Ghost Key

by Trish J. MacGregor

  Nicole looked as if she’d bitten into a lime, mouth pursed, eyes bulging in their sockets. “Walked out of the bookcase.” She made a quick sign of the cross. “Dios mío, hermano. You know how that sounds?”

  “I don’t give a shit how it sounds. It’s what happened.”

  “Shit. Okay, okay. How’d Mom look?”

  “Young. Beautiful. Whole.” He didn’t tell her about the rest of what Jenean had said, about her friend Charlie.

  Tears brimmed in Nicole’s eyes. “Did she say anything else?”

  “Not really. The visit seemed to be primarily to tell me you had the answer about where the terrorist cell is located.”

  “But why Cedar Key? Why would any terrorist cell be located there? It’s an old fishing village, a tourist place.”

  He didn’t say anything.

  “Listen, hermano.” Her hands touched his shoulders and Sanchez shut down completely so he wouldn’t pick up anything else. “I don’t doubt your ability, okay? It’s just that you caught me by surprise. If you end up in Cedar Key, just keep me posted about what’s going on. Text or otherwise. And I promise not to confront Delaney.” Her fingers traced an X over her heart, a childhood thing between them.

  Sanchez hugged her. “I’ll be in touch.”

  * * *

  The bonfire burned brightly now, the flames dancing in the breeze, the wood crackling, popping. Maddie reached out to Von again, comforting and encouraging him to hold loving thoughts.

  It’s hard to hold loving thoughts, Maddie, when I’m about to be burned at the stake.

  You’re already dead, she reminded him. You got confused and lost your way and now you’re going to find your way to where you’re supposed to be.

  Just then, an odd-looking man appeared next to the box—bald, portly, with Oriental features. It took Maddie a moment to realize he was a ghost and that none of the brujos could see him.

  I’ll take care of things from here, Maddie.

  Who’re you?

  Name’s Victor. Charlie sends his regards.

  You’re a chaser?

  But he was already gone. Maddie reached out to Von, calling his name. She felt his essence, but he didn’t answer.

  “I think the fire’s hot enough now,” Gogh said.

  “What’s going to happen to him when he’s obliterated?” Jill asked. “Where’s he going to end up?”

  “Nowhere,” Dominica replied. “Obliteration means destruction, Jill.”

  “We went somewhere when we died,” Liam said.

  “Exactly,” Jill agreed.

  Maddie sensed Dominica’s confusion about this issue and her annoyance at Jill’s question. The bottom line was that Dominica didn’t have any answers to the ultimate question, but she realized the others were expecting something from her, so she bullshitted her way through it.

  “Well, yes, technically, we did go somewhere when we died. And we found out that being dead just meant we don’t have bodies and that we have a whole lot of power to draw upon from the world of the dead.”

  Jill frowned. “So where’re heaven and hell?”

  “There’re no such places,” Whit replied. “Believe me, if there was a hell, I’d be there.”

  Joe nodded. “Me, too.”

  “So Von will just cease to be?” Liam asked.

  Gogh rolled his eyes. “Yeah, dude. That about sums it up. Look, can we just get on with it?”

  “This is really wrong,” Liam burst out. “Von died once, why should he have to die again?”

  Maddie understood that Liam, like Von, was waking up to the truth about the brujo world and she wondered if and when others would, too.

  “He broke a sacred law and attempted to escape,” Dominica snapped, her voice razor sharp.

  Liam’s face turned apple red, a pulse beat hard at his temple. “Fuck this. I refuse to be a part of this.” With that, Liam strode away from them, pushed his kayak into the water, got in, and paddled off into the darkness.

  Defiance. Rebellion. Independent thinking. The seeds of destruction, Maddie thought, gleeful at the prospect of insurrection within Dominica’s tribe.

  “Liam just lost his position on the committee,” Dominica announced, staring after him.

  No one leaped to his defense.

  Dominica picked up the box from the sand and held it a moment. “Does, uh, anyone want to say anything?” she asked.

  “I understand that Von committed a heinous act,” Jill said. “But we’re obliterating one of our own.”

