That’s not necessarily bad. Lots of normals know about us. But those are the ones who know not to talk about it in public. The ones who don’t tend to have short lifespans.
“Well, yeah,” Vivian says, “but I prefer the type who doesn’t get into constant fistfights with drunks. Do I have to get the first aid kit out?”
“Not this time.” I know she’s right. I’ve been doing this crap for a couple years now. I’ll go to a club and find the biggest, most piss-drunk asshole there. Words will be exchanged. Voices will be raised. Eventually we’ll get tossed out by the bouncer and take it out to the parking lot.
Sometimes I lose. Sometimes I don’t. But I don’t use magic. Just fists, a head butt, an occasional kick to the nads. Vivian tells me I’ve got anger management issues, problems with authority.
Yeah, no shit. Ya think?
My parents had me talk to a therapist once when I was twelve. Another mage, of course. We spent a lot of time talking about my feelings, how I view death, what I think comes afterward. He wasn’t really helpful. If he’d been another necromancer, maybe he’d have been some use.
He annoyed me when he kept arguing with me about ghosts and things he called “theory” and I called “my every waking moment.” So I summoned the ghost of his dead grandmother and let her yell at him for half an hour. That was my last appointment.
“I’ve missed you,” I say. I have. I screwed things up so badly with her that I don’t know if I can fix them.
“You saw me this morning,” she says.
“Yeah,” I say. “But … I just miss you.” I put my hands on the Formica table, touch the silverware in front of me. It all feels solid, but it doesn’t feel substantial. Like it’s all a plastic shell. “I feel weird.”
Something snaps in my mind and I don’t know what I’m feeling weird about. This is Vivian and me. I went out and got into a fight and now I’m sitting with her here in Canter’s and goddamn it she’s beautiful. I marvel at how lucky I’ve gotten the chance to be with her. And I wonder what she could possibly see in a train wreck like me.
“Well, yeah. Things are weird right now,” Vivian says. “This shit with that Frenchman is making everybody nervous.”
Jean Boudreau. A mage who’s trying to be like some mafia don, shaking down lesser talents, mages who don’t have a lot of power. Making their lives difficult if they don’t pay up. Or worse.
My parents have been standing up to him and his goons, organizing people to do the same. Getting mages to work together is like herding cats on meth. But they’ve been doing it.
“It’ll blow over,” I say. Every few years some asshole tries this kind of thing and a bunch of mages will decide to stomp on them. This isn’t any different.
“What if it doesn’t?” she says.
“Are you scared?”
“That’s not the point,” she says. “They killed some hedge witch down in Alhambra last week. And the week before that they burned down an airplane mechanic’s business over at the Torrance airport.”
“That was the aeromancer, right? Guy who was charming planes to keep them running better?”
“And they went after him because he couldn’t protect himself. If we had an actual community, this shit wouldn’t happen.”
“Look at you getting all liberal activist.”
“Dammit, Eric, I’m serious. Your parents are doing something about it. My mom is too damn scared to help.”
Vivian’s dad died a couple years ago. Massive heart attack. Nobody found him for over an hour. A little sooner and somebody probably could have brought him back, but there’s only so much magic can do.
I tried finding his ghost, even though Vivian told me not to. Just as well, he didn’t leave one. A good sign, actually. Meant he probably died quick and painless.
“What do you want me to do, Viv? I’m not my parents. They’re good people, but come on. This is their cause, not mine.”
“Do you even have a cause?” she says. “They could use your support, you know. You’ve got more cred than you realize. People talk about you. They could use your help. What if something happens to them?”
“Yeah, they talk about me because I’m one of the two freaks who talk to the dead in this town and the other one’s a fucking psycho Nazi. What’s going to happen, Viv? Boudreau’s not going to do anything to them. He’d get a royal ass-kicking and he knows it.”
“What about Lucy?” she says. My sister. The black sheep of the family. The one with no magic. The one we don’t talk about.
