When Nora returned to her office, she found Mercedes standing at the bookshelves, eyeing the titles with interest.
“Your wine,” Nora said. Mercedes took the glass with a nod of thanks.
“You have a very large library of books on Catholicism,” Mercedes said. “The Catholic Catechism. The History of the Catholic Church. Pope John’s Journal of a Soul. Thomas Merton. G.K. Chesterton. St. Augustine. St. Thomas Aquinas… Have you read all these books?”
“I like looking for the loopholes,” Nora joked. Mercedes didn’t smile.
“What do you mean?”
“Oh, nothing,” Nora said. “I’m just a bad Catholic.”
“Perhaps you aren’t a bad Catholic,” she said. “Perhaps you’re just a very good pagan.”
“Cradle Catholic.”
“You’re old enough to leave the cradle,” Mercedes said. “Aren’t you?”
“There’s someone in my life who would be very put out if I did.”
“If there’s someone in your life trying to control your faith, you’re the one who should be put out, Mistress Nora.”
Nora tensed. Not often another woman put her on the defensive.
“You can just call me ‘Nora.’ The ‘Mistress’ is for those who want to serve.”
“It’s a title of respect, yes?”
“Well, yes.”
“I respect your work, Mistress. But I’m happy to call you whatever you like. So Nora it is.”
“Mercedes,” Nora said. “Unusual name for an American.”
She shrugged. “I’m impressed you say it right. Nobody ever says it right, even after I tell them.”
“It’s a French name,” Nora said. “No accents. Not like we say the car brand.”
Mare-SED-ess, not Mur-SAY-deez.
“You know French?” the woman asked.
“Some. My boyfriend is French. One of my boyfriends, I mean.”
Mercedes raised her eyebrow but made no comment. No comment necessary.
“Sorry,” Nora said. “I say that stuff all the time. I forget it makes some people uncomfortable.”
“I’m a witch. Does that make you uncomfortable?” Mercedes asked.
“You know, I always thought if a witch showed up at my house in the middle of the night, it would be to tell me there was such a thing as a tesseract. That’s from—”
“A Wrinkle in Time. I know. And there really is such a thing as a tesseract.”
“Is there?”
She nodded. “A tesseract,” Mercedes said, “is a cube cubed. A hypercube.”
“I’m impressed,” Nora said. “I didn’t know witches knew advanced geometry.”
“It’s also known as ‘sacred geometry.’ Some believe geometry is God’s native language and that by learning sacred geometry, one can access the mind of God.”
“Do you believe that?”
“I don’t recognize your god,” Mercedes said. “I serve the Goddess.”
“I thought everyone in this town was Catholic.”
Mercedes smiled. “Not everyone.”
She gestured toward her stomach. She was wearing a long red skirt that flared at her hips and a white top, cut off a few inches above her waist so that Nora could see the tattoos on her lower stomach. A sliver of moon on one side, a sliver of moon on the other, a full moon that surrounded her bellybutton.
Nora had seen that symbol before but couldn’t say what it was. “What’s your ink?”
“It’s the symbol of the Triple Moon Goddess,” Mercedes said. “Everyone in my coven gets marked with Her symbol. Not necessarily on the stomach, though. I just did that to cover a stretch mark. I made my daughter pay for it.”
She smiled and Nora knew she was joking.
“It’s pretty.”
“Thank you.” Mercedes nodded toward the armchairs set in front of Nora’s desk. “Shall we talk about why you came to see me?”
“Sure. Let’s do that.”
Mercedes sat in one armchair. Nora took the other. Gmork sat at her feet, on her feet.
“I’m trying very hard not to demand you tell me how you know where I live,” Nora said. “I’m not sure how much longer I can stop myself.”
“Zillow,” Mercedes said.
“What?”
She pulled her bag into her lap, covering the bare inches of her stomach, and crossed her legs at the ankle.
“Zillow. It’s a real estate website.”
“Yeah, I know what it is. You used it to find me?”
“When you came for your reading with me, you said you were waiting to hear about a house you wanted to buy. It was in the Garden District, a red house, and you’d put in a lowball offer. A week later, I checked the website. A red house in the Garden District was now under contract for twenty-thousand less than the original asking price. Didn’t take sacred geometry to put two and two together.”
“You told me I’d get the house. Were you checking to see if you were right?”
“I knew I was right.”
“Then why—”
“My turn,” Mercedes said, and Nora sat up, alert. It wasn’t often another woman cut her off. Or anyone, really.
“Okay, go on,” Nora said.
“Lord Chaz said you were looking for a missing girl. I don’t think that’s true, is it?”
A fair question, but not so easy to answer.
“It isn’t. But I can’t tell you the whole story.”
“Please tell me what you can.”
“A man was found dead recently. He’d shot himself.”
“Accident? Or suicide?”
“Suicide. And I don’t know this man from Adam, but for some reason, I was the last person he tried calling before pulling the trigger. The man was found with my business card in his pocket, so we know it wasn’t just a wrong number—for some reason, he was trying to reach me. Unfortunately, that’s no longer my number. It was an old card from when I worked in New York. He never reached me. For days, I’ve been beating my head against the wall trying to think who I might have given one of my cards to while I was down here. Earlier this evening someone mentioned witches. I finally remembered…you. I gave you a card.”
“Only me?”
“Only you. As far as I can remember. Is it possible you gave my card to someone?”
“No.”
“Are you sure? I know I told you what I did for a living.”
“Writer. Dominatrix. I wouldn’t forget that even if I’d wanted to.”
“Did a friend of yours, a client, a stranger…did anybody mention they were trying to find a dominatrix?”
“No.”
“Could one of your coworkers at the shop…did they maybe take it?”
“No.”
“Did you throw it in the trash?”
“No.”
“Recycling?”
“No.”
“Come on,” Nora said, exasperated. “It must have ended up in the trash at some point, right? If you know anything at all, please tell me. It’s driving me crazy knowing a man reached out to me, wanted me for something, and when he couldn’t reach me, he killed himself. You’d want to know why, right?”