Half-Resurrection Blues_ A Bone Street Rumba Novel - Daniel Jose Older Page 0,6

what I told the dude.” He scrunches up his face real meanlike. “‘No, you back the fuck up.’ Then I sliced him.” He and Dro bust out into unchecked chuckles. Of course, it’s easy for them to laugh with reckless abandon: they’re just glimmering shadows to me and silent invisibilities to the drunks all around us. I have to be a little more conservative with my ruckus. As it is, the drunks see me speaking under my breath to empty seats on either side, occasionally smiling, swearing, or grunting. Anyway, we’re in the Burgundy Bar—a joint that is full of enough fuckups and generally blitzed-out patrons that one weirdo talking to himself at the bar is not really a big deal.

Sasha’s all-knowing smirk simmers across my mind for the eighty thousandth time today. I’m only barely here at all, just nodding, grinning, looking away.

“Carlos,” Riley says. He’s thick and translucent, bald headed and impeccably dressed, even in death. Riley and I share the common trait of having died so violently it shredded any memory of our lives, and in that we are brothers. When we’re bored, we make up highly unlikely stories about what may have been. “First you show up later than your usual Puerto Rican late, and now you all sulky. Kay tay pasa, hombre?” I know he’s emphasizing that silent h just to annoy me, so I ignore it. Besides, all his stories end with Then I sliced him.

I shrug. “Nada, man. Blame the Council. What we got for today?”

Riley leans over his Jameson and takes a sip. It looks stupid if you’re not used to it—grown-ass man dipping into his drink like one of those damn plastic birds—but even the don’t-give-a-fuck clientele at Burgundy would probably startle at a bunch of floating glasses. “Today’s adventure, my friends, is a very special one.”

Riley’s was the first face I saw when I came back around. He was standing over me, grinning that grin of his, looking all proud of himself like he was the one who brought me back. He wasn’t, but still, he found me, named me, brought me into the complicated fold of the Council, and has looked out for me ever since, in his own odd way.

Dro groans. “You say that every night, man.” Dro doesn’t drink. He’s tall and remarkably well built for a dead guy. We suspect he’s Filipino, but he keeps insisting on being Brazilian. Who can tell? Who cares even? Riley gets on him about it occasionally, but as far as I’m concerned, if Dro wants to be Brazilian, that’s his business. Either way, the three of us are about as much color as the Council will put up with, apparently.

“I do say that a lot,” Riley admits. “And I always lead you on a spectacular adventure.”

“Sometimes,” Dro says. “Sometimes no.”

Riley turns to me suddenly. “Hey, how’d the business with the inbetweener go on New Year’s?”

My pulse quickens to a slow-ass drag. I had just managed to push the whole thing out of my damn mind and then Riley went ahead and busted it back in. “Fine,” I say. “Why?”

“I just heard it was quite a scenario: he was tryna bring a group of college kids into an entrada or something, no?”

I nod.

“Damn,” Dro says. “And he was . . . like you?”

I make a grunty-affirmative noise. When they send me after a normal ol’ fully dead ghost, it’s usually to toss their translucent asses back into Hell or, when they’re really acting out, slice ’em to the Deeper Death. That means they’re gone-for-good gone, not just kinda-sorta gone. It takes some getting used to, yeah, but you figure, hey—they were already dead once. Not everyone comes back even as a spook, so they had got that second chance and jacked it up by playing the fool. The final good-bye ain’t that big a deal in that sense. But this one . . . this strange, gray-like-me man with his wild schemes and last-gasp poetics . . . his death hasn’t left me since New Year’s.

Neither has his sister’s perfect smile.

Anyway, should be pretty clear I don’t want to talk about it, but my friends don’t take well to subtle clues.

“Was that weird?” Riley says. “You clipped him?”

“No and yes.” I really don’t want to talk about this. I’m not even sure why, but the whole mention of it makes me feel like shriveling up inside this long trench coat and being gone.

Finally, Riley shrugs and rolls his eyes. “Anyway, as