“Must be a cargo ship of some kind,” he said.

  “It’s too big to be a cargo ship—look at it in comparison to the others. It looks more like an island, but which could it be?”

  “It’s not Alcatraz, that’s for sure,” said Sailor, and our eyes met. Not long ago we had survived a series of harrowing encounters within the walls of the old federal penitentiary on the island. Both of us preferred not to be reminded of those experiences.

  I knew there were other islands in San Francisco Bay: Angel Island, Yerba Buena Island, Station Island, Belvedere, Alameda, plus a few lesser-known rocks poking out of the water. But none of them resembled what I was looking at.

  “Besides,” I said. “Why would a cargo ship be lit up like a Christmas tree?”

  “All good questions,” said Sailor, wrapping an arm around me and giving me a hug. “Perhaps you could look it up on the Internet, if you ever learn how to use the computer. So, how does it feel to come back to the City by the Bay?”

  “Truthfully? Like coming home.”

  “Even though it’s not Europe?”

  “Do I sound silly?”

  “Not at all,” Sailor continued. “It sounds like you love where you live, and your friends and community. I’d say you’re very lucky.”

  “We’re very lucky.” I laid my head on his shoulder and gazed out the window as we flew past the city, skirted the bay, and finally set down on the soil of my adopted state.

  I was coming home to good friends and family. To my Haight Street vintage clothing shop, Aunt Cora’s Closet, and to the temporary (I hoped) role as the head of the San Francisco Bay Area magical community. I was returning with scads of gifts for everyone, a few spellcasting items and souvenirs for myself, and one disappointed familiar. As well as a mysterious fellow passenger, a dozen rows behind us, who might just spell trouble.

  My medicine bag had continued to hum throughout the flight. The man with one gold earring might be out of sight, but he was most definitely not out of mind.

  Chapter 2

  I searched for the mystery man upon arrival, but as we passengers crowded into the aisle to retrieve our various items and file off the plane, I couldn’t find him among the throng. Neither was I able to spot him in the resident or nonresident passport lines, nor as we collected our checked bags and headed to customs.

  “Who are you looking for?” Sailor asked.

  “Are you reading my mind?” I asked.

  “I wouldn’t read your mind even if your thoughts weren’t so well guarded. It would be too much of an invasion of privacy. But it doesn’t take extrasensory abilities to know when something’s bothering my woman.”

  I shrugged. “There was someone on the plane who looked . . . familiar.”

  “As in a witch’s familiar?”

  “No. Just . . . familiar.”

  It’s probably nothing, I told myself. Just some weird bit of random déjà vu.

  Except that, in my world, weird feelings were almost never “nothing.” When I adopted San Francisco as my city, I acquired not only a new world of friendship and community but a region rife with magic and murder. Besides, my medicine bag had tingled a warning—and my medicine bag rarely got it wrong.

  “Speaking of familiars,” Sailor said, after we cleared customs. “Oscar just texted me. He said to tell you he’s tracking down a few final tchotchkes in the airport gift shop. And that he’s hungry and to remind you that they sell See’s Candies at a stand in the arrivals area.”

  “Oscar texted you?”

  He nodded.

  “Oscar has a cell phone?”

  “Apparently.”

  “Since when does Oscar have a cell phone?”

  “I guess that clinches it,” said Sailor with a chuckle as we walked along the nondescript corridor that led out of the terminal’s restricted area. “You are officially the last person on earth—or the last creature on earth—without a cell phone.”

  “Oh, look! There’s Maya!”

  I spotted one of my closest friends in the crowd, waving. Maya was in her midtwenties, petite and strong, and wore her braided locks decorated with beads. She worked at Aunt Cora’s Closet and was a student at the San Francisco Academy of Art, and though she possessed a first-rate mind, she seemed to be in no particular hurry to graduate. Maya was one of my most levelheaded friends, who had come into my magical world with a healthy dose of skepticism. She was open to new ideas and unexpected realities, but wasn’t sure how far she was willing to go with the whole witch-type deal.

