My Soul to Take (45 page)

Harried attendants knocked on the door incessantly, bringing dresses, flower samples, and menus for Jessica to approve. Michel was making his wedding plans. Or was it Fana?

Jessica’s worn face and reddened eyes made her look like she was arranging Fana’s funeral instead, but she met with the attendants
dutifully, sitting with the women at the tea table near the fireplace. The women were so frantic to make Jessica smile that Phoenix wondered if their lives depended on it.

“Yes,
esta bien
,” Jessica kept saying, barely looking at the fabrics. “Anything is fine. You choose.” Her lack of interest brought the women to tears as they gave each other worried looks:
They
should choose? They were terrified of displeasing Michel.

Phoenix remembered her barefoot wedding to Carlos on a beach in San Juan before a handful of family and friends, an easy day that had planned itself. Still, Phoenix pitied the attendants. She called over her shoulder: “That one! Fana will love that one,” when one dress’s white gauzy lace caught the corner of her eye. The women showered Phoenix with teary thanks, and Jessica blew her a grateful kiss, glad to be done with it.

Would Fana wake up in time for her wedding?

By six o’clock, nearly dusk, Phoenix needed bandages for her blistered fingertips. When she couldn’t play, she sang while Rami’s violin sang with her.

“My soul gets cold from standing still … if I can’t test my wings, I’ll die …”
Phoenix sang to Fana’s sleeping face.
“Don’t wanna die for a while … I think I’ll fly for a while …”

Fana’s eyes popped opened. Phoenix was so startled, she thought she’d imagined it.

“I’ve always loved that song,” Fana said. Her voice was sleepy, but her eyes were bright.

Fana smiled as if she’d never been gone.

Jessica’s day-long prayers had been lost somewhere in Michel’s palace. Throughout the long hours, watching Fana’s placid sleep, Jessica had hoped to hear the wails and shrieks of Michel’s faithful through the halls, the sign that he was dead.

Not only hadn’t Fana killed Michel, she still planned to marry him. Jessica hadn’t realized how much she had hoped for a different outcome until Fana opened her eyes, her plan unchanged. Jessica’s disappointment blistered against the walls of her stomach.

But at least Fana was back. She hadn’t died helpless in her sleep
in a nightgown soaked with blood. But how much had Michel changed her?

Fana looked giddy enough to float in the day’s last light as Jessica and Dawit stood on either side of her on the balcony overlooking Michel’s woods and courtyard, watching the bustle of wedding preparations. A caravan of trucks was making deliveries, a chorus of loud beeping when they backed up, supervised by a swarm of Sanctus Cruor officials in crimson vests and skullcaps. Twelve white horses trotted in a disciplined line as costumed horsemen rehearsed formations. A royal wedding. To Jessica, it looked like preparations for a circus.

The stone domed tower above them speared the sky. Two silent bells hung from the belfry, the highest point. Below the bells was a gaping open-air platform where Michel planned to exchange his vows with Fana. The tower’s belfry was supported by thin columns of polished stone, but Jessica could see straight through the tower to the purple sky over Sonora. The Most High had made several addresses there, his attendants had told her.

To Jessica, Michel’s tower looked like a castle keep. Fana’s dungeon.

“He’s agreed to delay the Cleansing,” Fana said. “At least by a day.”

“That isn’t nearly enough,” Dawit said. “Not for what you’re trading!”

Jessica noticed again the way Fana seemed to be standing on her tiptoes, how she kept clinging to the balcony’s carved stone railing as if her weight were pulling away from her. Sometimes Fana’s feet seemed not quite to touch the ground. Was she levitating?

Jessica might never understand everything Teka had tried to explain about Fana’s mental union with Michel, but she knew what sex looked like. Now Fana was shining with a different kind of fever. Fana wouldn’t be the first woman to confuse sex with a man with having power over him.

“You’re marrying him, Fana,” Jessica said, speaking slowly to wade through Fana’s busy mind and floating feet. “That’s all he’ll give you? A day? That’s ridiculous.”

“Today I have one day,” Fana said. “Tomorrow, another day. Or a
week. Or a year. I’ll help him interpret the Cleansing a different way. We just need time.”

“If you haven’t changed him by fusing, what makes you think you ever can?” Jessica said. “He’s seen everything you want from him.”

