“Renna says you have to go back to this pool building? I’ll go with you.”

  “She indicated I should go alone.”

  “I’ll go with you,” said Oscar. “I ain’t afraid of no Nazis.”

  “No, I’ll go with you,” Sailor repeated.

  “I haven’t even decided yet if I’m going, but thank you both for offering.” I decided to set that aside for the moment. “What’s bothering me is that Renna said the overarching threat can only be confronted with the coincidentia oppositorum.”

  Sailor understood. “That’s not me.”

  “I wish it were. It would make things so much simpler.”

  “Then who is your counterpart?”

  “Aidan,” said Oscar.

  “I think it might have been,” I said. “If he were here, and healthy. But Renna mentioned the possibility . . . what if it’s Dragomir?”

  “Your brother,” said Sailor.

  “She says we’re astral twins.”

  Sailor reared back. “Really. Huh. That actually makes a lot of sense.”

  “Does it? I’ve never heard of it before; I was going to look in my Book of Shadows.”

  “The astral plane, as I understand it, is a dimension much larger, and very like, our earthly plane, teeming with astral beings and spirits. It’s where I go when I’m in a psychic trance and able to intuit symbols. If you and Dragomir are united in the astral plane, it means you knew each other before.”

  “Yup,” Oscar confirmed.

  “That would explain why he felt so familiar to me,” I said.

  Sailor nodded. “It also means you are fated to travel at least part of this life together. In tandem. Looks like I’d better check this guy out. You have a phone number for him?”

  “I imagine he’ll be in touch.”

  “Guess we’ll have to wait, then. I don’t like how mysterious he’s been about the whole thing. Why not just call you up and introduce himself?”

  “There was a lost note. Don’t ask. Anyway, he’s as wary of me as I am of him,” I said. “We have a scary father, you know.”

  “Darn tootin’,” said Oscar. “A demon’s minion is like that.”

  Chapter 24

  The next morning, Maya came into Aunt Cora’s Closet and announced: “Guess what? There’s a pigeon rescue group right here in San Francisco. It’s part of a national group, called Palomacy, rhymes with ‘diplomacy.’ They do pigeon and dove rescue—it turns out pigeons bred in captivity do need to be taken care of. I’ll call Leo and let him know.”

  “Oh, that’s great,” I said. “What a relief.”

  “And then I looked up Ingeborg Nachtnebel, and her Black Forest Bathing Beauties.”

  “What did you find out?”

  “Well, first off, there are plenty of rivers and ponds in the Black Forest, so maybe that explains the mermaid thing. But Nachtnebel’s story is really tragic. She was Jewish, and with everything going on in Germany in 1939, she asked to remain here after her gig at the fair came to an end. But the government would not grant her refugee status.”

  That matched what Dragomir told me about his great aunt.

  “And she was sent back,” I said.

  Maya nodded. “According to what I could find out, she was deported and died in Auschwitz. Along with millions of others.”

  * * *

  • • •

  That afternoon, Maya and I went to speak with a woman about a mermaid. But as we climbed into the car, Maya seemed unusually subdued.

  “How are you doing, Maya? Is everything okay?”

  “Nothing serious. I get migraines occasionally, as you know. That tincture you gave me really helps head off the worst parts, but it’s still there. Threatening. Vulture-like.”

  “Oh, you poor thing,” I said as we drove down Haight Street. “Are you sure you’re up for this today? We can reschedule.”

  “Are you kidding me? Miss out on a talk with little Shirley Mangicaro? My recorder is primed.”

  “Oh, good.” I kept driving, heading down Oak and skirting the Golden Gate Park panhandle. “I was thinking . . . maybe there’s something else on your mind?”

  “Like what?”

  “It’s really none of my business. But as Bronwyn would say, maybe there’s romance in the air?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  I wished I hadn’t started this. “Is there something between you and Conrad?”

  “Conrad?” She let out a little chuckle. “No, of course not. Why would you think that?”

  “You two seem to have grown close, much closer than you used to be.”

