chapter eleven
“Modern man likes to pretend that his thinking is wide-awake. But this wide-awake thinking has led us into the mazes of a nightmare in which the torture chambers are endlessly repeated in the mirrors of reason.”
—OCTAVIO PAZ
It was like stepping into an old movie or a bad museum trick. Animatronics, Tender thought, with hidden wiring and lights. He didn’t like things that tried to look alive when they weren’t.
Joseph Crow looked like the Ken doll of the Indians. No way he really looks like that, Tender figured. Then again, none of them did. Except Wish. Abe’s too stupid to take anything for himself.
The large man stood bared to the waist, hairless and tan, wearing body piercings and well-worn Levi’s jeans. The jeans looked like they’d gone through the desert, been run over by a pickup truck, and dried while worn after the rain. They were the jeans every other male trouser wanted to be. Those were Joseph Crow’s only clothes.
It was hot. How can he have a fire going in here? Tender wiped sweat from his eyes and stared at the small hole around the rough, center post. Air. Fresh air. Hot. I can’t breathe! The bastard did this on purpose, dammit.
“I came to talk,” Tender said to Joseph Crow, watching the smoke curl up and out, thinking, If anyone’s escaping, it’s going to be me.
Joseph Crow didn’t turn around, which irked him. The giant Native American stared into a corner at a six-pack of cheap beer. The cans had the untouched look of having always been there. Joseph Crow kept staring. Tender thought if this was a contest, the beer might be winning.
“Going to offer me a drink?” he asked.
The big man finally said something: “No.”
Tender shrugged and took a step closer. “I have something to ask you.”
“No one’s keeping you from asking.” Joseph said it like a challenge. The silver barbell pierced above his Adam’s apple bobbed as he talked. Joseph Crow threw a bundle of gray twigs into the fire and the place grew smoky-sweet.
“Someone’s killing in the Flow,” Tender said. “Folks are dying.”
Joseph said, “I’ve heard,” not making it clear whether he had heard about it secondhand or that he’d overheard it done. The ambiguity made Tender nervous, despite his cocksure grin.
“Do you care?” Tender asked.
Joseph glared at him. “Do you?” From under the wink of two hoops through his left eyebrow, Joseph’s eyes were darker than brown.
Tender, annoyed and surprised, said, “Of course I care.” He wiped his limp bangs angrily from his face. “I wouldn’t be here in your goddamn wigwam if I didn’t. How about you?” he accused. “You give a damn?”
Joseph cocked his head sideways as he scratched absently at his chest. There were rough patches of discolored scarring, an inch above each pierced nipple, which Tender thought was pretty homo if he stared at them too long. He kept his eyes up.
“I do,” Joseph said finally. “I give exactly one damn.” He glared again, rubbing the stud in his ear and fingering its smooth green stone. “Care to guess whose?”
Tender frowned and slipped a hand through hidden ooze and over the hilt.
“Are you threatening me, Red Man?”
He said only, “I am Joseph Crow.”
It was not a correction, or another veiled threat; it was as if the bare-chested man were summoning courage or something bigger. More. Tender drew out his pitted sword and held it between him and the flames. Black sludge ran, secreting out the blade’s pores to hiss, bubbling, onto the hot coals. The smell in the tent changed from white sage to sick.
Joseph held up two shriveled things on strings: shrunken claws—eagle talons—that he waved above the smoke. Raising his head, he tipped back his chin, nostrils flaring with a deep inhale. He pierced the black points through the scars on both breasts.
He screamed without surprise, a rictus of the familiar, a groan of endurance. Tender stepped back. The sharp nails fished around, jutting points of tented flesh. Meat hooks beneath the skin. They burst like bloodworms out of Joseph Crow’s chest.
The wounds poured, bleeding freely. Joseph’s eyes rolled back in his head as he swayed in pain, or ecstasy, or both.
As he leaned back, the thongs attaching pole to claws to skin pulled taut. Belt hooks of chest flesh yawned, but held him upright. Tender could see Joseph’s black gums against his gnashing white teeth.
“I am Joseph Crow.”
Each word pushed a fresh cough of blood onto his chest, streaming to slide under his belt and soak into his jeans. He spread his arms back as if he might fall; a spectral image superimposed itself, flaring out of the smoke. The slicked-back hair smoothed into a crest of feathers, his bear chest blending into stag legs. Hawk eyes blinked, cat-reflective, and huge black wings flapped for balance, whipping through the wan image of arms.
Wind and sparks and stinging ash beat at Tender, who shielded his eyes with one hand.
“I am Joseph Crow”—the creature’s voice rolled like thunder—“and all that I am may oppose you here.”
Tender blinked against the rain of debris. Bits of stone and dirt pelted the sword and stuck.
“Screw this,” he muttered, and lowered his blade, sliding it back into its sheath and retreating from the totem knight.
Tender blew through the hide walls as if they were mist, wondering whether he was as afraid or if he’d just seen too many animals at once, like at the zoo.
He hated the zoo, what he remembered of it. No one ever knew how many bars there were on each cage, no one had even bothered to count. Animals behind bars, pacing, stinking … contained. Uncontrollable. Intolerable.
Tender knew all about cages.
He’d passed through eight other outcrops in the Flow before he realized his mistake. “Damn,” Tender muttered. Joseph Crow had seen the sword. Tender had left the job undone and he’d most likely be barred from Joseph’s part of the Flow. It was only a matter of time before the freak job squealed to Sissy. He couldn’t let that happen.