  Jumping up and down beside her, clapping her hands, was Bronwyn, another dear friend who also worked with me at the shop. Bronwyn kept her own herb stand and, while I ran around town tending to other business, pretty much helped run Aunt Cora’s Closet alongside Maya. Bronwyn was a proud fifty-something, full-figured Wiccan, who tended toward gauzy purple outfits and wildflowers, such as the garland of yellow dandelions currently adorning her wild mop of graying hair. Bronwyn was a dues-paying member of the Haight Street Welcome Coven and had no trouble at all with my witchy ways.

  The sight of the eager smiles on the faces of these dear friends flooded me with emotion. Not so long ago, in what now seemed like another lifetime, I came to the City by the Bay at the suggestion of a drunken parrot named Barnabas in Hong Kong. I had arrived alone and friendless, and hadn’t expected my situation to change. I had long since accepted that I was a solitary soul, fated to travel my path alone.

  And just look at me now. I was newly married to a wonderful man, and two amazing women—more cherished sisters than good friends—were welcoming me back to my adopted Bay Area.

  The hugging went on for a very long time.

  “Have we got everything?” Bronwyn asked, as we started for the exit doors. “Fingers and toes all accounted for?”

  “Let’s hope so. Any more luggage and we’d have to hire some pack mules,” Maya teased.

  “Don’t complain,” said Sailor as he pushed the overladen luggage cart. “Half our suitcases are full of gifts for you all.”

  “I would expect nothing less,” Maya said with a laugh.

  As I looked around to be sure we hadn’t forgotten anything, I caught one final glimpse of the Mystery Man with the gold earring. He was standing near the exit to Ground Transportation. As our eyes met, he tipped an imaginary hat in my direction, smiled, and slipped out the door.

  I’m no clairvoyant, but I had the distinct impression this would not be the last time I laid eyes on that man.

  “How’s everything at Aunt Cora’s Closet?” I asked as we headed toward the multistory parking garage.

  “Great. Well, except there is one thing. . . .” Maya hesitated.

  “What is it? Is something wrong?” I asked, alarmed.

  “Nothing, really. Just that I did my best, I swear I did, but there’s still a pretty big pile of laundry that needs doing,” said Maya. “I honestly don’t know how you manage.”

  “Laundry,” I said with a sigh. “Yay.”

  It was official. The honeymoon was over.

  * * *

  • • •

  Bronwyn talked animatedly all the way back to Aunt Cora’s Closet, filling us in on what had happened in our absence, while Maya skillfully navigated the crowded city streets and added clarifying comments here and there.

  My heart again filled with emotion when we turned onto Haight Street. The neighborhood had become a true home.

  Although it was well past closing time, the windows of my vintage clothing store, Aunt Cora’s Closet, were brightly lit, and a crowd was milling about near the door. And . . . was that singing I heard?

  “What in the world?” I asked, climbing out of the car. The strains of an off-pitch rendition of some song I didn’t recognize assailed my ears.

  “It’s a welcome home party!” gushed Bronwyn. “We’re doing karaoke!”

  “It was supposed to be a surprise,” murmured Maya, giving Bronwyn a sidelong look. “But, and I say this with all due respect, your grandmother’s coven isn’t great at following orders.”

  “I’d be shocked if they were,” I said with a chuckle.

  “Everyone is so excited to see you!” said Bronwyn. “They couldn’t wait!”

  “And I, them,” I said, though a part of me longed for a hot shower and my soft bed. It had been a long trip, and my old pal, jet lag, was beginning to make itself known. It probably didn’t help that I had watched back-to-back movies on the plane instead of trying to sleep. I rarely had such uninterrupted time to hone my popular culture references.

  I opened the shop door and was greeted with the familiar, beloved aroma of fresh laundry and the sachets of lavender and rosemary that I hung around the place. Clearly the herbs had been replenished in my absence. No surprise there; the shop had been chock-full of witchy women: my abuela Graciela’s entire coven, whom I referred to collectively as the Aunties, visiting from Texas. They were a veritable United Nations of the elderly West Texas witch population: Viv, Rosa, Caroline, Winona, Kay, Betty, MariaGracia, Pepper, Iris, Agatha, Darlene, and Nan. Graciela made it a perfect thirteen, a lucky number for us magical folk.

