Apparition (The Hungry Ghosts) (13 page)

It took him a while. Once he had a version he liked he started uploading the photos he’d taken of those gleaming white surfaces where there had once been hillsides and the café’s rear deck. But the Internet was sluggish and it took forever for just a single photo to upload.

Since the defeat of Dominica’s tribe, the Internet had been free to everyone who lived within a fifty-mile radius of the city. Mayor Torres and his city council had deemed it to be vital to the security of the city, so a tourist tax and part of the sales tax paid for it. And usually, the connection was fast, flawless. Ian now found himself jumping to the paranoid conclusion that Ricardo—or his tribe, if it existed—was responsible for the sluggishness.

He tried uploading the photo with his browser, but the spinning beach ball on his Mac indicated it was going to take a while. Ian pushed away from his desk and went in search of something to eat. The office consisted of three rooms—the main work area that looked out onto the narrow cobbled street and the park and plaza on the other side; a small room with a table, chairs, and a couch for their infrequent editorial meetings; and the employee kitchen.

Since he and Tess lived in a third-story apartment above the office, he rarely came into the employee kitchen and was shocked at how much food was jammed in the fridge. All sorts of veggies and fruits, two loaves of bread, three types of cheese, two jars of organic peanut butter, three jars of jam, bottled water, all kinds of fresh juices, frozen fish, tofu meatballs, spaghetti sauces. Where had all this stuff come from?

It suddenly reminded him of how the fridge had looked during his ex-wife’s pregnancy, but back then, the shelves held sweets—cookies, chocolates, soft drinks,
crap
. Tess, her niece, and her mother ate more healthfully than his ex-wife ever had, but still, the amount of food in the fridge was excessive even for the Livingstons. Maybe this was part of Tess’s plan to make employees feel at home.
My house is your house,
mi casa es su casa,
my food is your food.

Ian made himself a salad, and just as he was about to call Tess, she called him. “Hey, Clooney, I just left the hospital. Leo says Diego is on the mend. I’m on my way to the store. What do you want for dinner?”

“The fridge in the employee kitchen has enough for about eighteen dinners. Who bought all this stuff, Tess?”

“Me.”

“Why? Maddie and Sanchez and your mom don’t eat here very often and most of the time it’s just the two of us.”

“I get hungry, okay? And since when do I have to justify what I buy? How about trout?”

Testy, he thought, and decided it wasn’t worth arguing about. “Sure. Trout is fine.”

“Traffic’s heavy. I’ll be home in an hour or so.”

“I’ll cook up some mushrooms and corn. We need some wine.”

“Got it on my list.”

“Love you, Slim.”

But she’d already hung up.

He wolfed down the salad while standing there, took a bottle of water from the fridge, then returned to the main room. Wayra was sitting in front of the computer, a large backpack on the floor behind the chair, his dark hair pulled back in a ponytail, suggesting that he was in work mode.

“Your photos uploaded. The article is powerful, amigo.” He swiveled around in the chair, his large, bony hands resting against his thighs. “You say just enough.”

“Or not enough. You think it’s true the chaser council intends to take Esperanza back into the nonphysical?”

“Yes, if we can believe what a
brujo
says.”

“Is it even
possible
?”

“Not without killing everyone.”

“Jesus, Wayra.”

“Yeah, I know. I’ve been thinking about it, Ian. We can take care of this problem at the source.”

A conundrum. Wayra often spoke like this, as though Ian could divine what he was actually implying. Most of the time, Ian guessed. This time, he couldn’t even do that. “I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”

“The Pincoya.”

“An abandoned hotel? What’s there?”

“The
brujos
in Ricardo’s tribe are using the Pincoya as a portal to other parts of the world where they seize hosts and wreak havoc.”

“So it’s true? He actually has a tribe? Of millions?”

“Yes. But you’re missing the point, Ian. Why do
brujos
need a portal at all? They’ve always thought themselves to locations, just like chasers. What’s changed? Is it that Ricardo’s tribe doesn’t know how to do this? Have they forgotten?”

“You’re the expert, you tell me.”

