Half-Resurrection Blues_ A Bone Street Rumba Novel - Daniel Jose Older Page 0,72
oil-covered dead man with the mustache!”
“The fuck you talking about?”
“Sasha! Her last memory. She said she saw a man, frozen as if in death, with a mustache and his body all slick like he was covered in oil.” I point to one of the statues reaching out from the edge of the pillared leg.
Riley raises his eyebrows. “I’ll be damned.”
“We died together,” I say.
“How sweet.”
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Mama Esther looks smaller than I’ve ever seen her, like the whole traumatic experience deflated her. She’s backed into a shadowy corner of the library, surrounded by stacks of old books and half-empty coffee cups. A sad cello solo wails out of the old speaker box.
“Ahh, boys,” she mutters when we come upstairs. “Boys, boys, boys.”
“You all right, Mama Esther?”
She gazes up at me, her lids half closed. Dark moons circle beneath her eyes and she’s trembling. “I wish I could say I was. Take a seat. You want a book? Looking for anything in particular?”
“No, Mama,” Riley says. “We just came to see how you were doing.”
“Ah.” She waves us off with a huge, flickering hand. “Mama Esther’ll be all right.”
I take a step toward her and the old ghost’s warmth embraces me. “Mama Esther.”
“You lost her, huh?”
I nod and twist my mouth up to one side of my face. I imagine this is what it must be like being a little kid, confessing to your mom that you’ve done something stupid.
Mama Esther shakes her head. “I can’t help you, Carlos.”
“Can’t or . . . ?”
“No.” It’s not even sharp, how she says it, just sad. “I don’t know. She betrayed you to Sarco, no? Well, if she’s not all the way dead or gone to ground, she will be soon.” She ignores my flinch. “Sarco will be looking for her too. You know he needs a halfie.”
“Sasha wouldn’t—”
“Wouldn’t what? You don’t know a damn thing about what that woman would do. Did you think she’d stab you? When a necromancer as powerful as Sarco is in play, folks will do all kinds of shit you’d never expect to stay alive. All bets are off. She’ll let you know how to find her when she’s ready to be found.”
I open my mouth to explain the real reason Sasha betrayed me, but Mama Esther cuts me off. “I understood something about the ngks when all that mess went down. Those threads they use—it’s like they have a physical manifestation of a hive mind, yes? That’s how they’re able to materialize so fast around each other. One has a thought or notion, a tinge of fear or rage, the rest of ’em have it too. Instantly.”
Riley and I shudder. I’m sure the memory of Dro succumbing to that sudden onslaught burns through both of us.
Mama Esther pays us no mind. “It’s the same spiritual technology the Council uses to get in touch with you, same fibrous interconnected threads, but the ones the ngks use are about eighty times more powerful and they can construct and manipulate their web like it’s a living part of them. When they want something heavy done, they fortify that web. The Council’s is just weak and stagnant, like the rest of the Council’s shit.”
She peers down to see if either of us will take the bait. We don’t. Mama Esther exhales loudly. “The ngks’ thread-web is powerful enough to rip that hole Sarco wants between the living world and the Underworld, but it needs a puncture point, like a thread needs a needle, yes?”
“The house ghost,” Riley mutters.
“And a halfie is the final ingredient,” Mama Esther says. “A doorman to manage the chaos, shape it into whatever sick fantasy Sarco has schemed up. Without all the ingredients, the whole plan collapses. You know he’ll be back for me too. And there ain’t that many house ghosts around these days . . .”
“We got guys all around the place,” I say. “Twenty-four seven.”
“He’ll be back though. He’ll wait till the city thrashes amid the collective energy of a thousand revelers and then he’ll unleash his foul designs again, Carlos. You’ll see.”
The pronouncement sends a shiver through me. “I don’t think he’d walk right into so many soulcatchers’ waiting arms,” I say. It sounds forced though. “Plus, I gave him a few scratches to think about while we were tangling downstairs.”
The old house ghost shakes her head, eyes closed. “’Course he’ll be back. If you didn’t think so, you wouldn’t have them boys out there waiting for him.”