Prologue
The old woman peered into the blizzard, squinting one sulphur eye as gray hair lashed her face. She bent a cavernous ear to listen to the howling of the wolves and grinned. The ruby in her incisor glinted. "Tak, tak," she muttered, "Molodtsy. Good boyses." She had heard the sound too rarely in recent times, especially in the last hundred years.
Events were awhirl, after long stagnation. She lofted her colossal nose and breathed deep: mud and decay and steel and tar, laced with wormwood. Faint and far away, she caught a whiff of something else. Her yellow eye popped open. Could it be-
The mottled yellow legs of the hut squatted hastily as she approached. The door swung open with a creak. Ignoring the snow gusting in behind her, the old woman grabbed the mirror that hung beside the huge pestle. The copper face of the mirror was framed on three sides with oak carved into snouts and fangs and tails and horns. The fourth side was unframed.
The old woman squinted at the dull surface. Her eyes narrowed to slits as she growled a long incantation. She concentrated on the elusive scent: dank and rich and salty.
The surface of the mirror clouded then resolved itself into a dim image: vehicles threaded among buildings. She scowled as the image wavered. When she clenched harder, the mirror winced, and the street scene was replaced by a swirl of impressions: lilting music, a crumbling stone facade, a spicy taste. The picture was fading again. The old woman slapped the mirror, which yielded one last convulsive image: six gaudy banners. Above them shone a solitary star.
A lone star.
The old woman had no time to pack. The surface of the mirror was already growing matte. She placed it on the floor, snatching a bundle from the mantel of the fireplace and her twig broom, which gave a little shriek. The mortar and pestle were too heavy to carry. Clutching her bundle and broom, she stepped into the mirror, grabbing the frame at the last instant and pulling the mirror itself after her.
Chapter 1. A Near Accident
Sitting at her cramped desk in the Bexar County Museum Association office, Rachel Vargas stared at the roster of names of the Daughters of the Lone Star. The Lone Star seemed to have a lot of Daughters for such a purportedly exclusive group.
Her boss, Ms. Shinkampf, was planning the cocktail party for the Eldest Daughters on Friday as if her life depended on it. Only Texas-
At least the handwritten notes that Ms. Shinkampf had ordered her to type up were a change from the usual museum business. All the names of the invitees had a sentence or two after them, presumably to help Ms. Shinkampf tell them apart rather than for extortion or bribery purposes. It was all pretty dry: One of them had cats named Lamar, Travis, and Seguín. She typed the note on the last semi-
Rachel wasn’t looking forward to the party. Try as she might, though, she couldn’t think of any way to get out of the gathering and still keep her job, short of being abducted by aliens.
A breeze wafted through the open window. As Rachel looked up, garish letters on the side of a passing bus caught her eye. “Cantrip Can Help!” promised the advertisement, rolling by. Who or what was Cantrip: a sleazy lawyer, a psychic hotline, a new mood leveler? Too late to find out. The bus was gone.
As Rachel printed out the notes on the invitees, she caught sight of her image in the mirror on the wall. It revealed her unruly hair and the dark circles under her eyes, reporting: “You are the most raccoon-
“Who asked?” Rachel muttered, averting her eyes. Every room in the building had at least one mirror. But at least they all showed Ms. Shinkampf’s reflection, proving that she wasn’t a vampire, despite her pale skin and chilly hands. Who needs so many mirrors anyway? As if in answer, she heard the swish of silk that announced the arrival of her boss.
Ms. Shinkampf flicked a glance at her blonde coif in the mirror before turning to Rachel. “Have you finished?” As usual, her voice sounded like silver scraping china. “It’s taken you long enough.”
Rachel bit back a reply and handed her the notes.
Ms. Shinkampf’s blue eyes raked over the names. “Ttch!” A lacquered nail poked the paper. “Not ‘Skunk,’ for God’s sake. It’s Miss Skink.” As she handed back the notes, her eyes fixed on the Klingon Bird of Prey earrings dangling from Rachel’s ears.
“Cloaking device, cloaking device!” Rachel ordered silently, not for the first time. But as usual the mirror showed that the tiny silver Birds of Prey were still visible.