Fortunately, Joe would need time to recover. He wouldn’t be able to get a message out until then. Tender had other alternatives for just such an occasion and he’d been saving one for a rainy day.
Tender smiled to himself. He was actually looking forward to this …
SHE looked better. One eye swollen, the other somewhere hidden, the Watcher stared resolutely at the computer screen, fingers flying over the keys. The cold blue light outlined Sissy’s face, making her look more skeletal than Consuela usually did. After the initial fear at finding her bedroom empty, Consuela found Sissy in her dark office, working. Sissy had turned off the lights, plunging the wide basement room into mourning.
“I’m back,” Consuela whispered.
“I know,” Sissy said. “You’re safe?”
“I am.”
“Good,” she said with an ember of warmth. “Find anything?”
The question was an uncomfortable one. What could she say?
“Maybe,” Consuela admitted. “No hints as to what happened, but V and I noticed that Killian’s family had gone.”
Sissy stopped typing and spoke into her shoulder without turning around.
“Why did you go to the O’Sheas’?” she asked.
Consuela slid into her usual chair, trying to catch Sissy’s one eye. They said nothing about what had happened between them; it was as if the incident hadn’t happened at all and was verboten to speak of now. That hurt and Consuela moved around it uncomfortably.
“It was the last place I’d seen the Yad,” she said uneasily. “I thought, maybe, there’d be … I don’t know. Something.” All her words were suddenly awkward, fragile. “The O’Sheas are moving.”
“Correction,” said Sissy. “Killian is moving. His parents both mysteriously died in their sleep. The police suspect carbon monoxide poisoning, but that wouldn’t account for little Killian being found safe and sound the next morning. There’s going to be an insurance investigation.” She sounded quivery and tired, the afterburn of grief. “I doubt they’re going to find that there was a protective ward drawn around his crib.” She swept her flawless hair back from her cheek; it had dried in enviable, sculpted curls. “He’s going to live with his legal guardians and I’ll have to track him down again. Without the Yad’s wards …” A sniffle threatened to stutter her sentence, but she got it under control. “Killian’s vulnerable and Yehudah knew it.”
Consuela nodded. “I saw the note. Why one hundred twenty-six? ”
“Seven times eighteen,” Sissy said automatically. “A lot of his power was based on Hebraic numerology. It’s not unusual; Abacus works on similar principles, although Chang’s specialty is crunching numbers to calculate probability.” Consuela squirmed. Unaware, Sissy continued to find comfort in talking, her words growing rapid as her single eye burned. “He can triangulate our assignments back in the real world—mathematically predict events and outcomes—all by finding the inherent significance of numbers. Yehudah said everything has a sum since every letter in Hebrew has its own numeric value.” She paused, then recited: “Know the name, know its number, know the thing.”
Sissy watched her own fingers tap the keys as if they were separate, living things. “The word for ‘life’ in Hebrew is chai,” she said. “The two letters that spell it are numbers eight and ten. Eight plus ten is eighteen. Eighteen equals ‘life.’” Sissy made an effort to look Consuela squarely in the face. “I’m eighteen. Doing one hundred and twenty six separate wards would increase the protective life force by a sacred number. The Yad figured that it would make Killian’s room impenetrable from harm.” She sounded defeated.
“Even from carbon monoxide poisoning,” Consuela said. “It saved the boy’s life.”
“But not his own.” Sissy’s face grew hard again, the harsh light carving deep, ugly lines by her mouth. “Yehudah suspected something. That’s why he went to increase the wards.” She swiveled her seat back and forth. “Maybe something that was meant for Killian got his parents instead?” she mused. “Maybe it got Yehudah or maybe it’s been after us all along.”
Consuela fidgeted in her chair. Should she tell Sissy about Tender? What could she say? V was right—without proof, accusing Tender would just add paranoia. If he was trying to get rid of them, one by one, why did he try to get Consuela to leave voluntarily? Was Tender really capable of killing people? She didn’t think so. She was caught in silent dread.
Sissy picked up her phone and slammed it down. “I wish Abacus would answer already,” she said. “I’m worried …” She let the rest drift off, unspoken. Consuela knew what she was thinking; she herself had been thinking the same thing. What if Abacus couldn’t answer?
Sissy yawned and knuckled her empty socket. “Oh God, I’ve got to collapse,” she said. “I just don’t want to dream.”
Consuela gave her shoulder a small squeeze.
“Don’t drink,” she said. “At least, don’t drink alone.” Consuela tried to inject a little humor as she headed for the door. “I’ll be back soon and we can play angels again.”
Sissy watched her go. “You’d better.”
Consuela nodded and closed the door.
THERE was a knock on the inside of her bathroom.
“May I come in?”
It was V. Consuela looked up from the mess on her floor. “Sure.”
He walked over to Consuela, who was hunched over a pile of papers, books, pens, pins, paper clips, binders, notebooks, mugs, stray photos, bookmarks, string, and loose gadgets. She was inspecting a screwdriver.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
Consuela put the tool down. “Trying to figure out what’s the one thing I have that can cross over,” she said. “It was one of the last things the Yad told me about, and I thought that I should at least know what mine was.” She played with the topaz cross on its chain. She’d hoped that the necklace would have been the key—somehow linking her back to her world, her parents—but so far, nothing. She let it fall against her skin. It felt like her last, desperate attempt to go back was slipping through her fingers.
“Can you take me home?” she whispered.
V sighed. “If I could, right this moment, I would. You know I would.”
