Esperanza (41 page)

Nadine emitted a derisive laugh. “Today she does. Tomorrow, who knows? I’ve given up trying to figure out their relationship. Why?”

“Just curious.”

“
You’re
FBI?”

“No longer.”

“I wish Shep would say the same thing.”

“But I hear he’s phenomenal at what he does.”

“He is. But when you’re in that kind of profession, you attract experiences you might not attract otherwise. You’re better off doing something else, Tess.”

That remained to be seen. Right now, “something else” might be the inside of a prison cell.

A cat snoozed in a chair at the end of a bookcase. In a reading area, a clutch of teenage girls huddled together, laughing, whispering, text-messaging. Photographs covered a wall on Tess’s right that captured the ineffable essence of the island’s mystery, moodiness, majesty. They entered a comfortable room with a huge picture window that overlooked an exquisite Japanese garden bathed in early afternoon light. Beneath the window stood a stone coffee table with couches and chairs arranged in a half-moon around it. Lauren and Maddie sat there, talking with a slender, attractive woman.

Mira Morales. Her dark hair was pulled back from her face with mother-of-pearl combs and tumbled to her shoulders. She wore gray Capri pants and a black T-shirt with
TANGO FRITTER
written across it in a luminous blue. No carnival Gypsy, Tess thought. No dumpy frump in a muumuu whose voice was husky from too many cigarettes. She didn’t wear a million rings and probably wouldn’t say,
As I come into your vibration.

“Tess, it’s wonderful to meet you. Maddie and I have just been catching up on her move to Florida.”

Tess and Nadine set the cappuccinos on the table. “I understand you
were instrumental in convincing her to move. Mom and I appreciate it. We love having her with us.”

Lauren pushed up from her chair. “We’ll wait outside, hon.”

“I’ve got nothing to hide,” Tess said. “You’re involved. You
should
stay.”

“Is that okay with you, Mira?” Lauren asked.

“Absolutely.”

Tess settled into the chair between her mother and niece. She didn’t see any tarot cards or other divination tools on the table. Mira didn’t look like the type who would pull some Santería bullshit from her bag of tricks, like a reading that first required an offering to the
orishas,
the saints—coins, chocolates covered in honey, a piece of jewelry, or a hefty check. She had seen Dan’s grandmother and father at work in that regard.

For a few moments, Mira said nothing. It seemed to Tess that her breathing altered slightly. The room felt thick and sluggish with silence.

“Tess, a man came into the room with you,” Mira said suddenly.

She glanced behind her, but only Nadine was there, standing by the door. “She means a spirit,” Maddie whispered. “A ghost.”

Not another one.
A legion of the dead followed her. “Is he . . . hostile?”

“Not at all. He’s smiling. He’s got a broad chest, thick white hair, large blue eyes. Ben Franklin glasses. Right now, he’s standing between you and your mother and I believe his name starts with a
C.
”

Tess and her mother glanced at each other.
Holy crap,
her mother’s eyes screamed, and she said, “Charlie? He’s here?”

“He’s nodding,” Mira said. “That’s his name.”

Tess considered it ironic that she could interact with strangers who were dying or dead, but couldn’t see her dead father.

“Tess, Charlie’s insisting that you can see him,” Mira said. “That you can talk to him, interact with him. He says you have that ability now. He’s mentioning something about hummingbirds. That’s how you’ll see him sometimes.”

The flock of hummingbirds this morning.

Mira sat forward, her intense gaze pinning Tess. “Charlie’s saying that you saw spirits at an accident scene yesterday.”

“The accident on the turnpike?” Lauren asked.

Tess nodded. “But that happened spontaneously.”

“Charlie suggests that when you’re consciously trying to see a spirit, you should use your peripheral vision. Or roll your eyes upward, toward a spot
between your brows, and try alternate nostril breathing, like what you do in yoga.”

“Is that what
you
do?” Maddie asked Mira.

“I don’t seem to have much of a choice,” Mira said. “I’ve been seeing spirits since I was a kid. Fortunately, Nadine was my teacher. Lauren, Charlie apologizes for leaving when he did. But he says it was necessary for certain events to unfold. He hopes that you’ll forgive him and that by the end of this reading you’ll have a better understanding of why he had to leave.”

Lauren looked on the verge of tears. “I forgave him a long time ago. But his reasons better be damned good.”

Tess felt a breath of cold air on her left, between her and her mother, but didn’t see anything in her peripheral vision.

“Charlie is telling me that you died, Tess. That you were in a coma for a while.”

Tess wondered if Lauren and Maddie had given Mira this bit of information.

“He wants you to know that he didn’t meet you then because you were supposed to experience something, so that you could return with this ability you now have. This place you went. He’s trying to tell me the name, but I’m only hearing the sound
esp.
Does that mean anything to you?”

This woman was definitely not some wacko carnival Gypsy. “Esperanza. In Ecuador.”

Mira’s eyes glazed over. “All right, he’s confirming that. He says that when you were on the first bus, you and an American family were booted off at a store. One of the kids, a young girl, got sick. You gave the mother something to alleviate the girl’s nausea and, later on, the girl thanked you and said something about her bear. Do you remember that?”

Sweet Christ.
The memories came fast and furiously now. Tess felt the blood drain from her face. “Yes.”

“He was the girl. Your father assumed her shape.”

“How could he do that?” Maddie asked. “Assume a shape?”

“That family was dead and Charlie knew how to assume the child’s shape.” Mira paused and cocked her head, as if listening to something Tess couldn’t hear. “He’s telling me, Lauren, there’s a key on your key ring that has puzzled you since his death. You found it among his things. It fits a safe-deposit box here on Tango. Box thirteen. He left money in an account to pay for the annual fee for a dozen years. You need to get to the safe-deposit
box as soon as possible. You’ll find enough cash to get the three of you to Ecuador and do whatever else needs to be done. He’s been waiting a long time to tell you this. And he knows you’re going to be pissed about it, about how he managed to tuck away so much money.”