Wayra’s eyes impaled Ian. “The story is evolving, my friend, and doing so in unprecedented ways.” Wayra crouched beside the backpack on the floor, unzipped it, and pulled open the sides so Ian could see the explosives, flares, and a small pack that held grenades, rags, cans of Drano, matches, lighters. “If we set fire to the Pincoya and blow up their portal, then Ricardo’s tribe can’t get into Esperanza.” He picked up a can of Drano. “It’s flammable and effective. We used it on Cedar Key. The—”

“Wayra. I’m a journalist, not a terrorist.”

The shifter looked annoyed. “These pricks don’t give a shit what you are. One of them has already tried to choke Tess, has issued an ultimatum to Charlie, taunted you, seized Diego and put him in the hospital, and thousands of them are using this portal to move into other cities and countries where they seize the living. If we blow up their portal, it seals it off and annihilates a bunch of them.”

Annihilate.
When a
brujo
essence met fire, its soul was freed to move on in the afterlife. Ian supposed that to a
brujo,
it was the equivalent of annihilation.

“You’re getting even, Wayra. Because of what Ricardo did to Diego. That’s dangerous.”

“Don’t try to psychoanalyze me,” Wayra snapped.

“I’m just voicing the obvious. Diego’s your adopted son. I get it, okay?”

“You with me or not?”

Ian visualized the abandoned hotel. Set back from the road, it occupied nearly an acre of land and was surrounded by fields. If they blew it up, the fields could catch fire, but it seemed unlikely that anything else would be jeopardized. “Where’d you get all this stuff?”

“Diego arranged the weapons.”

“He believes you, in other words.”

“Yes, Ian. He believes me. He doesn’t have any reason not to.”

“Okay, so we blow up their portal. Fine. But then the
brujos
in Esperanza turn on
us.
”

Wayra, crouched in front of his arsenal of explosives, just stared at Ian, who finally looked away. When he had chosen to stay here in Esperanza, aware of all it represented, he had known he was entering into a tenuous life plan. He had known it meant he was living on borrowed time unless he played by certain rules.

The heart problem that had killed him and first brought him here as a transitional soul was no longer an issue. The city had cured him, just as it had cured Leo’s leukemia. But if he left, if he was gone from the city for several months, what might happen? This was why Leo hadn’t left since he’d arrived twenty-plus years ago.

“We annihilate them before they come after us,” Wayra said.

“I don’t mean they come after just you and me. If this Ricardo really does have a huge tribe, he might turn them loose on the city just for revenge.”

Wayra swiveled around in the chair and stared out through the front window, watching the pedestrians hurry through the chilly evening air. Across the street, Ian noticed that the lights in the park created long, narrow shadows that fell across the cobblestones, the fountain, the pedestrians. A low, thin fog drifted across the park. Ordinary fog, not
brujo
fog, he thought.

“Yes? No?” Ian asked. “Maybe?”

Wayra swiveled around again, facing Ian. “He might. But understand this, Ian. Ricardo’s tribe isn’t like Dominica’s. Most of her tribe lived in a virtual city outside of Esperanza. My bet is that most of Ricardo’s ghosts are scattered across the globe and they come and go through the portal. Like I said, they either don’t know how to will themselves great distances or they’ve lost the ability to do this. If so, that’s a whole other mystery. If we destroy the portal, we’re cutting Ricardo off from the majority of his tribe.”

“And if it works? And if the chaser council is behind what happened at the café, will they leave Esperanza alone?”

“I don’t know. But it’s insanity to even consider taking the city back into the nonphysical. Everyone will be killed. Granted, I never supported this city being brought into the physical world. But I didn’t have a vote, I’m not a chaser. I live here now, though, and I’m willing to fight for my continued existence here.”

“You know where in the Pincoya this portal is located?”

“Yes.”

“And you’re proposing we just walk into this place? While all these ghosts are darting around inside, moving back and forth through the portal? I don’t think so, Wayra. Tess can’t be seized, but I can. And so can you.”

“Have you forgotten about the network of tunnels all over this city where people used to take refuge during a
brujo
attack? There’re tunnels under the Pincoya. That’s how we’ll set the explosives. And keep several of these on you.” He held out three flares. “A
brujo
comes near you, just point, aim, and let her rip.”

Ian set the flares next to his computer. “Can’t this wait until after Tess gets home and we eat? Join us for trout, Wayra.” It sounded lame and cowardly, Ian thought, but he really didn’t want any part of this.

