“What have you found?” Menchú said.
“A pattern,” Asanti said. “Well, maybe pattern is too strong a word. But at least a trend, a preference she seems to show in what she uses to conduct this experiment—whatever it is. Put simply, all the magic she uses seems to be old.”
“All the magic is always old, and new again,” Liam said.
“Don’t start,” Grace said.
“You hated those crusty Team Four eejits as much as I did,” Liam said.
Grace nodded. Even chuckled. “Still,” she said. “Shut up.”
“I don’t mean that the magic itself is old,” Asanti said. “I mean that it’s magic that has been here, on Earth, a long time. She uses cave paintings. The tooth of the Wolf of Gubbio. The oracle bones. The magic she used here at the Vatican.”
Liam nodded. “You’re right. Even the hydra she summoned seems kind of old-school.”
“Straight out of Greek myth,” Asanti said.
“There was nothing mythological about the inside of its throat,” Grace said.
“True,” Sal said.
“The point I’m trying to make,” Asanti said, “is that if I’m right that Hannah prefers old magic, then we can perhaps anticipate where she will appear next. Or head her off before she gets there.”
Liam’s voice rose with excitement. “There may be something to what you say,” he said. “I’ve been hearing a little chatter about an excavation in Central America. A few weirdos are excited about it. It’s a site way out in the rain forest that they’ve always claimed is magical. You know, the sort of place where gringos pay a local who knows what they’re doing to lead them out there so they can get high and watch the sun rise from the top of a temple and not get lost in the jungle.”
“Sounds unpromising,” Grace said.
“Well, except for the fact that there have always been a couple local legends about the place being a way into another world,” Liam said.
“That’s not that unusual,” Asanti said.
“Right,” Liam said. “But now an archaeologist has led a team out there to do a little digging.”
“Do you happen to know the archaeologist’s name?”
“Sifuentes.”
“Huh,” Asanti said. “My friend in Mexico told me about him. Said Sifuentes was coming back with pictures of some very interesting carvings. Glyphs. Things no one’s quite seen before.”
“And you’re saying that’s the sort of thing Hannah’s been interested in,” Menchú said.
“It seems like it, doesn’t it?”
“Though it also sounds like a wild guess on our part,” Sal said.
“I agree,” Menchú said. “I don’t think we can get the authority to dispatch the team officially.”
“Do you think it’s good enough that a couple of us can just … go?” Asanti said.
Menchú sighed. This was what passed for Asanti playing by the rules these days. True, she wasn’t trying to break them. Not in this case. Still, he needed more convincing.
“If your guess is right,” Menchú said, “what do you think Hannah is trying to do? Why only old magic?”
“I don’t know,” Asanti said, with a candor that Menchú found refreshing. “Maybe it’s what she’s comfortable using. Maybe the older magic works in a way the newer magic doesn’t. Maybe it suggests some sort of change in our world, or theirs, that Hannah is trying to work around.”
“Or subvert,” Liam said.
“Yes,” Asanti said. “Maybe she wants things back the way they were, somehow.”
“Killing everyone in my church’s parish was a very interesting way to express that,” Menchú said.
Asanti looked at Menchú with compassion. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to be so cavalier. I don’t like her any more than you do. But she has some sort of plan, and apparently she feels strongly enough about it to justify doing some horrific things.”
“Alongside some very banal things,” Liam said.
“Maybe they’re all the same to her,” Grace said. “God knows we’ve met plenty of deranged kooks who get too much magic on the brain and lose sight of …”
“Their humanity?” Menchú said.
“I was going to say ‘everything that matters,’ but yes, that will do.”
“But whatever her plan is,” Asanti said, “it’s possible that this dig in the jungle is part of the puzzle.”
“Unless she doesn’t know about it yet,” Menchú said.
“She may not,” Asanti said.
“I suppose I’m asking if we can really tell the difference between getting a step ahead of her and leading her right to whatever she’s looking for,” Menchú said.
“Maybe we can and maybe we can’t,” Sal said. “But speaking for myself, I’m getting tired of being surprised to find her. She’s the demon behind the curtain in half the cases we’ve taken on lately. I’m ready to learn a few things, to figure her out. If this is even a first step toward that, then count me in.”
“All right,” Asanti said. “I can contact Sifuentes and make arrangements. Arturo,” she added, gently, “given where the site is, I think you need to go, too.”
“I know,” he said. I don’t want to, he thought. He didn’t have to say it. He knew the rest of the team already understood.
2.
Through most of the flights, most of the connections, and the time waiting in airports, Menchú and Sal talked about nothing. Menchú could tell Sal was looking for an opening, a way to talk about where they were going and what it meant to him. At first he was irritated. She already knew what had happened to him, his congregation, his town. What was there left to say? And taking the magic out of it, what Menchú had experienced was not special. So many people had lost so much in the civil war, and it had changed them, too, bent their lives into a shape they couldn’t recognize and never wanted. Everyone had to live differently afterward.
