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mouth is an open, voracious void, and—”
    â€œ Enough , thanks. I don’t need a description.”
    â€œThen why did you ask?”
    â€œI thought I heard her tonight. She’s supposed to hang around riverbeds,” I pointed out as I hung a basket on my arm and grabbed my white-handled boline , a special sickle-shaped knife used to cut magical herbs. “But there aren’t any rivers in San Francisco, are there?”
    â€œNope.” Oscar trailed me through a pair of French doors onto my terrace.
    This was my essential rooftop herb garden: crowded with pots holding coriander, vervain, and even poisonous wolfsbane; and planters full of gingerroot, hore- hound, and damiana. Since it was only six weeks old my garden was still immature, but I had worked a fertility spell to speed the growing season up a little bit. I snipped off small sprigs of henbane and badger’s foot and placed them in my basket.
    â€œBut water spirits are practical folk,” Oscar continued. “They can’t find a creek or a river, they use the bay, a backed-up storm drain, a swimming pool. Easy enough for drowning people, either way.”
    â€œGreat. I finally find a place to settle down, and now La Llorona ’s haunting the bay?”
    He shrugged. “Everyone wants to live in the Bay Area. It’s an active area, spirit-wise. New Orleans is getting crowded, and the climate’s better here.”
    â€œHey, what’s the deal with your master, Aidan Rhodes? Does he want you to spy on me?”
    â€œYou’re my master now, mistress,” he repeated his earlier incantation.
    â€œI don’t need a familiar, Oscar. I’m not . . . not a normal witch.”
    â€œWell, you sure as heck aren’t a normal human.”
    I glared at him.
    â€œWhat’d I say?”
    â€œWhy don’t you go be Bronwyn’s familiar? She could use the help.”
    â€œWho’s Bronwyn?”
    â€œThe woman you’re so enamored with.”
    â€œOoh, the lady ,” he repeated dreamily. Then he shrugged. “Can’t. I’m yours. And she’s not a witch like you. She one of those, whaddayacall? Wiccans.”
    â€œAt least she belongs to a coven. I don’t belong . . . anywhere.”
    In the old days—the burning times—there was a distinction made between sorcerers and witches. It was said that a sorcerer learned magic through training, while a witch was born with innate talents and connections to the spirit world. The latter was true in my case, to an extreme degree. I hadn’t chosen this path; it had chosen me. One of the many curses my status bestowed was a near-perfect memory, and I could recall every alienating episode, every isolating incident, of my thirty-one years.
    Oscar was following so closely on my heels that when I stopped to pick some cinquefoil grass he plowed right into the backs of my legs. He watched me for another minute while I gathered nine berries of deadly nightshade ; then we both headed back into the kitchen where the cauldron was boiling.
    â€œWhatcha cookin’?”
    â€œA woman I met earlier may have heard La Llorona ’s cry. I’m brewing a spell to protect her.” I started crushing sempervivum leaves in the ancient stone mortar Graciela had given me when I left home.
    â€œOoh! How much is she paying you?” Oscar hopped around the kitchen in his excitement. “Firstborn? Life of duty? Web site?”
    That last option threw me. “Web site?”
    â€œMaster Rhodes had a supplicant make him an interactive Web site. You should see it. It’s awesome.”
    Times do change.
    â€œShe’s not paying me anything,” I answered as I dropped the black shiny berries, one by one, into the boiling cauldron. “She doesn’t even know I’m doing it.”
    He narrowed his eyes, fixed me with an odd look. “Don’t tell me you have a fetish for normal humans. They would have