  “We are close. We’ve gotten to be really good friends. . . . I don’t think I’ve ever had a close guy friend. It’s really nice.”

  “I’m glad to hear it.”

  It was early Sunday afternoon but there was still a decent amount of traffic, and we slowed down at the approach to the freeway leading to the Bay Bridge.

  “Besides,” said Maya. “I mean, the Con is great and all, but I’m not into men.”

  “They can try one’s patience, that’s for sure,” I said, thinking of the little boy excitement in Sailor’s eyes as he was sketching out the floor plan for the apartment. I found it simultaneously adorable and annoying, even occasionally alarming.

  “I don’t mean in that way. I’m actually . . . into women.”

  “Wait—what?”

  “I’m gay.”

  “You are?”

  “You seem shocked,” she chuckled. “Is that . . . you don’t have a problem with it, do you?”

  “Oh, of course not! I just didn’t realize.”

  “I don’t talk about it much. And for a long time, I didn’t admit it to myself, totally.”

  “I get that. But I’m a witch, after all. You’d think I might have picked up on . . . something.”

  “Like what? Are there gay auras or something?”

  “Not at all,” I said with a chuckle. “And you know me, I’m not that great at reading auras, anyway. But now that I think of it, I’ve never seen you with . . . anyone, romantically. I guess I’ve always thought you were solitary, and okay with that. Sort of like I was, before Sailor.”

  She shrugged. “I’ve seen myself that way, too. Anyway, to tell you the truth, it’s been kind of hard coming out, with my mom.”

  I was surprised to hear that. Lucille and Maya always seemed so close, and while I knew Lucille was active in her church, I had a hard time believing she would reject her daughter for any reason. I thought, again, of my mother rejecting me, and my magic, when I was a girl. How could we deny the essence of who we are, our power, our very selves?

  “Is she . . . having a hard time with it?” I asked gently.

  She nodded. “But you’re okay?”

  “Of course! You’re exactly the same person you were yesterday,” I said, “and the day before that. An extraordinary person.”

  “Mom is mostly upset that I didn’t trust her enough to tell her earlier,” Maya said, gazing out the window. “I guess she’s suspected for some time. No, the real problem is with some of her friends, and the rest of our family. My dad is a little freaked out, trying to wrap his head around it, but Mom says he’ll come around.” She shrugged, as if to shake it off. “Anyway, Conrad and I have become good friends, really good friends. I have an old friend from high school who’s been struggling with addiction, and Conrad has sort of taken him under his wing. They’ve been going to meetings together. And he helped me find the courage to finally come out to my parents.”

  “That’s great, Maya. I’m glad you were able to tell them. And me. Not that your love life is any of my business, but I want you to be happy.”

  “And extraordinary?” she said with a smile.

  “Extraordinary, indeed.”

  Once we finally got on the Bay Bridge the traffic moved at a good clip, and twenty minutes later Maya and I stood outside a tall condo building perched on a small thumb of a peninsula in Emeryville, at the foot of the Oakland span of the Bay Bridge.

  “Somehow, I pictured her living in the woods somewhere,” said Maya. “Somewhere like Calypso’s house.”

  I knew exactly what she meant. Calypso’s house was the perfect setting for a magical woman: a beautiful old farmhouse nestled in a glade, surrounded by redwoods and ferns, cats lolling on the deep porch.

  Shirley Mangicaro Faderin, on the other hand, lived in a modern, sleek high-rise.

  “I’m not certain she self-identifies as a witch,” I said.

  “You get to choose?” asked Maya. “How does that work, anyway?”

  “Like a lot of things in life, I suppose: Some people aspire to it, and some who are born this way spend a lot of time denying it.” I thought of how different my upbringing was from that of my half brother: Dragomir was born to a mother who accepted him for what he was and taught him how to refine his talents, while I had spent most of my childhood denying who I was and trying, and failing, to be someone my peers and my mother would accept. Had it not been for Graciela, I might have wound up hating myself and become a very angry witch. “But it’s a personal choice. I don’t like to assume.”

