The Line Between

«No, no money.» El Viejo waved her offering aside, studying her out of eyes the color of almost–ripened plums. The white markings under them looked real; the eyes didn't. He said, «I take you. We find you brother together.»

Angie's legs were trembling so much that they hurt. She wanted to assent, but it was simply not possible. «No. I can't. I can't. You go back there and get him.»

El Viejo laughed then: an enormous, astonishing Santa Claus ho–ho–HO, so rich and reassuring that it made Angie smile even as he was snatching her up and stuffing her under one arm. By the time she had recovered from her bewilderment enough to start kicking and fighting, he was walking away with her down the long hall he had come out of a moment before. Angie screamed until her voice splintered in her throat, but she could not hear herself: from the moment El Viejo stepped back into the darkness of the hallway, all sound had ended. She could hear neither his footsteps nor his laughter — though she could feel him laughing against her — and certainly not her own panicky racket. They could be in outer space. They could be anywhere.

Dazed and disoriented as she was, the hallway seemed to go soundlessly on and on, until wherever they truly were, it could never have been the tiny Santeria shop she had entered only — when? — minutes before. It was a cold place, smelling like an old

basement; and for all its darkness, Angie had a sense of things happening far too fast on all sides, just out of range of her smothered vision. She could distinguish none of them clearly, but there was a sparkle to them all the same.

And then she was in Marvyn's room.

And it was unquestionably Marvyn's room: there were the bearded and beaded occultists on the walls; there were the flannel winter sheets that he slept on all year because they had pictures of the New York Mets ballplayers; there was the complete set of Star Trek action figures that Angie had given him at Christmas, posed just so on his bookcase. And there, sitting on the edge of his bed, was Marvyn, looking lonelier than anyone Angie had ever seen in her life.

He didn't move or look up until El Viejo abruptly dumped her down in front of him and stood back, grinning like a beartrap. Then he jumped to his feet, burst into tears and started frenziedly climbing her, snuffling, «Angie, Angie, Angie," all the way up. Angie held him, trying somehow to preserve her neck and hair and back all at once, while mumbling, «It's all right, it's okay, I'm here. It's okay, Marvyn.»

Behind her, El Viejo chuckled, «Crybaby witch — little, little brujito crybaby.»

Angie hefted her blubbering baby brother like a shopping bag, holding him on her hip as she had done when he was little, and turned to face the old man. She said, «Thank you. You can take us home now.»

El Viejo smiled — not a grin this time, but a long, slow shutmouth smile like a paper cut. He said, «Maybe we let him do it, yes?» and then he turned and walked away and was gone, as though he had simply slipped between the molecules of the air. Angie stood with Marvyn in her arms, trying to peel him off like a Band–Aid, while he clung to her with his chin digging hard into the top of her head. She finally managed to dump him down on the bed and stood over him, demanding, «What happened? What were you thinking?» Marvyn was still crying too hard to answer her. Angie said, «You just had to do it this way, didn't you? No silly little beginner spells — you're playing with the big guys now, right, O Mighty One? So what happened? How come you couldn't get back?»

«I don't know!» Marvyn's face was red and puffy with tears, and the tears kept coming while Angie tried to straighten his eyepatch. It was impossible for him to get much out without breaking down again, but he kept wailing, «I don't know what went wrong! I did everything you're supposed to, but I couldn't make it work! I don't know … maybe I forgot…» He could not finish.

«Herbs," Angie said, as gently and calmly as she could. «You left your magic herbs back — " she had been going to say «back home," but she stopped, because they were back home, sitting on Marvyn's bed in Marvyn's room, and the confusion was too much for her to deal with just then. She said, «Just tell me. You left the stupid herbs.»

Marvyn shook his head until the tears flew, protesting, «No, I didn't, I didn't — look!» He pointed to a handful of grubby dried weeds scattered on the bed — Lidia would have thrown them out in a minute. Marvyn gulped and wiped his nose and tried to stop crying. He said, «They're really hard to find, maybe they're not fresh anymore, I don't know — they've always looked like that. But now they don't work," and he was wailing afresh. Angie told him that Dr. John Dee and Willow would both have been ashamed of him, but it didn't help.