“She wouldn’t read that garbage, Tristán.”
“Wouldn’t she?” he replied wryly and crossed his arms.
She waited for him to say something else, but he was sitting with his lips pressed tight and his head bowed. She knew when to make an exit, and she needed a shower anyway.
Afterward, she changed into a black turtleneck and a pair of jeans. They went out for dinner at a fancy French restaurant in Polanco, a few blocks from Tristán’s home, after he said he’d pick up the tab. The waiter frowned when Montserrat ordered a beer, but she didn’t much care what the man thought of her taste in drinks.
They took their time eating and then lounged inside Tristán’s apartment before Montserrat rummaged among his things and found two paper clips she could use to pick the lock. Tristán didn’t want to break in and kept wondering what would happen if anyone saw them, but at midnight the hallway was deserted, and they were inside Abel’s apartment in less than a minute. She hadn’t lost her touch.
Tristán closed the door and turned on the lights. Montserrat went toward the shelf with the crystals.
“The film’s not here,” she said, pushing aside geodes and quartzes, then standing on her tiptoes and trying to see if he had placed the film can on another shelf.
“Maybe the cops took it after all.”
“Why would they?”
“I’ll look in the dining room.”
Montserrat moved from the living room into Abel’s office, which was decorated with a couple of large posters from his movies—The Opal Heart in a Bottle and Whispers in the Mansion of Glass—and a myriad of photos of movie stars of yesteryear. There were bookcases stuffed with antique clocks and watches, objects he probably planned to resell. A rolltop desk was placed by a window. She opened a drawer and found an agenda with names and addresses and pocketed it. The photo album Abel had showed them lay open atop a reading chair. She closed it and tucked it under her arm.
Montserrat stood at the doorway to the bedroom, watching Tristán as he pulled drawers open.
“Anything?” she asked.
“Nothing like a can of film.”
“Did you try the freezer?”
“He didn’t stick it in the freezer.”
“I wonder what he did with it. Or whether someone stole it when they killed him.”
Tristán was looking down at the floor, frowning.
“What?” she asked.
“There’s a bloodstain on the floor.”
Montserrat swallowed. She’d been trying to keep her cool and succeeded, but the mention of blood brought back the memory of Abel’s face. “We should go,” she said.
Tristán walked Montserrat to her car, which was still safely parked around the corner where she’d left it the night Abel had phoned. On top of everything, she had feared someone might make off with her wheels.
“Call me when you reach home,” Tristán said, leaning down next to the window.
“You’re going to get Alma Montero’s contact information, right?” she asked instead of answering his request.
“Sure. I’ll try tomorrow. But call me when you arrive.”
Montserrat didn’t want to promise she would. It sounded like she was a kid answering to her parents, but she nodded.
Back in her apartment, she refused to go to bed and instead opened Abel’s address book, turning the pages in search of contact information. But Alma Montero, José López, and Clarimonde Bauer were not there. She grabbed the phone book, her hands sliding down the pages, but neither Bauer nor Montero were listed. She didn’t want to phone half the city to find the right López.
She threw her head back on the couch and stared at the ceiling. Still restless, she ended up in the kitchen boiling water for a cup of tea. Back in the living room, cup in hand, she opened Abel’s photo album, slowly flipping through the pages. Snapshots of Abel’s youth showed him grinning at the camera. There were many photos of Clarimonde.
She found the snapshot of Ewers staring at the camera, leaning forward. She kicked off her shoes and sipped her tea.
There were other pictures of Ewers, all of them showcasing that practiced, piercing gaze. In a series of full-body shots he wore a loosely belted beige trench coat with the collar pulled up high. Something in the poses and the way the photos were shot reminded her of Tristán’s photographs when he was looking for work as a model. Photos for a portfolio. She remembered a stray line she had read in Ewers’s book and turned to that, finding the correct page.
Silver is, of course, an important element of spell casting, and it should be no surprise that mirrors are reputed to have occult uses, seeing as they are coated with silver. Silver nitrate film, therefore, naturally offers an acolyte a perfect medium for sealing spells. Magic rites, shot with silver nitrate film, and shown to an audience, will multiply their potency tenfold. A spell caster must be seen and heard to have a powerful effect. Magic in the dark, in the privacy of a room, does not suffice. Witchcraft cannot be hidden between walls.
She slid Ewers’s photograph out of the album and held it up.
“Of course you wanted to be seen and heard,” she said. “I think you wanted to be an actor.”
She realized how ridiculous she sounded, speaking to a picture of a dead man, especially when this was nothing but an idle conjecture, but the practiced tilt of Ewers’s head indicated many hours spent in front of a mirror.
“How’d you do it?” she asked his photo. “How do you make magic real and not just words on paper?”
She set the photo down and retrieved Ewers’s letter. The apartment was quiet, but it was not the quiet of the other night. It was merely the usual silence laced with the humming of the refrigerator in the kitchen and the barking of a dog on the floor below. Blocks away, a siren wailed. She took more sips of tea.
The warmth of the beverage and the lovely, comforting sight of all her possessions had a soothing effect, and she found herself yawning. She scribbled on a napkin—Ewers, Wilhelm, magic, spell—then crumpled the napkin, smudging the words.
The phone rang, and she picked it up.
“I told you to call me when you got home,” Tristán said.
“I got here five minutes ago.”
“You left my apartment over an hour ago.”
“I lost track of time,” she said, glancing at the clock on the wall and setting the cup on the coffee table. She rubbed the back of her neck with her free hand.
“What are you doing?”
“Looking for information,” she said, flipping the pages of the book on her lap and turning to the chapter titled “The Cipher of Fire.” It was conveniently illustrated with the image of a flame within a circle.
“Did you find anything interesting?”
“Nothing yet. I need to give his book another look, with more care. I skipped through a lot of bits the first time I looked at it. I should give his letter a lengthy reread, too. And the film in the vault…I need to retrieve that.”
“Don’t tell me you plan to put it in your freezer?”
“No. I want to see that scene we dubbed again. I have a copy of the pages we used for the dubbing. I should check that,” she said, sliding the book aside so she could take another sip of tea.