Ghost Key (9 page)

They’re … going to burn me, to—

Von, you died already. All they’re doing is freeing you to move into the afterworld, to get to where you’re supposed to be. Hold on to thoughts of love.

How … how can you stand it, Maddie? When … when she went after me, slammed into me, it … it was … horrifying, like being buried alive.

I’ve learned to do whatever I have to do to stay alive. She’s not going to defeat me. And you won’t be defeated, either. They’re doing you a favor. Believe me. When the box begins to burn, Von, reach for all that’s good and loving in the world. There’ll be guides to help you.

She kept talking to him like this as the
brujos
paddled out across the dark waters of the gulf. When he was calmer, she explained that she had to check on something and would be back shortly. Then she reached out to the man who had touched her mind several days ago.

It was the only time in all these months of being imprisoned within her own body that anyone had found her. And this man had actually gotten so close to her that she had seen his face—dark, penetrating eyes, hair the color of rich chocolate, a square jaw. Yet he hadn’t been physical. It was as if he were a holographic projection. She had no idea what that meant and didn’t get a chance to find out because something had spooked him and he’d disappeared.

Maddie extended her consciousness, thrusting it out through time and space, searching for him. She had learned to do this in the early days of her imprisonment within her own body, when Dominica controlled her so completely Maddie couldn’t even relieve her own aching bladder unless the bitch allowed her to do so.

In those early weeks, she had learned a great deal about consciousness in general and her consciousness in particular. By stretching her awareness, she had been able to search for Wayra, her aunt Tesso, her grandmother, anyone she loved. She had found her family a few times, but because she was only consciousness, they hadn’t been aware of her. Once, when Wayra had been in his shifter form on a highway somewhere, it seemed that he sensed her. He had stopped, snout raised into the air, as if to catch her scent. Another time, she was sure she’d seen her grandfather, Charlie, dead more than a decade. It had startled her, seeing the dead when she was possessed by the dead, and her consciousness had snapped back into her body.

Now she reached and reached, stretching her awareness until it felt as though it might shred apart like a wet tissue in a high wind. Then it popped free of her body, and she could see brilliantly colored filaments of light with her inner eyes. They seemed to extend outward in all directions, gossamer threads in a giant spiderweb. Maddie thought these threads might be Indra’s net, a metaphor used by ancient Hindu mystics and Buddhists to illustrate the spiritual net that connected everyone in the cosmos. She suspected that if she followed any single strand, she would eventually reach a living being, a soul.

But which strand belonged to the man whose awareness had touched hers?

She focused on him, on what she had sensed about him, and thought she brushed up against his essence. She struggled to focus her inner vision and suddenly saw him and a golden retriever hurrying up the sidewalk to a small house with a pretty yard illuminated by outside lights. The clarity with which she saw them, the man and the dog, astonished her. It was as if she watched them through a pane of utterly clean glass. She didn’t have any idea how this was possible, but stopped questioning the process and absorbed as many details as she could.

The man wore jeans, a T-shirt with a peace sign on the front, a blue and light gray windbreaker, black running shoes with luminous orange laces. He looked Latino, late twenties, about six feet tall. The dog wasn’t on a leash and stared directly at her and started barking.

“What is it, Jessie?” The man glanced around.

The retriever’s tail wagged, and she barked again. The man stooped next to the dog, his fingers sliding through her fur, and briefly shut his eyes. Then, softly, he said, “It’s you, the redhead with the parrot-green eyes. Maddie, your name’s Maddie. Are you out of body? Dreaming? Is that it? Tell me about the evil that tasted me, Red. Is it inside of you?”

It wasn’t as if she could answer his questions. She was only consciousness. No body, no vocal cords. She desperately longed to speak to him in her mind, but the risk of doing so terrified her. Talking to disembodied Von was one thing; talking to a live human was something else. If Dominica realized what she was doing, she might plunge Maddie into a deep sleep and that would be it for the next ten or twelve hours. But would she ever have a better opportunity than right now?

