Lucas and I trail Aguilar up the staircase off the second-level sitting room to a set of elaborately carved wood double doors, where he stops abruptly and spins to face us. “No sudden movements,” he says.
Before I can ask what he means, he’s swung the doors open to reveal Kali, luminous in a white dress on a dark green velvet couch beneath a lazily turning ceiling fan, gently stroking the massive head of a full-grown jaguar.
I freeze.
Every muscle in my body tenses as the jaguar evaluates us with vigilant golden eyes, black rosettes rippling with its breath.
Out of the corner of my eye I see that Lucas is as rigid as I am.
“Sveta,” Kali calls warmly. “Welcome. I’m so glad you could come.” She switches her focus to Lucas, her eyes unreadable. “And Lucas, is it?”
“That’s right,” he answers.
“We weren’t aware you’d be joining us.” She breaks into a smile that could melt the polar ice caps. “But we’re glad to have you.”
“Thank you for your hospitality,” he says.
“My pleasure,” she returns.
The jaguar emits a low rumbling noise, and I involuntarily gasp.
Kali’s laugh is breathy and musical. “That’s a purr. You’d know if it were a growl,” she says, stroking the animal’s head fondly. “Ix-Chel has been with us since she was a baby. And she’s very well fed, aren’t you, darling?” She fingers the studded collar around Ix-Chel’s neck. “She’s also wearing a shock collar. It’s Xibalbá you have to worry about.”
I scan the room for another cat, my heart in my throat.
“My God.” Kali’s eyes widen. “He’s in his pen. I would never bring him up here. Have a little faith.” She waves at the two velvet chairs across from her. “Come, sit, I know you’ve had a long trip.”
Sage smoke curls in thick wisps from a polished brass Ganesh incense holder on the heavy coffee table. Neither of us moves.
Kali casts a look at Aguilar, and he grabs a heavy chain-link leash from beside the couch, latching it to Ix-Chel’s collar. “I’m so used to her I forget how ferocious she looks,” she says as the jaguar slinks off the couch and obediently trails Aguilar through the French doors at the back of the room, onto a covered deck that faces the endless jungle.
Once Aguilar has shut the doors behind them, Kali rises from the couch and extends her arms, fixing me with her magnetic gaze. “Come, come.” I go to her, and she embraces me, kissing me once on each cheek, her gunmetal eyes gleaming with tears. “I wish you could have visited before this happened, but I’m happy you’re here now.”
Her feather-light voice combined with the scent of sage and the adrenaline still swirling in my veins leaves me light-headed. “Me, too,” I manage, relieved that under the circumstances, she still seems glad to see me.
“And Lucas.” She switches her gaze to Lucas, standing on her toes to kiss him sensuously on each cheek. The sight of his massive hand on her bare back brings back an uninvited flash of memory of those hands on my back, among other places.
“I know Paul was very fond of your father,” Kali says as she pulls away. Her eyes soften, scanning our periphery. “I can see you’re tired.” She takes the bunch of burning sage from the bronze Ganesh and waves it around us, muttering something under her breath. When she’s finished, she contemplates us again. “Much better,” she pronounces, returning the sage to its holder.
She gestures for us to take a seat on the chairs facing her couch, beneath a life-size oil painting of copulating gods with jaguar heads atop human bodies. “Please.” She follows my gaze to the painting as we sit. “Beautiful, isn’t it? The Mayans depicted a number of their gods this way. The tribe that lived on this land would sacrifice a virgin once a year, feeding her beating heart to a jaguar as an offering to the jaguar gods to stave off war and famine.”
I gape at her, disturbed.
“Really,” Lucas says with more than a hint of disbelief. “I studied the Mayans in school, and no one ever mentioned that.”
Her smile is enigmatic. “It’s not widely known.”
A tall Asian guy with high cheekbones emerges through an archway that opens into a kitchenette and dining area. He’s carrying a tray that holds an ornate china teapot with matching teacups and saucers.
“Thank you, Hikari,” Kali says as he pours the tea and hands us each a cup before slipping quietly out of the room. “I know hot tea in the Mexican jungle may seem strange,” she goes on, as if that’s the strangest thing about this meeting. “But my parents were Indian and English, I can’t help myself.”
Steam curls from my cup as I inhale the floral aroma of the amber liquid. “It smells delicious,” I say.
