She nodded. "Roman numerals."

Miles grinned and started writing.

VIII ID. DIVIII. VDIIII.

"Maybe it's an address . . ." he said.

"Or a date . . ."

I grabbed the paper from Miles and started listing more numbers.

Sarah leaned over, next to me. I felt her arm touching mine.

We looked at the list.

"There's so many possibilities . . ."

We tried to make dates, addresses, Dewey decimal notations for books, lat.i.tudes and longitudes--anything that might point us to an answer. It was too much! We made dozens of numbers just by swapping letters around and inserting s.p.a.ces. There was nothing to guide us. Nothing to tell us what we were looking for or how to know it when we saw it.

I was starting to feel a sinking sensation--that we weren't a bit closer than when we started.

Sarah was still hammering away when I noticed Miles had been silent for a long time. Then he started chuckling. He said, "Oh, that's good."

"What's good?" I asked him.

He shook his head and smiled.

Now Sarah was looking at him too. He was staring off, with a satisfied look on his face.

"What's good, Miles?"

"Say what you want about the V and D," he said to us, "but they haven't lost their sense of humor."

I felt a tingling in my arms and legs.

He was taunting us, enjoying the victory. I felt the thrill of a mystery about to be revealed.

"What's good?"

"You saw drums. You saw a ritual. We just didn't know what ritual . . ."

He grabbed the pad from us.

"Not four i's. Four eyes," he said.

"Huh?"

"You still don't see it? Just like they told us. Look at the V and D with four eyes. Four big round eyes."

Sarah and I just stared at him. He wrote something triumphantly on the pad and pushed it toward us.

VOODOO, it said.

Miles tapped on his pad and smiled broadly.

"We need a witch."

24.

We came to a store called the Flying Mushroom, a place I'd pa.s.sed many times but never actually entered. It was a brick building painted with broad wavy zebra stripes. During business hours, the neon sign flashed purple and pink; white shoe polish on the windows promised "vintage alb.u.ms, psychic readings, and more . . ." In my lonelier moments, I had sometimes considered finding out what the more was.

We came at it from the back, reaching the Mushroom through the dark service alley that ran behind the stores. If anyone was following us, we would've seen them coming up the narrow path after us. At least, that's what I kept telling myself.

We followed Miles until he disappeared behind a Dumpster. Moments later, he came out with a key.

"How did you know where the key was?" I asked him.

He shrugged, unlocked the door, and ushered us in.

There were rows of wooden shelves, with dusty vinyl records in no discernible order: Beethoven's Emperor Concerto, Neutral Milk Hotel's Aeroplane Over the Sea, a Steve Martin stand-up alb.u.m, Miles Davis's b.i.t.c.hes Brew. I thought it would be a great store to visit if you had no idea what you were looking for.

Miles motioned for us to be quiet. He left the lights off and kept us away from the front windows. We went through a beaded curtain into a back room. Miles reached up and unhooked a thick black drape. It unrolled behind the beaded curtain and fell to the floor with a soft thud. We were in total darkness until he flipped a switch, and then I heard a soft bubbling sound and saw black lights illuminate the room from under the high cabinets. Planters with overflowing vines hung from the ceiling. An iguana stared at us blankly from a terrarium. There were lava lamps, of course; one yellow, one red. There were little fountains everywhere: spheres with smoky lighted holes, piles of wet pebbles, tiki volcanoes with water flowing like lava.

We sat at a small card table and waited. Miles looked nervous. The excitement of the puzzle had worn off a bit; the cold air had let a little chill of reality back in. Miles kept scratching his beard. I had no doubt he was dreaming of his Rubik's Cube, twisting his imaginary squares under the table. I stole a glance at Sarah. She didn't look happy, but at least she didn't have that how many times can you ruin my life in one week look that I kept expecting to see. Actually, when we were working the puzzle, I saw something totally different on her face, something that bothered me. She looked like she was enjoying herself. I admit a certain thrill in solving the riddle, but in her it scared me--because I was coming to the conclusion that I might care more for her than I did for myself. She hadn't asked for this. And I had a sneaking suspicion that the moment this became a game to us--that would be the moment someone got hurt.

