After a while, she picked up the bowl and carefully poured off the small amount of remaining liquid, leaving her with a purple-colored paste.

“Good,” she said. “Now, Stan, would you take your sport coat off, please?” She pointed to a nearby chair. “You can put it over there, if you like.”

I gave her a look, but the pleasant expression on her face didn’t alter. So I turned away, unbuttoned my jacket, and slipped it off. This is Rachel, dummy. Just relax – whatever she’s doing, everything’s gonna be fine. Probably.

I wished my mind hadn’t felt the need to add that last word, but I’ve learned that there are damn few certainties in life. Anyway, “probably true” is the standard most of us use for almost everything we do.

I folded my jacket and draped it over an arm of the chair, and when I turned back around Rachel was right there, standing less than a foot away. She’d come up behind me, and I’d never even known she was there.

Getting careless, Markowski. That could get you killed, one of these nights.

“Rachel, what’re you–”

“Hush,” she said, placing her left hand on my shoulder.

Given the height difference between us, Rachel needed to tilt her head back quite a ways to look me in the eye, and that’s what she did now as she said, “Kiss me, Stan.”

“Come on, is this some kind of–”

“No questions. Just kiss me.”

Since I was male, straight, and not insane, I did what she asked, even though bending my head forward like that hurt like a bastard.

My God, her lips were sweet. I’ve kissed a few women over the years – not as many as I would’ve liked to, but still – and I’ve never had a woman’s lips pressed against mine that tasted and felt like Rachel’s.

The small part of my mind that was not reveling in the sensations my mouth was receiving started wondering why Rachel was still keeping her right hand down by her side. As if bidden by my thoughts, her right arm suddenly came up, the hand reaching for the back of my neck.

Then that part of my mind still capable of rational thought remembered the knife she’d been holding a few moments ago. If you hit the right spot at the base of the skull, right where it joins the spine, you can kill a man with a knitting needle, let alone a razor-sharp blade.

I could have died, right at that moment – and if it been Rachel’s intention to kill me, that’s exactly what I would have done. But instead of the knife, what I felt on the back of my head was Rachel’s bare hand – which she then pressed, very hard, against that throbbing lump that had been making my life so damn miserable.

In the space of half a second, the pain raced up the scale from “pretty damn bad” through “fucking awful” to reach a level of agony that would have impressed even the head torturer for the Spanish Inquisition.

But before I could even scream, the anguish just… stopped. It didn’t fade gradually, which is what I’m used to. Instead, it was as if somebody had found the pain switch on my skull and flicked it to “Off.”

That was when Rachel stepped back, a little breathlessly. I saw now that her right hand was smeared with some of the purple paste that she’d made up in the bowl. That meant a glob of it was probably smeared on the back of my head, but I was in no position – or mood – to complain.

“You…” I began, but couldn’t think what to say next. I tried again. “You did… something…”

“Yes, I did,” Rachel said with a grin. “Feel the back of your head, Stan. Go ahead – the pain won’t return, I promise.”

I put my hand back there, felt what had to be some of the purple paste. It was cool on my fingers, and gritty. What I didn’t feel was the lump on my skull that had been put there by a gun butt belonging to a recently deceased thug from Philadelphia.

I just looked at Rachel, whose grin was still in place. Finally I took my hand away from the back of my head and used it to dig around in my pocket for a handkerchief to wipe the goop away.

“You used a spell,” I said. My grasp of the obvious was not reduced at all by my recent ordeal. “A healing spell.”

“Well, Karl said you were in a lot of pain, and too damn stubborn to take some time off in order to heal. He asked me to see what I could do to help you out.”

She went back behind her desk and used the cloth covering it to wipe the remaining magical goop off her hand. “There’s no magic I’ve ever heard of that would make you less pigheaded, so I figured the only alternative was to heal your injury.”

“What I know about healing spells,” I said, “they’re not something you can just pull out of the air.”

“Quite right,” she said. “I’ve been working on this one most of the day.”

“Not to sound ungrateful – because I’m not, believe me –but I hope McGuire doesn’t find out you spent your time working on that instead of the stuff they pay you for.”

“Whether I was wasting the city’s money depends on your point of view, Stan. One could make the case that I’ve performed a signal service for the Occult Crimes Unit by restoring one of its most valued officers to full capability.”

“Most valued?” I asked. “Really?”

The grin made another appearance. “Well, somebody must think so. Karl might – on your good days, anyway.”

“Do you think we could sit down?” I said. “I’m feeling a little… I dunno… lightheaded.”

“That should pass pretty quickly,” she said. “But, sure, have a seat.”

I moved my sport coat off the arm of the chair and flopped down. Rachel blew out the candle and sat down behind her desk.

“Would you like a bottle of water? You look like you could use some hydration.”

I hadn’t realized that I was thirsty until she said that, but now I felt parched. “That’d be great – thanks.”

She swiveled in her chair and produced two plastic bottles of water from the mini-fridge behind her. When she gave me one, I cracked the top and raised the bottle in her direction. “Here’s to… I don’t know. Witchcraft, I guess.”

“I’ll drink to that,” she said, and did.

That water was the second-sweetest thing I’d tasted since coming into Rachel’s office tonight. After I’d had a couple of long swallows, I asked her, “So why the subterfuge? Why not just say, ‘Get your ass down here, Stan – I’ve got a cure for your headache’?”

“I was afraid you’d go all macho and say that you could handle the pain just fine, thank you very much, and you didn’t need anybody casting spells to make you feel better.”

“What made you think I’d react like that?”

“We’ve known each other how long, Stan? Five years?”

“Yeah, more or less.”

“That’s why.”

“Oh.”

“I didn’t want all the work I spent preparing this spell going to waste, just because you were suffering from a case of testicular poisoning.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard it put quite that way, but maybe you’ve got a point” I said. “OK, that explains why you didn’t tell me. But what was up with that kiss?”

She laughed a little. “Oh, yes, I suppose I should apologize for that.”

“I was just asking a question, Rachel – not complaining.”

That earned another brief laugh. “Well, the kiss served two purposes, actually – one mundane, the other magical.”

“Which one of those covers knocking my socks off?”

“I’ll have to think about that. Anyway, the mundane reason was a simple distraction. I didn’t want you ducking away when I put that salve on your injury.”

“Assuming I was gonna be all macho about it.”

“Yes, assuming that.”

“And the magical reason?”

“A healing spell involves the transfer of positive energy from the practitioner to the patient. There has to be a generation of what another religion’s tradition would call ‘good karma’. I should add that I put on some lipstick with a mild enchantment on it, to make you want to stay with the kiss for a while.”

“I’m not sure that was necessary, but I’d say it served its purpose pretty well.”