“Fuck,” Lauren said.

“Charlie’s laughing. He knew you’d say that,” Mira said.

“What bank?” Lauren asked. “It would be helpful to know that.”

“He’s not sure. It has changed hands several times and the hurricane altered the landscape so that he seems confused about the location. I think it’s in the northern part of the island.” Mira’s eyes darted to Tess. “Has the number thirteen recurred for you since you died, Tess?”

Where’d she get that?
“Numerous times.”

“Esoterically, the number thirteen represents someone who is reborn into a higher level of consciousness and has reached a state of transmutation,” Mira said. “It’s one of the patterns, the synchronicities, that will continue to be important for you. Charlie says it’s vital to keep the police confused, so you may have to book several flights to Quito. Also, Lauren and Maddie will be vulnerable to—” She stopped, gasped, her eyes bulged, and she suddenly doubled over, arms clutched to her waist.

Nadine hurried over to Mira, whispered something. Mira shook her head. “It’ll pass.”

Tess and her mother exchanged a glance, no one spoke. Minutes ticked by, then Mira said, “I sometimes pick up . . . physical stuff. And right then I was hooked into a man whose name starts with
D
—Don, Dick, Dan, Drake, something like that. One syllable. He’s sick. There’s something inside him that’s . . . making him do things.” Another pause. “Does any of this make sense to you?”

Tess couldn’t speak around the rising tsunami in her throat. She wanted to leap to her feet and shout,
Who the hell are you that you know these things?
“Dan. His name’s Dan. And what’s
in
him? What
is
it?” She already had figured it out, knew that the
brujo
who had threatened her was making good on her promise.
I will take everyone you love as much as I loved Ben and will make sure their deaths are excruciating.

“It’s a . . . a hungry ghost, that’s the phrase Charlie is asking me to use. My understanding is that it’s a spirit, a lower astral being that stays close to our physical level of existence. These kinds of souls cause hauntings and poltergeist activity, and can sometimes attach themselves to the human energy field and create all kinds of problems. There’re different reasons for
their inability to move on—a traumatic or sudden death, a lack of belief in an afterlife, a refusal to accept guidance from other spirits. Those are the most common reasons. But these beings seem to have developed in an unusual way.”

“They . . . invade people,” Tess said. “Possess them. Take over their bodies, use them as hosts and force them to do things.”

“Not unheard of. Charlie’s telling me these entities have a name for themselves and they number in the millions.”

Millions?
“They call themselves
brujos.
”

“The spirit that has taken Dan intends to kill you, Tess, and needs Dan’s body to do that. He’s trying to come to Tango. But Charlie and his group are preventing Dan from coming here because of this entity inside him. They make him sick every time he tries to get on the island.”

“A group,” Tess said. “What’s that mean? What kind of group?”

“Of energy. Of souls. Charlie is part of this group.”

“Good and evil?” Lauren asked. “That’s what it sounds like.”

“These
brujos
don’t see themselves as evil any more than Hitler saw himself as evil. This battle between the
brujos
and Charlie’s group has gone on for centuries. It’s about control of Esperanza and other places like it. You and a man figure prominently in this battle and the
brujos
intend to stop you any way they can. Does the word
wayra
mean anything to you?”

Wayra
was the name of an independent record label that specialized in Incan music. But as she repeated it to herself, the word became a magical abracadabra that hurled open yet another door to buried memories.
A greenhouse. Two men. One of them begins to change, body transmuting, shifting from human to dog. Wayra/Nomad, shape-shifter.

“Charlie’s telling me Wayra is a part of his group. They call themselves . . . light chasers, yes, I think that’s the phrase. Wow, this stuff is . . . incredibly strange. Powerful.” She brought her fingers to her right temple. “Over here, there’s a channel about the chasers. And over here . . .” Her fingers slipped to her left temple. “There’s other stuff. Which do you want?”

Panic. What did she want? AM or FM? “Other.”

“A man whose name starts with a
T
or an
I
. Do you have any idea who he is?”

“Ian. I met him when I was . . .”
Dead.
“In Esperanza.”

“This man is like . . . your other half. Charlie seems to have a deeper agenda for the two of you, but I can’t interpret what he’s trying to communicate about that. He and his group can help to manipulate events, to shield
you and Ian, but they’re as limited in their way as the
brujos
are in theirs. They can’t physically fight this battle.”

Mira paused again, shut her eyes, and was silent for so long that Tess thought the reading was finished. Tess realized she was sitting forward, her body rigid, muscles tight, and finally forced herself to sit back. She felt that cold breath of air intensely on her left side, and when she turned her head, her dad took shape between her and her mother. Charlie, poking his glasses back up onto the bridge of his nose.

Hey, Slim.

You’re freaking me out, Dad.

C’mon, hon. I’ve been talking to you since the day I left. Now listen real well. You need to get off the island with your mother and Maddie. It won’t be safe here much longer.

His form flickered, then disappeared. Tess thought it likely that she was now in complete mental meltdown.

“Maddie and Lauren,” said Mira. “The two of you will be going to Ecuador with Tess.”

Maddie frowned. “I’d like to go. But is there some particular reason to do so?”

“Because you’re young and see what they can’t, because they’re your family. And I think your ultimate destiny lies there, Maddie.”

“My ultimate destiny as what? To do what?”

“I don’t know. Tess, Charlie is insisting that Ian contacted you, but there seems to be . . .” She frowned, her hands in front of her, as though she were holding something. Then her hands moved away from each other, as if the object were growing. “A space like this between you. I have absolutely no idea what that means.”