Miles's phone rang. He s.n.a.t.c.hed it up, looked at the caller ID, and breathed a giant sigh of relief. "It's Chance," he said. They spoke softly, then he closed the phone.

"He's fine," Miles said. "He's heading out of town to crash with some unnamed social rejects." Miles shrugged. "He wishes us luck."

"Great. That's very generous of him."

A door opened somewhere in the building, and all three of us turned to the black curtain at the same time. Heavy footsteps came toward us. I saw Miles slide his chair back. I looked down at my hand, which was clenching itself so hard the knuckles were white. I let it relax and watched the blood return.

Then the curtain was pushed aside and a large figure came into the room. She was giant, almost as big as Miles. But where Miles looked messy and distracted, she looked like the magnificent queen of a warrior people. Her hair was a wild tangle of thick black curls, with a long elegant strand of silver in the front. Her skin was a warm caramel brown, and her eyes were green, glowing with absolute confidence, almost on fire. She wore a full-length coat dusted with snow, and a Dr. Seuss scarf, striped with a dozen shades of blue, tossed around her neck like an aviator's. She filled the room. You couldn't take your eyes off her.

"Everyone," Miles said, grinning, "meet Isabella."

"This is your store?" I asked, after we had all shaken hands.

"My father," she said, "was a graduate student at the university. One of the first black international students. My mother"--here she gave Miles a smile--"was a local celebrity: a townie philosopher, agitator, free spirit. The first person to sell Janis Joplin records. The first person to read palms and do tarot. I was the little girl running around behind the counter in a moon dress. You wouldn't believe the famous people who came in here as students--as a joke of course--wanting to know if the stars predicted greatness for them." She sat and draped her arm on my chair.

"My mother and father were an improbable couple. An African man and an Irish woman, at a time when that was still scandalous. A university scholar and a red-haired hippie. The only problem was, the longer my dad was here, the more he resented his past. His new religion was economics, political theory. No matter how much they loved each other, she was obsessed with the one part of him he couldn't wait to leave behind. She became something of an embarra.s.sment to him. He turned into a celebrated professor, and she disappeared to San Francisco." Isabella took in the room, seeing it through our eyes, like an alien zoo. "My mother never left me a forwarding address. But she left me this store."

"How do you and Miles know each other?" I asked.

No one said anything, and I think they both blushed a little.

Miles leaned toward her. "No one followed you?"

"Of course not. Now would you please tell me what's going on? Calls in the middle of the night, Miles? Make sure no one follows me? What is this?"

"Okay," he said. He looked at Sarah and me sternly. "Ground rules. No one say a word to her about what we're doing. We're just asking general, hypothetical, academic questions. The less she knows, the happier I am.

"Now," he said, turning to Isabella, "what can you tell us about voodoo?"

She slapped her forehead.

"Miles, what did I say when you asked me to marry you?"

I felt the room stop, as if all the fountains froze at once.

Miles turned bright red.

My mouth dropped open. So did Sarah's.

"Well?" Isabella demanded.

"You said, when I grow up," Miles mumbled.

"Sweetie, does this seem grown up to you?"

He shook his head sheepishly.

I'd never seen Miles chastened before. He lowered his head, like a puppy waiting for its punishment.

Isabella sighed, running her hands into her hair. It was midnight black, a nest of unruly, graceful ringlets. Her green eyes sparkled. She closed them, and it was like a light went off in the room. She hummed to herself. Finally, she laughed and shook her head.

"Okay, okay, my sweetheart. What do you want to know?"

Miles let out a giant sigh of relief. He gave us a goofy grin.

"Everything. Izzy, tell us everything."

25.

"First of all, forget every ridiculous thing you've ever heard about voodoo. Forget zombies. Forget voodoo dolls. Our story begins four thousand years B.H.--Before Hollywood--in the ancient civilizations of Egypt, a.s.syria, Ethiopia. Their accounts of the stars, the planets, the human soul--these gave birth over millennia to the religions of the African tribes: the Fons, the Igbos, the Kongos, and dozens more. The slave trade brought these ideas to the New World: to Brazil, Cuba, Haiti, Galveston, New Orleans. Religions mixed and transformed, as slaves from different tribes were integrated . . . if you'll excuse the term . . ." Isabella leaned in and gave us a smile that was as large and majestic as she was.

