Broken Souls (21 page)

And now. Now I have no idea what I am.

“If I find an answer, I’ll let you know.”

She laughs. “I’d kinda rather you didn’t. No offense, Eric, but I’ve got enough trouble without you showing up again. I have a lot of pieces to pick up, a lot of people to find and probably get out of jail. Something tells me you’re better at breaking things apart than you are at putting them back together again.”

“Seems that way sometimes. Take care of yourself.”

“You too.” I watch her drive off, the sun peeking over the horizon, and worry that she’s right.

I steal a Volvo
parked in front of a Thai restaurant and make my way back to my motel in Burbank. The freeway’s closed, either from actual damage or the fear of it, so I cut up through Glendale. An eerie calm has settled over the streets. Reminds me of the Northridge Quake in ‘94. Not as big, not by a longshot, but it’s got people spooked. Quakes have aftershocks, but since this wasn’t a real quake, there won’t be one. The tension of waiting for the next shoe to drop hangs heavy in the air.

I turn on the radio, tune past the AM Spanish stations and get some news in English. Quake’s the big story, but so is the storage facility. They’re calling it gang warfare. Big firefight. I listen for a while and then the train story comes on. Media’s chewing on a terrorism angle, but the official story is a gas leak in the train car. It’s amazing the stories people come up with to explain the shit they can’t explain. And then there’s a brushfire out in Lancaster. Blame’s on a sudden Santa Ana wind that’s kicked up overnight and an errant spark. It’s a weird feeling, being responsible for so much of the news.

I pull into the parking lot of the motel, kill the engine and sit there, fried. I want to take a blistering-hot shower, sleep for a week, burn these clothes. I don’t think I’ve ever bled so much in my life. I touch the spot where the bullet went in, feel the cool texture of the stone that’s replaced the flesh. I take a breath and it moves with me, but there’s a stiffness to it that’s going to take some getting used to. I just hope I don’t have to get used to any more of it.

My phone rings in my pocket. I answer as soon as I see that it’s Vivian. “Hey. How’s Tabitha?” I say.

“I don’t know,” she says. She sounds exhausted. “I’ve called every emergency room in L.A., I’ve called the police. No one’s seen her. Nobody’s seen that ambulance.”

“It had to go somewhere,” I say. “After the shit I pulled I’m surprised they didn’t go straight to the cops.”

“These things have GPS installed. They don’t just disappear. It should have turned up by now. Do you think the guy who was going after the cage—”

“It’s not him. He’s dead. And I don’t think he had time to do anything to her. You’ve tried her phone?” I say.

“Home, cell, the bar. Nothing.”

“She’s probably fine and this is just confusion from the quake. She’ll turn up.”

“I know, but even with all that it’s weird. I’m going on shift in a little bit and I can’t keep tracking her down.”

“I got it from here,” I say. “I’ll find her.”

“Thanks. Let me know if you hear anything.”

“I’ll keep you posted.” I disconnect, wondering what the hell could have happened. A thought pops into my head, something Mictlantecuhtli said about his connection to me. I push it out of my mind, but it comes back stronger along with a question I hadn’t asked before. The more I think about it, the less I like it.

Goddammit. I just want to go to sleep, but this just gets bigger and bigger in my mind and I can’t shake it. Finally I resign myself to it. There’s nothing I can do about it until I get a shower and some clean clothes, but a nap is out of the question. I head inside past the motel ghosts and hope I’m wrong.

___

I pull up outside Tabitha’s house. I button the topmost button on my shirt, straighten my tie. Now, not only do my tattoos peek up over the collar, but thin green streaks do, as well. All of the wounds from where the ghosts tagged me have filled in with jade, and now green lines crisscross my body underneath the tats. I don’t know how many of the tattoos are still useful, or if there’s even any way I can touch them up. Maybe with a dremel? I cut myself at the motel to see if I could score the jade. Couldn’t even scratch it. But cutting actual flesh is fine. I was half worried it would heal over with more jade, but it bled like any other cut.