  Joe nodded his agreement.

  “He broke the law.” Dominica didn’t want to discuss this anymore.

  Jill’s mouth tightened. “It’s still wrong.”

  “Your objection is noted.” Dominica looked pointedly at each of the others. “Anyone else?”

  “Let’s just get it the fuck over with,” Gogh said. “Joe and I need to get back to the hotel.”

  “All right, engage with the net,” Dominica said.

  Maddie sensed that Dominica expected to hear Von’s wild, frantic sobbing, his wails. It confused her when she heard only silence. She frowned and tapped her finger against the lid. “He should be shrieking,” she said.

  Gogh impatiently shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “C’mon, c’mon.”

  Dominica tossed the box into the flames, and as they stood there, quietly, watching it burn, Maddie suddenly saw Victor and another man standing on the other side of the fire pit. Von, she thought at him.

  He looked the way he probably had in his life as a surgeon, a tall African-American with salt-and-pepper hair. He brought his hand to his heart and his consciousness pressed up against hers. Thank you, Maddie, with all of my heart. Victor assures me he and Charlie are working to get you out of this. I’ll hold them to it, you have my word.

  Then he and Victor faded into the darkness and Maddie was alone again with the brujos, on this deserted strip of sand, the flames in the rock pit leaping higher and higher. The rectangular box in which Von had been imprisoned was now little more than a mound of glowing embers.

  Five

  As the tide rose, the water slapped rhythmically against the sides of the houseboat, a sound that always soothed Kate. Fish jumped, their bodies shimmering in the light from the rising moon. The moon wasn’t full, but the light was bright enough to transform the trees and brush in the back bayou to silhouettes. It highlighted the striated golds in Liberty’s wings, turned her red tail feathers the color of fire, and limned her profile as she picked at the bowl of raw chicken Rocky had set on the railing for her.

  He and Kate were eating dinner on the back balcony of the houseboat. They often ate dinner together out here, with Liberty somewhere nearby, the hawk an endless source of fascination for them both.

  “Mom, you think it’s okay for us to feed her? I don’t want her to forget how to survive in the wild.”

  “We’ve been feeding her for months. But it doesn’t seem to have affected her ability to hunt on her own. She’s always catching fish.”

  Rocky had his father’s high cheekbones, Kate’s blond hair, and eyes the same unusual shade of blue that Kate’s father had. Tall for his age, he had the kind of good looks that girls in his sophomore class found irresistible. They called him night and day, but the only girl who interested him was Amy, who worked at the animal rescue center with him.

  “And yesterday, she flew in here with a live rat.”

  Liberty swiveled her head to look at them. Her dark, deeply set eyes caught the glint of the moonlight and turned them to amber. She fluttered her wings, stretched out the left one, and tilted it slightly toward them, like a hand waving hello or good-bye.

  “Were you on the porch at the time?” Rocky asked.

  “Sitting right here. I shot to my feet and scrambled inside.”

  Rocky laughed, a sound so pure and musical that it made Kate smile. He had his father’s laugh, too, full, vibrant, and filled with that seductive joy that had captured Kate’s heart the first time sh
e heard it in a mythology class her senior year in college. She and Jake had spent five years together, most of them good years. But when Rocky was born, Jake had changed. He hadn’t taken to parenthood as she had. He was jealous of the time Kate spent with their son rather than with him. He began to have affairs.

  When Rocky was a year old, she and Jake split up. Kate stayed on in Gainesville for another year, juggling her job as an English teacher with her responsibilities as a single mom. She moved back to Cedar Key when Rocky was two, and never regretted it. The island was home.

  “What did Liberty do when you freaked?” he asked.

  “Killed the rat, ate it, then tapped at the door.”

  The hawk looked at them again, almost as if she knew they were talking about her. “Sometimes,” Rocky went on, “I get this weird feeling that she sticks around because she thinks she owes me a favor or something for rescuing her.”

  Kate thought of the night that Liberty had dive-bombed Bean when he’d come here after the incident in the bar. “She’s definitely protective.”