"Of course, it all starts with the word itself. In the language of the Fons, Vo means 'introspection.' Du means 'into the unknown.' Voodoo is therefore the investigation of mystery. Not just of G.o.ds and heavenly bodies, but of our own souls." Isabella drew a line with her finger across the table. "The voodoo temple is the oum'phor, held up by a central post--the solar support--and balanced by the moon, a small boat hung from the ceiling, which represents the voodoo G.o.ddess Erzulie. The top of the sun-post is the center of the sky. The bottom is the center of h.e.l.l. The post itself is the wood of justice, with a whip strung from it to symbolize penitence and redemption. The post is the physical center of the temple--it is, as they say, the cosmic axis of voodoo magic. The oum'phor has many chambers: a holy of holies, and symbolic 'tombs' for the uninitiated--death before rebirth. On the altar are pots-de-tete, small jars that contain a bit of the soul of each person in the room.

"Everything flows from the power of the G.o.ds--the loas. You legal types may be interested to know that loa comes from the French word lois, or 'law.'" That smile again, magnetic. She leaned in. "Ask me where the G.o.ds live."

"Where do the G.o.ds live?"

"In the astral city Ife, in a star that bakes at thirty thousand degrees Celsius. You've heard of the ceremonies. Drums. Incantations. An animal sacrifice, or sometimes a plant. The loa comes down to earth to mount a voodoo pract.i.tioner, who becomes the G.o.d's horse. This is an act of possession, so that the G.o.ds may perform an earthly task: heal the sick, accept a sacrifice. The mounting begins with a violent struggle but ends moments later with a whimper: in a flash it's over."

Isabella went to a cabinet. She pulled a small object out of a box, unwrapped the felt cover, and placed it on the table.

"Perhaps the most powerful item in voodoo is the baka." She traced a circle around it on the table with her finger. "The baka is a talisman, but with a very special and dangerous composition. It is the fusion of two souls: the ka, the terrestrial soul that stays with the body after death, and the ba--the celestial soul that ascends to heaven. It is this combination that makes the baka's power so volatile: it is whatever the holder wants it to be. A healing charm. A weapon."

Isabella paused. She put the charm away. She walked to a cupboard, took out four gla.s.ses, and filled them with an almond liquor.

"For a time, voodoo did quite well in the New World. But you have to imagine the slave tent on a quiet night. The glow of the flames. The hint of drums. Rumors of rituals, miraculous seizures. The slave owners came down brutally, even for them: hangings, beatings, even flayings, punishments for the slightest whiff of voodoo.

"And so the religion evolved again. It cloaked itself in secrecy. Catholic saints were used to signify voodoo G.o.ds. Rituals were cloaked in other rituals. Erzulie becomes the Virgin Mary. Legba the Lion becomes Christ. Is it so surprising? Religions are always borrowing, mixing. Some believe that Moses himself was inducted into voodoo, under the tutelage of a black scholar named Pethro. Some even say Moses married a black woman briefly, until his family intervened. Who knows? But that is how voodoo, cloaked in a new skin, survived four hundred years of slavery in the New World. And how it exists to this very day."

Isabella sat back in her chair and spread her hands.

"That, my friends, is all I know about voodoo."

Miles, Sarah, and I each seemed to have the same reaction. Interesting--but what did it have to do with us? What did it tell us about the V&D? How was it going to save us? I weighed my words.

"Isabella, tell us about voodoo and death."

"Well," she said, thinking it over. "It's common to honor the souls of your ancestors. And to prepare one's soul for death. Penitence and redemption, like I said."

"Okay, but what about . . . preventing death?"

"You mean healing the sick?"

"Not exactly . . . I mean, like, cheating death."

Isabella wrinkled her brow.

"I don't understand."

"I met a man who was planning to live beyond his own obituary. To live forever. You didn't say how someone would use voodoo to do that."

She shook her head.

"They wouldn't."

"How do you know?"