She moved closer to him and the dog, brushed up against them. She offered an image first, of Esperanza, then of the battle last summer that ended the decades of
brujo
terror. Finally, she spoke to him in her mind, conjured more images, and hoped that for him it would be like reading an illustrated book.
The evil inside me is distracted right now. I can speak to you when her attention is elsewhere. She’s a hungry ghost, a
bruja,
dead but not dead, and she and her tribe seek to possess the living and live out their mortal lives. She’s ancient. Her new tribe is reckless. She intends to set up a
brujo
enclave in the United States that—

“Red, slow down,” he said softly. “I’m getting some of this, but you have to slow down.
Bruja,
I clearly heard the word
bruja
. That means ‘witch.’ It—”

In mythology, a
brujo
is many things. It’s what these hungry ghosts are called. It’s the—

“More slowly. Please. This kind of thing is … new for me, the words, the stream of consciousness. Where are you?”

On an island beach. These ghosts are about to annihilate one of their own who saved his host and obliterated a couple of
brujos. She showed him what she was seeing, the six hosts building a fire in a rock pit, the wooden box in the sand.
The ghost is kept in that box.

“Give me your location, Red. I can help you. My name is Nick Sanchez. I’m a remote viewer for the government and the FBI has asked for our help in locating a terrorist cell. These … ghosts you’re talking about, they’re the terrorists, right?”

Astonished and excited that he could actually hear some of what she was saying, she rushed on.
The hosts who have died have been hauled off to landfills, Sanchez. Dominica’s tribe has seized the cops, some of the town’s power base, and
— She suddenly realized she had to give him something useful, something he could
experience.
She instructed him to go to Annie’s Café on any evening.
The real terrorists sit on the right side of the café dining room. They’re the boisterous gluttons. They’re the
brujos
—hungry ghosts who seize humans for the pleasures of physical life. The one in me is the leader. She intends to take over Cedar Key and make it a
brujo
enclave. They’re terrified of fire. If a host is killed and the
brujo
doesn’t escape before the host dies, then the
brujo
is annihilated.

“But ghosts are dead, right? How can the dead be annihilated?”

Maddie felt Dominica’s attention turning back to her and quickly thought of her body and snapped back into it.

“Nica?” Whit looked at her. “You okay?”

Dominica tightened her control over Maddie. “Yes. For a moment there, I couldn’t feel Maddie’s essence.”

“They do that sometimes,” Whit said. “Leave, wander around. To preserve their sanity or something.”

It was almost funny, hearing creepy Whit talk like he was some sort of expert. But he was the one Dominica loved now, so she didn’t call him on it. Maddie crawled back into the virtual room she had created months ago, her little cave of imaginary stuff—a MacBook, a comfortable couch, a TV, books, things she had created from memory by using the raw materials of her imagination. It wasn’t so different from what the
brujos
did in their natural forms. She put on
Four Winds,
a CD by Bright Eyes, then fell back on the couch, waiting for Dominica and her minions to reach the island, and struggled against surrendering to despair.

*   *   *

There
and suddenly gone. Sanchez turned slowly in place, eyes sweeping through the starlight and shadows in his father’s yard. He glanced at the dog, now busily sniffing through the bushes along the side fence. Jessie had seen her, Sanchez had sensed her nearby. It was as if
she
had been remote viewing
him.

Red. Definitely gone now. He slipped a notepad from his shirt pocket and scribbled a few notes on what he’d learned. Hungry ghosts, bleed-outs, some gorgeous city high in the mountains where a battle against these
brujos
had taken place, a ghost named Dominica whose tribe stole bodies, just as he’d seen in his viewing. Other bits and pieces came to him—words, a phrase, images. A café on an island. Which café? Where was the island? “Shit,” he murmured. He’d gotten some of what she’d said, but not enough of it to find her.

Sanchez glanced through his notes. It all sounded nuts.
Hey, Delaney, the terrorists are ghosts.
Yeah, that would be a quick route to a psychological evaluation or a pink slip.

But it thrilled him that they had communicated.

