Silver Nitrate(92)

“We planned it. The whole of it,” López said. “He was sick and tired at that point, and he depended on me for several tasks. It wasn’t that difficult. Alma was the one who did the actual stabbing. After it happened, she was supposed to destroy the film, but she did not. I did not know immediately what had taken place, but a few years later I heard her niece was handling her affairs. A niece I had never heard of before, and when I saw Marisa, I realized the truth.”

“Did she pay you off so you’d stay quiet?”

“No. I think she fears me a little because I knew the full story of what happened to Ewers. Now Clarimonde, I’m sure she has guessed what happened, but I have my wards, and Alma must have even stronger ones. After all, she gained a great measure of Ewers’s power. That is why she must be interested in you.”

“God. You two are giving me a headache,” Tristán protested. “We don’t have anything to do with this. Can’t you cut us loose?”

“But you do have something to do with it, Spider-Man. You caused a second bigger explosion, remember? It must be affecting her, too. Before it was only Alma siphoning off that radiation, now you opened a valve and we’re all soaked in it. Clarimonde and Abel helped Ewers cast his spell on film, Alma and I killed the bastard, and you two allowed him to wake up and start bothering us again. You made yourself part of the story, buddy.”

“Fuck me, just what I needed. Some good old thermonuclear black magic,” Tristán muttered, then he turned his head slightly and looked down, as if he were interested in examining the arms of the chair.

It was like splicing a new piece of film onto a reel, then running it smoothly through a projector. In the beginning of this tale there had been Ewers and his associates, but now Tristán and she had made their way into the picture. Their voices had been used to dub the movie. That performance couldn’t be erased. She wondered about the other players in the film, the ones who had come before them.

“You never told Abel the truth about Alma?” Montserrat asked. “That she’d used Ewers’s film for her own purposes?”

López laughed and shook his head. “No. I made a mistake, telling him that Clarimonde was in love with Ewers and she was cheating on him. I implied I’d told Alma about it, too. He was furious. He said I’d ruined his picture. He said that was why Alma had shut us down. Can you believe it? We didn’t talk for years. A while back we got in touch. He was a very lonely man.”

Montserrat remembered Abel Urueta, inviting them into his apartment, showing them his trinkets, asking them to accompany him on errands. Yeah, she supposed he’d been lonely. Lonely and desperate enough to reach deep into the past and attempt one last spell, one last shot at greatness. The only problem was he had never informed them what he was getting them into.

“You haven’t said why you saved us,” Montserrat told López.

“This spell never ended. But I intend to put an end to it now,” López said firmly.

“Well, no, it didn’t end. Ewers’s death did something to the film, didn’t it?” Montserrat mused. “You thought by killing him you’d be rid of the man, but instead you made sure he stuck around. You said his magic was never this powerful when he was alive, but now…I mean, it’s blood magic. That’s what you did. He didn’t kill himself, but you offered a sacrifice anyway.”

“We didn’t plan it that way,” López said. “But yes, and now you’ve both made it even worse. We need to get rid of him permanently.”

“Then you know what to do?” Tristán asked hopefully. “It’s been awful. I’ve seen my dead girlfriend.”

“Oh?” López replied. “Necromancy? I never cared for that trick. It makes people jumpy.”

“Sure it does. Ewers haunts Montserrat, which I guess is worse.”

López leaned forward, lacing his hands together, and looked her in the eye. “He loved grooming talent. Maybe he thinks he’s found his next eager pupil.”

“I was never much for formal schooling,” she said, trying to sound nonchalant, even if López’s words made her weary.

“How do we exorcise him?” Tristán asked with an anxious lift of his eyebrows.

“There’s a way. At least I think there’s a way.” López stood up, wincing. “I need to take a nap. My doctor says it’s good for my blood pressure.”

“Yes, but—”

“You should also take a nap. You both look like you haven’t slept.”

Montserrat had not. She had rolled to one side of the bed and closed her eyes tight, but she had not slept. She had been acting, pretending she was fine. She didn’t want Tristán to panic, but she also feared someone else might be watching her, someone might be hoping she would shiver in fear.

“Follow me,” López muttered, as he began shuffling his feet out of the living room. They went behind him, up the stairs until he pointed at a door. “That’s the guest room. There are wards in the house, so you’re safe. Now let me sleep, and we can talk later.”

Once inside the room Tristán fell upon the bed with its brown knit blanket, making the mattress’s springs squeak. There was a desk with pictures of a man and a woman in sepia above it and a brass lamp with a green glass lampshade. Montserrat pulled up a chair and took the book out of her purse, setting it on the desk.