Something About Harry(29)

Harry grunted his displeasure in Nina’s direction, but Mara placed a hand on his arm to prevent him from baiting her. “How did this happen to you, Guido?” she asked.

“You’ll never believe it,” he groaned.

Nina rolled her eyes in impatience. “Dude, I’m a goddamn vampire and they’re werewolves. What the fuck kind of statement is that?”

Guido dropped his chin to his chest. “Point,” he said on a sigh. “Look, the guy that handed this off to me, unwillingly on my behalf by the way, just wanted out. I don’t know how he did it—I just know he did. One night, me and a bunch of guys in my group are drinkin’ some pretty rare scotch in a place where water is scarce, let alone booze. You know what it’s like, far away from home, you meet a guy—a native to Africa—one you think has connections, one who offers you stuff you haven’t had in a year. Like hot dogs and Fritos, you get to thinkin’ maybe he could hook you up.” He shook his feathered head, his eyes, dark slits beneath the red makeup, held a pain that touched something deep within Mara.

Nina? Not so much. She shook her dark head. “Nope, I don’t know what that’s like, but you’d better get to tellin’ me what it’s like before I get impatient. Ask Harry how I feel about waiting.”

Guido’s face went slack. “The next thing I know, there were chickens and blood and a mortar and pestle and the sweat of a thousand Namib Desert beetles. At least I think that’s what he called all those marching, squiggly things with a hundred legs.” Guido shuddered violently. “Anyway, it was loud, there was shrieking and praying, and it felt like he was dragging my insides outside of my body, then stuffing them back in again. I blacked out. When I woke up the next morning, under the hot-ass African sun in a lump of elephant shit, people were gathered around me praying. A villager who spoke English told me the juju was now mine. I beat feet out of there I was so scared. By the time I figured out what the hell the juju was, I was on my way home to New York, and I was like witch doctor out of control. I turned a guy on the plane with me into a mute, for Christ’s sake. I know it was me who did it, too. I felt it happen.” He shook his head, his makeup-masked face full of regret. “That poor son of a bitch still can’t speak because of me. I keep tabs on him, you know. Because I’m not the dick everyone in your nutbag world thinks I am.”

“How altruistic,” Mara muttered. “Yet you keep right on practicing.”

His look matched his sarcastic tone. “Look, lady. I gotta make a living. When I joined the Peace Corps, I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life. But while I was in Africa, I figured it out. I was all jazzed to do my time and come back home and go to culinary school. I wanted to be a chef. Not some flippy witch doctor. Then this happened. I didn’t ask for it. I sure as hell don’t want it, but I’m not fit for public consumption because believe me when I tell you that culinary school I went to, for less than a week mind you, will never be the same. I do shit I don’t even mean to do to innocent people every time I try to leave this hell. It’s like I’ve got some kinda invisible chains on me, and when I finally break free, bad shit happens. It’s not like I can just quit or go home to my mother’s. What if something happened to her because of the whacked-out stuff I can’t control? I’d never forgive myself. In the meantime, somebody’s gotta pay the rent on this dump. I have to eat, too,” he finished defensively, pushing his thin chest forward only to expose his rib cage.

“So you offer a service you know will go awry? You tell people you can help them, knowing your spells are bad?” Mara asked, incredulous.

Guido made a face at her, comical under all his stage makeup if not for the fact that he was a madman. “Oh, stop with the ‘I’m so moral’ look. It was you who did this to poor Harry, wasn’t it?”

Harry was up and in Guido’s face in a heartbeat, his long arm reaching out to clamp a hand on his thin shoulder. “Back off her, Guido.”

Mara’s pulse raced at Harry’s defense of her. This was almost like the fantasy she had about him defending her against the evil Malfoy. Well . . . it wasn’t a lot like that, but he was taking up for her honor. That was as close as she’d gotten in a year’s time of infatuation.

Guido’s hands shot up in the air just as Harry shoved him back into his rickety chair. “Peace, brother. I’m just pointin’ out the facts, man. Look, the spells I cast are mostly just bullshit. Yeah, yeah, I take their money because like I said, I gotta eat. But I’ve only had three incidents. Three times where I really tried to do this right by readin’ from that hokey-ass book. Shit went kooky, but they were all accidents. Kinda like your hot girlfriend and her accident.”