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DEXTER IN THE DARK
225
“Ah, well,” I said, and I more or less stumbled to a halt. How, after all, did one begin? I couldn’t really say that I thought I used to be possessed and wanted to get the demon back—the poor woman might throw chicken blood at me.
“Sir?” she prompted impatiently.
“I was wondering,” I said, which was true enough, “do you have any books on possession by demons? Er—in English?”
She pursed her lips with great disapproval and shook her head vigorously. “It is not the demons,” she said. “Why do you ask this—are you a reporter?”
“No,” I said. “I’m just, um, interested. Curious.”
“Curious about the voudoun?” she said.
“Just the possession part,” I said.
“Huh,” she said, and if possible her disapproval grew even more. “Why?”
Someone very clever must already have said that when all else fails, try the truth. It sounded so good that I was sure I was not the first to think of it, and it seemed like the only thing I had left. I gave it a shot.
“I think,” I said, “I mean, I’m not sure. I think I may have been possessed. A while ago.”
“Ha,” she said. She looked at me long and hard, and then shrugged. “May be,” she said at last. “Why do you say so?”
“I just, um . . . I had the feeling, you know. That something else was, ah. Inside me? Watching?”
She spat on the floor, a very strange gesture from such an elegant woman, and shook her head. “All you blancs,” she said. “You steal us and bring us here, take everythin’ from us. And then when we make somethin’ from the nothin’ you give us, now you want to be part of that, too. Ha.” She shook her finger at me, for all the world like a second-grade teacher with a bad student. “You listen, blanc. If the spirit enters you, you would know. This is not somethin’ like in a movie. It is a very great blessing, and,” she said with a mean smirk, “it does not happen to the blancs.”
“Well, actually,” I said.
“Non,” she said. “Unless you are willing, unless you ask for the blessing, it does not come.”
226
JEFF LINDSAY
“But I am willing,” I said.
“Ha,” she said. “It never come to you. You waste my time.” And she turned around and walked through the bead curtains to the back of the store.
I saw no point in waiting around for her to have a change of heart. It didn’t seem likely to happen—and it didn’t seem likely that voodoo had any answers about the Dark Passenger. She had said it only comes when called, and it was a blessing. At least that was a different answer, although I did not remember ever calling the Dark Passenger to come in—it was just always there. But to be absolutely sure, I paused at the curb outside the store and closed my eyes.
Please come back in, I said.
Nothing happened. I got in my car and went back to
work.
What an interesting choice, the Watcher thought. Voodoo. There was a certain logic to the idea, of course, he could not deny that. But what was really interesting was what it showed about the other. He was moving in the right direction—and he was very close.
And when his next little clue turned up, the other would be that much closer. The boy had been so panicky, he had almost wriggled away. But he had not; he had been very helpful and he was now on his way to his dark reward.
Just like the other was.
T H I R T Y
Ihad barely settled back into my chair when Deborah came into my little cubicle and sat in the folding chair across from my desk.