  Maya nodded, and typed a number into the phone pad outside the main entrance. A quavering voice answered: “Yes?”

  “Ms. Faderin?” Maya asked. “I’m Maya Jackson. We spoke on the phone?”

  “I’ve been expecting you,” she said. “Would you be a doll and bring up my mail? The code on the box is the same as my apartment number: 421.”

  “Of course,” said Maya. The buzzer made a rude sound, and we pushed through the glass door. The neat but nondescript lobby boasted two crushed velvet wing chairs and a credenza, over which hung a large gilt-framed mirror. To the right was a long bank of brass mailboxes, and on the back wall were two sets of elevators.

  Maya gathered the mail—a few bills, a greeting card, a couple of large manila envelopes, and an assortment of advertising fliers—and we headed up in the elevator to the fourth floor. Halfway down a long, narrow hallway, we knocked on #421.

  An elderly woman opened the door. Her smooth white hair was cut in a chic bob, and she wore an emerald green cashmere cardigan over a silk shirt, a pair of cream-colored wool slacks, and a string of perfectly matched pearls. In her understated elegance, Mrs. Faderin would not have been out of place in one of the Bay Area’s many upscale suburbs: Alamo or Hillsborough or even Belvedere.

  “Thank you for bringing up my mail,” she said. “Sometimes even just getting downstairs can be a bit much. I don’t like to use my walker in public, but it’s essential for my safety.”

  “My pleasure,” said Maya as she handed the stack to the older woman, who flipped through the items briefly before setting them aside.

  “It’s nice to meet you face-to-face, Mrs. Faderin,” said Maya. “This is my friend Lily Ivory. She’s also my boss, so be sure to make me look good.”

  “How do you do? But please, call me Shirley. Mrs. Faderin was my mother-in-law, and we never really got along.” Shirley chuckled and ushered us into a large living room. Now I understood the appeal of the otherwise soulless building. A long wall of windows looked out across the San Francisco Bay: at the Bay Bridge immediately to the left, Treasure Island, all of downtown San Francisco, the Golden Gate Bridge, and part of Marin to the north. A picturesque thick blanket of fog lingered over the hills, but the bay, the city, and the bridges sparkled in the afternoon sunlight.

  “What a stunning view,” said Maya.

  “It really is,” I seconded.

  “I count myself fortunate to have found this place. When my husband was alive we had a beautiful house in the hills, but after he passed I needed a change. And, well, I don’t care for old things,” she said. “And that includes me.”

  I wasn’t sure what to say to that.

  Like many of Graciela’s coven sisters, I couldn’t quite tell Shirley’s age. She certainly wasn’t ancient, at least not compared to a lot of the witches I’ve known. Her hands were thin and lined with ropes of blue veins, her eyes were rheumy and her face wrinkled. But if I hadn’t known she was a child at the Golden Gate Exposition, I might have assumed she was a hard-fought seventy.

  “Shirley,” said Maya as we sat on the dove-gray living room couch. “Would you mind if I record our conversation, so I don’t forget anything?”

  “I don’t mind at all,” she said. “Where shall I begin?

  “Wherever you like,” Maya said, and Shirley launched into her story. She grew up in San Francisco’s Washington Square neighborhood, in the Italian area—“It wasn’t nearly so fancy back then, we were all Italians, going to the Catholic school there”—until she married and moved to Oakland with her husband. He fought in the Korean War, she worked briefly as a secretary while he was in the service but mostly was a homemaker. And there was her true calling: her healing.

  “Could you tell us more about that?” Maya asked.

  “I thought that was why you contacted me, because of my healing work. I don’t do much of that anymore; I seem to be a forgotten old lady now. But back in the day, I was quite well known.”

  “I read that you healed an injured man at the World’s Fair,” said Maya.

  “Yes, that’s where it started.” She looked out at the view, toward Treasure Island. “It’s funny, I thought no one was interested in the World’s Fair anymore. But you’re the second person to ask me about it in so many weeks!”

