Thomas nodded.
“Why would she give you a feather?”
“To wake up my spirituality, apparently. She said it fast-tracked my connection to my tribal responsibilities.”
“So it was a charm.”
“I guess. And she didn’t hand it to me. She snuck it into my pocket.”
Reuben shook his head. “That’s not right. It’s like slipping dope into somebody’s drink and letting them think they’re just losing their mind.”
“I wouldn’t know,” Thomas began. He broke off at the sound of a scuffle behind them. Turning, he saw Steve trying to drag Sammy toward the helicopter.
“Are you out of your goddamn mind?” Sammy said. “There’s no way I’m getting inside that thing.”
“You want off this mountain,” Steve told him, jerking his chin toward the machine, “there’s your ticket out.”
“Fuck that. I’m not riding in that dog’s stomach.”
“It’s not a dog anymore.”
“The hell it isn’t.”
Reuben left Thomas’s side and went to help Steve. In the end, it took all three of them to drag the struggling Sammy to the door and hoist him inside.
The door shut on its own as soon as they were all in.
“You know how to pilot this?” Reuben asked Thomas.
Thomas shook his head. “But we don’t need to. Gordo pilots himself.”
“Okay, that’s just a little creepy,” Steve said.
Sammy lunged for the door. “Let me out of here! The fucking thing is eating us alive!”
Steve and Thomas grabbed him, one on either side.
“Tell you what,” Reuben said. “As soon as we’re airborne, I’ll be happy to shove you out the door.”
“Fuck you!”
His face went even paler as the helicopter rose from the rocks.
60
Marisa
They were a silent group. Morago stood on one side of Aggie’s bed, head bowed in prayer or thought, Marisa couldn’t tell which. Diego stood across from him on the other, gazing toward the window where the crows remained in a silent line on its outer ledge, but Marisa didn’t think he even saw them. Manny, one of the crow men, sat in a chair near the foot of the bed. He had turned the chair around and crossed his arms on the back, supporting his chin as he watched Aggie.
Marisa sat with her back against the wall, looking toward the windows, her legs splayed out in front of her. She felt utterly defeated and the silence of her companions hadn’t given her the slightest bit of confidence that she’d feel better any time soon.
After a while she took out her phone and found she had a couple of texts from Alan. She started to respond to the latest, but then erased what she’d written and dialed his number instead.
“Hey,” he said when he picked up on his end. “I was hoping to hear from you.”
Hearing his voice, she immediately felt better. “Hey, yourself,” she said.
“So what happened with Jackson Cole?”
“You know that thing with Isabelle that we never talk to anyone about?”
She could almost feel him straighten up from wherever he’d been slouching. “Are you saying he’s a numena?” Alan asked.
Diego shot her a curious look as though he could hear exactly what Alan was saying.
“No, turns out he’s Jackson’s cousin Steve,” she said.
“So if a painting didn’t bring Jackson Cole across—” Alan began.
“It’s not about Jackson. It’s about the place that Isabelle’s numena come from. I’ve been on that other side. And Leah’s lost somewhere over there.”
“Whoa, whoa. Back up. You’re been where?”
“Into the otherworld. Or maybe it’s an otherworld, I don’t know. It was surprisingly like ours, except there was no indication that people have ever been there. No roads, or houses, or anything. At least where I was.”
“And you’re okay?”
“Seems so. But did you hear me? Leah’s gone.”
She told him about their day, ending with the bizarre moment by Aggie’s bed when Leah simply vanished. She looked past Diego as she spoke. Aggie’s body still floated above the sheets, turning in a slow circle like a leaf caught in the lazy eddy of a current.
She described what she was seeing to Alan.
“I should never have talked Leah, or you, into going,” he said.
“You had no idea any of this would happen. And to tell you the truth, I haven’t seen her this engaged in ages. Maybe writing a book about Jackson wasn’t what she really needed to nudge her out of her habits and routines back home. Maybe all she needed to do was experience something different. She’s actually been talking about doing some serious investigative journalism here, and didn’t seem at all disappointed when Steve turned out to be Jackson’s cousin.”
“But now she’s vanished.”
Marisa sighed. “Yeah, and doesn’t that suck? What are we going to do?”
“I’m catching the first flight out there.”
Marisa knew she should be saying something like, “You don’t have to do that,” or “There’s nothing any of us can do.” But the truth was, she felt as though she’d failed Leah and really needed Alan here to help her get through whatever had to be done next. She supposed the first thing would be to report Leah’s disappearance to the police, except how did you even report a missing person who’d vanished into the otherworld?
“Marisa?” Alan said.
“I’d like that,” she told him. They talked for another minute or so, then he signed off to check on flights.
Marisa started to put her phone away and paused. Opening her camera app, she switched from photo to video to record Aggie floating above the hospital bed in her slow, steady turning motion. She remembered how it had been with Isabelle’s numena, how the reality of them kept slipping away from her memory like trying to hold on to mist. They had no proof. It was only by talking it through with Alan that either of them was able to keep what had happened from fading away.
