In Search of the Dove Read Free

more like a hobo than a college professor.
    Was he a fool to trust this woman with his life? He wasn’t sure, yet something had brought him to her door.
    “Things have not gone well with you, Gilbert,” she observed as she drew him into her little house. The clapboard dwelling was in one of the city’s less prosperous districts. Like its neighbors, it needed a coat of paint and new louvered shutters. But inside, the air of poverty vanished. The small living room was elegantly furnished with Oriental rugs and Victorian antiques from some of the most exclusive shops on Royal Street.
    Gilbert turned the woman’s statement aside. “But you seem to be doing very well.”
    His hostess shrugged delicately. “People ask me to help solve their problems. An impotent husband with a young wife. A pregnant girl whose lover is hesitant about marrying her. They are always satisfied with my services, so they come back again.”
    “I have a problem too,” he ventured.
    The fingers on his arm squeezed sympathetically. “I wouldn’t need to read tea leaves to know that. But I am glad that you came to me. Sit down and tell me your troubles.”
    He sank heavily onto a green velvet high-back couch, and she drew up a matching chair. How much could he trust her, he wondered.
    She read the hesitation in his eyes. “Gilbert, I’m like a doctor or a lawyer. Your secrets are confidential here.”
    “There are men who want to find me so that they can control me,” he blurted. “And there’s danger to you if I say too much.”
    She waved her hand dismissively. “I have ways to protect myself from danger.”
    “Maybe not from these men.”
    “But you believe in the power of my magic, or you wouldn’t be here.”
    Did he believe? Though he was well educated—with a Ph.D. in chemistry, no less—he’d seen what this woman could do. She was part witch doctor, part folk healer, and part charlatan. Maybe he had come here because he was desperate enough to believe in her power.
    “We will make a charm to throw your enemies off the scent.”
    She stood up and left the room. He could either follow or flee. He chose to follow, his eyes trained on the back of her flowing robes as she led him down a narrow hall, which ended at a doorway closed off by a thick beaded curtain. Beyond was a room that he remembered all too well. It was a twilight place with bamboo wall covering, pungent candles, and carved wooden figures with jeweled eyes that jumped out at you in the dark.
    The woman must have sensed the tremor that rippled through his body. “You were eager for my help once. Are you afraid to accept it again?”
    That had been in an entirely different context, a different life. He had been willing to take what he could from her, as long as he didn’t have to acknowledge the magic.
    “I’m not afraid,” he lied.
    The beaded curtain rustled as she pushed it aside and gestured for him to sit down on one of the flat cushions that were the floor’s only covering. When he had complied, his companion gave him a satisfied smile before kneeling in front of a low altar at the far end of the room.
    He had watched her do that before. Only then drums had beaten a frantic rhythm in the background, and the room had been full of dark, writhing bodies. Now it was just the two of them, and he was a participant, not an observer.
    For a moment the priestess was completely silent, then she began a soft chant as she lit more candles, the graceful movements of her body beneath the flowing silk caftan strengthening his sense of foreboding. In a way, he could trace the root of all his problems back to his fascination with this woman and her dark secrets. No, that wasn’t fair. He accepted the responsibility for the mess he’d gotten himself into.
    The woman had finished her chant. When she turned back in his direction she was holding a carved wooden box, which she set on the floor in front of him. Then she went to a cabinet along the wall and began removing jars