Tiomi.”
The older woman smiles.
“See what you can see.”
She nods and, after some groaning and maneuvering, sits on the couch beside Sasha.
Baba Eddie turns to me. “Now, you, tell me exactly what happened.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
The santeros work late into the night. At some point, Dr. Tijou politely asks if I wouldn’t mind changing the sheets for her so she can crash out on my bed. I don’t even think she has any reason to be here anymore except pure curiosity. And maybe a doomed crush on “Dr. Voudou.” She slips under the fresh covers and passes out with a smile on her face.
“So that’s the magic stabbing lady that stole your heart,” Kia says as we have coffee at the kitchen table. It must be getting near dawn by now.
“Indeed it is.”
“You knocked her up.”
I nod. “Indeed I did.”
“Well, at least you got to sleep with her, then.”
“Thanks, Kia. That’s comforting.”
“I’m saying, it’s better to have loved and lost, right?”
“I think so. I’ll let you know after this ordeal is over.”
“Fair enough.”
We sip in silence for a few minutes. In the other room, the babas chant softly. Iya Tiomi’s voice rises above the others in a raspy staccato and then the men answer her. Someone’s clanging away rhythmically on a cowbell and beneath it all is the endless swooshing of water. I’d be able to appreciate how beautiful it was if I weren’t so worried about losing the woman I love.
“You love her?” Kia says, once again digging into my private thoughts without permission. One day I’m gonna have to speak to her about that.
I search myself for a second, even though I know the answer. Maybe so it doesn’t seem as irrational as it feels. Then again, who ever said love was rational? “I do.”
Kia nods solemnly. “Seems complicated.”
“It is. Very.”
The conversation’s strangely comforting, for all its simplicity. Kia has a way of showing that she gets it without saying too much. And anyway, I couldn’t deal with a lot of chatter right now.
A few minutes later, Baba Eddie walks in looking exhausted. He slumps into a chair and pulls out a cigarette, plops it into his mouth without the usual fanfare, and lights up. I raise my eyebrows at him.
“She’s all right.”
Thank you, universe. Thank you, stars, world, all of that. Thank you. Yes. “And the baby?”
Eddie puts his hands up. “Best I can tell, yes. We have spiritually deep cleaned her with everything we got. The spirits seem to be in accordance and have given their blessings, so on my end, all is well.” He puts his hand on my knee reassuringly and then leans back into his chair and exhales a huge mountain of smoke.
“Thank you, Baba. I don’t know what to say.”
“De nada, Carlos. Just give me some coffee please.”
I put a new pot on, and we sit listening to the clunk and clatter of santeros cleaning up and the gurgle of freshly made coffee.
* * *
“You almost died.”
Sasha’s smile is faded, but she’s still somehow full of life. “I know.”
“You saved my life.”
She smiles again, but a second later it’s gone. “You saved mine too. Thank you.”
This is harder than I thought it’d be. But then, she’s probably exhausted.
“Can you talk about it—what happened?”
She sits up a little, and it crashes down on me one more time how beautiful she is, even after all the hell she’s just lived. All the pieces fit together just right. “I tried to contact you.”
“Ginny,” I say.
She nods. “Felt you looking for me that first night. You know fortune-tellers, even wack ones, got all that energy floating around the place. Figured that’d be the easiest way to ping you, and you’d put the rest together when she told you I was going to TiVo.”
“I did!”
“Not quickly enough.”
“I know. The giant jumped me while I was waiting for you to come out.”
We sit in the silence of our missed connection for a few seconds. I try not to wonder if anything would’ve been different if we’d have managed to link up before Sarco got to her.
“Anyway, I knew he’d be coming for me,” Sasha says. “And that it would be useless to fight him. I knew he’d have some other plan up his sleeve. I more or less had pieced together what he was up to from what Trevor had told me and some of my own sources. I was gonna do a Carlos.” (Sad smile. I crumble a little inside.) “And go along right up until I had a chance