Half-Resurrection Blues_ A Bone Street Rumba Novel - Daniel Jose Older Page 0,45
are gone, a total void. Without warning, this matters. My whole life. I don’t even know how old I am. What century I came from. How long I was dead. Nothing. I’m empty. Empty of history, of genealogy. Devoid of family. An utter abbreviation of a person.
“Buen provecho,” the waiter says, putting a massive pork sandwich on the table. Besides the pig, there’s every vegetable possible smashed in there. It’s delicious. The eight-year-old giggles every time her abuelo picks up a card. Her laughter rises to a joyous cackle and she crows, “Uno!” The old man fusses with his mustache, furrows his brow, and then picks a card. And then another. “Chingada madre,” he mutters as the laughter continues unabated across the table. “Mierda.” Finally, he puts down one with a sigh and the girl gets real serious, scrunches up her face, and draws a card, then slams it down, yells, “Uno!” again, and resumes laughing.
A hipster, all skinny jeans and big glasses, pokes his head in, tries to ask directions to the train station, and leaves disappointed. The Council, in their infinite smugness, has put me in charge of this investigation. I put some more sandwich in me. Without Riley to bounce my ideas off of, I’m not sure how far I’ll get. No, that’s not it. I’ll untangle this shit, but I’m not sure I’ll make it out the other end intact. And I doubt it’ll lift me out of this preposterous mood.
Another ranchera blasts across the bakery. It’s a swirl of horns and pounding bass drums, somehow both mournful and ecstatic. Also, slightly absurdly loud. The ngks are effectively undefeatable. If this tall hairy fellow’s somehow the source of their sudden appearance, dealing with him might be the only way to get them out of the equation. But the bastard just pulled my ghost-killing blade out of his gut with barely a flinch.
The tangled equation resolves itself into the simple question of how. Perhaps a trap of some kind. The basic laws of physics still seemed to apply to this creature. Didn’t see him walking through walls or flying. He was a solid body, a halfie at the deadest. Certainly powerful in whatever old sorcery he was up to, but not undefeatable. No one’s undefeatable. I might just have to work out some cleverness. What worries me most, though, is time. Now that all these new ngks have scuttled out of the woodworks, there’s no telling how fast the infestation will progress. The Council has soulcatchers out there, stalking up and down Franklin Avenue with their sharp eyes out, but really, what are they going to do? Alert me. And then we can all sit and brood about it more.
I killed my one lead. Slept with my other. At this point, all I got is whatever trail of Post-it notes Trevor left behind at the library.
The driving ranchera grinds to a halt just as the little girl finally defeats her grandpa and erupts into giggling again. He shuffles the deck and deals, sighing heavily through his mustache.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Riley found me on Mama Esther’s stoop one afternoon during my recovery. I’d been alive again for a few weeks at this point and was getting some sense of my body back. I could walk around and talk to people without sounding like a total moron. I was beginning to get a feel for things, understand my own strange powers, and grow into myself.
Riley looked me over for a few seconds. “How you feel, Cee?”
I stretched my arms out and rolled my head around, cracking my still-achy joints. “I feel good. How you feel?”
“I always feel good, man. I’m dead.”
“Right.”
“Let’s go upstairs. I want to talk to you about something.”
* * *
I could already feel it then, the urge to hunt. The pulsing inside me that would start up at any old time and take over. I was still physically diminished, could barely move my bad leg at all at that point, but it was like I could see a fiery image of what I would one day do, a woulda-been version of myself tearing loose from this somewhat useless body and launching gleefully into the night. That me, the hunter, would stop momentarily and take in all the wild, churning signs and hints that the city had to offer. He would sniff the air, feel the breeze on his face, and understand all the stories and implications of each tiny detail, each swirling plastic bag and scattering rat. The