Apparition (The Hungry Ghosts) (29 page)

“A black Lab,” she said. “I remember you as a black Lab, Wayra.”

“That’s a start.”

“And I remember Illary as…” Tess felt another memory surfacing and relaxed into it. In her mind, a beautiful sparrow hawk circled above her, against a magnificent blue sky. “A hawk. A sparrow hawk.”

Wayra grinned. “Will you come with me?”

“Absolutely.”

“Let’s get to a safe haven, Kali,” said Wayra, and the parrot fluttered upward, into the twilight, and they hurried after her.

Fourteen

Charlie and Karina

1.

Charlie and Karina stood outside the virtual home that Maria had built who knew when. An eye-catcher. Constructed of recycled materials, it was camouflaged by a jungle of trees that grew in the Brazilian Amazon. “I like our place better,” Charlie said.

“Yeah, me, too.”

“Let’s get this over with, Karina.”

“It’s going to be ugly.”

“It’s already ugly.”

Thick ferns shrouded the long, curving sidewalk, beds of colorful, exotic flowers blanketed the rolling grounds, purple and red orchids grew from the trunks of nearby trees. The attention to detail in this place, Charlie thought, revealed a great deal about Maria herself.

When he rang the doorbell, John Lennon sang “Imagine,” and it sounded as if he were standing right next to them. A creative touch, Charlie thought. But the music didn’t match Maria’s sour expression when she threw open the door. She looked ravaged—emotionally, intellectually, spiritually—and bore little resemblance to that gorgeous, reserved babe from the last council meeting. He could hardly believe she was the same person. Her colorful dress looked as if she’d slept in it for days, a coffee stain shaped like Sicily stained the front of it, she was barefoot and the toenails on her right foot were painted bright red, the toenails on her left foot had no polish on them at all.

“Oh. Charlie, Karina.” She stepped out onto the porch and quickly shut the door behind her. She stabbed her fingers through her long, tangled blond hair, flicked it over one shoulder, fussed with it. Her toes curled and uncurled against the wooden landing. She knew she looked like shit. “What’s up?”

“We need to talk,” Karina said. “May we come in?”

“Now really isn’t a good time, Karina. The—”

“Now is the
only
time!” Charlie moved past her and opened the door.

Newton stood just inside, his eyes wide and startled, like those of a teenager who has been caught having sex with his underage girlfriend. His longish gray hair was stringy and greasy, as though he hadn’t washed it recently, and his clothing—jeans, a T-shirt—looked soiled, old, faded. “It’s, uh, not a good time, Charlie, to talk about anything.”

“It’s the perfect time.” Charlie swept past him, into the spacious front room of Maria’s carefully constructed home.

But nothing inside the place looked carefully constructed. The living room, though spacious, faded in and out, a testament to the fact that neither Maria nor Newton had their acts together enough to keep things solid, real, tangible. Magazines and books spilled off a coffee table to the floor. Dirty dishes and glasses and piles of discarded clothing lay everywhere. Animals scampered around—meowing cats, barking dogs, squeaking hamsters racing around in cages, birds that shrieked and cried. Cat poop, dog poop, hamster poop, bird poop dotted the counters and had been ground down into the grout between the floor tiles.

“Chaos,” Charlie murmured.

Karina wrinkled her nose. “Stinks, too.”

“You can’t just barge in like this,” Maria snapped, coming up behind them. “Get out, just get out of here.”

“Stay,” Newton pleaded. “Please stay.”

“What gave the minority of the council members the right to disappear El Bosque?” Charlie demanded. “Several hundred people—including my daughter—were in there when you did that.”

Newton sank into one of the chairs, his face etched with such abject misery that Charlie almost felt sorry for him. But only
almost.

“It was
her
idea.” He stabbed his thumb toward Maria. “She got Simon and José to help her. I told her it was a mistake, that I didn’t want any part of it, that it went against the way we’ve always done things. I refused to help them.”

Maria, apparently locked in a full meltdown, shouted, “That’s a goddamn lie,” and lunged at Newton.

Karina grabbed the back of Maria’s dress before she reached Newton, jerked her back, and shoved her down on to the couch. Maria’s face went radish red, her eyes flashed with rage, and she threw up her arms, trying to knock Karina’s hands off her shoulders. When she didn’t succeed, she demanded, “Take your hands off me, Karina.”

