? Don’t you personalize recipes? Give them your own touch?”

“Sure, but you don’t cook. When you do, it’s ghastly. Except for the meatballs,” he said, spinning one of the soaps he had bought between his hands.

“Be serious, Tristán.”

“I am serious.”

“The runes meant something personal to Ewers. But they don’t mean anything to us. They were his secret code.”

“Like what, like when we invented our own language in the fourth grade?” Tristán asked, tipping his chair back.

Montserrat stared at him. “What?”

“Don’t tell me you forgot. We invented our own language so we could pass messages back and forth. It was fine until Miss Mireles caught us sending each other notes and gave us detention. We spent one month sitting outside the principal’s office, writing down ‘I will pay attention in class’ in our notebooks.”

Of course. They’d always played like this. At one point, they’d gotten hold of a pair of walkie-talkies and tried to talk to each other at night.

“Do you remember any of the alphabet we invented?”

“Sure, some, I guess,” Tristán said, scratching his head. “Why would that be useful?”

“Because that was our language, yours and mine alone. Same as the runes were Ewers’s. Here,” she said, tearing out a piece of paper from the notebook she’d been using and handing him a pen. “Write something.”

“All right. Um…there.”

Montserrat looked at the letters he’d scribbled in blue ink. It was a crude, silly alphabet. A half-moon represented the “t” and a square with an X in the middle was the letter “m.” They hadn’t used it for ages. But she could still read it.

“Tristán and Montserrat,” he said, tapping the page. “And we abbreviate it…here. You and me, like that.”

Their initials. They’d carved that into their chairs at school and doodled it on random bits of paper, signing off their messages this way. The half-moon, filled in, and the square with the X. A line beneath each symbol served as a rudimentary flourish. It was the first signature they ever drew. The code for me and you.

“Okay, write the word ‘shield,’?” she said.





19


The restaurant Marisa Montero selected was a Spanish venue close to her home. Montserrat parked across the street and stayed behind the wheel, as if she were the driver of a getaway vehicle. Tristán felt more Cantinflas than James Bond, despite his sharp outfit. The vision of Karina remained fresh in his mind. He couldn’t shake it off and had smoked two cigarettes before they parked and he stepped out. The charm he’d made, following Montserrat’s instructions, lay heavy in his pocket.

Montserrat had been correct. He was not the right person to conduct interrogations. But they’d both decided maybe this time his charisma might be more effective than Montserrat’s bluntness. Besides, Marisa had called him and made no mention of having Montserrat at their meeting.

Tristán straightened his jacket and stepped into the joint. It was the kind of place that sold overpriced cabrito al horno and imported wines. Marisa had a table at the back. The lighting in the restaurant, or perhaps the makeup she wore that evening, did her no favors. He’d thought her fiftyish when they’d first met, but now he calculated she was edging close to sixty. The blouse she wore was a pale blue, the shoulder pads on her navy suit jacket were quite large, like something Joan Crawford would have worn in her heyday. Or else it was the power suit women used to favor a few years before when the look had come back in vogue.

She had a martini already and was smoking a cigarette.

“I’m not late, am I?” he asked. His voice was perfectly poised, despite his nerves.

“Not at all. Just on time. I like a man who’s prompt.”

Marisa raised her hand, summoning the waiter with a casual motion of the wrist. Tristán asked for mineral water. He was still trying to steer clear of alcohol.

“You do smoke, don’t you?” she asked, opening her silver cigarette case and offering him a slim cigarette.

“I’m trying to quit my vices.”

“But I like a man with some vices.”

“Prompt, but with vices, then? What a combo.”

She smiled. Tristán mimicked the gesture. This part was easy. He could flirt with his eyes bandaged and both hands tied behind his back. It had been helpful, back when he’d started. He caught the eye of men and women alike. Maybe it wasn’t fair, but he had secured his first few gigs like that. Flirting and sleeping his way through the auditions. It felt a bit cheap, now, and Karina had never had to do that. She was quality goods, she came from the top. A father who was a producer, a mother who was a former movie star. He, on the other hand, was a nobody who got lucky. Until the luck ran out.