  The sales counters were covered with a tower of homemade cookies, cakes, and muffins, as well as an assortment of libations. I am a solitary witch, but having attended a coven meeting or ten, I had learned that witchy gatherings were always accompanied by plenty of great baked goods. I noted with relief, however, that there were no cupcakes among the treats. I had recently developed an aversion to beautifully frosted “fairy cakes” as the result of a series of encounters with a maleficent baker named Renee. Another long story.

  Baby, baby, don’t get hooked on me

  ’Cause I’ll just use you then I’ll set you free

  Baby, baby, don’t get hooked on meeeeeeeee

  Near the dressing rooms an informal stage for the karaoke singers had been created with plywood and wooden packing crates. Upon spotting us, Rosa and Viv interrupted their duet. “Lily! Sailor! Welcome home!”

  I waved back, and asked, “What are they singing? I don’t recognize that song.”

  “It’s by Mac Davis, a country-western singer. Big hit in 1972,” Bronwyn’s boyfriend, Duke, a retired fisherman, explained. “Welcome back, Lily.”

  “Lily!” I heard, and was swiftly embraced by my mother, Maggie Ivory. She and I had a difficult past, but we had made a lot of progress in healing it, and her hug was as comforting as a soft warm towel after a dip in the frigid bay. “It’s so good to see you.”

  “You, too,” I said, and meant it.

  While Sailor lugged our suitcases in and stowed them in the workroom, I reveled in greeting my many friends: several members of Bronwyn’s Welcome Coven; a few Haight Street neighbors; our “gutter punk” friend, Conrad; and Maya’s mother, Lucille, and several of the seamstresses who worked for her. Sailor’s cousin Patience Blix nodded at me coolly, which was more than I expected. My friend Hervé Le Mansec, a hoodoo practitioner, gave me a big hug, and his wife, Caterina, greeted me politely. Caterina did not like me very much, probably because I was in the habit of calling her husband in the middle of the night to ask for his assistance in investigating one murder or another. Even Carlos Romero, the SFPD homicide inspector was there, chatting with Patience. Carlos had become a friend over the course of far too many of those murder investigations.

  Everyone talked at once, sharing stories and peppering us with questions to the background strains of septuagenarians warbling, with off-key enthusiasm, to the Greatest Hits of the 1960s and ’70s. To my surprise, my notoriously private new husband took out his cell phone to show off various photographs of our travels, a crooked smile on his lips as he lifted his eyes and met my gaze from across the room.

  This is how it starts, I thought. A lifetime of shared memories.

  “How are you, Selena? I missed you!” I said to my young charge, who was in the sullen-teenager phase. At least, I hoped it was a phase; it had been going on for so long I thought it might never end. Still, Selena was slowly starting to show signs of a greater maturity, and I saw a bit of my young self in the awkward, lonely, powerful young witch. “You didn’t say anything when we FaceTimed last week.”

  She shrugged but gave me a shy smile.

  “Here,” Selena said, awkwardly handing me a rolled-up sheet of sketching paper. As a trio of the Aunties crooned, “Billie, don’t be a hero, don’t be a fool with your life / Billie, don’t be a hero, come back and make me your wife . . .” I unfurled the scroll to find a drawing of a mermaid drifting amidst a swirl of blues and greens, rather like an underwater version of van Gogh’s The Starry Night. The mermaid’s long green hair obscured her face, and she floated in a prone position, her arms limp at her sides. The image was strangely beautiful, yet decidedly melancholy.

  “Is she asleep, and just drifting along with the tide?” I asked. It never occurred to me to wonder if mermaids slept, but if they did it made sense they might do so like whales or dolphins, simply floating in the water.

  Selena shook her head. “She’s dead.”

  “She’s . . . what?”

  “Dead,” Selena repeated in her typically flat affect. “That’s why she’s floating like that.”

  “Oh,” I said, not sure how to respond. “Was it . . . did you have a vision?”

  “Mermaids die, you know,” she said. “No one lives forever.”