She stared at the screwdriver. “I told Sissy about the O’Sheas, but she already knew. Now she thinks that something was after Killian and got the parents or the Yad instead.” Consuela shook her head sadly. “I didn’t know what to say.”
V nodded. “I understand,” he said as he settled himself onto her pink carpet, fiddling with a red paper clip. “I had an interesting conversation with Joseph Crow,” he said darkly. The metallic hum trilled, // Eerie/Ominous/ Saying nothing //, while his true voice continued, “I can’t find Wish. Sissy couldn’t find Maddy. Abacus is out somewhere,” he said, nodding to her. “The Watcher’s a wreck and Nikki …” V cast his eyes to the ceiling. She heard it before he said it.
// Nikki’s dead. //
“Nikki’s dead,” he said, taking the screwdriver from her hand. “But you’re safe,” he concluded, his accompaniment adding, // There’s still time. //
Consuela was too aware of his fingers on hers. Was it alarm or excitement that made her heart jump? It didn’t mean anything! She swore he could see the pulse beating in her wrist. When had she become such a vulnerable, fleshy thing?
He tugged her to stand. “Come on,” he said. “I came to show you something and I wanted to see what you think.”
“Why me?” Consuela asked.
V grimaced. “Because you seem pretty smart until you say dumb things like that,” he retorted.
Her voice flatlined. “‘Excuse me?”
“Please tell me you’re not one of those girls who thinks they’re stupid or pretends to be so just they can hear compliments all day long,” he shot back.
Consuela arched her eyebrows, taking back her hand. “Issues much?” she said.
V let go, surprised. “Sorry,” he said. “Pet peeve. I have four sisters and they all play dumb. It isn’t cute.” She rubbed her wrist where he had touched it.
He had the grace to look ashamed, then glanced over his wide shoulder at her. “You have any brothers or sisters?” he asked.
“Nope,” Consuela said, sliding her cross on its chain. “Just my mom, dad, and me.”
“Well, you’re lucky,” he said roughly. “At least there’s not as many to miss.”
He stopped in front of her full-length mirror and offered his hand, which she took with a boldness that was becoming familiar. “Now keep in contact,” he advised. “Don’t let go.”
And with that, he stepped them through the mirror and beyond.
She’d hoped to see what was in the rumored Mirror Realm, but stumbled, surprised, into a blindingly bright hall with hardly a gasp in between.
They’d exited on the flip side of a large looking glass that had been left propped by a metal door. The floor was anonymous linoleum tile. The door was industrial-grade with a little glass window, crisscrossed with wire. Consuela peered through it, seeing nothing but white.
“Where are we?” she asked.
“I think it’s Tender’s,” V said quietly. “Tender’s place in the Flow.” They exchanged looks. Consuela opened the door.
Instead of a room, there was a vacuum cloud—a formless, white nothingness and a chair. It was a cheap chair, metal-framed and plastic-cushioned, the exact bruised-red-orange color of summer tomatoes. The seat was scuffed a little with a slight tear on one corner; a few plastic threads stuck out of an L-shaped hole. Consuela nudged it; it moved easily even though she had the impression that it should have been bolted to the floor.
V circled it warily, trying to make out anything in the eerie dreamscape.
“This is weird,” he muttered in his low bass.
// Unusual. // Creepy. // the violins trilled.
“Really?” Consuela said. “It doesn’t seem much weirder than Abacus’s place.”
“That’s different,” V said. “Abacus made it that way once he was here; ‘the power of possibility,’ he called it. He was always a little out there. But when we first come over, the scene freezes in exactly the same way as we left it, down to the dust. I don’t see how anything could be like this in the real world.”
“Maybe he made this?” Consuela frowned again, thinking of chairs. “He feeds on the Flow,” she said. “And he can make things appear.”
“He eats,” V said, still searching. “And he makes illusions. This is real.” He knocked the chair. “Or, as real as it ever was, which is why this doesn’t make sense.”
She paused, not wanting to argue, but she kept thinking about Quantum—Abacus had made something real out of the Flow. And Tender worked closely with Abacus. If Tender could make something real, what might it be?
V crossed his arms in frustration. “It’s not even like a fog machine,” he complained, and waved his hand through the air, but nothing swirled or moved. “See?” V kept his hands out like feelers. “But it still smells like him—feels like him—traces of it, anyway. Can you sense it?”
Consuela tried to. “No. Sorry.” She stood in front of the chair again, the one solid thing in the vaporous room. She stroked the frame, aluminum and cool.
“There’s only one thing for it,” she said simply. “We’ll have to try it out.” Consuela gestured to V. “You want to?”
// No. //
“Do you?” // Bones. // Both voices were terrified.
She gathered the strength from her mother-of-pearl soul.
“I guess I will,” she said, and before she could hesitate, sat.
// DON’T! //
The last thread of electric warning hung in the air.
Consuela waited, but she only sat in a slightly creaky, uncomfortable chair surrounded by nothing in all directions. She blinked up at V.
“Oh well,” she said. “I guess that was pointless.”
// Daring. // Brave. //
The correction hung between them. She inspected her cuticles in order not to betray that she kept overhearing his innermost thoughts. He found her brave. That was something. Consuela tried a smile, but his next unsung word stopped her.
// Beautiful, // he all but said.
She froze, thoughts reeling. How could someone like V find me beautiful? Okay, maybe as Bones … She wouldn’t deny that in her Flow form she was amazing—even Tender thought so—but now? Like this? V was something from a magazine ad, someone for tweens to fawn over at a comfortable, glossy distance.