“As soon as you’re calmer, I will.”

Maria raised her hands. “Okay, I’m calm, I’m calm. I won’t kill him. I promise.”

“He’s already dead,” Charlie remarked.

“Yeah, exactly,” Newton spat. “But Maria’s intent on our reincarnating as soon as Esperanza has been removed from the physical world. That’s what the rush is about. She forgot to mention
that.
”

“Why does Esperanza have to be disappeared before you reincarnate?” Charlie asked.

“Once the city is taken back to where it came from,” Newton said, “our obligation to Esperanza is finished.”

“Others on the council have reincarnated,” Karina said.

Maria rolled her eyes. “Get your facts straight, Karina. Only one member of the council has reincarnated since Esperanza was brought into the physical world.”

“So, Maria, have you already chosen your parents?” Karina asked. “The place? The details?”

“No,” Newton said.

“That’s not true,” Maria said quickly. “I’ve got some possibilities, Newt.”

“Yeah, all of them in shitty rural towns in South America. No, thanks. I’m going to be reborn in the U.S. or Europe this time, and not in some backwater town, okay? And I’m not going to be coerced into an arrangement I don’t like.”

“Uh, excuse me,” Charlie said. “You two can argue about your next lives when you’re alone. Right now, you need to reverse the travesty you’ve committed and free El Bosque and everyone who got caught up in its disappearance.”

“It can’t be reversed,” Maria snapped.

Charlie felt such sudden and profound despair that for a moment, he couldn’t speak, couldn’t think, couldn’t even move. Then anger swept through him, freeing him from his paralysis, and he seized on the first idea that leaped into his mind.

“If I’m not mistaken, Newton, there’s an obscure rule that allows any council member to request that another member be suspended for making decisions based on self-interest rather than for the common good of Esperanza and her people. Maria has clearly done that. So I’m invoking my right to kick her off the council.”

“What?”
Maria looked horrified. “There’s no such rule. Show me where that rule is written down, Charlie. This is such bullshit.”

Charlie didn’t know whether such a rule existed. Victor had first told him about some obscure rules that had been in force when there were fourteen council members. He’d said he would research it and find out if they could invoke one of these rules to prevent the council from removing Esperanza from the physical world. But Victor had never gotten back to him. Even if such a rule didn’t exist, it should, Charlie thought. Judging from Newton’s bewildered expression, it was apparent that he was as much in the dark as Charlie.

“Newt, tell him,” Maria said, growing agitated again. “There’s no rule like that.”

“I…” Newton stammered. “I, well…”

“Actually, there is such a rule,” Karina said with a gleeful snicker.

Charlie struggled to hide his surprise.

Maria rolled her eyes again, more dramatically, and flung her arms out at Karina. “You are
so
transparent, Karina. You’re just saying that to support Charlie.”

“No, that’s something
you
would do. During my earliest years as a chaser, I worked as a researcher for the council. The law Charlie is referring to was used only once, thousands of years ago, to remove the fourteenth member of the council.”

“These are lies, all lies,” Maria burst out. “Newt, why was the fourteenth council member removed?”

Newton shrugged. “How the hell should I know? It was well before my time.”

“But you’re the oldest member of the council,” Maria rushed on. “If you don’t know, who does?”

Newton tilted his head toward Karina. “She obviously does. And she has studied our history.”

“The fourteenth member was removed from the council because she went against the majority at that time by advocating for council members who represented animals,” Karina said.

It was news to Charlie. Was Karina making up this stuff?

“Animals?”
Maria burst out laughing. “That’s ludicrous. Souls aren’t confined to any species, certainly the fourteenth member must have known that.”

“But just as some souls are predominately male or female,” Newton said, “it’s also true that some souls prefer reincarnating as animals.”

Maria’s cheeks flared with color again and she shot to her feet and faced the three of them, hands on her narrow hips. “You can’t just kick me off.”

“Yeah, we can,” Charlie said. “You, Simon, and José. Be sure to let them know.”

Newton pushed up from the chair, and he, Karina, and Charlie turned their backs on Maria and clasped each other’s hands. It was what a herd of elephants did when one of their own had died.

