“You too? Well, I guess trauma comes better in pairs.”
“What do you mean?”
“I saw Karina again.”
Montserrat turned a corner, unsure where they were headed. She walked quickly despite the pain in her leg. “What, at your apartment?”
“No. I was at a shoot. A ruined shoot now. I messed up.”
“What was she doing?”
“I don’t know…she was standing there. Dead and standing there.”
She gave him a side glance. “The blood—”
“Mine. I banged my nose. And the damn shoot! Fuck! Everyone is going to say I’m doing LSD, crack, and cocaine all at once. Just you wait. I won’t blame them if they do, either.”
“They won’t fire you, Tristán.”
He snickered. “They haven’t even hired me. Enough is enough, let’s hail a cab, head to the Mercado de Sonora, pay for a limpia—”
“You think that’s going to work?”
Tristán paused, pushing his expensive sunglasses up the bridge of his nose. “No. You’re right. We burn all of Ewers’s things, we get a limpia, and then we pretend we never heard of the man.”
She stopped and stared at him. Burn them! The thought outraged her, but before she could say a word, Tristán was speaking again and raising a hand, trying to attract the attention of a taxi that was headed their way. “It’s the only way to handle this, Momo. We forget about all this shit and burn it, and then burn the ashes, too.”
She pulled his arm down and pulled him with her, across the street. “Are you kidding? I’m not letting you touch Ewers’s book.”
“Why the hell not? We throw gasoline on it and burn it in an alley.”
“It’s not going to solve anything!”
“How do you know?”
“Because I’ve been reading. Look, I made a protective charm,” she said, taking out the napkin and showing it to him.
Tristán grabbed the napkin from her hands and inspected it. “You know, that’s the problem. You’re getting too involved in this abracadabra crap.”
“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.