He whistled for Jessie and they headed up the sidewalk toward the house where Sanchez had been born. Little Havana had been his father’s haven for decades. Back in the day, the house and the neighborhood had been upscale. But in recent years, the entire area had slipped into decay and neglect. Now Emilio’s windows were covered with bars to prevent robberies, but the bars also made the place look like a prison. The house on the left was in foreclosure, the one on the right had been vacant for months. He wished his father would move.

Before he reached the front door, he heard the shouting match between Emilio and Nicole. Not surprising. She had called Sanchez late this afternoon, asking him to meet her at Emilio’s place. That meant some sort of crisis had developed. Every week a crisis ensued. He briefly considered just turning around and driving home. But Nicole could use some support at the moment, so he opened the door without knocking or ringing the bell and entered the house. Jessie bounded past him, nose to the tile floor, and disappeared into the kitchen, the source of the racket.

Sudden silence. Then Emilio shouted in Spanish:
“Get that goddamn dog out of my house!”

Sanchez hurried through the kitchen doorway and nearly burst out laughing. Jessie, sprawled next to Emilio’s chair, covered her ears with her paws. Nicole’s eyes, dancing with amusement, met his, and she pressed her hands to her mouth to stifle her laughter.

“That’s not a very warm welcome, Emilio,” Sanchez said.

“Dogs have fleas and bad breath,” he grumbled. “And they fart. When did you get a dog, anyway?”

“Months ago.”

“And you never brought her here before?”

“Why would I, with a reception like this? And she doesn’t fart or have fleas and bad breath. Where’s Carmen?”

“He fired her.” Nicole tucked her long black hair behind her ears. “Carmen called me a few hours ago to tell me.”

“She was the most abusive housekeeper yet,” Emilio grumbled.

“It was probably the other way around, Emilio. She’s the sixth housekeeper you’ve fired in as many months. I hope you can do your own shopping and cleaning, because I’m not looking for another housekeeper.”

His old man frowned. “But … but how am I supposed to—”

“Shop and clean? Cook? Get over to the park for domino games?” Sanchez shrugged. “Beats me. You figure it out.”

“But … I…” he stammered.

“Look, Dad, I found this great facility just five blocks from Carlos and me,” Nicole said quickly. “You’d have your own room, TV, all the comforts of home. They have a full nursing staff, a beautiful dining room with—”

Emilio slammed his bony fists down against the table, rattling dishes and coffee mugs, and shot to his feet with shocking swiftness. “
No
. I’ve told you both over and over again,
no, no,
and
no.
I am
not
moving. Everyone I know who has ever moved to one of those places dies there.” He flung out his skinny arms, a gesture that encompassed not just the kitchen, but the house, the entire neighborhood. “All my memories, my photos, my friends live in the neighborhood, my—” Then something tragic happened to his face. Wrinkles collapsed, as if pulled down by a terrible gravity, his dark eyes flooded with tears. He sank into the chair, shoulders hunched, everything about his body whispering defeat and surrender. He pressed his hands over his face and cried.

Nicole, ever the nurturer, the one who always addressed him as “Dad” rather than as “Emilio,” as Sanchez had for years, moved forward to provide comfort and solace. But Jessie was already nudging Emilio’s leg with her snout, whining softly, and one of Emilio’s hands dropped gently to her head. His knobby fingers slipped through her silken fur and he looked down at her, regarding her with his rheumy eyes as though she were a curious object he didn’t remember buying. When she licked the back of his hand, Sanchez thought,
Shit, he won’t like that.
But Emilio started to laugh.

It stunned Sanchez. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d heard his father laugh. He watched Emilio transform from a bitter old man to one who suddenly discovered he still had a capacity for enjoyment.

“You are one beautiful dog,” Emilio said softly, and leaned forward and rubbed his face against her head. She licked his nose and barked. “You are welcome in my house any time, Jessie.”

Nicole stepped in then, talking quickly, calmly, petting Jessie, encouraging Emilio to call Carmen, apologize, and hire her back. Emilio didn’t look too happy about the prospect, but Sanchez suspected Carmen would acquiesce, especially when he told her he would be paying her more. With two kids in college, she needed the money.