Without uttering a word to her or to each other, they walked toward the front door. Newton opened it, stepped outside, and Karina followed him. Just before Charlie joined them on the porch, he glanced back. “If the three of you reverse what you did to El Bosque, then we’ll reconsider.”

“You’re trying to blackmail me,” she yelled. “Leave! Just get the fuck out!”

Gladly
. They headed down the sidewalk, not talking.

Before they reached the dirt road, a bright red Porsche roared toward them, a cloud of dust rising up behind it. The car squealed to a stop and Franco hopped out. Except for his clothing—khaki pants, a pullover sweater, and shiny brown loafers—he looked more like da Vinci than he ever had.

“Karina, Charlie, Newt,” he said, striding over to them.

He looked Newton over from head to toe and Charlie suddenly saw Newton through Franco’s eyes—a disheveled old man in a soiled shirt and wrinkled pants who looked half mad. “What the hell happened to you, Newt?” Franco blurted out.

Newton looked down at himself, at his soiled, wrinkled clothes, and jerked his thumb toward Maria’s place. “
She
happened.”

“Maria’s signaling so much distress every chaser within miles could hear it,” Franco remarked. “What’s going on?”

“Why did you and Victor take Tess to El Bosque?” Charlie demanded. “What possessed you to do that?”

Franco threw up his hands. “Hold on, Charlie. Hold on. We didn’t take her there; she went on her own, when she sought refuge in the tunnels during the
brujo
attacks in the plaza. We followed her to keep her safe.”

“You sure did a lousy job,” he spat. “And why didn’t either of you contact me about it?”

“Where the hell were you?” Franco fired back. “I tried to get in touch with you. To tell you about El Bosque.”

“He was with me,” Karina said. “And I don’t remember hearing any Franco voice summoning any of us.”

“He said, she said.” Franco rolled his eyes.

“You need to talk some sense into Maria,” Newton told him, gazing off at her rapidly fading house. “She, José, and Simon disappeared El Bosque, with several hundred people inside.”

“Including my daughter,” Charlie said. “But you already know that, knew it within minutes of it happening since you and Victor were standing outside the market when Tess went in.”

Franco frowned, and for a second Charlie thought he was going to say,
How do you know that?
Instead, something came into his eyes that Charlie found deeply disturbing, a spiral of shadows, each one a bit darker than the one before it. Then Franco emitted a small, clipped laugh and the spiral of shadows vanished, and Charlie thought he probably had imagined it.

“Are you accusing me of something, Charlie?”

“Yeah, of poor judgment.”

Newton, agitated now, threw up his arms. “Please. No one is making accusations. We’re just trying to find out what happened, Franco.”

“Tess went into the market to find out if the clocks in El Bosque were all stuck at nine twenty-eight. She was in there so long that Victor and I decided to go inside and look for her, and that’s when the screaming and panic ensued. Then … we saw the blackness creeping … covering the walls, and it started spilling toward us. Once this black shit is set in motion, that’s it. The disappearance has to run its course.”

Charlie glanced at Maria’s house, fading one moment, flaring with color and definition in the next. “Unless the chasers who created it pull it back,” he said.

“No chasers can get into the disappeared area,” Karina added.

Franco rubbed his beard and nodded. “We’re all having trouble maintaining or doing anything we’ve always taken for granted.”

“Franco, if you have any pull at all with Maria, then you need to convince her the situation has to be reversed,” Newton said. “Like you said in the meeting, people need a choice.”

“What makes you think she’ll listen to me?” Franco snapped. “She hasn’t spoken to me since I sided with Charlie and Karina and the others. And come to think of it, Newt,
you
were the one who voted with her, so why am I suddenly the scapegoat here?”

“You’re not a scapegoat,” Newton said quickly. “Maria’s crazy. And I regret the day I lobbied to get her on the council. Just talk to her, okay? And if you happen to run into Victor and Liana, let them know what’s going on.”

Franco looked at the house, still fading in and out of view, and nodded reluctantly. “All right, I’ll talk to her. But I’m not expecting much.” He turned toward the Porsche, clapped his hands twice, and the car dissolved away. “At least we can still do stuff like that, right?”

Yeah, Charlie thought, but for how long?