By Sun

by T Thorn Coyle

  She rested her cardboard sign against the cooler.

  Paletas, gratis, it read in black block letters, with Free Popsicles written beneath. Inmigrantes Bienvenidos, read smaller letters near the bottom of the sign.

  Not all of the people checking in at the ICE building spoke Spanish, of course, but a large number of them did. Lucy hoped her sign and presence were non-threatening enough that some folks would feel comfortable stopping.

  She should’ve grabbed a folding chair.

  During the time the camp was in operation, Lucy had seen several immigrants stop to shake hands with the activists. She’d also seen some, confused, skirting around the throng.

  A family walked down the sidewalk, squinting in the sun, making their way toward the building. The father held a baby carrier in one hand, the other hand gripped by his five-year-old daughter’s chubby fingers. A woman walked next to them, clearly the mother, a worried look in her eyes and a sheaf of papers in her hands.

  As they approached, Lucy smiled.

  “Paletas?” she asked them.

  The woman’s face brightened slightly, and the little girl tugged on her father’s hand.

  “Después, mija,” he said to his daughter, then looked at Lucy. “Gracias.”

  “De nada,” she replied. She hoped that they actually did stop once they were done with their appointment. Every kid needed something to look forward to, and on a hot day, a paleta was often just the thing.

  As the small family trundled their way up the broad driveway to the entrance, they had to pass armed Department of Homeland Security police, two of whom wore full face masks. Because terrifying already frightened people was just part of the job. The fact that the DHS cops had to be miserably hot under their gear and balaclavas made Lucy feel only slightly better. Sweating under a face mask was nothing compared to what some of these families were going through, but at least the minor day-in, day-out irritation was something.

  No one should feel comfortable while ripping families apart, torturing children, and sending people back into danger.

  Anger tasted bitter in her mouth.

  Lucy waited until the family was inside, then crouched next to the cooler and spat on the dirt. The guards watched her. As long as they didn’t ask her to move along, she could ignore them.

  Boots barely moving, she inched her way toward the fence. Lucy needed to get as close to what ICE thought of as “their property” as possible. At some point, she was going to need to try to touch the building itself, but that wasn’t going to happen today. This was just reconnaissance.

  Lucy had no idea what she would find, if anything.

  The way psychometry worked…well, Lucy couldn’t really explain it. Not rationally. All she knew was that when she held an object in her hand, it often spoke to her. Told her stories.

  The first time it had happened was just after her abuelo’s death. She had clutched his favorite pipe, stroking the cherry bowl with light fingers. Her hand tingled and the clearest image rolled into her head. It was Abuelo Ricky, pipe in hand, sitting in his favorite green corduroy easy chair. He looked directly at her and smiled.

  She had dropped the pipe, but the sense of her grandfather remained.

  After that, her mother caught her picking up objects in shops and around the house, closing her eyes, and screwing up her face. Once she figured out what Lucy was attempting, she sent her to Abuela Linda for training.

  Turned out the whole family was riddled with psychics. Oh, they were good Catholics, but brujas all the same.

  Not that they would ever use that word to describe themselves. Never in a thousand years.

  Lucy smiled. Enough of the trip down memory lane.

  She touched one hand to the dirt. Felt the tree roots. Felt the hum of electricity. The whoosh of water in buried pipes. The distant rumble of a streetcar. Slowing her breathing down, she softened her awareness, and sent her consciousness further downward. Another thing that was difficult to describe, that dropping of one’s awareness to a place inside that felt like still water, or the deepest cave inside the tallest mountain.

  The earth felt warm, despite the shade. Tree leaves were not enough to keep the dirt from heating up during day after day of scorching temperatures. The concrete sidewalk and black tarmac only increased the heat, pumping it skyward, causing the whole city to heat up.

  Focus, Lucy. It was hard to do witchy work when men armed with Tasers, service revolvers, and less-than-lethal filled machine guns stood guard nearby.