Well, now she had proof. Not that she planned to show the video to anybody. There was no point in that. People would only think it was some special effects trick. But it would remind her.
She caught Diego smiling at her. “You’re as bad as these children I have staying with me,” he said. “They don’t believe they’re experiencing anything unless they can see it through their phones.”
Marisa thought of any concert she’d gone to in the last few years and the sea of phones upraised in the crowd. “It’s not like that,” she said.
Before she could go on, Aggie’s body suddenly dropped onto the bed. The bedsprings squeaked as the old woman landed, and Manny jumped to his feet so quickly that he knocked his chair over. Marisa was still registering Aggie’s sudden return to the normal laws of gravity when Leah appeared directly in the air above Diego. Marisa assumed some sixth sense warned him because he stepped back with his arms outstretched before she struck him. He caught her as effortlessly as though it were all part of an act that they’d performed a hundred times, and gently stood her up beside the bed. He kept an arm around her shoulders until she regained her equilibrium.
Aggie sat up in the bed and looked around herself, her gaze finally settling on Leah. “Now, aren’t you an interesting young woman,” she said. Leah blinked back at her in confusion.
Marisa didn’t blame Leah for her bewilderment. It was an odd first statement to come out of the old woman’s mouth after she’d been comatose for hours.
Marisa jumped up and joined Leah by the bedside. When Diego stepped back, she gave her friend a hug. “Are you okay?” she asked, pulling back, but leaving her hands on her friend’s shoulders. “I was so worried.”
Leah nodded. Her gaze remained fixed on Aggie, but Aggie’s attention was on Diego. “What were you thinking?” he asked her. “How could you just give up like that?”
“I wasn’t giving up,” Aggie said. “I was…I’m not sure what I was. Tired, mostly, I suppose. I�
�m human. All these extra years don’t lie as easily on my shoulders as they do on a ma’inawo such as yourself.”
“What extra years?” Marisa found herself asking.
Aggie didn’t respond.
“When humans spend a lot of time in the ghost lands,” Manny said, “they tend to live longer than the rest of you do.”
“And I’ve spent more time there than most,” Aggie added. “It seems like a miracle at first, but in the end, all you do is dream of sleep while the ashes of your body ride the winds to meet your ancestors.
“And no,” she added, turning to Morago as though she could see his frown with other senses than her eyes. “I don’t have a death wish. But when the child cut me, and Diego said I had a choice…” She shrugged.
“I never meant that,” Diego said.
“Then you should be more careful when you waggle your tongue.”
Manny grinned. “Now that’s the Aggie White Horse who spits in the face of fate.”
Aggie shook her head, but there was a smile in her eye. “What have I told you about catching more flies with honey?”
“Don’t remember, don’t care. I’m just glad to have you back.”
Morago nodded. “Ohla.”
“I thought that meant ‘hello,’” Leah said.
“It means many things,” Diego told her. “In this context it means ‘thank you.’”
“How long was I gone?” Aggie asked.
“Half a day,” Morago said.
“And the child?”
“She’s squatting at the Ghost Mall,” Manny said.
“But she’s unharmed.”
Manny nodded. “Mostly. Though I can’t say the same for anybody around her. That girl’s poison.”
“No,” Aggie said. “She’s been poisoned.”
“And you can fix her?”
Aggie sighed. “Oh no. The only person who can fix her has always been herself.”
She reached out and took Leah’s hand. “Though I was content where I was, I thank you for risking your life to bring me back.”
Risking her life? Marisa thought. She squeezed Leah’s shoulder.
“It was no big deal,” Leah said.
“It was a very large deal,” Aggie told her. “I know that, and so do you.”
“How did you get inside Steve’s mind?” Leah asked.
Marisa gave her a surprised look as if to say, say what?
“Is that where I was? Interesting.”
Marisa noticed the look that Morago and Diego exchanged. Aggie did too.
“How is that—” Morago began, but Aggie cut him off. “I’m tired,” she said. “Let an old woman rest.” She made a shooing motion with her hand. “You can debate where and why I was somewhere else.”
Diego nodded. “I’ll take you back to your motel,” he told Marisa and Leah.
“Our rental’s still at Aggie’s house,” Marisa said.
“I’ll get someone to bring it by tomorrow,” Morago told her.
He gave Aggie a stern look which she pretended not to see as Diego ushered Marisa and Leah out of the hospital room.
Manny picked up his chair from where it had fallen and sat down.
“You too,” Aggie told him.
He smiled. “Make me.”
61
Sadie
Sadie awoke with a start, unable to see anything in the pitch blackness. She didn’t know what had woken her, or where she was, but then the horror show of the past day all came back to her.
She listened carefully for a minute or two, but heard no sound. Her body was stiff and sore because she’d slept away the afternoon and a good part of the night on the hard marble floor of this abandoned clothing store in the Ghost Mall. Now it was dark, and maybe she’d stayed safe, but nothing had changed. Her life was still shit. Twenty bucks wasn’t going to last long and she had no place to go anyway, unless she went back home where Reggie would beat the living crap out of her.
She pictured his smug, creepy face—how he’d get that slow grin of his as he stood up from his recliner and took a step in her direction.
