WEARING ONLY HIS PAJAMA BOTTOMS, JESSE SHIVERED ON THE HARD CHAIR IN THE COLD INTERROGATION ROOM. His hands were cuffed behind him, and his ankles were cobbled together with a plastic tie. Officer Jenk had yanked so hard that the plastic bit into his skin. His feet throbbed with lack of blood flow.
The chief sat on the other side of the table. He was wearing a new suit, no doubt the same one he’d worn on his date with Kellie. He twirled a pen and asked Jesse questions in a slow and puzzled way, although there wasn’t the slightest bit of dullness behind those sleepy eyes of his. Jenk paced the room and kept jumping in to lean on the table and shout at Jesse, his questions taut with anger and fear. This wasn’t good-cop bad-cop acting, Jesse knew. These were real cops, angry cops.
The questions buzzed by him, only half-heard. He remained silent. What could he say? He wasn’t even sure he could explain things to himself. He lifted his eyes and stared at the interrogation room’s one-way mirror. At this early morning hour, no one was behind it.
Or was the room beyond truly empty? Was there a presence watching him? A breathing darkness?
“What was in the blood?” Chief McMann said. “What kind of biological agent did you use? What sort of plot are we dealing with here?”
Jenk slammed his hand down on the table. “You goddamn little terrorist punk, I got a wife and baby asleep back home. And if you’re not going to telling us, I’m going to rip the information right out of your throat.”
Biological agent? A terrorist plot? Jesse snapped to attention. “You got it all wrong,” he said, his voice still hoarse from all that shouting in the ICU. “It was a…a kind of voodoo ritual to heal Volt. That’s all. The bird was Miss Myrna. You can check with the vet how healthy she was.”
Chief McMann stopped twirling his pen. “The Mindells’ talking bird?”
Jesse nodded, not trusting himself to speak.
Chief McMann heaved himself to his feet and left.
Officer Jenk turned off the tape recorder. “You’re not fooling me,” he said. He got up to stand behind Jesse and whispered in his ear. “I’ll rip your nails out with pliers if I have to.”
In Jesse’s memory, he heard an old man saying, Rangda is here. Rangda often hides among the ranks of the fearful and the ignorant.
Could she take the form of a man?
“Aum,” he said, drawing out the sound.
“What did you say?” Jenk said.
“Aum,” Jesse said again. “Dress me in light, pour light upon my head.”
Nothing stirred in Jenk’s eyes except his anger. “Zip it.”
Jesse shivered in silence. He had saved Volt. But the joy of that was pricked by his aching hands and swelling feet. Other emotions slipped in. Why him? He had already been in enough trouble when he had arrived in Longview. Why couldn’t somebody else have saved Volt, somebody with power and authority whom police chiefs wouldn’t question? Why not Volt’s pastor? He was on God’s side too and much higher on the ladder.
Jesse’s anger simmered. His fear, too. Homeland Security wasn’t going to let this one slide.
Chief McMann returned about fifteen minutes later with the Mindells. “It was their bird, all right,” he told Jenk. “Take off the cuffs.”
Blood flowed to Jesse’s feet with a painful heat. He sat there rubbing his ankles while the Mindells stared at him as if he were a monster. Mrs. Mindell carried a plastic bag with some of his clothes. She darted in and put them on the table, just as quickly retreating, hugging her robe around her.
“Oh Jesse, how could you?” She sounded so hurt Jesse had to look away.
Mr. Mindell didn’t speak. He stepped forward and walloped Jesse across the cheek.
Jesse’s dreams of family were instantly shattered. He bit his lip to keep from crying out from the astonishing pain of it.
Chief McMann spread his arms and herded the Mindells out of the room. The duty cop took Jesse to the cell. It was new, with shiny bars and plastic bunks and a stainless steel toilet in the open. George, who must have been hauled in from a real bender, mumbled drunkenly on the bottom bunk. He fixed a hard red eye on Jesse. “I’ve seen her,” he whispered. “Oh yeah.” He began to sing loudly and off tune, “It’s a hard, it’s a hard, and it’s a hard wind a gonna blow.”
After putting on a pair of pants and a T-shirt from the bag Mrs. Mindell brought him, Jesse climbed into the top bunk and pulled the thin blanket over him.
George kept singing.
Jesse leaned over the side. “I’m trying to sleep.”
George ignored him, singing louder. “It’s a hard wind gonna blow.”
Jesse swung off the bed and grabbed his jaw. “Shut up.”
George’s drunken eyes bobbled as he tried to look at Jesse, and then they steadied with an expression that Jesse couldn’t quite understand. He nodded without speaking. When Jesse let go of his jaw, he remained silent.
It was only when Jesse got back on his bunk that he understood the look George had given him. Fear.
In his whole life, nobody had ever looked at him with fear.
About time, a part of him whispered.
Much to his amazement, he drifted off to sleep.
A loud jangle of keys woke him. The clock on the wall outside the bars said it was just past six. A young freshly shaven cop smelling of cologne opened the cell door. “Visitor,” he said to Jesse.
Standing in the hallway was Dr. Clarke.
And with her was the old bald-headed man, looking as haggard as a buzzard. He wore a long coat that was too big for him. As Jesse shuffled out of the cell, he stared at the old man, who stared back with tired, droopy eyes.
Dr. Clarke said, “My God, Jesse, why are you in jail? What happened? When I phoned the Mindells, they wouldn’t say.”
“It’s a long story.”
The old man coughed.