  She imagined breathing through her hands, connecting her spirit to her flesh, and connecting flesh to earth. Breath was the great unifier. She breathed in the oxygen given off by the trees overhead. They buried their roots in the soil beneath her hands.

  Lucy reinforced the shields around her aura, and allowed herself to deepen further still.

  The acrid tang of teargas and the burn of pepper-ball projectiles coated the back of her throat, making her want to spit again. She swallowed. She felt fear. Anger. Sorrow.

  Tell me… she thought.

  But the earth revealed nothing more. Damn. Lucy had felt so certain that her itching hand had drawn her here. So what…?

  ::::

  Sensation flared in her right hand, along with the strange sense of not-quite-a-voice at the back of her skull. Well then. Something was trying to communicate.

  Who are you? She sent the thought-form out through her hands, and simultaneously through the edges of her aura, hoping that somehow her question would make it through.

  “Excuse me, ma’am?”

  Lucy’s consciousness snapped back into her head. Dammit! Anger flashed through her, heating her skin hotter than the day’s sun. Her skull throbbed.

  She rocked back on her heels and rose quickly. Ignoring the spots swimming at the edges of her vision, she brushed off her knees before squaring her shoulders and looking up at the DHS cop in his dark blue polyester uniform, bulletproof vest over top. Yellow Taser strapped to one leg. Revolver at his hip.

  Dressed like that? Everyone you encounter is the enemy.

  “Yes?” she said.

  “You can’t loiter here, ma’am.”

  Lucy looked around herself, at the cars driving by, at the five-story condo building across the street. Three cyclists rolled toward the bike path that skirted the train tracks just behind her, heading toward the high-end car dealership.

  “As far as I know, I’m standing on city property and not under your jurisdiction.”

  He pointed to a small orange sign staked in the dirt.

  “No camping allowed,” he said.

  “Do I look like I’m camping?” Lucy asked.

  He didn’t respond, but his right hand strayed toward the butt of his gun.

  Coward.

  “You need to move along, ma’am.”

  “I’m waiting to give frozen fruit pops to the children that just walked through your doors. They deserve something nice today, don’t you think?”

  Lucy kept her words deliberately mild, but couldn’t keep the challenge from her face, or from the solid spread of her boots on the ground.

  “Here they come now,” she said.

  The man turned. Once he saw the small family coming toward them, he backed off.

  “Best to not stick around, ma’am. It could mean trouble for you.”

  Could be more than trouble for you, pendejo, Lucy thought at his retreating back. Then she called up a smile, and plastered it on her face. Squatting back down, she opened up the cooler and drew out three strawberry paletas.

  The little girl hurried toward her, dark hair flying around her sweet, round face.

  “Papa?” she asked, pausing, hand in mid-reach toward one of the paletas.

  “Sí, mija,” he said. He gave Lucy a serious look, and a nod. “Gracias.”

  “De nada.”

  Not quite nothing. But never quite enough.

  She handed out the frozen fruit pops, and watched the family make their way, likely heading to the s
treetcar one block down.

  She looked back at the imposing building, and the blinding white driveway leading to the automatic fence where the buses emerged, ferrying innocent people away.

  She wished there was a way to get closer to the building itself, but couldn’t figure out how.

  Not yet.

  She was too pissed off to re-center now. There was no way she’d be able to recapture whatever that almost-voice in the back of her head was. Damn it, again.

  Lucy would just have to come back. Maybe talk to the sidewalk next time.

  Meanwhile, a man trudged toward her, paperwork clutched in his left hand. She called up another smile.

  “Paleta?” she asked him.

  “Gracias,” he said. “Despues.”

  Yeah. Later. She just hoped he wasn’t one of the ones who had run out of time.