At the mention of her name my mind snaps back and I know what’s happening. It’s the mists. Whatever the mists are they’ve decided I need to see this particular evening.
March eighteenth, three in the morning. Everything is about to go to shit.
“This isn’t real,” I say.
“What are you talking about?” she says.
“This already happened. Nineteen ninety-five. Alex is going to come through that door any second now and he’s going to tell me that I need to get home. My house is on fire. My parents are inside. He’s going to break every rule we have and use a one shot teleportation charm he bought out of the back of some guy’s Buick in Vegas to make me disappear in front of all these people. It won’t get into the news because mages have people in the papers and the networks and they’ll block it.”
Vivian looks at me, eyes wide. “I—What?” Alex runs into the restaurant right on cue.
“Told ya. So, is this all in my head? Or are you actually a thing?”
“Eric, I’m your girlfriend,” she says. “What are you going on about?”
“No, you’re not. And god, I wish you still were. But we both know that boat’s sailed. You’re a memory, maybe. Or something that’s tapped into my memories?” I pull the obsidian blade from my pocket. “Let’s find out, shall we?”
I lunge across the table, grabbing the back of her head and pulling her forward as I shove the knife deep into her chest. She tries to scream, but I’ve punctured a lung and all that comes out is a wheeze.
For a sick moment I think I’m wrong. That I’ve had some weird hallucination and it really is nineteen ninety-five and I’ve just murdered the woman I love.
No. I’m right. I have to be right. Even now the magic of the mists are making me doubt. Making me forget. Why I’m here, what I’m doing, who I am. I twist the blade hard and everything comes back into focus.
“How fucking dare you use Vivian against me. I don’t know who you are or what you are, but goddamn it I am not letting you win.” Vivian looks up at me, wide-eyed and horrified. The diners around us are staring at me, frozen in fear.
And then Alex begins clapping.
“Bravo!” he says, walking across the restaurant toward our table. Vivian, the diners, the waitresses, they all evaporate into smoke. Silence crashes down around us. In seconds it’s just Alex and me in an empty restaurant.
“So which one are you?” I say. “The real Mictlantecuhtli, or just the piece of him stuck in my soul?”
“Neither, actually,” he says. “I’m here to guide you. Everyone who comes through here faces their demons. They win against them. Or they don’t.”
I can guess what happens when they don’t. They get kicked out of the mists, diminished, stuck. All those souls out there who tried and failed and tried again only to come out missing chunks of themselves. So why didn’t any of them make it through?
“And you’re my demon?”
“One of oh, so many,” he says.
“You do this for everybody who comes in here?”
“Everyone gets a guide. I didn’t exist until you came in here, and I’ll stop existing once you’re gone. Your own personal Virgil.”
“Personalized concierge service for the dead? Nice.”
When Mictlantecuhtli took Alex’s form he was indistinguishable from the real one, flaws and all. But this thing isn’t quite right. It looks like Alex, talks like Alex. Except … he’s a little too Alex. Skin too clear, teeth t
oo straight. Some details are off and as I think of them they clarify. He becomes more like the real Alex the more I remember him.
“You’re pulling all this from my memories,” I say.
“Yes.”
“I have some pretty fucked-up memories.”
He smiles the way a hungry wolf that’s just cornered a rabbit might smile. “Oh, yes, you do.”
“Why hasn’t anyone else gotten through?” I say, trying to change the subject and keep him talking. Maybe I can find a way through here that doesn’t involve me reliving the past.
“The mists were locked when Mictlantecuhtli was imprisoned,” he says. “And now you’ve unlocked them.”
“So all those souls backed up out there? They’re going to finally get through.”
“Some of them. Possibly even most. They still have to go through their challenges. Everyone who comes through here does.”
“Even the king of Mictlan?” I say, hoping a little bit of name dropping will get me to the front of the line.