“I don’t expect to change him,” Fana said. “We’ll change each other. We already are.”

Jessica didn’t have the gifts to burrow into Fana’s head, but she could see the difference in her already. Fana’s eyes never met hers or Dawit’s when she spoke to them now; she was halfway with them, halfway somewhere else. With Michel, probably.

“Will he wear his Sanctus Cruor robe to the wedding?” Dawit said. “If so, you can’t predict what he’ll do. His beliefs may prove too deep for him, with so many followers here. To him, this wedding represents the union in the Prophecy, the signal for the Cleansing. He’s waited his whole life for this day, Fana.”

Fana nodded, considering. “I’ll ask him not to wear his robe,” she said.

“Be prepared if he does not agree,” Dawit said. “You may lose ground.”

Fana smiled to herself; a secret.

“What’s funny?” Jessica said.

Fana shook her head. “It’s not funny. I just wish I could show you what I gained.”

“Don’t trade away the world population for good sex and flying lessons,” Jessica said, and Fana’s smile vanished.

“I wouldn’t do that, Mom.” Fana looked embarrassed, a hint of her former self. Jessica noticed Fana holding more firmly to the railing. Was she worried about literally drifting away?

“Just checking to make sure you’re still there, sweetheart.” Jessica dangled her car key for Fana, to show her what commitment looked like. “We can still go.”

“You can go,” Fana said. “You gave me everything I needed. He won’t stop you.”

Fana’s terseness stung, but maybe she would go. She could meet Alex and Lucas in Nigeria to help brace for what might come after the wedding.

“Would you prefer us to go, Fana?” Dawit said. There was a trace of hurt in his voice.

Fana still didn’t look at them, gazing down at the courtyard.

“I’m getting married,” Fana said. “Every bride wants her parents there.”

Please don’t wear your Sanctus Cruor vestments when we’re married
.

When Fana pulsed the thought to Michel, the sounds and sights from the physical world dimmed, and her mind brightened. Her parents’ voices faded, and the busy thoughts of the workers frantic to make Michel happy. Fana’s awareness narrowed to Michel, riding the new streams that tied them. She dived into him with ease.

Her timing was bad: Michel was in a meeting with his father in his chapel. His father was trying to persuade Michel to let him administer the vows. She and Michel had agreed on Teka instead, and Stefan, as always, was angry; accusing blasphemy, predicting disaster.

Fana’s message so surprised Michel that he didn’t answer at first. But silence was better than the instant outrage that would have come before their fusing.

Don’t trade away the world population for good sex and flying lessons
. Her mother’s voice, faraway. Fading to nothing …

HOW CAN YOU ASK THAT OF ME?
Michel finally said.
THIS IS THE WEDDING OF THE MOST HIGH TO HIS PROPHESIED MATE
.

Your robes are a symbol of your station, Michel. I want to marry the man—not a symbol
.

Michel whisked her to the chapel with him, so that she could see the gold writing from the Letter of the Witness that filled the wall. His father’s voice was a muffled burr. She could smell the tequila in Stefan’s glass.

THE PEOPLE HAVE NEVER SEEN ME WITHOUT MY ROBE
, Michel said.

Our real union was last night, Michel. You weren’t wearing your robe then
.

She reminded him of her ocean retreat, and how they had played
in the warm water. She tickled him in one of the new mental passageways they had built.

YOU ASK TOO MUCH, FANA
.

Please consider it. You don’t have to answer now
.

I’M SORRY
, Michel said,
BUT YOU HAVE MY ANSWER
.

She would marry the Most High after all. Fana marveled at how unafraid she was. No answer from Michel would have been good or bad; it simply was. She had known that fusing with Michel wouldn’t give her control over him unless she was ready to risk fighting him. She wished they could go back to learning each other instead of the constant arguing that the physical world’s concerns thrust on them. Her mental streams hummed from his voice, tugging to follow him, just as hers tugged at his.

But she couldn’t play with Michel tonight. How would she find her way back in time for their wedding? Phoenix and Rami needed to rest.

Brightness coaxed Fana back to the balcony with her parents, where the sun was setting. It was almost as pretty as her mind’s ocean, except that the physical world’s colors were so much duller. Had the colors here been brighter yesterday?