  6

  Jack

  Jack sat at the long sweep of the scarred oak bar at Constellations, sipping a crisp local lager. Most of the tiny tables between the bar and the front door were empty. It was still early, and there were no bands scheduled for the night, which was good. Other than the Dropkick Murphys playing quietly through the bar speakers, the place was pretty quiet. Jack needed the quiet to think as he flipped through the big, abstract-impressionist art book he’d gotten from the library.

  The ghost scents of beer and old marijuana tickled the edges of his nose, mingling with the faint patchouli scent the bartender wore.

  Lunch with Olivia had consisted mostly of her grousing about one particularly persnickety client. Jack had certainly dealt with those before. It was a benign conversation, the kind you have when there’s something important you really need to be talking about but can’t.

  However good it was to see Olivia, it all just made him feel restless. Too restless to go back to coding the backdrop for orcs and errant princesses. So after lunch he’d gone to the library to see if there were some contemporary art books that might give him insight into the vision of paint spatter still dancing in his head.

  Paint spattering across Lucy’s lush, gorgeous skin.

  After a couple hours at the air-conditioned library, he’d decided to head to the bar. He needed to avoid Lucy for now. By the time he got back home, she and Suco should be packed up for the day.

  His fingers grabbed another slick page and gave it a sharp flip. Page after glorious page. Splashes of color, and tone on tone. Jackson Pollack. Lee Krasner. Perle Fine. Joan Mitchell. What made the paintings something interesting, what drew the viewer in rather than pushing them away?

  What held the patterns together? Olivia said it was the source, and Jack knew that was right, even if he couldn’t see it yet.

  It wasn’t just Olivia, either. His gut also insisted that he was onto something.

  That spatter had to mean something more than Jack was still hot for Lucy, which, given the way she was around him—slightly cool and distant—was something he should probably ignore. He’d fucked that one up good.

  These paintings were close, but not quite right, either, but he knew he had to keep looking. The answer was in here somewhere. The way Jack’s brain operated, he only latched on to something if his subconscious was trying to work it out. It was part of why he was a good coder, and part of why he’d been such a good gamer, back when he played regularly.

  His brain always sought the patterns that underlay everything. Gaming had never been about high scores, it was about figuring out the puzzle. Even random shoot-it-up games had a pattern to be solved. High scores were simply a byproduct of what really drove him.

  Same with coding. It wasn’t about the money, though owning his own home was a pretty nice outcome. The key to coding was latching on to the unseen pattern, building on it, shaping it into something satisfying. Beautiful, even.

  The trouble with coding as a business, however, was that when he’d cracked the code, he became easily bored. And then he was in the position he’d found himself in with the current client. He just didn’t really care. He knew he should, but…nothing.

  All he wanted to do was dive further into the projects Olivia was slowly feeding him, a type of coding that didn’t pay the bills. Despite no mortgage, Jack wasn’t nearly rich enough to give up paying work.

  So he was going to have to suck it up and work, and keep hacking on the side. It wasn’t as if he had much of a social life these days, anyway, though Alejandro said he’d try to stop by the bar after he dropped his nephews at his sister’s house.

  Alejandro was another coder. Jack hoped that would help. The fact that Alejandro was also in Lucy’s coven wasn’t lost on Jack, but he was determined not to ask about her. Alejandro would just tell him to ask her what he wanted to know himself.

  Jack took another slow swallow of lager and pondered ordering a pile of nachos. He flipped another page in the art book, and there it was. The pattern. It was a painting by Clyfford Still and somehow, out of all the other pieces, this one struck him.

  The image was layer after layer of red that streamed like code down the canvas face. A jagged striation of deep blue with a yellow core edged its way upward—or was it down?—toward the left-hand side. A black edge near the top shaped the red lines of coded paint, making the painting almost look like a map of Oregon.

  “Hey man. Sorry I’m so late.” Alejandro slapped his hands on the bar before easing into the stool next to next to Jack. He wore a crisp lavender dress shirt and black slacks. Dude was a programmer, but dressed like a businessman.