  “The other day when I was riding the scooter home from school, these rednecks in an electric cart tried to force me off the road. Liberty went after them, Mom. You should’ve seen her. She made that high-pitched shriek, that kree-ee-ar, and then dived at them again and again, until they swerved off the road and into a ditch.”

  She could barely speak around a terrible lump that formed in her throat. “Rednecks? Who were they? Where were you? Jesus, Rocky, I told you to tell me if anything weird like this happened.”

  “Hey, there was nothing weird about it. They’d probably had too much weed or beer or something. I was never in danger.”

  “Did you know these kids?”

  “Adults, they were adults. I think they were part of Zee Small’s group.”

  Zee Small was an island old-timer, a survivalist and fundamentalist whom Kate had known since she was a kid. He and her father used to fish together. Back then, he was just a humorous eccentric. But during the Y2K hoopla, Zee believed the end-time had arrived and he and some of his flock had moved into the woods on the farthest island that comprised Cedar Key.

  Cedar Key actually consisted of four small islands connected by isthmuses. The largest island was where they were—the tourist and downtown areas that extended to the first bridge. The second island was where the wealthiest people lived, their homes lining the island’s runway. The third part of the island was located on either side of Gulf Road, a working-class area, blue-collar, where zoning laws were nonexistent. Here, everything was mixed together: trailers, new homes on pilings, old homes flush to the ground. Yards often looked like used-car lots.

  Then there was the fourth island, middle-class homes that were once a gated community and great, deep thickets of trees at the northern end. That was where Zee and his group lived, in the woods, on land that had been in his family for generations. His group was like a commune of gypsies, people coming and going all the time, some of them living in old rusted trailers, others living in tents, the women cooking outdoors, kids and dogs running wild around the camp. Zee’s Camp. That was how it was known on the island.

  “What did the guys in the cart do when Liberty attacked them?”

  Rocky laughed. “Got out of there very fast.”

  “I’ll talk to Zee about it.”

  “No, don’t, Mom. It’s no big deal.”

  “It’s a big deal to me.”

  “This is exactly why I didn’t want to tell you about it.” He sounded pissed. “I knew it would make you all paranoid.”

  With that, he picked up his empty dishes and went inside. What the hell, she thought, and cleared the table and followed him into the kitchen. She set everything on the counter next to the sink. “You know what happened at the hotel that night, Rocky, with Bean and Marion. It was weird, okay? And there’s other strange stuff going on around here. I’m just asking you to be careful.”

  “Yeah, whatever.” He rinsed his plates, put it all in the dishwasher. “I’m going over to Amy’s.”

  Amy lived in one of the large homes along the runway. Her grandfather had invented the seat belt and they owned a Learjet that flew her dad to Atlanta a few times a week. She lived in another world altogether. “Have you noticed anything odd with her or her family?”

  Rocky rolled his eyes, grabbed his pack, and headed for the door. “Nope. Nothing. See you tomorrow.”

  “Hey, Rocky. Hold on a second.”

  Another roll of the eyes, a huge, exaggerated sigh. Teenage bullshit, she thought, and got right in his face. “I told you what to look for. The dark, shiny eyes, the—”

  “Christ, I get it. Really. There’s talk, Mom, a lot of talk about how … well, paranoid you’ve gotten. I understand you witnessed something weird in the hotel bar. Fine. But weird shit happens daily around here. It’s the nature of Cedar Key.”

  Where the hell was this coming from? “I don’t know who you’ve been talking to, Rocky. But until a few months ago, the kind of weird shit I’m talking about never happened here.” She dropped her hands to his shoulders. “Hey, look at me.”

  At fifteen, he was her height, five foot ten, and when he met her gaze, she experienced a maternal time slippage: Where did the years go? She could still remember holding Rocky in her arms, reading him to sleep at night, tucking him in, trying to answer his questions about his absent father. Now he stood head to head with her, already had an iPod bud in one ear to block her out. She flicked the bud from his ear. “Listen closely, Rocky. Nothing on this island is what it seems. If Amy or someone else you care for has dark, glossy eyes, exhibits jerky movements and twitches, if their mouths seem to move out of synch with what they’re saying, then run fast in the opposite direction. Promise me you’ll do that.”