But she couldn’t correct him without admitting what she’d heard. And, knowing that it was his secret voice, what he said was irrefutably true.
Her heart beat thick in her throat. Was it really him or just a compulsion of the Flow? Did he even know what he was feeling? Thinking? Did she?
V stared at her. Consuela, wide-eyed, stared back.
“See anything?” he prompted.
“What? Oh!” Flustered, she blushed and was completely surprised when she did, in fact, see something.
“Wait a minute …” she said. Her vision telescoped down, zooming to focus on a pen. She shifted her eyes—the pen disappeared, replaced by a book nearby. She could still see the barest ballpoint tip.
Consuela tilted her head to read the title on the hardcover spine: Faust. She looked back to the first spot; the book had disappeared and the pen was back. The faux-wood grain beneath them remained the same. Consuela figured out that she could only spy a four-inch circle of space at a time.
She slowly discovered details, a jigsaw-puzzle picture, enough to piece together that there was a small side table on which there was a book, a pen and reading glasses, an adjustable lamp, a tin of mints, and an otherwise completely unnoteworthy smear of something wet leading up to a take-out coffee cup. TALBOT was handwritten on the cup in black marker. When she saw the plastic lid, the coffee smell hit her with the force of a truck.
Consuela swooned and gagged under the zero-to-eighty French roast filling her nose to the tear ducts and her mouth to the teeth. She pitched forward in the chair. V dove to catch her shoulders.
“Bones?”
At first she wasn’t sure which of his voices had spoken. As she blinked back the tears, she thought, maybe, both.
Consuela shook her head and clucked her tongue against the phantom taste. “I’m fine,” she said, incredibly aware of V’s hands on her body. She wanted to move closer, but pulled herself back.
“Wow,” she said, covering the moment.
“What happened? ” V asked.
“Coffee.” She described the smell as best she could as V tucked his hands into his back pockets.
“Sensory memory,” he said quietly. “I’ve heard of it.” Consuela realized she was still reliving the feel of V’s hands on her skin, her own sensory memory. He’d also called her brave and beautiful. It was hard to think straight after that.
She glanced back at the chair. Was this really how it had been when Tender crossed over? What had Tender’s life been like to be frozen like this?
Consuela reached out for the space that should have held the table and the glasses and the copy of Faust, but she walked clear through the white nothingness. She reconsidered the chair, alone on the floor.
“We should tell Sissy,” she said.
“The Watcher,” V corrected.
“The Watcher.” Consuela groaned. “Fine. We should talk to her. She can find where this is. She wanted to get Maddy and …” She swooned as her vision plummeted out of focus. V grabbed her again. The movement was less romantic than strong.
“You okay?”
“What?” It hit her like the coffee truck. Her head spun and she all but fell onto the floor. V was there, his arms holding her up. The world was impossibly crooked. She tried saying something, but the words came out upside down.
“Hold on,” he said, and physically lifted her up, cradling Consuela in his arms like he was some sort of Italian Prince Charming. She thought he was probably breaking his back.
“I can …” she slurred.
“You can’t,” V corrected, and sliced them through the ornate mirror in the hall. Her head kept spinning even as he crossed her room and laid her down on the bed, settling her softly onto her pillow, where she felt she’d keep sinking into layers of sleep. The pillow was cold and still slightly damp from Sissy’s towel.
“Consuela,” he whispered, brushing back her hair. His lips didn’t say: // I’ll watch over you. //
She thought she’d said his name, but realized she was already dreaming her dream.
It was dark, purple-dark. The hallway was lined with tall candles and bouquets of autumn blooms. Consuela could see the dancers in their places, hopping and swaying through their cotton-quiet songs. The men in their flames, the women in their flowers, their skeletons weaving poetry their lips could no longer speak.
It was an eerily beautiful sight.
Knowing the door was there, knowing it would end this scene, Consuela ignored it and bent to watch the tiny dancers. She searched for the old calavera with the impossible mustache and the brushed-black sombrero, finding him gentlemanly and oddly fetching in his silver-threaded suit. He was on his wax perch halfway down the hall, stamping his shiny boots as if he were big enough to be the only angel dancing atop of his white-hot pin.
He spun for her. Cavorted. Bowed. Brandishing his sombrero like a bullfighter’s cape, he swept it grandly in a circle, as if daring her to dance.
Seized by a mischievous impulse, Consuela licked the tip of her finger and plunged it through the flame.
Color exploded like tinsel and paper flowers. Music swelled to life—driving guitars, clacking maracas, and the pleading whine of trumpets—heartbreakingly clear and beautiful. The noble skeleton dancer appeared, full-scale, taking one of her hands in his and placing a guiding palm at her hip. He held her like a grandparent, both proud and frail; Consuela fell into his steps, feeling that she should be in her lace-trimmed quinceañera dress with satin ribbons in her hair.
The fiesta burst loud and hot and bright all around them, but he held her protectively through the steps of the dance that popped beneath their feet like coals. Strings of papel picado swayed overhead, paper cutouts hanging like portraits in garish hot pink, purple, orange, and green. He pulled her hand up into an expert twirl, handing Consuela to another dancer with a tip of his incredible hat.
A female calavera hooked an ulna to Consuela’s waist, pulling her wrist flat against where the woman’s belly ought to have been. The dancer wore a blazing red gown ruffled in stiff, black lace, a tight bun of hair pinned to the nape of her neck with a tortoiseshell comb. She laughed as they spun, teeth chattering like dice in a cup, before whirling away, clapping her hands over her head, inviting Consuela to do the same. Dance with the dead. Her partner curtsied, leaving Consuela with the impression of plucked, hawkish eyebrows arching up and away.