“Oh Jesse, this is Ida Pedanda Bagus. My mentor. The one who never leaves his village. Showed up at my doorstep just a while ago. A taxi from O’Hare. A taxi! Wanted to meet you. It couldn’t wait one minute, he said.” Dr. Clarke looked at him and at Jesse and back at the old man. “What is going on?”
“Ruth, my dear, could you find me some coffee and doughnuts?” the old man asked.
“Oh, fine,” she said, and left.
“Sit there,” the cop said to Jesse, nodding at a plastic table at the end of the hall. Dried ketchup stains dotted one corner of the table. The old priest slid into a seat, and Jesse did the same. The cop leaned against the wall, unfolding a newspaper to read. The priest reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes.
The cop looked up from the paper. “No smoking.”
The priest scowled. “No-smoking flight, no-smoking airport, no-smoking taxi, no-smoking police station. Is there anyplace in this country one can smoke?” He shook out a cigarette but didn’t light it. He leaned forward to whisper. “Did you kill the bird with the keris?”
“Yes.” It had been done. He had to move on.
“Good,” the priest said. “Now the keris has life. It has power. It is your weapon, shaped to your hand.”
“Not anymore. The cops took it from me.”
The priest shook his head as if that was an unacceptable answer. He jammed the cigarette into his mouth and sucked, forgetting it wasn’t lit. Pulling it out, he stared blankly at it for a moment and then pointed the filter end at Jesse. “Tomorrow is the new moon. Tonight Honor will make the final offering, and gain the full power she will need for the dark of the moon, when she will rend the barrier for Rangda’s true and final appearance—”
Jesse cut him off. “And I’m supposed to stop her, right?”
“If not tonight then by nightfall tomorrow—”
“How? I’m in jail, in case you haven’t noticed. I don’t think I’m getting bail, either.” Again that anger and fear rose. “You know, the Mindells were here. I liked them a lot. They liked me. Maybe we weren’t family family, but it was the closest I’ve had. My last chance. Now it’s gone.” Jesse grabbed the priest’s arm and squeezed. “Why me? Nobody asked me. I didn’t volunteer. I’m sure there are lots of people out there who would have loved being chosen.” He squeezed even harder. “Why not you? Why don’t you stop her?”
The priest did not react. Sudden pain radiated through Jesse’s hand. He instantly let go and flexed his fingers.
With his long thumbnail, the priest scratched the underside of his chin. “I promised you an explanation. Where to begin that will make sense to you? Let us say a girl is born. The Balinese believe four sibling spirits are born with her. These sibling spirits will guide and protect her as she grows. Now, you know about the first village Ruth worked in, the sorceress she first studied with?”
“The one who wanted Honor born dead for her black magic. Yeah, I know. I read a paper she wrote.”
“That’s not the truth of it. Ruth completely misunderstood her. It wasn’t Honor she wished to kill, but Honor’s sibling spirits. In this village, the sorcerers are particularly powerful precisely because they have no sibling spirits. The sorcerers who came before them murder the real babies’ sibling spirits when the babies are still in the womb and then take the children in as youngsters to train them. With Ruth, a foreign scholar who viewed magic as myth and not reality, this powerful sorceress saw an opportunity to smash the eternal balance in the struggle between good and evil. Why should Rangda remain in Bali, confined to Balinese rituals? Why not America? This is the era of globalization, is it not? This sorceress knew Ruth was pregnant, so she planned to murder the baby’s sibling spirits and thus make Ruth’s child vulnerable to Rangda, to be used as Rangda’s agent to prepare her way to America. A sneaky trick, you might say. Are you following me so far?”
“I think so.” It all seemed so alien to Jesse, yet he felt excited, as though he were on the verge of a great understanding.
“This sorcerer managed to kill three of Honor’s sibling spirits, but one escaped. You.”
The great understanding quickly receded. “Me? A spirit?” Jesse rapped his knuckles on his head. “I don’t think so.”
The priest chuckled. “That is true. You have a boy’s eye for pretty girls. But the story continues. This sorceress was my great enemy—” He cut himself off with an odd smile. “She was once my wife as well, but that is another story. When I realized what she was doing, we had a battle. Now, when powerful magicians battle, it is mostly in the realm of the unseen. This battle, with the fate of the world at stake, was violent and brutal, with armies of disciples and deities, both good and evil, drawn into the conflict. The heavens shook; the stars fell. The sorceress killed three of Honor’s sibling spirits and she mortally wounded you. When I was able to fight my way to your side, the sorceress was already aloft and howling out her triumph, believing you were dead. The only thing I could do, with the help of the Eternal One, was to take the last of your dying spirit and incarnate you into human form, as a baby. The sorceress saw me and attacked, to make her triumph complete by killing me. There was only time enough to fling you to earth, wrapped in that sacred cloth to both protect and identify you. A tracking device, you might say. But despite my constant searching, I could not find you. I could only hope that others were sent to prepare you and train you.”
Jesse absorbed all this, the understanding not so much blinding him as it was slowly forming like a photographic image in the developing bath. “So I’m Honor’s twin?” he asked in wonder. Wesley had been psychic after all.
“Only in a manner of speaking. You share none of her blood. You are human, yet you never knew a mother’s womb. You are the only person in all of human history who has no family, no roots, no ancestry.” A deep pity rose in the priest’s eyes. “That is your lonely fate, but also your strength. Only one person can stop Honor now. You.” He took a deep breath and added, with even greater sadness, “Even if that means doing to the girl what you did to the bird.”