  Maya met my gaze, but before I had a chance to ask who she might be referring to, Shirley went on with her story. “Oh, it was so exciting! I’m a child of the Great Depression, you know, and those were grim years. And then the Bay Bridge connected Oakland and the East Bay to San Francisco, and the Golden Gate Bridge connected the city to Marin, and it felt like such progress! The flags of all nations flew on the streets of San Francisco, and the fair was billed as a grand Pan-Pacific celebration of world peace and neighborliness. Walking through those elephant gates felt like entering another world! It was just lovely.”

  Maya smiled warmly at the old woman. “I’ve seen photographs, but I’m not sure they do it justice.”

  “They don’t, I assure you,” she said with a nod. “No photograph can. There was a vibrancy in the air, you see, the feeling of excitement when stepping foot on that new island. They created it, out of nothing, right there on the shoals of Yerba Buena Island. Can you imagine? Lily, will you bring that big green album over here? There are some photographs I’d like to show you.”

  “Of course,” I said as I went to a large bookshelf on the far wall and picked up the album. The other books on the shelf had a maritime theme: sailor lore, mermaids, dragons, chimeras, and other fantastical sea creatures. Another shelf held tomes about natural health and healing.

  “It seems like quite the feat of engineering,” Maya said. “To build an island for a fair.”

  “Oh, my, yes, it was. But then, that was when men built things: grand bridges and even islands! Not like today, when a person is drowned in paperwork and environmental reports just to remodel a simple bathroom!”

  I bit my tongue, remembering what Mel Turner had said last night. Building whatever one wanted without concern for the environment or safety codes might have been easier, but it could cause other, sometimes disastrous, problems. But I pushed those thoughts aside to focus on what we were here to find out.

  “So, Shirley,” I said as I handed her the album. “You mentioned someone else had asked you about the fair recently?”

  Shirley was flipping through the pages of the album, pointing to this photo and that, identifying the different areas of the Exposition: the Tower of the Sun, the statue of Pacifica. I couldn’t be sure whether she was ignoring my question or simply wrapped up in her memories.

  “During the fair they lit up the entire island so that at night, from San Francisco or here in the East Bay, Treasure Island looked like a floating ‘city of lights.’ ” She sighed happily. “Can you imagine? It was something to see.”

  I recalled the lights I had seen in the bay from our airplane window. But that made no sense. Treasure Island was no longer lit in that fashion, was it? And besides, it wasn’t attached to the Bay Bridge; I would have noticed that.

  “And this part was called the ‘Gayway,’ ” Shirley continued. “It was a huge area featuring many naughty shows, along with Sally Rand’s Nude Ranch. It was quite shocking at the time, let me tell you. Quite titillating. No pun intended.” A pretty blush stained her cheeks.

  We smiled.

  “Of course, we children weren’t allowed in that part of the fair,” continued Shirley. “I remember my mother had gone to see the Liberty Bell exhibition and left me with my father. He wanted to see Sally Rand’s girls, so he bought me a doll to keep me amused and told me to run along and play for a little while. It was different back then; kids were given more freedom to roam. And that’s when I nearly drowned.”

  “What happened?” asked Maya.

  “I was playing on the rocks at the edge of the bay and dropped my doll in the water. It was the prettiest doll I’d ever had, a Japanese lady dressed in a red silk kimono, and I didn’t want to lose it. I tried to reach it and fell in the water. It was quite deep because the land dropped off suddenly.”

  “Because it was a manufactured island?” Maya asked.

  She nodded. “I was in trouble, I don’t mind telling you. I didn’t know how to swim, you see. Still don’t.”

  “And then?” said Maya.

  “And then I was saved.”

  “By whom?”

  She looked up, a twinkle in her eye. “Why, by a mermaid, of course.”

  Chapter 25

  “When I dropped my doll in the water, a little mermaid girl took it. But her mother brought it back, and it was she who saved me. She didn’t say a word, but I knew what she was thinking. I was scared, and to cheer me up she gave me these.” Shirley touched the lustrous strand of pearls she was wearing. “Next thing I remember, I woke up on the rocks by the shore, with these around my neck.”