Consuela swung wildly with young men in dapper kerchiefs and minced daintily with a woman in a tight, fitted dress and an enormous Victorian hat with silk flowers and little, stuffed birds. Consuela tried matching steps with a stooped man in a voluminous, stained poncho and a weather-beaten hat. He had one hand wrapped around a bottle of tequila as he repeatedly pumped his trigger finger, unloading explosive blasts of memory into the air. He leered at her as she whirled away; Consuela noticed that several of his yellowed teeth were missing.
A tall skeleton in a silk tuxedo pressed close against her, a lit cigarette between his teeth flashing like a firefly by her head. A trio of short, squat women encircled her with their hands on their hips, swaying with their shoulders; the fringe of their shawls mimicking batting eyelashes. A child in multilayered skirts and a wreath of paper flowers held Consuela’s fingertips and twirled in careful circles until she grew dizzy and fell down. The little girl laughed like a windup toy. Consuela laughed, too, and helped her up. Her tiny party shoes tap-tap-tapped away to cuddle against her mother’s lap.
And then she was there.
“Grandma,” Consuela breathed.
Grandma Celina’s skeleton gathered Consuela gently in her arms—the smell of her, like rose water and melons, filled Consuela’s memory with sweet, warm, and loving things. Consuela’s eyes swam with happy tears and she laughed into what little space hadn’t been filled with music and tobacco and clapping.
Grandma Celina still gave the impression of being heavy and solid, flesh packed invisibly onto her bones. She held Consuela’s hands as if she were a bird in flight and they danced, their hips and feet mirroring one another, embracing arm in arm. Consuela couldn’t take her eyes from the shiny gold cross, the favorite coral brooch, or the rosary wrapped around her grandmother’s wrist that she’d last seen buried with her grandma in the earth. It was so good to be with her now, so good to be with family, dozens of generations, hundreds of years … so good—so good!—to dance, reunited, to be whole once again. Consuela didn’t want it to ever ever end.
But Grandma brought her to the midnight door. She mimed the motions, urging Consuela to grasp the handle, to open the door, to step through. Consuela resisted.
“No, Grandma,” she whispered. “I want to stay here with you.”
The expressionless skull seemed to soften, capturing the forgotten-yet-familiar gesture, cupping her face like a drinking glass and pressing cheek to cheek. The bone was warm against Consuela’s cool skin. The moment was so invitingly real, if Consuela closed her eyes, she could see her grandmother’s face clearly—full of wrinkles, laugh lines, and dove-gray hair sprayed in place with Aqua Net.
Her grandmother turned Consuela’s chin to look upon the shadow door. Purpled layers blossomed outward, revealing a Gypsy’s glimpse of a faraway place. The image sharpened. Consuela’s heart stopped.
Mom and Dad sat on a picnic blanket weighted down with picture frames; a huge wicker basket lay open at their feet. They were laughing, smiling, waving hello to other people as Dad cranked a corkscrew into a bottle and Mom lit citronella candles with a thin butane lighter.
Consuela watched as they hugged each other close, her father whispering something around the chewed end of his cigar. She could almost smell the burned-cherry smoke, almost taste her mother’s roast chicken and the creamy potato salad with dill. There was even a pitcher of tart lemon iced tea—her favorite—beading a little with ice-cubed sweat. She saw three paper plates, three plastic cups, and three folded fabric napkins that matched the basket set. But she was here. Did they notice? Did they care? Consuela held out a hand as if to grab the pitcher, but it was too far away.
It hurts. She felt it. It hurts to be this far away!
She didn’t belong here. Not yet.
I’m not dead! Mom? Dad? I’m here! I’m not gone!
Consuela needed to hold them like an ache, pull them hard against her and feel them close. She needed to be there. She need to be living, breathing, real. It turned her eyes to water and her chest to stone. She felt heavy, sinking—this is too far away!
“Grandma …” she whispered into the primordial party—food, love, friendship, and music, absorbing and re-forming, spinning into a frenzied pitch. The skeletal hands wrapped in beads were an offering, a benediction, a blessing: Go on.
Consuela turned quickly and wrenched open the almost-door, plunging suddenly, deeply, into a familiar quiet.
She was in her room. Her hand on the door handle, she realized that she’d been sleepwalking again. Pushing down, both feeling and hearing the click-click of the catch, Consuela hesitated, wondering if this was her last step before death. She wasn’t afraid, remembering Grandma’s touch and the fiesta of flowers and flame. But she was … unfinished. Too restless, yet, to rest in peace. There was too much left to be done. So much more to do.
Mom. Dad.
With a strange, fluttering, all-body sigh, Consuela let go of the door handle and crawled back into bed, returning to herself, asleep.
Only later did she identify the feeling as regret.
V paced the length and breadth of her room, unable to sit still and unwilling to watch her fitful sleep. Without the comfortable distance of silver and glass, it felt like a hospital, like a deathwatch, like he was a voyeur. And if he stared at anything too long, it felt uncomfortably like prying.
V coiled around the worry and the room. If he stopped, he might touch her. If he touched her, he might wake her. If he woke her, he wasn’t sure what he would do. It was best to keep moving, trying to ignore the smell of her skin and clean sheets.
He didn’t realize the moment when he stopped walking. He didn’t realize that he’d marched past her as she twisted sleepily in the bed. He didn’t see the mirror or feel the slicing transition as he walked through, answering a familiar pull of invisible threads.
