to be hidden away, the earth-shaking weapons of the powerful few. When this is done, when the gate is open, this magic will be at the hands of the whole world. We will enter a new age.”
I just look at him; his staticky, impossible form trembles in the hellish wet wind sweeping across the rooftop.
“Carlos, do you have the foresight to understand that what’s happening here today is much greater than the petty casualties of the moment?”
“You killed my people, Sarco. That soulcatcher, Dro . . .”
Sarco sighs, the disappointed patriarch. “The soulcatcher was about to ruin everything. Yes, I killed him. My plan will not be ruined. Yes, I took one life to bring a new world order, yes. And Washington and Arroyo, they should not have fucked with ngks. Everybody knows that. The ngks are a part of the equation. They purify. A space must be purified before any sacred work is done there, cleansed and left alone. The ngks form a barrier against the meddlesome dead, and then they are pivotal in opening the gateway. They don’t have to hurt anyone if people would only stay away from them.”
“Easy for you to say.”
Mama Esther’s tired, unconscious face appears at the focal point of all those tingling threads. Slowly, grudgingly, her massive body begins to rise up from the ceiling.
“The ancient Romans had a god called Janus,” Sarco says in my ear.
I step away from him. “Two faces. Watched the gates.”
“Yes! Janus was a part of both worlds. His faces looked inside the gates and outside at the same time. Divinity, Carlos. The Divine Doorkeeper. This is the gift God has given humanity in the form of the inbetweeners. The missing link. Resurrected. You have a role to play in this great struggle between life and death, and it’s not just as a busybody catching runaway grandma ghosts.”
Again, uncomfortably close to home. I don’t know what my role is in the grand scheme of things, but the sting of feeling underused is sharp.
“What will happen?”
“At first? Chaos. The hungry dead will pour through the gate, scatter out into the world in their vast multitudes. The living will wander in. There is always a painful period of absolute crisis at the pinnacle of any great change.”
Mama Esther has cleared the roof now and hangs a few feet up in the air, her body limp and leaning forward like she’s dangling from a string. The threads that are converging on her tingle and twitch. There’s ngks at the other end of each thread, I’m sure of it. Mama Esther is the focal point of a huge phantom spiderweb.
“The Council?”
“Ha! The Council will be obliterated. Probably first to go.”
The thought has a certain charm to it.
“Eventually, balance will return to the world. The equation will even out, because that is the natural way of things. Except this time, the dead will exist in harmony with the living, not confined to some supernatural detention center. The living will feel a companionship with their lost loved ones, know the soft touch once more of those who passed. There will be a coming together, a palpable shift. The war will be no more, the barriers collapsed. The occult sorceries will be released like a wave of light across the world; living humans will be capable of powers they never imagined.”
“And me?”
“The world begins and ends with one thing, Carlos: the gatekeeper.”
“But aren’t you just gonna tear it open and let them swarm through? What do you need a . . . ?”
“It’s part of the equation, Carlos, part of the magic. To make a gate, one needs a gatekeeper. The ngks play their role, I play mine, and you play yours. The Council is a thing of the past. You will take up your rightful position as the living guardian of the crossroads, a warrior priest of unimagined powers, Carlos.”
Sheets of rain cascade around us, sweep across the roof in Hell’s untamed wind. I stare into Sarco’s shifting void and smile.
“What do I have to do?”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Sarco looks me up and down. I’m just a flickering shroud, but I sense his gaze penetrating me, searching out my innermost secrets. “You have to take up the mantle,” he says carefully. “It begins right here. I will rent open the gateway. The change will commence. There will be trouble, like I said. It won’t be easy. A mad rush of souls will begin. Already they swarm, keen with the sense that something gigantic is about to