“Who’s Mary?” I whispered as we exited.
Gráinne shrugged. “Mary’s such a common name there will always be at least one nearby. ’Tis the best name to be using when you’re counterfeiting.”
To say that San Francisco in 1850 was a city being built on Gold Rush fever does not begin to capture the chaos, havoc, greed, and rough-hewn glamour that made up the peninsula. It had taken almost no time at all for the sharpest of the ’49ers—or Argonauts, as the tens of thousands who came by sea were called—to realize that the real money was to be made not from mining gold but from selling all manner of goods to the fellows who were trying to mine it. Shops of every conceivable sort had sprung up in buildings around the waterfront and on the route out of town—freshly built wooden buildings that (I did know this much from some hasty research) had already burned in three enormous conflagrations over the past year or so.
I also knew from my abbreviated Googling that a fourth Great Fire would destroy a swath of the town just a few weeks after our arrival. This, in concert with my awareness that magic was soon to wane entirely, added a certain urgency to our DEDE—I was eager to accomplish it and get out quickly.
Between credit and gold, the town was obviously, and almost dangerously, wealthy. Grand, elegant palace-like hotels and buildings were being constructed in a slapdash manner even faster than they were burning down. The building we had just exited was three stories tall and brightly painted, facing onto a large city square. I looked to either side—the entire block was a series of theatres, saloons, and inns, bustling in the bright midday sun with prostitutes, gamblers, con men, and the occasional gentleman. Given there was no easy natural source of water or wood, I cannot imagine where all the resources to do this were being obtained.
“Amazing,” said Gráinne heartily, gazing down the hill toward the harbor—in which was moored many hundreds of tall ships. “Two years ago this was a village; now this. See all them ships? Marooned there by their crews, so they are, the crews having jumped ship to go prospecting. So it’s taking possession the city folk have done, and turned them into homes, inns, taverns, brothels, theatres, and I do believe a jail. And look, that’s where the Chinamen are living.”
She pointed to a peculiar neighborhood of unaccountably neat and sturdy wooden homes, laid out in a grid, on a slope near the harbor. “Those houses were shipped over here from Canton, in pieces but ready to be assembled. They’re very popular and their owner is about to make a fortune. Can’t say as much for the rest of the Chinese.”
“Where’s Xiu Li?” I asked, this being the name of the witch we were to recruit. “Since you did all the research I assume you have some idea? I guess the Chinese have brothels as well?”
Gráinne cut me a look. “Why are you even suggesting that? Do you think all witches are prostitutes?”
“Well, in all fairness, you—”
“Sure wasn’t I a spy for the O’Malley!” she said with ferocity. “Prostitution was a front and didn’t I only engage in it to suit my own purposes! Anyhow,” she said, collecting herself and making a let’s-put-this-behind-us gesture, “it certainly isn’t the case here. There be no witches amongst the Chinese tarts, no witch would be finding herself in the straits those poor women are subjected to. No, our lady is right across the square there, in the fancy hotel—the St. Francis. Not much saintly about it from what I hear.” She chuckled her distinctively Gráinne chuckle, took me by the hand, and led me across the dry dirt square.
We entered the lobby of the St. Francis—like the Golden Mounds, there was tacky, tawdry opulence everywhere, much as I imagine Vegas must look, but without the neon—and a woman unlike any Chinese witch I had expected was standing by a card table in the center of the room.
Xiu Li was tall and elegant, almost gentlemanly, feet unbound (although I noticed when she walked that she walked stiffly). Her dress was an ingenuous blend of Oriental and Western that revealed just enough flesh to make a gentleman inclined to stare, and yet concealed enough that she could, technically, pass as modest, at least here.
She was watching the card game, and at a certain point, she settled upon the arm of one player’s chair. She moved with the demure grace of a geisha pouring tea, and yet at the same moment somehow with brazen confidence as well. She was beautiful and spellbinding.
Literally, spellbinding.
She was helping her companion cheat at cards.
For a few moments, we watched the card game. Xiu Li’s companion was also Chinese—a gentleman with short hair, cut in the Western style. There were three other players, all white men, one young, two chubby and older. Standing back from the table were an assortment of servant-ish types, including a Chinese man with long hair in a queue.
“’Tis a weak magic here,” said Gráinne under her breath at last. “She’s using soft magic to influence their choices, rather than what I’d do in her place, change the order of the cards in the deck.” I recalled Erszebet lamenting on the cheap parlor tricks she’d been forced to perform to earn her keep, back in . . . well, just about now, actually. What an odd thought, that at this very moment Erszebet was a young witch somewhere in Eastern Europe, innocent to all that lay ahead.
We watched the game to its completion—that is to say, to her partner’s satisfaction—and then without hesitation, Xiu Li turned with radiant grace and walked elegantly directly toward us. She greeted Gráinne as if a friend she knew attended her. Not surprising, as I have come to understand that witches recognize each other in subtle ways.
“You are no witch,” the tall elegant woman said to me.
“Along for the ride with me, she is. Gráinne I am by name, and this is Melisande, and you are Xiu Li.”
Xiu Li smiled, her teeth small opalescent pearls. “Yes.”
“We’ve a proposition for you,” said Gráinne. “Be there a place to talk in private?”
“There is a room upstairs,” said Xiu Li. “I do most of my business there.”
I confess deep curiosity to know what her business was, but as Gráinne was clearly the lead DOer here, I satisfied myself with following along quietly. We headed for a wooden staircase.
It seemed to me that somebody was following us up the stairs, and sure enough, at the top, we were stopped by a Caucasian gentleman who had been just behind us. “Hey, Shirley,” he said, mispronouncing her name in a nasal voice. “Introduce me to your friends here.” He had a flat accent, akin to what I would in my own time describe as midwestern.
“We talk first, and then we talk to you,” said Xiu Li, with cold friendliness.
“Hi, I’m Francis Overstreet,” he said, offering his hand to Gráinne, and then to me.