He nods. “Even the king. This is the last stop before reaching Chicunamictlan. There are nine rivers you must traverse. Each one is a window to your past.”
“Nine rivers, huh? Real ones? Or, like, metaphorical ones?”
“Depends on the person. Some people, it’s rivers. Some people, it’s snakes. Some people, it’s all the regrets and mistakes they made in their lives that they can’t take back.”
“I’m in that last category, aren’t I?”
“Do you have a problem with snakes?”
“Not particularly.”
“Then yes, you are. And the sooner you continue the sooner you can finish.”
“You’re like Mister Roarke on Fantasy Island. Where’s your midget?”
“That’s an interesting way to put it,” he says. “I’m a greeter of sorts. A facilitator. We usually don’t explain what’s happening to the dead who come through here. You’re special.”
Maybe that’s my loophole. “If I’m so special why am I going through this?”
“Because you’re here. Alive, dead, mortal, god. Everyone pays their way in pain, here, Eric. Everyone.” He snaps his fingers.
And I fall.
My house is on fire.
I’m standing in the driveway of the home I grew up in, staggering from a sudden wave of nausea. One of the joyous effects of Alex’s teleportation charm. I’m glad he had it. Driving would have taken me an hour even in late night traffic, but I’m still too late.
There is something I’m forgetting. Even through the terror and realization that there’s nothing I can do, there’s the sense of something vital that’s just out of reach. It surfaces briefly like a whale breaching the waves and then just as quickly sinks back down again, disappearing completely at the sight of the house engulfed in flames.
It takes everything I have not to go running into the fire. The entire façade of the building has burned away. The living room, foyer and kitchen are gone. The second floor collapses as I watch crews of firefighters desperately try to put it out.
I can tell already they won’t make a damn bit of difference. I can feel the magic in the air, residue of massive spells. Some of them undoubtedly my parents’. The rest of it is from a thing I catch out of the corner of my eye, dancing in the flames of what used to be my living room.
Then there’s the death. No ghosts, but the sense of death lingers. Not quite a smell, not quite a sound. Just a feeling I get when someone nearby has kicked the bucket.
My parents and Lucy, I’m sure. I can’t see bodies. The untouched garage is still closed. I can’t tell if their cars are in there or not, and much as I hope they took off for some late night errand, I know they’re in the house.
All this devastation has been caused by a fire elemental. Not a big one. I can see it flitting from flame to flame, hiding in the fire, disguising its shape. The firefighters, normals every one of them, won’t see a thing, but I know what to look for.
I catch a glimpse of another one that hasn’t hatched yet in the remains of the living. They start as eggs, tiny things made of fire that grow to about the size and shape of an ostrich egg before cracking open and letting loose a nightmare beast of flame. They’re good for burning things, nothing else. And unless you’re into arson for insurance purposes, and believe me there are better ways to do that, you only use them to kill.
And I know who set them off in my house.
Jean Boudreau. He’s been fucking with mages and lesser talents for months now, and my parents were pushing back. Vivian said something about an aeromancer whose business burned down. I doubt an elemental was used there, too. A can of gasoline and a match would be less indiscriminate.
I’ve moved on from panic, straight through grief and horror and hit the brakes firmly at rage. I know the way I know that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west that I will kill this man. I will tear him to pieces. I will make sure he knows I’m the one who’s doing it to him.
And I will make it hurt.
A car pulls up into the driveway, screeches to a stop. I don’t recognize it, don’t know who’s driving. I ready a fire spell of my own in case it’s Boudreau come to gloat. He wants a fight, I’ll give him a goddamn fight.
But it’s Lucy. She jumps out of the passenger side in sweats and sandals, brown hair pulled back with a scrunchie, sleep still in her eyes. She’s running on adrenaline. Relief that she’s safe, horror that she’s going to see this. I run to her and pull her close, turning her away from the flames.
