Night Film

46

“You think we’re going to die?” asked Nora nervously as we moved up the Enchantments steps.

“Everyone tends to.”

“In the next few days. That goofer stuff she was talking about. She said it can kill you without you even realizing.”

“Ex-wives do the exact same thing. The most interesting thing she said was the knowledge of dark magic passed from generation to generation.”

“You think that’s what the Cordovas are hiding? That they’re all witches or something?”

I said nothing, the notion sounding absurd. But then—Cordova was a creative eccentric holed up in an isolated estate, basically a petri dish for cultivating the weird and outlandish. Cleo had testified that Ashley was quite proficient in spells. She’d learned how to assemble those materials from someone.

But for whom had she intended this Black Bone killing curse—me? Had she laid it knowing I’d investigate her death and eventually show up at Henry Street? What about Hopper? He’d been sent that stuffed monkey and had somehow known she’d frequented Klavierhaus. Or did she intend it for someone else entirely? Iona, if she could be believed, claimed she’d seen two men outside Ashley’s door. One might have been Theo Cordova. Maybe it was her family Ashley considered the enemy and she’d put down the killing curse for them. Hopper’s inclination was to hold them accountable. Maybe they’d been chasing her, trying to find her, fearing she was on the verge of exposing them. She had, after all, been following me—which doubtless would have made the family quite nervous.

Nora was thinking it over, nibbling her thumbnail. “It could be why Ashley took her life. She couldn’t handle the guilt of what the family had done for years, practicing black magic.” She wrinkled her nose. “Maybe that’s what the housekeeper at the Waldorf noticed when she saw that mark in her eye. Maybe she could tell Ashley practiced black magic.”

“At this point, it’s all conjecture.”

Closing the metal gate behind us, I realized my phone was buzzing. I assumed it was Hopper, but instead it was an email notification from the Blackboards, indicating someone had answered my post, though to read the response I needed my laptop with the Tor browser.

“You might think this magic stuff is hogwash, but I don’t,” Nora said, scraping the soles of her boots on the curb. “This curse is like cement.”

“We need to go back to the apartment.” I stepped onto the street, hailing an approaching cab.

“What about going to Rising Dragon tattoos and asking about that receipt?”

“We’ll do it later. Someone on the Blackboards answered my post.”