“I already told them that I would ask you, so they know you might be coming.”

“Oh so you just assumed I would show up?”

“No, but I thought there might be a possibility that you wouldn’t turn me down.”

He just refused to be ruffled and he was so logical about it. It was hard to argue with logic.

I made another turn. We’d swung into an older neighborhood. Magic destroyed tall buildings, breaking them down into dust, but it also fed tree growth. The people-friendly trees, red maples, yellow poplars, red and white oaks, which usually grew in carefully managed spaces to shade the front lawns, had shot upward, spreading their thick limbs over the road and their massive roots under it, bulging the asphalt in waves. The street looked like a beach with the tide coming in.

“Dali, I need to know if we’re on for this barbeque.”

“Driving on this road is just awful. They should do something about this.”

“Dali,” Jim growled.

“Yes, I will come to the barbeque, fine!”

He shook his head.

“Thank you for inviting me,” I said.

“You’re welcome.”

I pulled up before a small yellow house and turned off the engine. “This is it.”

The house sat in front of us, a typical one-story ranch-style home, its walls bright with cheerful chicken yellow paint. A neat front yard, recently mowed, stretched to the front door, shadowed by an old redbud tree. A dozen bird feeders and wind chimes, some plain, some with shiny colored-glass ornaments, hung from tree branches. It looked so neat and bright, just the way you would imagine a grandmother’s house should be.

I really hoped nothing bad had happened to Eyang Ida.

“Roll down your window,” I asked.

He did. The air drifted in, baked in the relentless heat of Atlanta’s summer. I closed my eyes and concentrated. In my mind, the cheery front wall of the house fell forward. Inside foul magic waited, rotten and terrible. It dripped from the furniture, slid down the walls in thick, dark drops, and coated floorboards with its slime. Every house has a heart, the echoes of its owner’s presence, and simple magic that turns a building into a home. The heart of this house was rotten to the core. Something had fed upon it and now it was dying.

Fear raised the tiny hairs on the back of my neck. This was bad. This was so bad.

The ugly magic noticed me. Hundreds of mouths appeared all over the slime, dark slits armed with sharp, black teeth. The slime stretched toward me, trying to take a bite. It felt familiar. This was Indonesian black magic. Things were out of balance here, way out of balance.

I opened my eyes. The house appeared so welcoming from the outside. Just you wait, you nasty thing. You have no idea who you’re trying to eat. I don’t know what you’re doing in this house, but I will purge you out. You don’t get to defile the home of someone I know.

“What is it?” Jim asked.

“Eyang Ida is a nice lady,” I told him, my voice tight with anger. “Something evil is squatting in her house and feeding on it. I’m going to get it out. This is going to get creepy fast. Do you want to stay in the car?”

Jim looked at me, his face completely flat.

“Jim?”

He leaned toward me and said in a quiet, scary voice, “I don’t stay in a car.”

Well of course. That would be ridiculous. Big Alpha Man does not stay in car. Big Alpha Man roar and beat manly chest. He’d locked his teeth. Jim was an incredibly smart man. That’s why I fell for him so hard. He was also incredibly stubborn.

I sighed. “Look, this is something I do. If you come with me, you have to do it on my terms. I’m going to do some magic and you will have to go along with it and not act like it’s stupid.”

“It’s your show.”

Say what you want about Jim, he always treated my magic with a healthy dose of respect. My calligraphy didn’t always work, but my Balinese magic was a different story. He had never seen that side of me before.

I popped the trunk open and got out of the car. Two chests sat in the trunk, the small one with my calligraphy supplies and the large one with all of my Balinese items. A box of donuts sat on top of the bigger chest. Jim’s eyes lit up. He reached for the box and I slapped his hand lightly. “No. Offering.”

I opened the large chest, pulled out a necklace of iron wood beads with a large black amulet hanging from it. A stylized lion, bright red with details painted in gold gleamed on the amulet. The lion had large round black eyes half covered by bright red lids, a wide nose with two round nostrils, two wide ears, and a huge open mouth filled with bright white teeth.

“Barong Bali,” I told Jim, as I put the necklace over his neck. “King of spirits and sworn enemy of Rangda, the Demon Queen.”

Jim studied the amulet. “So how often do you do things like this?”

“About once every couple of weeks,” I said. “There is usually something untoward going on.”

“And it’s an insult to offer you money for it?”

“The legend says that a long, long time ago on the island of Bali, there lived an evil sorcerer. He was a terrible man who summoned demons, cast curses, and stole children and young pretty men and women to drain them of their blood so he could use it in his dark rituals. A man called Ketut had had enough and he asked Barong Bali for the strength to destroy the sorcerer. Barong Bali spoke to Ketut and told him that he would grant him powers to banish evil, but in return if any villagers came to Ketut for help against the dark magic, neither he nor his family could turn them away. Ketut agreed and Barong Bali made him into Barong Macan, the Tiger Barong. Ketut defeated the sorcerer and his descendants have guarded the balance between evil and good ever since.”

“Do you think it’s true?” Jim asked.

“I don’t know. But I’m a tiger, I have the power to banish bad magic, and people come to me for help.”

“Are you afraid that if you started charging for the services, you would be tempted to prioritize?”

I glanced at him in surprise. Wow. Nailed it. “Yes. Right now rich and poor are equal to me. I get no compensation either way, except for the satisfaction of restoring the balance and doing my job well. I’d like to keep it that way.”

“There should be some reward for this,” he said.

“People leave gifts,” I told him. “Sometimes money, sometimes food. Mostly on my doorstep or with my mother. I never know who they are from but I appreciate it always.”