Half-Resurrection Blues_ A Bone Street Rumba Novel - Daniel Jose Older Page 0,44
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.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
It 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-oompahs 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