Free The Black Witch of Mexico by Colin Falconer Page B

someone. Is that who you’re running away from?”
    “I came here to help at the mission.”
    She squeezed his arm, an intimate gesture he was not expecting. “What are we going to do with you?” she said and then moved off through the market. From behind, that braid, that hair, she looked just like her. Why couldn’t Jamie Fox Garrido have been short with black hair, like everyone else in this damned country?
    They passed a shop selling religious and occult statuary. Inside, rows of saints were lined up on shelves like soldiers alongside racks of exquisitely suffering Christs.
    He almost barged into a life-size statue of a skeleton in a scarlet and black robe.
    “ Santa Muerte ,” she said. Saint Death.
    “That is grotesque,” he said.
    “She is venerated here. During the flu epidemic here four years ago, sales of Santa Muerte went through the roof. She may look terrifying, but to a Mexican she is a great healer, especially when she is dressed in white. We pray to her when someone we love is sick.”
    “Do you believe in all this ...” He was about to say ‘crap’ and stopped himself.
    “Not in the daylight.”
    “But your father’s a Baptist minister.”
    She shrugged.
    “What about your mother? What did she believe?”
    “She said that a soul cannot die, just like my father does. But she did not believe in heaven, she said we go to a place called Mictlan, the land where souls wait to be reborn. She did not believe in a judgment day like my father does.”
    “So why did she marry a Baptist minister?”
    “Because she loved him,” she said. “I don’t agree with my father on many things but I still love him. Do you have to agree with someone before you can love them, Adam? If you do, you must live a very frustrating life. Not many surprises for you. Sorry, now I have offended you again. Let’s try to cheer you up. Here’s some candy. Do you like candy?”
    The candies were skulls made from dark chocolate and sugar coated. She bought a dozen and popped one into her mouth. “ Muy bien ,” she said. “Here, try one.”
    He shook his head.
    “You don’t like chocolate?”
    “I don’t want to eat a skull.”
    “Then what about one of these? It’s a skeleton. They’re called calavera , they’re delicious.” She went back to the stall and bought two. She popped one in her mouth and offered him one. He hesitated and took it.
    “You can spit out the bones,” she said, then laughed at his expression. “It’s just chocolate.”
    They passed another of the witches. “Have you ever been to one?”
    She didn’t answer.
    “You have, haven’t you?”
    “No, but I thought about it.”
    “When you were a teenager, right?”
    “No, last week.”
    “Last week?”
    “I’m going through a pretty messy divorce.”
    “You wanted the witch to get him back?”
    “Not really.”
    “Then what?”
    “I helped the freeloading bastard all those years he didn’t have a job and now he wants half of my apartment and a cash payout. If he has some bad luck, I wouldn’t mind. The only real way to get him off my back is if he ...”
    “If he dies? You’d go to a witch and ask him to put a curse on him so that he ...”
    “I didn’t do it. I said I thought about it. But you don’t know what a temptation it is.”
    “You don’t really believe these guys could do that?”
    “When you’re in Mexico, sometimes you don’t know what to think.”
    “That they can kill people?”
    “Many people here believe the maldad negra is the cause of all illnesses, all bad luck, all accidents.”
    “The black evil? So - like black magic then?”
    “Yes. The Darkness. The devil.”
    “You really think one of these guys could make your ex disappear? Like a spiritual hit?”
    “You are making fun of it but maybe when you have lived in Mexico more than one day it won’t seem so funny.”
    They left the market and walked back to the Zocalo.
    “So this divorce,” he said. “This is why you’re sending all these