Half-Resurrection Blues (12 page)

T
he Council will blast one of their stupid messages through my head any second now. I can feel the vibrations of imminent ignorance like an oncoming freight train. Sasha smiles in the blissed-out sleep of the fully fucked, I notice with satisfaction, and I’m enjoying a few quiet moments before my mind and unartful employers catch up to me. I slip out of bed so as not to pervert the peaceful air with their bullshit, and the transmission comes as I’m walking into the kitchen.

“New York Council of the Dead to Agent Delacruz. Your presence is required immediately at Council Headquarters for a hearing in regard to yesterday’s events, the extinguishing of a Council agent and the injuring of a soulcatcher prime during the course of duty. Please respond posthaste to room 849 in the headquarters main offices immediately.”

Respond posthaste immediately? Dickheads.

“End transmission.”

*   *   *

She wakes up while I’m sliding my belt on; blesses me with a groggy smile as she watches me lace up my boots.
I take her face in my hands and kiss it, once on the lips, once on the forehead, once on each cheek. A rumbling inside lets me know that if I linger any longer, I’ll be here all day, all week probably; so I stand, nod, and stroll out the door into the snow-covered morning.

*   *   *

Bureaucracy’s got its own special language. It’s trifling, of course, the lowest order of poetry, and manages to divest words of all meaning and still weigh them down with extra banality. After a while, you get good at it. Riley’s reached legendary status the way he spits that shit out like it’s scripted in him. Makes it look so easy.

I’m not there yet.

I still gotta bounce my mind back and forth along the highways of implications that burst out of each sentence, so my rhythm’s off and I come a little clunky with it. But I’m getting better.

In a chilly, mostly dark room up in some corner of the Council’s industrial warehouse headquarters in Sunset Park, I lay down the story in the best bureaucracy-talk I can muster. The committee is a semicircle of shrouds around me, indistinct in the foggy gloom. Somewhere, the ever-watchful eyes of at least one of the seven ignoble chairmen must be watching us.

“At this point in time, I withdrew from the premises with Agent Washington.”

“Why,” an icy voice cuts me off, “Agent Delacruz, did you not make an attempt to intervene on behalf of Agent Arroyo?”

You see that? Poetry. The most overindulgent, self-important use of language ever. I stifle a curse-out and then say, “The situation with Agent Arroyo had
deteriorated beyond any point where intervention would have been . . . useful.”

Where’s Riley when I need him? The motherfucker has a way with words. I can only imagine how he knocked ’em out after the last basement debacle. But Riley’s unconscious somewhere, recovering from the ngk poison. And I’m floundering.

“And by that you mean?”

“The ngks had already dealt mortal injuries on Agent Arroyo, and he was, by my estimation, in a state of Deeper Death. Unsalvageable.” I cringe at the word because it makes Dro into an object that must be thrown away.

“By your estimation.” I sense precise intonations being recorded forever in that endless ghost memory.

“Also, I had no idea what possible intervention I could’ve performed to release Agent Arroyo from the ngks, seeing as his own assault on one of them was the inciting incident that led to the attack.” Now I sound like I’m blaming him for his own death. I want to get out of here so badly it hurts.

An uneasy silence follows my words. Then the voice says, “I see. Continue.”

“Upon withdrawal from the scene, I absconded to what I deemed to be safer territory, namely Eastern Parkway on the corner of Franklin Avenue.”

“At this point you were with Agent Washington?”

“Correct. I was carrying him, actually.”

“He was unconscious?”

“Honestly . . .” I take a breath and then start again with less growl. “I wasn’t able to determine Agent Washington’s level of consciousness because I was too busy”—
not getting my ass murdered
—“absconding.”

Fuck.

“I see.”

“When I paused at the specified intersection, I then had time to check on my superior and discovered that he was in dire need of medical attention, having sustained an unknown injury from his contact with the ngk machinery.”
Which was all y’all’s brilliant idea, jackasses
.

The shroud in the middle of the semicircle steps forward, and for the first time I can make out his features: a hyperaggressive chin, sharp eyebrows, and the fakest of smiles. It’s Chairman Botus, the only one of the Ignoble Seven High Council chairmen to ever let his identity be known. I hate that grin he’s wearing like a cheap suit after a bad date, and I hate that he’s towering over me, immersed in shadows. “And here, Agent Delacruz, is where things get murky, so to speak.”

“Hardly,” I say. I’m doing everything not to take the bait, but the whole conversation is so infuriating.