I can’t shake this feeling of déjà vu, as if this has all happened before. It has an almost hazy feeling, like a memory I can’t quite grasp.
Lucy’s with a woman I don’t know, something strange about her. The feeling that this is a memory stops at her. She feels familiar, but I can’t place her. It’s like she doesn’t belong here. Her face is blurry. Smoke in my eyes, I imagine. Who the hell is she?
“Oh, god, Eric, what happened? Alex called and we came right over.” We? What is this woman’s name? I know her, don’t I? That doesn’t sound right. A memory tugs at me and all I can think is that she feels wrong. Lucy should be alone.
I’m not the hugging type, but I can’t seem to let go of my sister. I should be feeling grief but all that I can seem to grab is anger. My insides are a knot, competing emotions tearing me up from the inside. Relief that Lucy’s safe, rage that my parents are dead, that Boudreau murdered them.
I don’t know what to say. There’s been an accident? I don’t know yet? She’ll see through anything less than the truth, so I don’t bother hiding it.
“Mom and dad were in there,” I say.
At first there’s confusion. The words aren’t registering. And then understanding floods into her, and she pulls away from me, tries to run. I hold on tight, don’t let her go.
“We have to get them out.” Her voice is ratcheting up to a scream. “We have to go in there and get them out.”
“Lucy, they’re gone,” I say. She knows what I can do, knows the things I can feel. She’s got to know I’m telling the truth. “Someone let a couple of elementals loose in the house. They’re still there. If we try going in there we’ll die, too.”
The fact that the elementals haven’t come out of the house to look for Lucy and I is, if not a good sign, then at least a thin, silver lining. That means Boudreau went looking for our parents and not for us. We should be safe from them as long as we stay out here. Once there’s nothing left of the house to burn they’ll put themselves out and fade back into the void.
All the color drains out of Lucy’s face. “Do something,” she says. “Do something.” Her voice pitches higher as she repeats herself. It’s a command, a plea. Her voice echoes like a banshee’s cry. She pounds my chest but I don’t let go. I know what kind of person she is. She’ll run in there looking for our parents. She’ll die if she does.
She knees me hard in the crotch and the shock of it makes me loosen my grip. True to form she bolts for the house. I
’m running behind her, ignoring the lightning pain in my nuts and the nausea crawling up into my gut. I need to get to her before she gets herself killed.
I manage to, but barely. I get my arms around her and lift her off her feet. She’s kicking and screaming.
“Why won’t you do something?” she yells.
“I am doing something, goddammit. I’m saving your life.”
“You’re a fucking coward. You have magic. You can bring them back.”
“I can’t. Dammit, Lucy, you know I—”
A look of determination clamps down on her face, and I can tell she’s feeling some of the same anger I am. Only directed at me. “Bring. Them. Back.”
I can’t. I can’t do a goddamn thing. I have never felt so powerless in my entire life than at this moment. I have no control over anything. I am too late, too weak and too vulnerable.
I am less than nothing.
Everything freezes. The fire engine lights stop strobing, Lucy stops beating against my chest. Even the water from the firehoses and the flames in the remains of the house go stock still. Then slowly fades into a hazy gray of nothing. I am holding empty air.
I snap out of the memory and back into the present. Like in the recreation of Canter’s I suddenly realize what’s happening. Like a switch that’s been thrown. Maybe this is what Hell is. Living the horrible things that have happened in your life over and over again. I had no idea it wasn’t real.
Wait. No, I did. A little. That woman who was with Lucy. She hadn’t been there when it happened. That’s why she felt wrong. Was that the guide who’s walking me through?
“Why didn’t you save them, Eric?” says a voice. It’s not a man or a woman, just a flat, androgynous sound. “Fear? Surely you could have done something.”
“Is this where I talk about my feelings?” I say. “My inner demons? Is this seriously one of my regrets? Saving my sister?”
“She didn’t feel that way, though, did she?”
Hungry Ghosts Page 12