  “Fuck.” He jerked away from her, stuck the iPod bud in his ear again. “You sound nutty, Mom. Honestly, that’s how you sound.”

  “Promise me,” she snapped.

  “Okay, okay, I promise. Are you closing up the bar tonight?”

  “Yeah, I’ll be home after one.”

  “I’ll be here,” he said, then moved swiftly past her, his body language screaming that he couldn’t get away from her quickly enough.

  When she heard the sputter and gasps of his scooter pulling away from the houseboat, she opened the French doors to the back balcony. Liberty fluttered her wings and hit the empty bowl with her beak. It clattered against the floor. Then she made that high-pitched keening sound and took off after Rocky.

  * * *

  When Kate stepped outside the houseboat at 8:20, a fog rolled off the back bayou, long, white ribbons of the stuff swirling across the surface of the water, making its way toward land. That was another thing that had changed on the island, she thought. Never, in all the years she’d lived here, had fog on Cedar Key been as frequent as it was now, coming in nearly every night, thick and strange, swelling like a tick until dawn. She decided to drive to work. The memory of walking home in the fog that night in February was much too vivid in her mind.

  Kate walked briskly along the side of Richard Pinella’s house and was surprised to see the lights on. He had gone into work at the hotel bar at one this afternoon and wasn’t supposed to get off until she arrived. She rapped at his front door. “Hey, Rich,” she called. “It’s me.”

  “Hold on,” he shouted.

  Moments later, he opened the door, a towel wrapped around his waist, his curly black hair wet from the shower, water beaded on his muscular arms, his broad shoulders. He was a year older than she, and they had known each other since they were kids. He had gotten married right out of college, then divorced a few years later and returned to Cedar Key. His daughter, whom he rarely saw, lived in Boulder with her mother. Kate had never married Rocky’s dad and had sole custody of Rocky, but otherwise their lives had followed parallel tracks until the tracks had intersected last year.

  “I thought you were working,” she said.

  The flash of his smile, the way
his hazel eyes undressed her in a single, swift glance, excited her. It had been weeks since they’d made love, weeks since they’d spent any quality time together. “I was. But late this afternoon, Bean asked me to help him move a boat to the marina on the other side of the island and the tide was out and we got stuck out there for a while.” He opened the door wider. “C’mon in. It’s chilly.”

  Kate entered the house, he shut the door, and without another word, he slipped his arms around her, holding her close. He was several inches taller than she and her face fit perfectly into the curve of his shoulders. She breathed in the scent of his skin, of the soap he’d used, something new she didn’t recognize. It reminded her of autumn here on Cedar Key, when the wind brought in the salty odors of the marsh, of the mud flats that appeared at low tide, a masculine smell. His towel was new, too, fluffy and thick, a bold purple. Rich never bought new towels or new sheets. He prided himself on making do with what he had.

  He slid his fingers through her hair, tilted her head back. “I’ve missed you, Katie-bird,” he whispered, and kissed her so passionately that she felt as if she were falling and stumbled back against the wall.

  Then her hands moved of their own volition, tugging on his towel until it dropped away. He unzipped her jeans, rolled them down over her hips, and kissed his way from her mouth to her thighs. She gasped at the exquisite sensations that coursed through her, her senses burned with desire. She and Rich moved as though they were joined at the hips, lurching and stumbling until they fell onto the couch. When he slipped into her, her body arched, her nails sank into his back, her legs locked around him, and he thrust with a kind of fierceness that shocked her. In the time they had been lovers, he’d never made love to her like this, as though she were not only the focus of his intense desire, but his only desire.

  At one point, Kate drew back, her hands at the sides of his face. “What?” she whispered. “What is it?”

  His eyes seemed to darken and gloss over, as Bean’s had that February night when he’d come to the houseboat. She pressed her hands against his shoulders, pushing him back slightly so that she could see him better, see him outside the thick shadows that fell over this part of the couch. His eyes looked fine. Of course they did. She had imagined it.