“Ah. Do explain.” Botus leans forward like he really wants to hear what I have to say.

“Agent Washington’s condition was such that, as I stated”—
easy Carlos, easy
—“he required immediate medical attention. So I . . .”

“So you brought an unconscious agent of the Council to the safe house of a non-Council, unregulated entity.”

“Esther is . . .”

“And
left
him there.”

“I . . .”

“Did you, Agent Delacruz, file a report with the Council in regard to the incident?”

I hate being interrupted. “I left a message.”

“Excuse me?”

“I don’t have two-way telepathy, Chairman, because I’m not fully dead.”

Botus widens his smile. “Of course.”

“So the Council has generously set up a phone line that I report to, and I left the information on the machine.” I wonder if the sarcasm is gushingly obvious. Then I decide I don’t really care either way.

A moment passes. Botus is probably confirming this information with some other party.

“And did you know, Agent Delacruz, that this house ghost in question—”

“Esther.”

“—has been known to harbor and give aid to various non-Council entities?”

“Esther is the most proficient ghost healer I know. She personally attended to—”

“That wasn’t the question.”

I let a few seconds slip past. “The Council’s healing services would not have been administered in a timely enough fashion, giving the circumsta—”

“Also not the question, Agent Delacruz. The question was, did you know—”

“That Esther had non-Council ghosts up in her library sometimes? I did know that, yes. Found that out that very night, in fact.”

My face burns with irritation. I want to lunge forward and throttle this ridiculous Botus person. Instead I stay quiet while some more murmured conferences go on around me.

“Interesting,” Botus finally says, although at this point it’s not at all clear what he’s referring to. “Your case will be reviewed by the committee. Your complicity has been useful in our understanding of the situation, Agent Delacruz.”

Cock. Time grumbles along like a limping beggar as I
wait in a side room. Suddenly, I’m not so good at patience anymore. I can’t stop pacing, and the feeling that nothing’s happening rankles my brain. After a grueling hour, they beckon me back in and explain that they’re issuing me a verbal admonition for breach of protocol and will be keeping a sharp eye on me. They add, almost reluctantly, that I’m receiving official commendation for saving the life of a superior officer, and that I’ll be taking over as lead agent on the case. None of it means anything, of course. It’s all empty words and paperwork. I’m just glad to be out of that damn place.

I leave in a cloud of vague humiliation. I’d hoped, by the end, to at least storm out after some righteous speech. Or maybe go all stony and silent as the frustrated committee buffeted me helplessly with their idiotic questions. I wanted some tiny triumph amid all that unseemliness. Instead, it just sputtered out and I felt probed and abused and mostly empty.

*   *   *

Riley doesn’t look so hot. It could be worse, given what he’s been through, but still . . . it’s hard to watch my friend flickering on the edge of existence. He’s in a tidy little room the Council has set aside for injured ghosts—just a cot and whitewashed walls and Riley, all splayed out and muttering to himself. His eyes are closed. The room is charged with some kind of ghost-healing shit the Council uses, something like a hyperbaric chamber for the dead. The shit’s relaxing, whatever it is; as soon as I walk in, a general easiness enters me, washes out all the lingering irritation from my hearing. Underneath that, though, there is a sadness, and the happy healing shit can’t even touch that sadness; it’s not going anywhere.

I don’t think he even registers me walking in. I crouch against the wall near his cot and put my hand on his shoulder. It’s so barely there I almost press right through him and touch the sheets. Riley makes a huffy noise and rolls over, eyes still
shut.

I
t stopped snowing. The early-afternoon sky is pale with splotches of gray. Folks walk around huddled up into themselves, scurrying from place to place before the hypothermia sets in. It’s practically April, and this is some bullshit.

I hole up in one of those twenty-four-hour Mexican bakeries to take stock of the situation. A happy little round guy with spiky hair takes my order, bows graciously, and disappears into the back. An accordion-driven hard love ballad
oompah-oompah
s out of the speakers, but I barely notice it; I’m too busy trying to see past the emotional Drano of the last two hours and get a grip on what’s really going on.

I hadn’t really let myself deal too deeply with the thought of Dro being gone. First it was the initial terror of everything, then the dire need to
not
think about it as I escaped into Sasha’s arms, and then the hearing. Now the reality of it clamors around me; I can’t help but think about that last longing glimpse of his family that I interrupted.