Fana was dizzy from her balcony’s height, startled to brush against the railing as her feet found the tiled floor again. She’d been floating! She had never levitated on her own, and now she could barely remember how to walk.

What else was waiting? What else could she be?

Fana nestled between the auras of her parents, enjoying the feeling of them on either side, her ocean in the physical world. Colors might grow duller, but her parents’ auras were a different kind of bath: pure love.

“I’m getting married,” Fana told them. “Every bride wants her parents there.”

Thursday

Wedding Day

6:30 a.m.

T
hey came from everywhere, following the ringing of the bells that had started at five a.m. They braved the road, glutted with traffic. They took shortcuts through the woods, where they were questioned and searched by soldiers. They rode cramped in cars and trucks, or weaved dangerously on motorcycles and minibikes. They trudged on foot with their children trailing behind them, or riding on their shoulders.

As far as Raul’s binoculars could see, Nogales’s faithful were streaming to the church.

The women wore white dresses, and the men in jeans had white T-shirts or dress shirts. When it had still been dark and Raul had been scouting through the infrared, the pilgrims had looked like ribbons of milk spilling across the rocky woods and mountain.

The church’s courtyard was filled. The overflow already ran the length of the church’s driveway, down the road, and into the surrounding woods. Thousands of people would never be close enough to see or hear the ceremony when it started, but they might all hear the gunshot.

Eight o’clock. Ninety minutes to go.

“How many, you think?” Martha asked him.

“Twenty-five, thirty thousand,” Raul said. “Might be more, if they’d had any notice.”

Martha’s voice beside Raul was as constant as his heartbeat. She
lay five yards left of him, eye always trained through her spotting scope. Like him, she was draped in heavy, grassy camouflage. They had found a spot in the high grass and shrubs near a cluster of knotted tescalama-tree roots, like a web of aged fingers clamping the soil in place behind them. The roots would give them footing when it was time to run.

He and Martha had met at the range when both of them were long past the age of expecting to meet someone new. They had almost the same story, word for word; one afternoon had taught them their experiences and grievances in common. Martha had been raised in Texas, too, a
gringa
with a wide face, cherry cheeks, and beerblond hair who’d left her parents the day she turned eighteen in 1979 and enlisted in the army. Then her true life had begun—until things changed. It wasn’t every day you met a perfect soulmate
and
a world-class spotter just as pissed off as you were. And no one had ever looked as good as Martha in a ghillie suit.

There hadn’t been a sliver of sunlight when they’d chosen their spot at four-thirty. Before the night’s clouds had burned off, rain had dripped on them for twenty minutes, long enough to turn the ground slick.

When the bells had started ringing at five, Raul had thought it was an alarm.

But the church had only been calling to its supplicants, the sole wedding invitation. The first had started coming right away, as if they’d been camped out down the road. Within a half hour, the traffic had been steady. Within an hour, the road to the church had been jammed.

“Know what, baby?” Martha said.

“¿Qué pedo, rubia?”
She loved it when he spoke Spanish, but his English was better.

“This isn’t just talk anymore.”

“Nope. We’re way past talking.”

How many nights had they stayed up late talking about how the fanatics and narcos were destroying Mexico, and how the feds back Stateside were burning the Constitution to try to shut down Glow? The key, they’d realized, was to understand the
connection
.
They weren’t the only ones who could see that Washington was on its knees to S—

Raul stopped himself before he thought the sect’s name. He wasn’t superstitious like his cousin Andres, but he knew how to dodge a jinx on mission day.

Andres had called him for jobs twice before, but never this big. He and Andres had to stay away from each other. Raul was glad he’d enlisted back in 1995 after a long stint as a Dallas cop, before the DEA had heard of the Enriquez cartel in Sonora. He’d liked bragging about his cousin’s gangster family when he was growing up in El Paso, but the connection had stopped being cute a long time ago. Andres was a second cousin, but still.

Five years ago, Raul had done some work for him in Mexico, getting rid of some people the world wouldn’t miss. Andres had paid him so well that he hadn’t done it again. But they’d talked for the first time after Tio Tito and their little cousin Arturo were murdered. Butchered—that was the word for the old man’s death. They traded tragedies.