  “Well, that’s true enough. Thank you, Selena. This is beautiful. I love it.”

  A squabble broke out near the karaoke machine, there was a brief lull in the music, and then Fleetwood Mac’s “Go Your Own Way” started up.

  “Oh, I know this song,” said Maya’s mother. “My, that takes me back. . . . So, where’s Oscar? I thought you’d pick him up at the kennel on your way home.”

  Among my friends, only Maya and Bronwyn knew Oscar was a magical shape-shifter. It made it awkward to live with the fiction that he was an ordinary miniature Vietnamese pig, at least as “ordinary” as a pet pig could be in San Francisco.

  “Um . . . first thing tomorrow,” I said. “They were already closed for the day.”

  “Conrad, dear, have you checked out the snack table?” I overheard my mother ask Conrad. “I made your favorite.”

  “Cowboy cookies?” replied the Con. “Thank you, Mrs. I. You’re so thoughtful.”

  “It was my pleasure, dear,” my mother said, patting his arm. “You’re too thin; I like to see you eat.”

  Witnessing their easy exchange, I felt a spurt of jealousy and was disappointed at my reaction. As Bronwyn always said, love must be shared, not rationed. But a small part of me was still a scared little girl feeling the sting of maternal rejection. By the time I was eight years old, Maggie had come to fear my magical abilities and suggested I go live with Graciela, and when I was a teenager, she tried to force the magic out of me at a disastrous snake revival. My history with my mother was so fraught that I supposed it would take a while to put it all to rights.

  I excused myself to drop my purse in the store’s workroom, which was separated from the shop floor by a heavy brocade curtain. The area doubled as a break room and a laundry room and was furnished with a green Formica table and chairs, a small fridge, an electric teakettle, an extensive collection of Bronwyn’s homemade tea mixes, and a jumbo-sized washer and dryer. Most vintage clothing was too delicate to machine-wash, so the most expensive garments were outsourced to a green dry cleaner and the rest were handwashed in the two deep utility sinks.

  Maya joined me. “I really am sorry about all this laundry, Lily. We tried to keep on top of it, but you know how it is when the shop gets busy. The Aunties tried to help, but after a second load of whites got mixed up with some red 49ers T-shirts and everything came out pink, I told them I would handle the laundry and, well, it got to be too much.”

  “Land sakes, you had your hands more than full just running the store and wrangling the Aunties!” I said. “I appreciate everything you and Bronwyn did while we were gone. I’ll get started on the laundry tomorrow, no worries. Looks like Sailor’s already added our stuff to the pile.”

  A splash of color within the mound of soiled clothing caught my eye. “Speaking of pink . . . What’s this doing here? This needs to be dry-cleaned.”

  I pulled what I thought at first was a richly beaded evening gown from the pile. But as I held it up, I realized it wasn’t a gown at all. It was a costume. A mermaid costume, to be precise, complete with an ornate tail with scales created by swirls of beads and spangles and nautilus designs. This was no homemade or store-bought Halloween outfit inspired by a Disney character.

  I held it close to sense its vibrations. The garment sparked in me that special sensation that only came from old, antique, and vintage clothing. I closed my eyes. What was that I was picking up? Water? Salt? Something . . . oceanic? Maybe that was simply my imagination running riot. It was a mermaid costume, after all.

  “Where did this come from?” I asked.

  Maya shook her head. “I’m not sure . . . to tell you the truth, I hadn’t noticed it. What do you think it is?”

  I spied Selena skulking behind Maya.

  “Selena, do you know anything about this costume?” I asked. “Is this what inspired you to make the drawing of the mermaid?”

  She shook her head.

  “Are you saying you don’t know where the costume came from, or that it didn’t inspire your drawing?”

  “Both,” she said, then added, “I’m hungry,” and headed back toward the cookie tower.

  “It certainly appears old,” I mused, inspecting the costume. The needlework was detailed and very fine, the “tail” was covered in thousands of faceted beads, and delicate seashells had been woven into the net sleeves. “There’s no label, but it’s the right era for Elsa Schiaparelli. And it’s her pink.”