He was gone before he’d ever noticed and no one saw him leave.
Except for a little white mouse that dashed out from under the bed skirt, squeezed itself under the door, and ran into the nothingness with a flick of its tail.
V burst through her bedroom mirror with enough force to make her sit up straight.
“What?” she said, feeling stupid, half awake. “What’s happened?”
“It’s burning. Joseph Crow’s place—it’s burning!” V pointed as if it were happening just over his shoulder. Consuela threw back her blankets and stood up, thankfully dressed.
“Can you show me?” she asked. He nodded dumbly and took her hand without asking permission. Moving like a fire engine slicing through traffic, he stepped through the mirror and she forgot to close her eyes.
The Mirror Realm was a split-second slice across her retinas, tricking her with painful splinters of fragmented silver light. She blinked against the pain-tears. Her eyes stung and kept on stinging as they crossed onto the open plain.
Smoke billowed and filled the sky; the singed specks of ash in the air were horribly hot and real. Consuela coughed, squinting against the light and heat as V crushed her hand in his. He felt cold.
The tepee was a huge pillar of white-orange fire capped in black smoke, its triangular insides outlined in ash. Some of the fire had spread to the grass, but they were feeble flames.
V stared. Consuela could see the fire reflected in his eyes, yellow-red-gold obliterating the brown. She didn’t have to ask if Joseph Crow had been inside, she already knew. But the expression on V’s face—glazed, mouth slightly open—she didn’t need a different skin to sense what he felt. Rapturous. Yearning. Guilty. Afraid. It was a wordless radiance that bubbled off his skin.
She shared the fear, at least.
“How can this be happening?” she asked. “Things don’t … do this sort of thing in the Flow. They don’t change.”
“Nothing affects the Flow but us,” V whispered woodenly. “Joseph Crow had a fire because there was a fire in the pit when he crossed over, but it always stays in its circle.”
“Like my bathroom stays misty,” she said. “How could it spread?”
V took a long time to answer, his eyes never blinking.
“Everything reverts back to its original form unless one of us changes it.”
Silence shielded them against the roar and crackle of the fire as it burned. Someone had changed it. Someone from the Flow.
“Will it change back?”
The violin-voice ignored the rush of fiery death song. // No. //
“Tender … ?” Consuela said, trying to make the word fit the crime. “Could Tender do this?”
V’s eyes sank to the ground, although their look still smoldered. “No,” he said. “No, he can’t. Only I can do that.”
// I can taste it again // I can smell it everywhere // Change // hot and burning. //
Consuela dropped his hand, forgetting, until that moment, that she’d been holding it.
“What do you mean?” she said.
The noise of the crackling, popping, impossible flames chattered in her ears. Bits of singed surreality kissed her skin and seethed. V said nothing. It made her nervous. Angry.
“You wanted to show me,” she pressed. “You wanted to show me this.” A flash of insight: “You wanted me to ask!”
V wouldn’t look at her. He struggled with something that wasn’t there, something that belonged in his hands, which opened and closed with need.
“I… used to set fires,” V admitted.
“Fires?” Her brain slipped on his words. They made no sense.
He nodded. “Little ones, mostly,” he said. “Sometimes big ones.”
// Beautiful. Wild. Free. They whispered… //
Consuela remembered the curtained room singed at the edges.
He glanced at the burning wreckage and the ecstasy-shame evaporated. His rapture gone, a hollow emptiness remained.
“This,” he said, taking out a cigarette lighter and turning it over. “This is the one thing I have that can cross over.” It sparkled, reflecting malevolent light. “It’s the only thing I know of that could do something like this.”
Consuela thought about her skin of flame, the box of matches from her scented candles. Her candles regressed to being unlit. There were always fourteen matches in the matchbox, no matter how many she watched burn. Nothing changes in the Flow, unless we change it. Could I do this with my fire-skin, if I wanted to? Does it work that way?
“Did you?” she finally asked. “Did you do this?”
“No!” V shouted, but the electric chorus doubted.
// Tender! // It has to be Tender! // Me? // It couldn’t be me … //
Consuela faltered. How could he not know?
The central pole finally gave way, collapsing the tent in a cough of sparks.
Consuela placed a hand on his arm. V flinched. She spoke softly. “Then let’s find out who did.” Her hand sought his and he took it. A tentative touch, permission to be let in. “Bring me back,” she said, and V’s face pinched with worry. “Just for a minute,” she assured him. “I can find out. Evidence, remember?”
He knelt and picked up a small beaded pouch. Circles of polished mirror were stitched carefully into the leather with bright red, black, and yellow thread. V lifted it up by its thong and cupped the tiny reflection to his eye, staring hard.
“Hang on,” he muttered, and squeezed her hand. She didn’t have time to squeeze back as they flipped over, spiraled under, and stepped out onto her carpet.
She didn’t bother with explanations or with shyness or rebuke. Unzipping her skin, she marched toward her closet, shedding it along with her clothes as if it were nothing more than an undershirt, an afterthought. Consuela grabbed her fire-skin and welcomed it on.
It rushed over her gladly as she tipped back her head to revel in the wash of heat. Crackling from her toes, up her spine, and into her eyes, the fire plumed out the top of her head in a forelock of flame. She glanced at herself in the mirror with a satisfied smile, all but ignoring the awed look on V’s face.
She was a terrible, beautiful, burning
// Angel. //
V stood, transfixed. In his eyes, she saw it: she was his own private heaven, his own private hell. He could not look away. His eyes burned inside her.