  Jack didn’t get it. Jack also noticed that Alejandro had no trouble getting women…or men, either.

  Alejandro ran a hand over the stubble gracing his dome, dark eyes serious behind his glasses, as though the cocktail menu in the neighborhood bar was something of great importance. He pursed his lips, then looked up and smiled, signaling to the bartender.

  She stalked over like a cat, hazel eyes rimmed with black eyeliner that matched her clothes and the short swirl of hair on her head. This close, the patchouli scent was almost overpowering.

  “What’ll it be?” she asked, leaning just slightly across the bar. Jack doubted she even realized she was doing it.

  “Aviation martini, please. Stirred.”

  Jack had no idea what an Aviation martini was, but knowing Alejandro’s tastes, he bet it was a local gin.

  He could almost feel Alejandro’s smile, beaming at the bartender.

  “Olives?” she asked.

  “Twist.”

  She spun on her heel to begin the ballet of chilling the martini glass, flipping bright bottles, and pouring the exact amount of clear liquid plus just a little more.

  “How do you do that?” Jack asked.

  Alejandro looked at him, brow furrowed. “Do what?”

  The bartender shaved off a perfect curl of lemon peel before delicately twisting the fragrant sliver over the glass.

  Jack just shook his head and took another swallow of lager. He was a simple man, and nowhere near Alejandro’s league.

  The bartender set the martini down with a smile.

  Alejandro smiled back and slipped four ones onto the bar top. Damn charmer.

  Jack let him settle in with his drink. They sipped companionably for a moment before Alejandro gestured toward the book.

  “You ready to talk about why you texted, and why you’re suddenly interested in abstract expressionist art?”

  “What? Can’t I cultivate some culture?”

  Alejandro just snorted and took another drink.

  Jack’s mind raced, trying to figure out how to explain the inchoate sense he had that somehow, just somehow, the painting in front of him was important.

  He also had to figure out how much he could share about his little side projects.

  “Show me,” Alejandro finally said.

  “Okay,” Jack said with a sigh, and slid the book over.

  “What am I looking at?”

  “The code.”

  “Code?”

  “See how the red paint d
rips look like a field of color, but really they form a cohesive pattern? And see the way the blue and yellow cut across them and the black forms a weird boundary?”

  Alejandro ran a hand over the stubble on his head again, a slight frown on his face. After a moment, he nodded.

  “Yes. I see it. It even looks kind of like Oregon. But what does it mean?”

  “Can you look at it with your…” Jack waved a hand over the page “…you know. Your spidey senses?”

  Alejandro barked out a laugh.

  “Spidey senses? You sound like my nephews.” He took another sip of his martini, then slid the glass away and wiped his hands on a tiny black bar napkin.

  Then Jack felt Alejandro…change. Damn. If he was going to hang out with witches, he really needed to expand his spooky-shit vocabulary.

  It felt as if Alejandro had gone into some weird sort of stasis. Like, he could barely tell the guy was breathing. Alejandro’s eyes were closed behind his glasses and he slid his right hand forward until it hovered a couple of inches over the painting on the page.

  He stayed poised like that for what must have been around thirty seconds, but felt like an eternity.

  The witch curled his fingers in, withdrew his hand, and shook it out. He slowly opened his eyes, and reached for his martini glass once more.

  Jack sipped at his lager. Waiting. Looking down at the Clyfford Still painting, the image somehow felt more alive. Another thing he couldn’t explain.

  Alejandro finally trained his dark eyes onto Jack.

  “I’m happy to talk to you about what I sensed, but I can tell you right now, you’re going to need to decide exactly how much you’re going to share with me, Jack.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Alejandro set his stemmed glass back down on the bar and turned on his stool, facing Jack head on.

  Jack felt as if a predator had suddenly taken up residence inside of Alejandro’s skin. He didn’t know whether or not he should run.

  “While I was scanning the painting, I couldn’t help but pick up on your aura. You’re broadcasting all over the place.”