Jackie rushed Babu from the church. Outside, a cold March gale cut through the thin jersey of Jackie’s skirt and ruffled the flaps of her headscarf and trench coat.
Babu gripped her upturned coat collar to protect her neck. Her eyes were sad and watery.
What was Babu not telling her? What was she hiding?
As Jackie drove her clunky Oldsmobile home, Babu, silent and contemplative, clutched her purse and stared out the window. She let out a weary sigh now and then.
Jackie wasn’t sure where to begin in asking about Babu’s past. Despite their language differences, she and Babu typically communicated without a problem with simple day-to-day banter, but to communicate with Babu about what she had picked up from Mrs. Kevich and what she had said would take a lot more Russian nouns and verbs than Jackie had in her arsenal.
David’s translation services were out of the question. She didn’t want him to know any more about Babu than what he and she had learned after the possession fiasco. It was bad enough that David hadn’t been thrilled that to get rid of the demon, Babu had used a crystal paperweight, a pewter letter opener, and a channeling technique to open up a portal to send it back to the underworld and that his holy water and scripture reading had only agitated it.
Babu had assuaged the situation by saying these things were just instruments and that the real power came from the heart. And that’s where Jackie had left her questions about Babu’s life in Russia, never wondering what it was like before she had given up her pagan ways.
But now Mrs. Kevich’s accusations brought so many questions to mind. Was Babu the one who had frightened Mrs. Kevich as a girl? Did she cause those people to suffer and die? And why did Mrs. Kevich call Babu and her witches?
Even if Mrs. Kevich kept quiet about what she knew or thought she knew, it was more than that which troubled Jackie. Babu had the gift to heal just as Jackie did. What if they had this ability and many more paranormal abilities because they were witches—like a genetic thing she could never put behind her?
Jackie gripped the steering wheel and bit her lip. Her stomach grew queasy. As much as she dreaded what she might uncover, she had to find out more about Babu, more about herself, before her relationship with David went any further. A priest married to a psychic was maybe tolerable, but a priest married to a witch—an abomination!