But he understood Sal’s impulse. She was trying to be compassionate and he respected that. He tolerated how she kept steering the conversation back to where they were going. What is Guatemalan food like? I hear it’s beautiful there. I’m looking forward to seeing it. He took a deep breath every time. It’s hearty. Sometimes hot, like Mexican food. We have chilies there you don’t see outside the country. And yes, it is beautiful. I’ve never seen anywhere else quite like the highlands. He could sense her working him like a detective, or a swindler setting up a long con. He wouldn’t let her in.
Until, just two hours out from landing in Guatemala City, he realized Sal was worried about him. Not only because they were friends, but because she needed to know how much she could depend on him for the mission. She needed to know he was all there, one hundred percent, like she always was for him. He picked a rare break in the conversation when they were talking about something other than Guatemala.
“Look,” he said. “I won’t deny that it’s hard for me to come back.”
“I wouldn’t expect it to be easy,” Sal said.
“The memories are still so vivid, and they always will be,” Menchú said. “I can’t do anything about that. But they won’t distract me from what needs to be done here.”
He watched Sal relax a little.
“I’m worried about you apart from the mission, too,” Sal said.
“You don’t need to be,” Menchú said. He had chosen those words with care. Hannah’s constant appearances were bothering him, gnawing at him. Apart from wanting to know why she had come back to haunt him, what she was planning now, her return was forcing him toward a reckoning with himself. Something was opening in him, a question was being asked. But he was telling the truth when he said that Sal didn’t need to worry about it. He was the only one who could answer that question.
• • •
The airport in Guatemala City was new, gleaming like so many other airports all over the world. The only real difference was that it was so quiet. A small row of empty gates, waiting for a volume of traffic that hadn’t arrived
yet. But its polished floors were ready. Menchú and Sal waited a few hours in the air-conditioned silence for the plane to Flores. On the flight, Menchú watched from the window as the sprawl of the capital turned into fields and towns nestled among dead volcanoes. Then the land dropped away beneath them and there was almost unbroken rain forest as far as he could see. A road cut through the greenery. Now and again, a cluster of rooftops, small fields. That was it. They landed in the little airport near Flores at sundown. The plane’s door opened and the heat fell on them. It was a weight, thick and heavy. They walked from the plane to the terminal.
“There you are,” Perry said, when he walked up to them outside the airport.
“And here you are.” Menchú felt tired, and not from the flight. On the list of reunions he dreaded in Guatemala, Perry Brooks fell somewhere near the bottom. Perry had turned up so often on their recent missions that Menchú almost wanted to welcome him. For all his supernatural connotations and occult motives, he was a known, comfortable oddity. Sal was turning an impressive, furious shade of reddish purple. “Our supposedly angelic friend. Once more in our way.”
Perry shrugged. “Only half an angel. Not even. I mean, we’ve been over this.”
“What, exactly, are you doing here?”
“I thought you might want some backup,” Perry said.
“I have to ask how you knew we were coming,” Menchú said.
Perry just smiled.
“You can at least tell us how you got here,” Sal said.
“I’m not going to,” Perry said.
“You don’t have to be a brat about it,” Sal said.
“I’m not being a brat,” Perry said. “I’m—”
“Never mind,” Menchú said.
“Fine,” Perry said. “I just took an earlier flight.”
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
“That’s all the answer you’re getting, Sal. I’m sorry.”
“Father.” Sal didn’t finish the question, but she didn’t need to. Menchú saw the conflict in her. On the one hand, her brother remained an unknown commodity. On the other hand, he was family.
“You’re here to help?” Menchú asked.
And when Perry said, “Yes,” Menchú believed him.
They took a cab into Flores. On the way, out the dusty window, was the Guatemala Menchú remembered. Houses of cinder block and rebar, painted in bright colors. Places that would fix your tires on the spot. Men sitting outside restaurants with fluorescent lights. He had never been to Flores as a kid, only heard about it. It was a vacation spot for people who had more money than his family, or anyone in the congregation he led later, ever did.
“When do we get started?” Perry said.
“Not tonight,” Menchú said. “We’re too late to drive out to the rain forest. We’ll go at dawn. We’re supposed to meet Sifuentes where the road ends. Then he’ll take us through the forest to the site.”
“How long will that take?”
“A couple days,” Menchú said. He noted Sal’s surprise. “It’s like that around here more often than you’d think.” He turned to the driver and negotiated with him to pick them up the next morning, haggled him down to a fair price. He enjoyed that. It felt good to flex that muscle. He hadn’t done it in a long time.
The houses ended at a wall at the shore of a lake. The cab followed the road over a low, narrow bridge onto an island covered in houses. For some reason, the driver said, the water level of the lake was rising—no one was sure why. The road closest to the edge of the island was flooded in places. But one block away was higher and dry. The cab brought them to their hotel, a clean place with white tile floors and a laconic man behind the counter who seemed genuine in his happiness to see them. He showed them to their room. There were three beds in a row, from the door to the window.
“I call window,” Perry said.
“You have got to be kidding,” Sal said.
“I am kidding,” Perry said. He turned to Menchú. “You first.”
“I don’t think I’m ready to sleep yet,” Menchú said.
“If we’re getting up at dawn, I am,” Sal said.
“All right,” Menchú said. “I’ll be quiet when I get back.”
