"You're a very brave person to come here like this," Nadia said, letting the door swing open wide and stepping aside to give Trace access to her apartment. He waited a moment, expecting her to add some kind of disclaimer about entering freely and of his own will, but she just stood there with an air of vaguely irritated patience until he walked inside.
She didn't look like a witch, or a sorceress, or a voodoo priestess or whatever she called herself; she barely came up to Trace's shoulder, and she had the kind of baby face with round, pink cheeks that ensured she would get carded well into her forties. Her long, light blonde hair was pulled back in a ponytail that might have looked severe on another woman, but just made her look like she was getting ready for a sock hop at the student union or something. Even the dress she wore didn't look particularly gothic or sinister; it was a light floral print, the kind of thing a young woman would wear to go ask Daddy if she could borrow the car for the big dance on Saturday.
It made Trace feel a little like he was bullying a teenage girl as he brushed past her, drawing up to his full height and giving her a scowl as he walked into the living room and took a seat on the sofa without being asked, but he knew better by now. Nadia Volkov was something of a local celebrity in Baton Rouge, in the social circles that thought life was more interesting with a little bit of bullshit in it. She entertained all sorts of desperate and gullible types, taking their money and giving them charms and potions that they really thought made their lives better. That innocent face of hers hid a seasoned con artist, and Trace didn't feel a bit bad about making her day a little bit worse by showing up.
Nadia followed him in with no evident signs of being intimidated, and took a seat across from him in an easy chair covered with an old pink shawl. "I assume the police already told you about what happened," she said, scooping up a block of wood from a small stack of similar blocks that lay on the coffee table. She leaned back in the chair and produced a small whittling knife, seemingly out of nowhere, and began to carve into the soft wood. As threats went, it wasn't exactly subtle, but Trace was pretty sure he could take it away from her if he had to.
"They gave me a bunch of excuses, if that's what you mean," he said, folding his arms defensively. "Said that Toya came out and told them she was here of her own free will and she wanted to stay with you, and there was nothing they could do about it. As if they didn't know you were using that voodoo shit on her." He kept his expression tightly controlled, his lips a thin line and his eyes set in a firm glare. He knew how bullshit artists like this worked, playing on body language and facial cues to tell when their patter was working. He wasn't about to give her anything.
"It's not voodoo," Nadia said mildly, turning the block off wood over in her hands and deftly carving great hunks out of it. "It's sympathetic magic. Honestly, I don't know what it is with you people. There are at least thirty-seven Crafts and Disciplines out there that utilize some form of sympathetic magic, but the second you sign a lease on an apartment in the state of Louisiana, suddenly you're a 'voodoo queen'. It's not exactly respectful to other people's religions, Mister Moreau."
Trace worked very hard not to roll his eyes. "Fine," he said, meeting her unblinking gaze with his own. "It's not voodoo. It's still just... superstition. The power of suggestion, working because gullible people expect it to work." How could anyone be fooled by her? However she tried to dress or do her hair or even smile that baby-faced smile of hers, that jaded stare always told the truth. She looked at him and saw just another mark, one more sucker like the people who came to her begging for 'magic spells' or the idiots who she fleeced for lessons on 'the Craft' or... or Toya.
It took everything he had not to glance over at the half-open door to the bedroom to see if he could spot his wife through the gap.
"Is that how you think of Toya, Mister Moreau?" Nadia said coolly, slicing away slivers of wood and letting them drift down to the living room floor. "As someone 'gullible', or 'superstitious'?" She'd cut away large sections of the block in the short time they'd been speaking, leaving a roughly oblong shape behind that she began to cut into. "I suppose you think that a black woman is just naturally susceptible to the charms of 'voodoo'. Not like a straight-shooting white man with his own business and a degree from Tulane, right?" Her lips quirked into a crooked grin, one that didn't touch her cold green eyes at all.
Trace sat bolt upright, barely managing the urge to jump over the coffee table and knock the smirk off of Nadia's face. "I love my wife," he snapped, his voice tight with anger. "I have every respect for her as a person. It's just that..." he let out a little sigh, feeling uncomfortably as though he'd suddenly been put on the defensive without quite knowing how. "She's lived in Baton Rouge her whole life. She's a part of this culture. And she's always grown up around people who believe that this, this shit you peddle, this 'sympathetic magic' bullshit works. So when you show up with a voodoo doll-"
Nadia coughed impatiently. "A poppet, darling," she corrected. "It's a completely different tradition, dating back to pre-Christian harvest magics. Honestly, you do have quite a bit of unexamined privilege in that tightly sealed mind of yours, don't you? Your wife runs off with another woman, and the first thing you can think of is that she's a superstitious native woman in the thrall of a voodoo curse? Frankly, I'm feeling better than ever about my decision to make her mine."
Trace stood up, his hands clenching involuntarily into fists. "Don't bullshit me," he snarled. "I know what happened. I heard it from the folks at the bank. You took one of those, those-" He gestured over at the wooden figurines on the mantelpiece, each one carved in intricate detail to resemble a human being. "Those poppets of yours! You took one out of your purse and you told Toya that it was time to stop being such a silly girl and come with you! And she did! She didn't do it because you were having an affair, or because she was unhappy with our marriage, or any of that bullshit you're trying to peddle. She did it because you put a spell on her!"
Nadia didn't stop her carving for even a moment. She merely fixed her icy green stare up at him and said, "Well, of course I did. She caught my interest while she was helping me with my financial planning, and I decided I wanted her to belong to me. But it was actual magic, Mister Moreau. Not 'the power of suggestion', not gullibility or foolishness or superstition. I took her will away and I put it in my poppet. And now she's mine."
