The magic set likes to keep things quiet, so when practitioners sell to other practitioners they use symbols based on old hobo signs. The pentagram with the wavy lines means this woman sells potions. It’s only about the width of my thumb.
Of course, she could just be manning the stall and the real mage is out. There’s a simple way to get to the bottom of that. I take a sip of the local pool of magic, taste its tang of chaos, its thickness of human sweat, the draw of money. Her eyebrows shoot up as she feels the pull on the magic. She does the same. It’s a quick and easy way to identify other mages. It’s not like we walk around wearing robes and pointy blue hats with stars and moons on them. And it’s more polite than acting like dogs and sniffing each other’s butts.
Now that we’ve established our bona fides I pull a wad of 200 peso notes out of my pocket and put them on the table. She smiles when she sees the bills, showing cracked and yellow teeth. “I’m looking for someone,” I say. And the smile goes away.
“I don’t know anybody,” she says. She looks away from me.
I ignore and press on. “I’m looking for the type of someone who might be interested in your sorts of wares.” She doesn’t have any other customers, but the stalls are so close to each other that anyone could easily overhear our conversation so I keep it cryptic. Above all else, we don’t want to scare the straights.
Her eyes lock onto mine, and I can tell she’s pissed off. I’ve crossed a line. “I don’t talk about my customers.” I pull a U.S. hundred dollar bill so that only she can see it and slip it under the peso notes. The last thing I need is somebody trying to jump me for my cash. I already stand out, I don’t need to grab more attention.
“How about a slightly different question? Have you seen anyone around recently who you think might be a potential customer? Somebody like me?” I lower my sunglasses so she can get a look at my eyes. She scowls at me. She knows I’m human. When something that isn’t draws power from the pool it feels different.
She thinks about it a second, then sweeps the bills to her side of the table making them disappear faster than you can say abracadabra. “End of the street. Girl’s got a storefront. She does fortunes. Felt a draw on some power coming from that direction a little while ago. So if it’s not her, it’s somebody close.”
“Much obliged.”
“Don’t tell her I said anything,” she says. “She frightens me.”
“Why?”
“She smells like death,” she says, crossing herself. “The same way you do.”
Yep. That’s Tabitha.
The storefront is right where the woman said it would be, in a white brick building with blacked out windows. Hand-painted in bold, red letters above the door is a sign that reads ADIVINADORA. Fortuneteller.
Well, then. Let’s go see what the future holds.
A little bell rings when I open the door and step inside. The sounds and sights of Tepito disappear behind me and it takes me a minute for my eyes to adjust to the gloom. When they do I can see what look like carnival sideshow banners hanging from the walls, brightly colored paintings with words beneath each one. LA LUNA showing a smiling, crescent moon, LA MUERTE showing a skeleton, and EL CORAZóN showing an anatomical heart with veins and everything. I’ve seen these before but I can’t quite place them.
Pedestals line the walls holding softly glowing veladoras, prayer candles inside tall, glass cylinders. Each one stamped with an image that could be mistaken for the Virgin of Guadalupe in the gloom if they weren’t all surrounding different effigies of Santa Muerte on each pedestal.
There’s one in her traditional wedding dress holding a scythe in one bony hand, a globe in the other. Another of her in a red traje de flamenca, a green cocktail dress, a long, flowing quincea?era dress. Almost a dozen Santa Muerte statues, none more than a few feet tall, stare out into the room through empty eyes.
Through an open door on the other side of the room sits a table covered with a dark tablecloth. A single light shines down from the ceiling. Two women sit at the table, one a young Latina girl in a black t-shirt and jeans, the other an Asian woman wearing a blue flannel shirt over a tank-top.
Tabitha’s black hair is longer than the last time we met and falls down to the small of her back. It looks good. I push that thought out of my head.
She places cards in front of the girl, saying something too quietly for me to hear. She glances up, sees me, gives me a slight smile and returns to her cards.
I stay quiet, not wanting to intrude. Better to wait until the girl’s gone. She’s not a part of this and I need some time alone with Tabitha.
As Tabitha puts each card down I can feel the slight tug of magic in the air. This isn’t some sideshow con game. Is she actually telling this girl’s fortune? Or is she doing something else?