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standing out like a dragon in a fairy ring: "Huitzilopochtli," I said.
"Yes." Michael's understated agreement held a world of meaning.
Why, I wondered couldn't the Aztecian war god have been teetering on the edge
of extinction? No one, not even the sort of people who march to save Medvamps,
would have shed a tear to see him leave the
Other Side for wherever gods go when they die. His influence on This Side has
always been baleful, his power fueled by hearts ripped from human victims.
What maniac, I wondered had imagined he should be summoned to strengthen a
potion that exalted life, not gore?
But I knew the answer to that Cuauhtemoc Hernandez. I must have said the name
out loud, for one of
Michael Man-stein's butter-colored eyebrows rose an eighth of an inch or so.
The curandero who made this stuff," I explained.
"Ah," Michael said. The eyebrow went down.
"Have you called the constabulary about this yet?" I asked.
"No; I thought it appropriate that you be the first to know."
Thanks." I added, Thanks twice, in fact I don't think I ll eat any lunch
today, so my waistline thanks you, too."
"Heh, heh," he said just like that. I'm afraid he really is as straitlaced as
that makes him sound.
"We're going to be involved in nailing this curandero along with the
constables," I said. "I don't remember the last time anything so nasty got
loose in the environment, and God only knows how many jars are still sitting
on shelves in the nostrums cabinet or next to the sink. If we're real lucky,
Hernandez will have kept records on the women he's sold it to so he can try
and poison them again with something else. Odds are, though, we'll have to
spread the word through the dailies and the churches."
"Hernandez may not even be totally responsible," Manstein said.
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"How s that?" I asked indignantly.
The tests I performed seem to me indicate that the mild beneficial influences
in the potion were to overlain on top of the already present summoning of
Huitzilopochtli," he answered The curandero may not have been aware that the
latter was present."
"If he didn't know it was there, then he's responsible for being a damned
fool," I snapped and I meant it literally. "He certainly shouldn't be allowed
to run around loose practicing thaumaturgy and inflicting this garbage" I
pointed at the tartar-sauce jar "on innocent, ignorant immigrant women."
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There I cannot disagree with you," Michael said "Do you want to call the
constabulary, or shall I?"
I ll do it," I said after a few seconds' thought I ll want to fly up there
with them and be in on the arrest, make sure however much of this potion
Hernandez has is sealed and then properly disposed of." I
wished Solomon had heard of Huitzilopochtli; that would have made the problem
of sealing the vicious stuff simple. But however effective the great king's
design is with jinni, baalim, and other Middle Eastern denizens of the Other
Side, its useless against New World Powers, except those largely subsumed into
a
Christian matrix. And Huitzilopochtli, as Manstein's analysis had shown all
too clearly, still had a great deal of independent potency.
Then something else occurred to me: Hernandez's horrible nostrum might end up
in the Devonshire toxic spell dump. Tasting the irony of that, I went back to
my office and got on the phone.
The first constable I talked to was a fellow named Joaquin Garcia. "
Madre de Dios
! he burst out when I
told him what I'd run into. Being of Aztecan descent, he had a culturally
ingrained understanding of just how nasty a power Huitzilopochtli was. I knew
it in my head; he felt it in his gut. He bumped me up to his superior, a
sublegate called Higgins, and he must have given him an earful, too, because
Higgins was the soul of cooperation.
"We'll get going on a warrant for this right away, Inspector Fisher," he
promised. "Any time we get a chance to put one like that out of business, we
leap on it."
He didn't argue when I said I wanted to go along, either, sometimes constables
get stuffy about things like that I added, "Better make sure your people are
well warded, Sublegate: with one potion like that around, who knows what else
Hernandez has in there with him?"
"We'll send out the Special Wizards and Thaumaturges team," Higgins said. "If
they can't handle it nobody this side of D.St.C. can. I'll call you back as
soon as we have the warrant Thanks for passing on the information."
"My pleasure," I told him. "I want this guy shut down at least as much as you
do."
After I got off the ether with Higgins, I went back through my files and found
the names and addresses of the other three apsychic kids born near the
Devonshire dump in the past year. Then I checked in the phone grimoire; two of
the families were listed. I called both those houses and, by luck, got an
answer each time. What I wanted to know was whether the mothers had bought any
potions from Cuauhtemoc
Hernandez.
Both women I talked to answered no. I thanked them and added the data to my
notes, then spent a while scratching my head. The curandero's nostrum was
certainly vile enough to have caused Jesus
Cordero to be born without a soul, but just because it could have didn't
necessarily mean it had. I kicked myself for not doing a more thorough job
around the Corderos' house, but I didn't lack too hard. When the microimps in
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your spellchecker start going berserk, you'd better pay attention to that.
More nearly routine stuff kept me busy the rest of the day. When Bea walked by
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