// Beautiful // Wild // Burning // Free //
// Angel. // Angel Bones. //
Consuela smiled, hearing herself through him. She took his hand, which did not burn. Her voice, roaring and airy, said, “Let’s go.”
He followed like a worshipper.
They sheared through the silvered glass. Returning, Consuela swooped in a hurricane dive, swiveling into the heart of the pyre. Racing along its insides, she felt the organic dwindle and burn—hides, pelts, wood, sinew—only the bits of metal and stone sang with heat, impervious to unmaking. Would that Joseph Crow had been the same. Perhaps he’d managed his bird form and taken wing? But no. She smelled the acid flux of burned feathers and sensed that the only living things crept deep beneath her, safely tucked under the earth.
She returned to the matter of the fire, scenting its beginnings; the foreign perfume of treachery, ferreting out its secrets better than any pyrotechnician could. She found the answer, but it brought her no joy.
Satisfied, Consuela leaped from the inferno, surprised by the gentle pang as she divorced herself from the parent flame. In this small way, perhaps, she understood V. The fire was her lover, her parent, her friend—all-encompassing and welcoming as no other human being had ever been except her father and her mother, far away in the realm of flesh. Fire had no prejudice, judgment, or reserve.
Fire was free. And damning.
V held the totem pouch like a talisman, looking half inclined to flee. From me? From Tender? From the scene of the crime? Consuela flung her arms in dismissive wings that roared, burning through the air. She was done with superstitious guessing; she wanted facts.
“Give me the lighter,” she said in a soft roar. V did.
Holding it in her palm, she turned the thing over, tasting its cheap, metal surface, kitten tongues of flame divining the microscopic truth. She even sniffed it to confirm the obvious—a sharp tickle of plastic and fuel—thankful that when she was in her preternatural skins she was more inured to human emotion, less easily affected by mortal things like suicide and murder. Her heart and tears were elsewhere. She handed back the lighter.
“This set the flame,” Consuela said darkly. “I could taste it in fire.”
V paled.
“No,” he said weakly. “That’s impossible.”
“It is possible and it happened,” she said under the flames. V shook his head as if he hadn’t heard her at all. “Only your fingers have touched it. I can taste the oil.”
V kept staring, his head barely shaking no.
“Why did you bring me here?” she asked. “Was it to confess?”
He curled like she’d physically punched him.
“No!” V snapped, and balled his fists. “I didn’t do it! I’d know!” But he didn’t sound so sure. He fell heavily to his knees, pitching forward in a sort of weird supplication. “I’d know! Wouldn’t I? I’d know!”
But doubt sang under his words, a black undercurrent dragging him down. He pressed his head to the dirt, rapping his forehead against pebbles and grass, arms crossed over his stomach. Unfurling like great wings off of his back, the sound of metallic strings reverberated into pleas.
// I couldn’t do this! // Joseph Crow // You told me // My only wish // Tender! // Only a dream // Another pain-nightmare // Pain // Fire // Burning … I didn’t do this! // Please // No // No! // I DIDN’T DO THIS! I COULDN’T DO THIS AGAIN! //
The force of his denial pushed her backs, the unspoken words beat at the surface of her skin. Consuela stumbled, astonished.
Again?
V lifted his face, one hand in the dirt, and reached for her.
She surged. The flames waxed ominously. “Get away from me.”
“No, please, listen …”
“Get away!”
She jerked her arm back, launching into a rainbow arc of flame and punching an acetylene trail through the Flow’s deadened sky.
CONSUeLa seared through her open window, landing in a puff of ash. She grabbed Sissy’s discarded bath towel and threw it angrily over the mirror, diving into her bedroom to do the same with her sheets. She smothered every shiny surface. As she went, her tears evaporated, throwing steam off her eyes.
A rushing-wind vacuum sound ended abruptly in a thump. Consuela swirled, staring hotly at her closet, where the freestanding mirror stood draped like a ghost.
“Bones?” V called through the flat plane. “Bones, are you there?”
He sounded a little panicked, a little hopeful, desperate.
Consuela’s skin roared in response.
“Bones.” He sounded thankful, exasperated. “Remove the sheet, please.”
Consuela said nothing. She seethed. Burned.
“You’re not mourning, are you?” V sounded more ashamed than annoyed. “I can’t come into a house of mourning.” Another swooshing impact, and not a ripple against the sheet. “Dammit, Bones. We can’t afford to do this now!”
She wandered nearer to the bedsheet, inspecting it at a distance, hardly believing that such a little thing could keep him at bay.
“Bones,” V called out again. “It’s not safe. You’re in danger …”
“From you?” She hadn’t meant to snap back. Hadn’t meant to speak at all.
“Dio mío cielo …” V muttered. “Can you please let me in?”
“Did you do it?” she shot back.
“No!” V said.
“But you’re not sure,” Consuela said. There was a short pause. “What happened, V?” Consuela asked. “Tell me what happened.”
“I don’t know! I don’t remember any thing!” V insisted. “Can I come in?”
She shook her head needlessly. “Not until you explain.”
“I never remember …” V started and sighed. “… when I go back.” The last line was an admission of something close to repulsion. Guilt.
“I don’t understand,” she said, sitting in front of her shrouded mirror. “You mean when you try to save people?”
“No,” his voice rasped. Without a face, he wasn’t a gorgeous god, or an angel, he was just V.
