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?”
“It’s…kind of. I mean…I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“She was trying to cast a hex, drawing runes. I stopped it. Reflected it. I don’t know…I’ll take you to your apartment.” She winced and pressed one hand against her ear.
“I don’t have any booze in my apartment, so let’s go to yours. You look like you need a drink.”
“Make it three.”
She did have a bottle of tequila that she hadn’t opened. As soon as they walked in Montserrat grabbed the first two cups she saw on the drying rack and filled them with booze. They were not proper tequila glasses, but she placed them on the table.
“That was messed up.”
Tristán sipped his drink. Montserrat downed hers so quickly she thought it would burn a hole in her throat. She was a light drinker. One glass was enough for her. Tristán almost spat out the drink in his mouth when he saw her pouring herself a second one and downing it with equal haste.
“Holy shit, slow down,” he said. “Are you okay, Momo?”
She pressed a hand against her forehead. It felt warm, like she might be starting to run a fever, but the ringing was growing muffled.
“I feel a little shitty,” she said, setting her cup down.
“Well, of course you do, Charlie McGee.”
“Don’t fuck with me tonight, Tristán.”
“I’m saying that you set a piece of paper on fire.”
“Reflected a spell,” she muttered.
“That too. And you’re not sure exactly how you did it?”
Montserrat frowned. It was hard to put it into words. There’s a rhythm to his words, she thought. Three beats to the bar. It flows. Learn the pattern, you can dance it.
“I was looking at Ewers’s book. He discusses the rudimentary idea of it,” she said at last. She poured herself more tequila, drank it quickly.
“You’re still reading that thing,” Tristán said, grimacing.
“Among other titles, it’s over in my office,” she said, pointing in its direction.
“What did you draw on her table? I didn’t see.”
“Just the word ‘no.’ The way we used to write it.”
“Why would that work?”
Montserrat opened her mouth to explain Ewers’s ideas about magical actions and reactions, his florid mixing of knowledge gleaned from here and there, plus her own scribblings, which had now multiplied and took up many pages in her notebook. It was like trying to explain poetry to someone who wants to read a recipe. Ewers’s book had a system, but it was beautifully, sometimes surprisingly arranged, and depended not only on logic but emotion. Sound was much the same way. You can show someone how to splice tape, but getting the feel of it is a different tale.
Montserrat threw her head back. “I’m nursing a migraine, and I need to drive you home.”
“You’re not driving me home looking like you were just mashed by a steamroller and stinking of tequila. Come on, let’s tuck you in bed.”
Montserrat protested, but he hauled her up by the arm, and they headed to her bedroom. She lay down and watched wearily as Tristán took off her shoes. She’d done that for him on numerous occasions, and now the roles were reversed.
She didn’t relish it.
Then he took off his own shoes and dumped his jacket in the corner.
“What?” he asked. “I’m not sleeping on that stupid couch of yours. It’s lumpy.”