Silver Nitrate(83)

“He comes back,” Montserrat said, her words low.

Clarimonde looked pleased, like a teacher who is about to award a prized pupil a gold star. She grabbed her sketchbook and her charcoal, turned the page, and began delicately tracing the outline of an apple.

“Despite the problems in ’87, I still have certain resources, even if that building is no longer in use. It’s quite a lovely space; we used to meet there, once upon a time. The others remain around the city, at least a fair number of them, and there have been a few new converts. We still meet to share in Wilhelm’s wisdom. The congregation is eager to greet him.”

Montserrat saw the look Tristán shot her. He wanted to get up and run to the door. Fear is not the answer, fear gives a sorcerer power over you. She wanted to tell him that but since she couldn’t, she pressed her palm firmly against his knee. Tristán froze in place.

“You do not need to be one of us. I wouldn’t ask that,” Clarimonde said.

Clarimonde’s voice was soft, but her face was ice. Something about them offended her sensibilities. Their appearance or their dress or the combination of them. She supposed they looked like a couple of people who’d grown up playing near the train tracks in Pantaco. Kids from slightly squalid apartment buildings. Their hues, their mannerisms, were flawed. Wilhelm would have disapproved. Clarimonde Bauer, Abel Urueta, Alma Montero. He’d recruited his disciples from the upper echelons of Mexican society, which were also the whitest. The purest. The most suitable to his purposes.

“I know. It was an exclusive country club,” Montserrat said.

Clarimonde seemed offended by the remark. “They don’t let everyone go into the discotheques, do they? There’s a velvet rope.”

“You can keep the rope.”

“Careful. You’re being rude again.”

Clarimonde looked fixedly at her, eyebrows arched. “I want the silver nitrate film, and I want your cooperation. There is a ritual that must be completed. You’ll be part of it. Afterward, you may go on with your ridiculous lives, same as you did before you’d ever heard of us. It’s not much to ask, is it?”

“I guess it depends. Maybe we don’t want dead sorcerers walking around Mexico City, making snares and curses.”

“What do you care? It won’t affect you.”

“We need to think about it,” Montserrat said, standing up. Tristán stood up, too.

“I’ve been very kind. Very understanding. But now I’m growing a little impatient.”

Clarimonde’s irritation was poorly masked by an attempt at an air of chilly indifference. Underneath it all, the woman burned with anger at them. She must have expected them to agree to her request immediately.

“We’ve given you the letter. It was meant for you, anyway. But the nitrate print, that’s for us to think about,” Montserrat said.

“Consider carefully what you’re saying. You don’t want to refuse me,” Clarimonde told them as her hands fluttered back toward her sketchpad; she gripped the piece of charcoal and slid it across the page with a hard motion.

“We should get going,” Tristán said weakly, grabbing Montserrat by the elbow.

“Sit down, the both of you.”

Clarimonde drew another line across the page.

“No,” Montserrat said.

“You cannot refuse me,” Clarimonde said, and her hand drew a third stroke.

Montserrat could see, on the page, the crude shape of one of Ewers’s runes. Clarimonde Bauer was attempting to cast a spell on them; each line she drew was a word in an incantation. To run out at that moment might have been the most instinctive solution, but if Montserrat understood something it was that curses are not outrun. And although fear or a strangled scream might have been an understandable reaction, she gritted her teeth.

Montserrat extended a hand and grabbed one of the pieces of charcoal and began to draw her own symbol on the surface of the white table, each stroke hard, staring back at Clarimonde. The woman’s anger was almost palpable, and Montserrat pushed back against that anger with a smooth determination and rage of her own. There was plenty of anger inside of her, after all. Plenty of kindling. Let it burn.

“I refuse you,” Montserrat said and at the last word tossed the piece of charcoal away.

Smoke rose, and the paper Clarimonde had been drawing on turned black, the page curling and burning away into ashes within seconds.

Clarimonde’s eyes were very wide. She stared at her in surprise. “A counter-spell. Who taught you that?”

“I read it somewhere,” Montserrat muttered.

Clarimonde was shaken; her eyes looked a little wild. She raised a hand, as if to touch Montserrat, then seemed to think better of it. “You will not be safe, ever, unless you give me that film. Only I can protect you.”

“Yeah, it didn’t work for Abel, did it? Come on.”

Montserrat grabbed Tristán by the hand and pulled him toward the entrance. They moved fast. She feared someone would bar the door, but they made it out and into their car without any issue.

She began driving toward her apartment. Her heart was pounding, and her fingers were wrapped tight around the steering wheel. In her ears there was a soft ringing. She reached for the dial and turned on the stereo, but Tristán immediately switched it off.

“How did you do that back there?” he asked. “Did you read it in that book?”