Rachel sat down and dutifully replaced the u in “Skunk” with an i: Skink. She pictured a slender, squirmy woman. After printing out the page again, she handed it to her boss. “There you go. Anything else?”
Ms. Shinkampf’s alabaster brow furrowed slightly then she smiled, never a heart-
“Our”? Rachel hoped it was the royal “we,” but of course it wasn’t.
“ Your task will to be to ask some local . . . institutions whether any of their items are missing,” Ms. Shinkampf said.
Not the Alamo, of course. Even though they were technically no longer the official custodians, the Daughters of the Lone Star still had a lot of influence (having outflanked the reluctant Texas Land Office to get the current excavations started). They brooked no outsiders, especially now, with the protests at the current excavations. Ms. Shinkampf, long a Daughter herself, aspired to become an Eldest Daughter. Hence her planning for the party on Friday as if it was D-
Rachel took a guess at which museums might want their help. “The Institute of Texas Cultures? The Witte?”
Ms. Shinkampf shook her head. “No, I’ll take the larger museums myself.”
Rachel thought smaller. “Museo Alameda? The Longhorn Hall of Horns? The O. Henry House?”
“No, no.” Ms. Shinkampf handed Rachel a short list written in purple ink, without looking her in the eye. “It’s quite an opportunity for you, Rachel.”
Rachel read the list: “Ripley’s Believe It or Not! Stella Attractions. Barb Wire Bonanza. Jeremiah Fort’s Collection of Anomalous Phenomena.” Ms. Shinkampf didn’t even blush.
“You said a copy of a Fabergé ornament had been stolen, not the real thing. What would these museums have that would be valuable?” Rachel asked.
“The stolen things didn’t seem to have much monetary value at all. More or less nicknacks in some cases.” Ms. Shinkampf waved a maroon-
“Right,” said Rachel, putting the list of assignments by the phone. “Lucky me.”
None too enthusiastically, Rachel made an appointment for 10:30 the following morning at Ripley’s Odditorium. This assignment promised more than her fair share of oddities.
Stella Attractions was not listed in the yellow pages on the computer, but Rachel found an address scrawled in red in an old file on a shelf, although it had no phone number.
When she phoned Barb Wire Bonanza, the owner, Eldon Scarper, said that he couldn’t talk long because he was just on his way out of town for a few weeks. But he was polite enough until Rachel mentioned Ms. Shinkampf and the Museum Association.
“Mind your own bidness,” he yelled. “You snitty, jumped-
Rachel held the phone farther away from her ear. “Sir, if you could just tell me whether you’ve had any thefts—”
“When the Ice Capades tour hell! I wouldn’t step over a cow pattie to help that passle of drippy-
Right. One down, three more to go. It was a start at least. After erasing a few false starts, Rachel inscribed “No comment” for Barb Wire Bonanza. She wondered what Eldon Scarper had against Ms. Shinkampf (well, what his particular complaint was) and what had happened at the banquet. With a faint smile, she recorded: “Eldon Scarper says hello to Ms. Shinkampf.”
Rachel made an appointment with Mr. Fort for the day after tomorrow. He seemed pleased to be included.
It was one minute to five, according to the clock on the wall. Rachel walked as slowly as she could out of the office. The parking lot was deserted as usual except for Ms. Shinkampf’s BMW and her own second-
A few blocks north of the Bexar County Museum Association building, the neighborhood changed drastically. Only a few buildings were occupied: El Papagallo restaurant, with its neon parrot (never lit), Adelante! bookstore, with its curious mix of pink and gold romance novels and political tracts in the window, and the liquor store, which seemed to have no name. When Rachel turned the corner, she felt a blast of cold wind.
An old woman clasping a twig broom and a large mirror stood in the middle of the road. Her malevolent sulphur-
“Well, she must be all right,” Rachel muttered to herself, glancing up and down the street once more for signs of body parts or slivers of glass and bits of broom. “I didn’t feel a bump. And there’s no pool of blood.” But how did the old woman flee so quickly? She must really have been flying.
Rachel walked up and down the block and even peered around the corners. Seeing no sign of the old woman, she got back in her car. She’d never seen a broom like that before—except in The Wizard of Oz, of course. And that evil-
Rachel felt a peculiar tingle.
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