The shifter shook his head and tapped the face of his watch. “In about thirty minutes, thousands of
brujos
will convene on the portal. I don’t know why they convene at this hour in the evening, but they do.”

“I’ll take your word for it. But if they convene every night, let’s wait until tomorrow night. By then, we’ll have more information about what’s actually going on.”

“By tomorrow night, amigo, half the city may have disappeared.”

“You’re exaggerating. And if you’ve known about this all along, why haven’t you ever said anything?”

“I just found out a few hours ago. Remember Pedro Jacinto, the priest from Punta?”

Ian would never forget Pedro. “Without his help, we wouldn’t have defeated Dominica’s tribe.”

“Well, he’s retired from the church in Punta and is living in the foothills just outside the city, with his brother and his family. He’s been observing these
brujos
for weeks. He called earlier to let me know he’d seen this blackness in a field a block from his brother’s house. The area is small, but half the field is gone. Here’s the video he sent me.”

Wayra handed Ian his phone. He clicked on the video, a full three minutes of darkness that moved like a wall of sludge across the field. It was the same phenomenon they’d seen last night at the cafe, the same shit that had pursued Ian as he’d made his way along a spit of earth on the outside of the deck railing.

It swallowed everything—grass, weeds, stones, earth, trees, bits of plastic, bottles, cans,
junk.
The video paused, then skipped ahead seven minutes. The blackness had been replaced by that blinding whiteness.

“What’d Pedro do about it?” Ian asked, passing the phone back to Wayra.

“Nothing. It stopped on its own, no one was hurt or killed. But the point is that someone or something is consuming bits and pieces of Esperanza. Whether it’s chasers or
brujos
or something else, we can’t allow it to continue.”

Ian rubbed his hands over his jeans. He was an expat in this country, this city. Esperanza had welcomed him, cured him, enabled him and Tess to build a life together, to start a newspaper, and he had been happier here in the last four and a half years than he had been at any other period in his life. But the fact remained that he wasn’t a native and didn’t feel it was right for him to meddle in something like this.

When he said as much to Wayra, the shifter looked at him like he’d lost his mind, then howled with laughter. “You’re kidding, right? Of course you are.”

“Fuck off, Wayra.”

“Wow. You’re not kidding.” Wayra moved restlessly around the front room, his long legs eating up the square footage in seconds flat. He combed his fingers back through his hair, shook his head, muttered to himself in Quechua, Spanish, French, then something that sounded like Greek or Russian.

In English, he finally said, “I don’t even know where to begin. So I’ll start with the bottom line.
No one
is native to Esperanza, not even the people who were born here in the last five hundred years. You can’t be native to a place that came from elsewhere, okay? We’re all expats. That’s what makes Esperanza so vibrant and magical. And if it hadn’t been for you and Tess, this city would still be terrorized by Dominica and her goddamn minions. That alone makes you as native as any of us, Ian. So if you don’t want to do this, fine. But don’t give me some idiotic excuse about not wanting to get involved because you’re not a native.”

Ian tipped the bottle of water to his mouth, then turned and walked back into the kitchen. He put his empty salad bowl in the dishwasher, tossed the empty bottle in the recycling bin, and pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes. He felt like punching something. Everything Wayra had just said was true.

He slipped his iPhone from his pocket and texted Tess:
Eat dinner w/out me. Checking out stuff with Wayra.
Tess would be pissed. She would be arriving home with fresh trout, expecting to walk into an apartment that smelled like dinner. But no corn would be boiling in a pot on the stove, no mushrooms would be sautéed in any frying pan, no basket of warm bread would grace the table in front of the apartment windows that overlooked the city. No wine would be poured. No toasts would be made.

He hit Delete and scribbled an actual note. He folded it, pressed a strip of Scotch tape on the top, then returned to the front room. “Okay, I’m in. Next step.” Ian shrugged on his jacket and slipped the flares in his pockets.

“I’ll drive,” Wayra said.

Once they were outside, Ian taped the note to the front of the
Expat’
s door, positioning it so Tess would see it when she glanced at the office on the way up the stairs to their apartment. He locked up and fell into step alongside Wayra.