I sit in the car for a good five minutes drumming my fingers on the steering wheel. Thought a lot on the drive over. Didn’t like what I came up with. Eventually it’s shit-or-get-off-the-pot time and I finally get out of the car. The blooming jacaranda tree in Tabitha’s front yard is an explosion of purple. Petals litter the ground in a violet blanket. I pause a moment to look at the Mini. It was in the bar lot last night. There’s no way any self-respecting hospital would have let her leave so soon. So did someone else drive it here? Who? Someone from the bar? Some old friend she calls when things get tough? It occurs to me that Tabitha knows a lot more about me than I know about her. I go to the front door, not sure I want to go inside, not sure I want to stay out here. There are answers on the other side of that door that I’m not sure I want. I’m afraid that there might be more questions, too. We have precious few illusions and I’m afraid that a big one is about to get broken. I take a deep breath, try the knob. Unlocked.

Nothing’s changed inside, boxes in varying stages of unpacking, pictures leaning against the wall rather than hung up, but there are things I didn’t notice before. Last night I wasn’t paying as much attention to my surroundings as I should have. Too focused on being beat to hell, my own problems, on Tabitha. Now that I get a good look around in the daylight, I can see the little things. Small details that didn’t register. A skeletal marionette carved of wood hanging from a hook in the corner, a line of ceramic
calaveras
on the mantel painted in bright Dia De Los Muertos patterns.

Tabitha steps out from her kitchen, two mugs of coffee in her hands. “Black, right? I’ve never asked, but you always struck me as someone who drinks his coffee black.” She tries to hand a mug to me. I don’t take it. She shrugs and sets it on the coffee table.

“Vivian’s been calling,” I say. “Trying to find out what happened to you. You haven’t answered your phone.”

“Of course I haven’t answered the phone. I don’t want to talk to her. I want to talk to you.”

“Tell me I’m wrong,” I say. “Tell me you didn’t lie to me. That you saw Alex and he told you where I was and that I’m wrong.”

She sips at her coffee. “I can’t,” she says. “And you know that.” I do. I wish I didn’t. Wish this was all a mistake and I was just making shit up in my head. But I knew the truth before I got here. Knew it before I was even conscious of it, I think.

“How long have you been Santa Muerte’s puppet? Were you working with her the whole time I’ve known you?” When Mictlantecuhtli told me about his connection to me, something bothered me, but I couldn’t place what. And then things happened so fast I didn’t have time to think about it after. But after talking to Vivian it started to bug me again. And that’s when it clicked. How she found me at the store, how Santa Muerte told me in the desert that I had been in “safe hands” that night, the fact that she disappeared last night with an ambulance and showed up here.

She laughs. “Oh, is that what you think?”

“What the hell should I think?”

Mictlantecuhtli couldn’t have appeared to Tabitha as Alex because the only connection he has right now to the outside world is me. He said he can observe, has observed, the world going on around him, but I’m the only person he can talk to. So he couldn’t have appeared to her to tell her I was in that electronics store surrounded by demons.

But someone else has been keeping tabs on me. I twist the ring around my finger. It’s gold now, a string of tiny
calaveras
etched in its surface. Is it always that when I see her? And jade when I see Mictlantecuhtli? I can’t remember.

She sips at her coffee. I clench my fists, ready to wipe that goddamn smirk off her face. “You should think that I’d never stoop to being someone’s puppet. Husband.”

It doesn’t register at first. Doesn’t quite sink in. But when it does the room starts to spin and my feet almost give out. “Oh, Jesus.”

“I’m good, aren’t I? Cold, imperious Santa Muerte, the skeletal bride, and cute, perky Tabitha who can’t quite adjust to this big, wide world of magic. It’s easier than you might think.”

I sit on the arm of the sofa, my world dropping out from under me. Bad enough that I thought she was working for her, but this? I shake myself out of it, the shock wearing off. Now’s the time to get answers.

“What if I don’t believe you,” I say. I’ve been lied to a lot, lately. And some of it’s been with the truth.

She says nothing, her expression doesn’t change. But then the skin on her face cracks in long fissures, strips of red meat falling away from bone as her hair drops out of her scalp in clumps. She grows taller, hands lengthening, skin falling away from spindly fingers. Soon she’s a grinning skeleton, all smooth, white bone and a stink of roses and smoke. It takes forever and no time at all, a blink of an eye and an eternity.

And then she’s Tabitha again, sipping her coffee.

“Convinced?” she says, putting the mug down.