That wasn’t going to happen. Not anymore. She was done being his private punching bag.
But the downside was, all she could exchange for living with Reggie and Tina was being homeless and on the run, and if today was anything to go by, she didn’t think she could cut it.
While Sadie liked to pretend she had street smarts, she knew Aylissa could run circles around her when it came to being tough. Even Riley and Gabriela were better equipped. Their bodies weren’t like hers, a scarred road map of all the ugliness she couldn’t keep bottled up inside.
She didn’t know how they did it, how they were able to compartmentalize the crap they confronted in their lives when she couldn’t. But Reggie wasn’t as bad with them because Child Services checked in from time to time, and foster children represented money. Not so with Sadie, his natural born daughter—she was all cost and no benefit. Unwanted from the get-go, as he’d often reminded her. So at the end of the day, the other kids just weren’t the mess that Sadie was.
But bad as her days usually were, this past one had really sucked. And the worst thing was she felt like she’d been channeling Reggie in the past couple of days, like all those years of living with him had turned her into some sketchy bitch version of the douchebag he was.
She bit at her lip until she drew blood. The metallic taste in her mouth helped keep the rising anxiety at bay.
If her life were one of those Hallmark special movies that Tina liked to watch, this was the point where she’d be trying to make amends to those she’d hurt, and get their forgiveness just in time for a happy fade-out to the next set of commercials. But she’d learned a long time ago that life was nothing like a Hallmark movie—at least her life sure as hell never was.
And as for forgiveness, she wasn’t going to get it any time soon. Not after the things she’d done to all these people who’d genuinely been trying to help her. She’d pretty much tried to ruin Steve’s life. She’d stabbed Aggie. But maybe the worst was what she’d done to Ruby.
What she needed was a way out—a permanent way out—but she didn’t have the cojones for that, either. If she did—if she could just draw the blade of her utility knife across her own throat—she’d solve a lot of people’s problems. And since she’d been so stupid making that deal with the witch, she couldn’t even piss somebody off enough to kill her because the witch’s spell made her invisible to anybody who meant her harm.
If it was going to get done, she’d have to do it herself.
She sucked at her lip and reached into her pocket, fingers closing around the handle of the knife.
Maybe if she had some dope she could find the nerve.
Then she heard something stir out in the hallway and her usual sense of self-preservation kicked in. The idea of killing herself vanished as though it had never crept up the back alleys of her mind to whisper in her ear.
“Who’s out there?” she yelled.
The sound, whatever it was, stopped.
She scrabbled around on the floor, feeling for the mess of hangers she’d seen when there’d still been some light. It took a moment to find them in the dark. Grabbing a handful, she flung them in the general direction of the store’s opening where they made a loud clatter out in the hall. She heard some kind of animal scurrying away. A packrat, maybe. But what if one of those creepy animal people had come to give her some payback? A hybrid scorpion man would make that same scratchy sound.
That scared her enough to get her to her feet. Her eyes had adjusted enough that there was the vaguest bit of illumination from the grimy skylight, but not much. She found her way to the main corridor of the mall mostly by inching her way forward, hands in front of her to avoid walking into display cabinets or clothing racks. She knew she was near the front of the store when glass crunched underfoot. The ’bangers must have had a field day smashing all the windows in this place. She just wished they hadn’t pissed everywhere
because out here in the hall it smelled like a urinal.
She stood quietly, listening. The only sound was her own ragged breathing.
Screw this, she thought. On top of everything else she didn’t need to be in this freakshow of a place.
She eased her way in the direction of the main entrance, sliding her feet along the marble floor so that she was pushing glass away rather than stepping on it. Every so often she’d stop to listen. Nothing. But finally, the solid wall of darkness around her gave way to a diffuse light ahead.
It seemed bright when she finally made it to the entrance and outside. Darker than she’d ever experienced except for that night out in the desert with Steve, but nothing like the near absolute blackness inside the mall.
She stood by the entrance, looking around at the shadowed hulks of abandoned cars and other crap. It seemed like she had the place to herself, but she studied the parking lot for a long time before deciding it was safe to move away from the mall. She didn’t get more than a half-dozen steps before she heard the sound of wings flapping, loud in the night air.
She’d forgotten about her own personal freak crow-stalker.
“Manny?”
She heard the sound of wings again, circling. They disappeared somewhere behind her and she heard the approach of footsteps crunching on broken glass. She turned in the direction she thought they were coming from.
“Come on, Manny,” she said. “Stop screwing around.”
“Manny’s not here,” a voice responded from the darkness.
It had the same timbre as Manny’s—raspy and rough—but it definitely wasn’t him. Sadie’d already heard enough of his annoying comments that she’d have known if it was him.
“My name’s Gonzalo.”
“Who the hell are you? Where’s Manny?”
“He can’t be here, so he asked me to look in on you.”
Yeah, creepy much? She couldn’t make out his features very well in the dim light, but he was tall and dark-skinned like Manny, and from what she remembered of the rest of his crew, they all kind of looked the same.
The Wind in His Heart Page 36
