Secondhand Spirits by Juliet Blackwell Read Free Book Online Page A

streamed up to the ceiling, taking on the amorphous form of a face lingering above us, looking down. Graciela said one day I would learn who my helping spirit was, but I wasn’t sure I even wanted to know. He or she . . . it . . . scared me, every time. Almost as fast as the face appeared, it melted back into the ether.
    â€œ Wow! Didja see that?” asked Oscar, who had fallen back onto his butt and was huddled against the cupboards in the far corner of the kitchen. I had that same reaction for the first year or so of learning how to brew. “Mistress is a truly great witch!”
    I blew out a deep breath and wiped my sweaty brow.
    Witchcraft isn’t for the faint of heart.
    Â 
    I have a genuinely terrible singing voice, but I didn’t let that stop me from crooning along to a Dido CD at the top of my lungs as I sped my cherry red convertible through San Francisco’s quiet streets. Oscar had whined and pleaded and mewled until I caved in and let him come along. Now, ignoring my admonitions, he jumped back and forth over the seats like a talkative dog.
    Sneezing be damned, a traditional black-cat familiar was sounding better all the time.
    Bayview-Hunters Point, Maya had informed me, was one of the last affordable neighborhoods in San Francisco, in part because it was adjacent to 465 acres of prime waterfront property that had been declared a toxic waste zone after the military pulled out a few decades ago. While lots of San Francisco’s lower-income and “marginal” folks—hourly workers, free spirits, and artists alike—had been driven by economic necessity across the water to the East Bay, many people in Hunters Point had stayed on, developing a strong, innovative neighborhood association and even establishing a flourishing artists’ colony.
    As I drove into Frances’s neighborhood, I noticed small groups of young men lingering on corners and loitering in front of the liquor store, using the pay phone. Farther down the street, where Jessica lived, all seemed quiet.
    I pulled up in front of the darkened Potts house a little before one in the morning. Taking a special charm from the glove box, I held it in my right hand, closed my eyes, and recited an incantation several times. A few minutes later a bleary, disoriented Frances opened the front door. I ordered Oscar to stay in the car, grabbed my big canvas carryall, jumped out of the car, hurried up the path, and took the stairs two at a time.
    I shut the front door behind us. The house was dark, but my night vision is better than average, and diffuse light from the streetlamps outside sifted through the windowpanes, lighting our way. Frances moaned softly as I gently propelled her up the stairs and down the hallway. If she remembered any of this, she would think of it as a vague dream. She moaned again and I searched her lined face, hoping I hadn’t given her a nightmare. People had unpredictable reactions to sleepwalking.
    Strange . . . tonight the patterns of colored lights filtering through the stained-glass window seemed to have an ominous cast, and the ticking of the grandfather clock marked time too quickly, almost frenetically. The air held a stale mustiness that melded with the lingering aroma of pot roast and potatoes, the scent much stronger now than it had been earlier this afternoon. Ditto the general sensations of past souls, though this wasn’t surprising. Old houses held all kinds of spirits. Like the vibrations I gleaned from clothing, these were primarily benevolent, but not entirely.
    Still, all the sensations felt stronger. Had something shifted since this afternoon, or was it just the effects of being here, virtually alone, in the middle of the night?
    Frances’s bedroom was small and cozy. I imagined that she and Ronald never moved into the master bedroom after his parents died. The chamber was minimally furnished: a double bed with a simple maple headboard and matching side tables; a vanity