It took Menchú only ten minutes to get to the other side of the island, which was much more lively than where their hotel was. Rows of restaurants, people outside right on the water. Boats pulled up to the wall at the edge of the ring road amid the last people who were still swimming that day. A gaggle of children still out. The sounds of norteño music. He turned onto a quieter street and was just thinking about how nice it was to be back when he ran into her. She was a little boy. But she still had those eyes.
Why did Hannah have to possess children?
“I never thought I would see you back here again,” Hannah said.
“It’s thanks to you,” Menchú said, “though I think you know that already.”
“This represents some new initiative on your part, doesn’t it? Trying to get ahead?”
Menchú decided not to answer that.
“Learn to play the role you’re assigned,” Hannah said. “The situation must be controlled.”
“Our archivist used the word experiment, lately, to describe what you’re doing,” Menchú said. “You have used it yourself.”
“You think you’re figuring me out?” Hannah said.
“You tell me,” Menchú said.
“Do your job,” Hannah said. “Otherwise we get mayhem.”
“You don’t think what you did to my town was mayhem?”
“It served its purpose,” Hannah said.
“Would you care to tell me what that was?”
“It’s complicated,” Hannah said, “and I hope I don’t have to do it again.”
“If you dare—”
“You will do what, exactly?” Hannah said. “Hit a child?”
“That poor boy you’ve taken is already dead to you,” Menchú said. “And the day you stop using children as human shields is the day you learn what I’m capable of.”
“I think you don’t have that quite right,” Hannah said. “When you see me in my true form, you will have already seen what I can do.”
“All the same,” Perry said, “using kids is a little dramatic, don’t you think? And here I thought I was the theatrical one.” He had just rounded the corner behind Menchú. The priest realized that Perry had been following him. Maybe looking out for him.
Hannah’s anger contorted her child host’s face a little beyond what it was capable of. Something popped in the child’s jaw; Menchú could hear it.
“You are a traitor to your team,” Hannah said to Perry. “How can you side with them?”
“Well,” Perry said, “for the human part of me, my sister’s on their team, so it’s easy. I wouldn’t describe the angel part of me as taking a side so much as being curious how everything’s going to work out. And maybe being interested in dabbling a little, too. Meddling, you know.” He smiled. “It’s complicated.”
“Not funny,” Hannah said.
Now Perry’s face changed, too. Just a little stretched, a little unnatural. “What is not funny,” he said, in a voice that wasn’t quite his, “is your misguided attempts at control. How far you’re willing to go to have your way.”
“I don’t need to explain myself to you,” Hannah said.
Perry held his smile. “I had no idea it would be so easy to get under your skin.”
A few other people coming down the street had stopped a respectful distance away, watching them. Menchú hoped they didn’t understand English. He pictured what they were seeing, a priest and a foreigner arguing with a child in the street. What must they think is going on?
“Clearly, you need a reminder of what I’m willing to do to keep you in line,” Hannah said.
Hannah made the little boy scream. Menchú braced himself, expecting the kid to make a run for him. But Hannah apparently had something else in mind. The boy got down on his kn
ees in the street, arched himself back, and slammed his head onto the cobbled street.
The people watching gasped.
The boy’s head rose. He had a cut across his nose and a gash on his forehead that started bleeding, a lot.
“Play your part, priest,” Hannah made the boy say. She then made the boy rear his head back to bang his head against the cobblestones again, which was when Menchú dove for him. He caught the boy’s head in his hands before it hit, then took the boy in his arms and held him tight. It was an embrace. It was a constraint. He could feel the boy resisting, trying to wrest his hands free. Maybe now she’ll make him attack me, he thought.
An energy surged through the boy, made him stronger than he should have been. His whole little body jerked in Menchú’s arms, enough that it seemed possible that the boy would dislocate one of his shoulders.
“Perry,” Menchú called, “help me.”
“What do I do?”
“Take his legs. I’ll take his arms. Hold him and don’t let go.”
The child writhed. Menchú could swear he felt the boy’s forearms bend as he strained to get away, as if he’d push himself hard enough to break his own bones. But together Menchú and Perry were too strong to allow that to happen. The boy screamed, his fingers convulsed. Menchú just kept holding him. He glanced up at the people watching.
“It’s okay,” he said in Spanish. “I know how to help him.”
The people watching seemed reassured, but they didn’t leave. The boy kicked. He had strong legs and almost pushed Perry over, but Perry kept both of them where they were. The boy screamed again. Menchú looked in his eyes. They were still that same pale color. The boy got his right hand free and, sure enough, raked his nails across Menchú’s face. Menchú grabbed that hand by the wrist and brought it back down.
“Leave this boy alone,” Menchú whispered in the child’s ear.
Hannah made the boy scream once again. Menchú could feel the stinging where his nails had cut deep, tracks of wetness where drops of blood were running down his face.
“Leave this boy,” Menchú said again, a little louder.
The boy’s face contorted one more time and he let out a roar, more like an animal—a monkey, then a lion—than a human. The people watching jumped back. The boy went limp and closed his eyes. Menchú checked the boy’s pulse.
Bookburners Page 31