She smiles. “We make it here. We have a huge variety of herbs in our gardens.”
I blow on it and take a tentative sip. It’s simultaneously sweet and earthy, like honeysuckle and moss. I sneak a glance at Lucas, who hasn’t even bothered with the pretense of raising his cup. I look at his cup pointedly, encouraging him to be polite. His jaw tightens, but he raises the cup and drinks.
“So, what happened?” I ask, unable to hold it in any longer. “To Paul?”
“Follow me,” she says, suddenly rising. “You can bring your tea.”
It’s strange, when I met Kali in New York a few weeks ago, she’d seemed so down to earth. But here she’s a different person, her power palpable. I don’t quite know what to make of it.
Lucas and I follow Kali through another set of French doors onto the broad balcony on the front corner of the house. The heat of the day has dissipated and the faintest breeze caresses my skin as we stand at the stone balustrade above the gardens that spill down the hill to the dark waters of the lake. A mist hovers over its glassy surface as the sun sinks beneath the impregnable jungle on the far bank. Nothing but forest, as far as the eye can see.
Kali lowers her voice to an almost imperceptible level, her face serious. “I’m going to tell you the truth, but this information doesn’t go beyond us. Do you understand?”
Lucas and I nod, leaning closer to hear.
“No one knows this. They can’t; it would destroy everything he worked so hard for.” She bites her lip as though reluctant to continue, then takes a deep breath and looks deeply into each of our faces in turn. “He was ill. He’d been ill for a while.” She focuses her gaze on me. “When I mentioned it in December, it had already been going on for some time.”
I feel Lucas’s brisk glance—I still haven’t mentioned our meeting to him—but ignore it.
“He’d grown skinny,” Kali continues sadly, “his eyes had lost their sparkle, he was tired all the time. I begged him to see someone, but he wouldn’t let any of our shamans near him. He believed this was what was meant to be and asked me to accept it as he had. What the others say is true: he took leave of his body. But it was illness that killed him.”
Lucas squints at her, as confused as I am. “He had cancer,” he says. “And he did see someone. He told me he was receiving chemo in the States.”
“Western medicine is a Band-Aid,” Kali says dismissively. “It addresses the symptom, not the cause of illness.”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“Our physical state reflects our spiritual state,” she explains patiently. “If your vibration is high enough, you’re not vulnerable to disease. We never have illness at Xanadu because everything we do here raises our vibration. The deterioration of Shiva’s health exposed the cracks in his spiritual purity; therefore he chose to believe the Divine was simply calling him home. He handed the reins to me and instructed me what to say to his students to maintain continuity.”
I don’t follow this logic, but before I can pin down what question to ask, she reaches out and squeezes my hand, her eyes again welling with tears. “But you’re his family, you deserve to know the truth. I want you to understand that he’d made peace with physical death—that, no matter how painful it may be for those of us left behind, this is what he wanted.” She takes a deep breath, stilling her trembling lip. “I’m sorry. I’m trying to be strong for everyone and I celebrate the freedom of his spirit, but I miss him.”
Glad to catch a glimpse of the Kali I met in New York, I reach out and wrap her in a hug, which she returns gratefully. She may be a priestess or whatever, but the poor woman is only human, and she’s just lost her husband.
“So, what will the death certificate say?” Lucas asks, unmoved.
“Natural causes.” She wipes away a tear as we release each other. “And I have to ask you to uphold that. If the media were to find out he’d been ill, they’d have a field day.”
Lucas looks dubious. “And the request for issuance of death certificate has been filed?”
“Not yet,” Kali says. “We haven’t had an opportunity to take the forms into town. It’s a long way, as you saw.”
“Once the death certificate is issued, it still has to go through the US consulate to get the probate process started,” he returns. “So we shouldn’t waste time.”
“You really don’t need to worry about this,” Kali says calmly. “It will all be taken care of. You have my word.”
Lucas finally nods. “I can drop the forms on our way to the airport tomorrow.”
“Thank you,” she says, gliding to the door. “We should go now. They’ll be waiting for us. Please change into the clothes left on your beds. I’ll be down in just a minute, and we can walk over together.”
Inside, Hikari takes my empty cup. As he leads us toward the exit, I can see Ix-Chel through the glass doors on the opposite side of the room prowling back and forth, muscles rippling beneath her spotted coat. I have to remind myself that the rumbling I hear is a purr, not a growl.