The coffee’s not bad. Mexicans don’t get all extra about it like most island Latinos do, but they can make a fairly serious cup when they’re in the mood. I find a smile for
the portly waiter, and he seems pleased with himself. At the only other table in the place, an ancient mustachioed man in a Yankees cap plays Uno against an eight-year-old girl with pigtails. A couple day laborers in big vests and faded jeans trade stories at the counter.

I wonder if Riley’s gonna be okay. I wonder who Sasha really is, what secrets she’s tucked away inside herself. Then my thoughts glide reluctantly over my own secrets. Which ones slip out when I’m not paying attention, hanging in the air waiting to unravel?

Trevor.

If I hadn’t killed him, would everything be different? I’ve dreamed about that moment—the blade leaving my hand, that awful squish as it found its mark—more times than I can count. What, besides the nefarious Council bureaucracy, gave me the authority to so cavalierly snatch away that man’s life? I try again to imagine a scenario where Trevor and I just have a pleasant chat instead of me slaying him. The truth is, I know he’s wrapped up in this ngk mess, and I know he was about to vanish into Hell’s impossible haze.

I squint into my coffee.

There was no other way.
The Council sent me to do a job and I did it. I wonder if it really is that simple for some soulcatchers.

The question lingers.

I would’ve been able to tell Sasha everything.

My heart actually lurches at the thought, and suddenly I’m irretrievably sad. It’s one thing to talk slippery to the Council—it’s a given; a call-and-response game that keeps everybody grumpy but mostly above water. But to have to store away my whole strange existence from this woman who has swept into my life so gracefully and trusted her body with mine—that’s another story. Even poor Riley
doesn’t know the full extent of what’s going on with me. And now Dro’s gone. That recurring thought piles another heavy rock onto my heart.

No one knows what’s really going on with me.
Not a soul. I only barely understand it myself, and my vision seems to get blurrier by the minute. To top it off, the first however many years of my life are gone, a total void. Without warning, this matters. My whole life. I don’t even know how old I am. What century I came from. How long I was dead. Nothing. I’m empty. Empty of history, of genealogy. Devoid of family. An utter abbreviation of a person.

“Buen provecho,” the waiter says, putting a massive pork sandwich on the table. Besides the pig, there’s every vegetable possible smashed in there. It’s delicious. The eight-year-old giggles every time her abuelo picks up a card. Her laughter rises to a joyous cackle and she crows, “Uno!” The old man fusses with his mustache, furrows his brow, and then picks a card. And then another. “Chingada madre,” he mutters as the laughter continues unabated across the table. “Mierda.” Finally, he puts down one with a sigh and the girl gets real serious, scrunches up her face, and draws a card, then slams it down, yells, “Uno!” again, and resumes laughing.

A hipster, all skinny jeans and big glasses, pokes his head in, tries to ask directions to the train station, and leaves disappointed. The Council, in their infinite smugness, has put me in charge of this investigation. I put some more sandwich in me. Without Riley to bounce my ideas off of, I’m not sure how far I’ll get. No, that’s not it. I’ll untangle this shit, but I’m not sure I’ll make it out the other end intact. And I doubt it’ll lift me out of this preposterous mood.

Another ranchera blasts across the bakery. It’s a swirl of horns and pounding bass drums, somehow both mournful
and ecstatic. Also, slightly absurdly loud. The ngks are effectively undefeatable. If this tall hairy fellow’s somehow the source of their sudden appearance, dealing with him might be the only way to get them out of the equation. But the bastard just pulled my ghost-killing blade out of his gut with barely a flinch.

The tangled equation resolves itself into the simple question of how. Perhaps a trap of some kind. The basic laws of physics still seemed to apply to this creature. Didn’t see him walking through walls or flying. He was a solid body, a halfie at the deadest. Certainly powerful in whatever old sorcery he was up to, but not undefeatable. No one’s undefeatable. I might just have to work out some cleverness. What worries me most, though, is time. Now that all these new ngks have scuttled out of the woodworks, there’s no telling how fast the infestation will progress. The Council has soulcatchers out there, stalking up and down Franklin Avenue with their sharp eyes out, but really, what are they going to do? Alert me. And then we can all sit and brood about it more.

I killed my one lead. Slept with my other. At this point, all I got is whatever trail of Post-it notes Trevor left behind at the library.

The driving ranchera grinds to a halt just as the little girl finally defeats her grandpa and erupts into giggling again. He shuffles the deck and deals, sighing heavily through his mustache.