“When the pain comes,” V stammered. “Whenever anyone tries to bring me back, I’m pulled into the pain. You can’t imagine … I can’t stand it.” Another soft thump on the inside of the mirror and she could all but picture him leaning against its flip side, speaking over his shoulder back at her. “I don’t remember what happens in those in-between times, but I usually end up somewhere else in the Flow.” His voice dropped off. “Like sleepwalking,” he said.
// Lost without memory. Stinking of pain. //
Consuela hesitated, the flames of her fingers plucking the edge of the bedsheet as he talked.
“The Yad said I was subconsciously running to escape it, and that’s why I ended up here in the first place.” V sighed with a trembling ripple in his breath. “He kept saying that eventually, I’d have to stop running.”
With a soft tug, she brought the sheet cascading down. She looked into her own reflection, knowing V sat on the other side.
“Then what?” Consuela asked the mirror.
V leaned through the silver pool, looking her right in the eye.
“Then I’d either live or die,” V said.
She shook her head, sending up crackles and curls. “So you’re in pain … ?” she said, awkwardly.
“All the time,” he said. They both stood as he stepped in beside her. “It’s low-key, dealable, but—” He unbuttoned his shirt slowly, a mass of black bruises spread across his chest, but Consuela saw they weren’t bruises; they were patches of darkness, like the shadows of the Flow etched on his flesh. “—I come out of it looking like this.”
Consuela clenched her fingers to keep from touching him, but his eyes made it hard.
So she said, “Why?”
“I don’t know. When I become aware of my body, I’m aware of more pain. If I can stay deep enough in the Flow, I can escape it for a while. But when my family tries to revive me, or the doctors get particularly creative …” V stopped, sensing something in Consuela’s sudden stillness. His monologue slid into regret. He looked sorrier than ever.
“You didn’t know that our bodies are still out there, did you?” he whispered. “That we’re just souls stuck here waiting to die.”
And although she wanted to deny it, it made perfect sense. Her soul, her self, was here—the rest had to be somewhere else. Back in the real world.
“And you’re … where?” she asked.
“In an intensive burn ward,” V said casually. “Suffering full-body burns.” He glanced at his hands, his arms, then hers, aflame.
Consuela shuddered under the licking flames. “That’s what you meant by ‘again,’” she said. “You burned yourself.”
The muscles around V’s mouth trembled and he bit his lip to still it. His fist beat against his thigh and he dropped his head, nodding into his chest.
“It was an accident,” he said. // Getting trapped there. The fire … The fire just got away … // “I lost control of it.” V cracked his neck. “They keep me under—way under—but in the Flow, I’m whole. I’m me. I have all my fingers and my hair and my face and my nose. But when they try to pull me back …” He shrugged. “I don’t let them. I bow out.”
// Coward. // No! // I can’t take the pain. //
Consuela saw the husk of Joseph Crow’s place in her mind. Did this mean Joseph Crow died in the real world? Or did Joseph Crow die here, first? Did he die there and, somehow, his death crossed over? Which world is the reflection and which one’s real?
“Where am I?” she whispered to no one.
“In a hospital,” V said. “Most of us are.”
// I found you. //
She stared at him. “Where? How?”
V sighed. “Sissy has her computer,” he said. “If it’s out there, she can find it. Medical records, news reports—she can find anyone with enough information. And there aren’t a lot of Consuela Louisa Aguilar Chavezes around.” He rubbed his palms against his jeans as if trying to get warm despite being in the company of a living, burning thing. “So I found you. // The shell of you. // I hoped that bringing you to your body might help get you home.”
“Would it?”
“Maybe. It always pulls me,” V said. “That’s why I avoid going as long as I can. But once you know where your body is, you can never not-know again. It haunts you like your own personal ghost. You’re never wholly here again.”
Consuela considered that and him. “Can I ask you something? ”
“Anything.”
She burned, hesitant and looming. “Who are your assignments?” she asked quietly. “What’s the pattern?”
He knew why she was asking; a ripple passed over his mottled chest. He steeled himself before answering.
“I save those who are victims of their own choices.”
Stunned, Consuela struggled to make that fit.
V waited a tense moment in silence. “Can I ask you a question? ”
Consuela looked up.
“Are you ready to leave?” he asked.
Consuela swallowed, tasting her resolve with her tongue.
“No,” she said, her voice warm. “I haven’t saved you yet.”
Something unspoken passed between them.
Consuela stepped cautiously forward. V flinched. She wanted to say that she was being careful not to touch him—that although he would not burn, her fire might be a painful reminder—but the sentence only continued in her head: A reminder of pain. His pain. V’s pain. Her thoughts fell neat as dominoes: Tender eats pain. Controls it. Tender needs pain. He can’t help it, he’s hungry. V is always in pain. Tender helps him. Tender needs to feed. V wants to escape the pain, but Tender wants … what?
Violins sobbed in unison, snapping her aware.
// Do it! Say it! // Damn me, Angel! // You can’t save me! // No one can! //
She could. And she couldn’t. It wasn’t him.
Don’t give up, V. Don’t give up.
Consuela curled against him, a nimbus embracing him. He shuddered in her halo.
She whispered into his sleeve: “Know thyself.”
He looked up, startled, eyes wet and confused.
“It wasn’t you,” she said. “I know it wasn’t you.” And she was surprised to find that she meant it. There was some connection between V and pain, and pain and the Flow, and Tender and V, and somehow, she would find the answer. It was a compulsion as strong as any she’d known. But there was something more that she could give.
“I forgive you now.”
He fell against her.
Consuela hugged V tighter and let his tears dissolve into mist.