good at the same time. I haven’t laughed in far too long.
“She was actually pretty cool with all the spiritual stuff too, even though she still calls it voudou.”
“Well . . .”
“She even said she’d come back and help us do the cleansing.”
As if on cue, Baba Eddie, Dr. Tijou, and Iya Tiomi come through the front door, shaking rain off their jackets and chuckling about some inside joke.
“How’s the little dead guy?” Dr. Tijou asks amiably.
“He’s awake!” Kia says. I’m still not used to this nice person that replaced her.
Baba Eddie clasps his hands together. “Excellent. We can begin.” He lights up a fat-ass cigar, and everyone gathers around me. “Close your eyes, Carlos.”
I hear words—very old, beautiful words. They come out of Baba Eddie in an endless stream with occasional pauses in which he mutters, “Um . . . coño . . . ah sí sí . . .” and jumps back in. There’s a call-and-response part where Kia and Tiomi answer him with a mix of Spanish and some other language—Yoruban, I presume—and then I hear the ftz-ftzing of lighters and the tiny crackle of candles coming to life around me. Something wet gets sprinkled on my face and then all over my body and, as more chanting begins, I drift off into a pleasant, dreamless sleep.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Sometime in there I got good at being patient again. Life became a blur of sleeping and waking, mumbling senseless shit, passing back out. At one point I think someone bathed me, but I have no idea who. I remember smiling a lot, enjoying all the banter without understanding a word of it. Dr. Tijou seemed to have taken a liking to me, or at least to the peculiarity of my wound; she started showing up regularly and sipping her tea while Victor told wild ambulance stories and smoked cigarettes with Baba Eddie.
Despite the wealth of healing arts in the room—a doctor, a medic, and a wily Santería priest—it was Kia who ended up making sure I stayed on point with my medicines and herbal remedies. The others kept an eye out, checked vital signs every now and then, but basically yukked it up. Of course, laughter has its own healing properties, and their ongoing debates and zings kept my mind from lingering on Sasha for too long.
Then one day I start planning. It’s not a conscious choice; it pretty much just happens. I wake up, lie there for a minute, and then my mind immediately drifts toward Sarco and his treachery. He’s not dead. There’s absolutely no way I would believe that he didn’t somehow make it out of that swarm. His physical body being gone is proof enough of that. Anyway, the guy obviously has some severely advanced supernatural powers. If he could survive that barrage of stabs I dealt him with his own blade, well . . . I gonna need to see a body before I believe it’s over.
And if he’s still alive, that means he’s still plotting. No madman in his right mind would go through all that trouble, have a whole plan in place, ready to go, get inches, seconds literally, from completion, and then just cast it away because the first halfie he tries for sticks it to him and storms off.
No.
Sarco will try again. And again and again until he either gets what he wants or gets obliterated trying. I set my mind toward making the latter happen.
Kia pokes her head in from the kitchen. “You want some water, Carlos?”
“With rum, please.”
“Right.”
If the ngks could be spoken to somehow, reasoned with, perhaps his whole plan would unravel. I know they’re a crucial ingredient, but they don’t or won’t speak. We can barely get near them without spawning more or getting all kinds of casualties inflicted upon us. And Sarco will be looking for another halfie, once he recovers, and I have no doubt who he’ll turn to first.
“Here. Water.” Kia sets a glass on the table along with a little orange medicine vial. “And your pills.”
“Gracias.” I gulp down the pills. “You having fun?”
“I am, actually,” she says seriously. “It’s nice to get a break from the store for a while.” She pauses, looks away. “And home.”
It’s one of those moments. Do you ask about all the heaviness she inflected the word “home” with or just let it sit, let her get to it on her own? Kia’s a pretty private person, so I opt to nod and let her continue if