“Convinced enough,” I say. “Why Tabitha? Why not appear as Vivian? Or the Bruja? If you can be anyone, why Tabitha?”

“Mmm. The Bruja. I don’t think she likes you much. Anyway, it’s not like that. Eric, I know you better than you know yourself. You’d burned every bridge you ever had here. You wouldn’t trust Vivian appearing out of nowhere. You wouldn’t trust another mage. You certainly weren’t going to trust Santa Muerte. No, you needed some nice, normal girl that you didn’t have any history with. You needed a friend. So I gave you one.”

“Is that why you killed my sister? To show that you care?”

“I’m sorry about that,” she says, face growing serious.

“No, you’re not.”

“You’re right, I’m not. Eric, to be whole Mictlan needs a queen
and
a king. One without the other and it withers. It’s been withering for hundreds of years. All that time I’ve been searching for someone to take Mictlantecuhtli’s place. And then I found you. You should be flattered. I’m trying to turn you into a god.”

“You’re trying to turn me into a piece of statuary to get the old king back. That’s why you got Sergei to steal the knife. Yeah, I had a talk with your ex. I know how we’re switching places. And you’re going to kill me to bring him back.”

She says nothing for a long time and then barks out a laugh. “That’s what he told you? No. I don’t want him back. He made his choice and he’s welcome to it. He can sit in that dumpy little tomb of his and rot for all I care.” She takes my hands in hers. “Eric, I chose you. You are the next king of Mictlan. Not him. I know we got off on the wrong foot—”

I pull my hands away, give her a shove. “I think murdering my sister’s a bit much for ‘the wrong foot,’ don’t you?” I pull up my shirt, show her the patch of jade in my gut. “If he’s lying, explain this.”

“That part he’s not lying about. You are merging. But I didn’t send Sergei after you.” She pauses, lets that sink in. I don’t know if she’s telling the truth. Of course, I don’t know if Mictlantecuhtli’s telling me the truth, either.

“I don’t think that Mictlantecuhtli intended for Sergei to try to kill you with that knife,” she says. “I think he sent Sergei to give it to you so you could kill me with it. I’d thought of doing the same thing, actually. But not to kill you. To finally end him.”

“So why didn’t you make a play for the knife?”

“Because I trusted you would get it on your own. Eric, you’re the only hope I have to make Mictlan whole. Yes, I’m using you, but not like you think. Mictlantecuhtli made his choice a long time ago. And until he’s gone and someone takes his place Mictlan will fester. I need you to take the knife and kill Mictlantecuhtli. That will stop this. All of his power will be yours and he’ll be gone.”

“Seems dead’s a hard thing to pin down with gods,” I say. “You sure that would work?”

“If you took the knife and stabbed him with it hard enough he’d cease to exist. You don’t get any more dead than that. He hates me, Eric. He wants me gone. Do you know how he got in that tomb? It was a mistake. He lured a bunch of Conquistadors there to kill me.”

“That sounds like a piss-poor plan,” I say.

“They had help,” she says. “But things went wrong, and I fought. Now instead of me stuck in that tomb it’s him. He wants Mictlan for himself, thinks he can hold it all together on his own, and refuses to believe that it needs both a king and a queen. He doesn’t care about making it what it once was. You may not believe me, but it’s not Hell. It’s Paradise. At least it used to be. And it can be again.”

I’m in the middle of a divine, domestic pissing match and I don’t know which side to believe. It’s a lot to take in. I don’t trust Mictlantecuhtli and I sure as hell don’t trust her. But one of them needs to be telling the truth, right? I have no idea which one of them to believe.

“So what if Mictlan goes to shit? How is that my problem?”

“Because you took me up on my offer,” she says. “No take-backs. Help me, and you become a god. Do nothing, and be imprisoned for eternity as a lump of lifeless rock.”

“Some choice.”

“An easy choice.”

“You let Sergei shoot you,” I say. “Didn’t you? You knew I’d try to save you and that it’d trigger these abilities.”

“I wasn’t planning on it,” she says. “It just worked out that way. I thought it best to go along and let things play out. I wanted to see if your powers would manifest and what you might do with them. Nicely done, by the way. Using them to heal would never have occurred to Mictlantecuhtli.”