“Yeah, that’s when she was a vegetarian. Now that she’s a vegan she only eats orange food: mac and cheese, carrots, sweet and sour pork.”
“Sweet and sour pork is not vegan.”
“The kid had two dogs the size of cows at her command. If she wants sweet and sour pork to be vegan, then it is.”
“So you just let her do whatever she wants—run around here like a crazed barbarian.”
“She likes to think of herself as a warrior princess,” said Cassie.
“Are you guys fighting?” Charlie asked.
“It’s how we show affection,” said Cassie.
“Honestly, I’m kind of sad she’s not the Luminatus,” said Jane, slouching on the couch. “I feel bad for her. Plus, it really got me through discussions in line at Whole Foods. When the other mothers were going on about how awesome their kids were, I’d think: Oh, your little Riley is an all-star in youth soccer, can play Bach on the cello, speaks Mandarin, and has a brown belt in ballet? Well, Sophie is the Luminatus. DEATH! The grim reaper. The big D. She rules the Underworld and can vaporize demons with a wave of a hand. She’s guarded by indestructible hellhounds that can eat steel and burp fire, so your little Riley can lick dog drool off my Sophie’s spiky red Louboutins, bitch! Now I’ll never be able to say that.”
“Sophie has spiky red Louboutins?” Charlie said. “I don’t think those are good for a kid’s posture.”
“No, I was embellishing. Really not the point of the speech, Chuck. It was that Sophie had a thing, but it had to be a secret. They’re all so gifted.” Jane said ‘gifted’ with a tone normally reserved for reference to skin-boring parasites. “You know one mother has her kid in Ninjitsu. Ninja lessons! Kid is seven, why does she need invisible assassin skills?”
“Well, as important as your self-esteem in the line at Whole Foods is, I’m more concerned that if she doesn’t have her powers, with the hellhounds gone, we don’t have any way to protect her from—you know.”
Cassie and Jane both knew how Cavuto had been killed. They played darting-eye tennis between them until Cassie lost and so had to say something positive.
“Maybe she’s just having a hiatus or something. She had them when she needed them, right? Well, maybe her powers will return. Like when she hits puberty. Maybe one day when she’s in sixth or seventh grade she’ll get her period, the skies will darken, and the Apocalypse will be on.”
“That’s how it happened for me,” said Jane.
“It did not,” said Charlie. “I don’t remember that.”
“You were at camp.”
“Well, even if that’s the case, we need to get her to sixth or seventh grade. Look, I need you guys to take her somewhere out of the city until this is all sorted out.”
“I can’t. I have work,” said Jane.
“You’re sitting around drinking wine at three in the afternoon on a Monday.”
“If you give me a day,” said Cassie, “I’ll get my classes covered. How far do you think we should go and how long do you need us to stay away?”
“Thanks, Cass,” Charlie said. “I think maybe a day’s drive will do it. Whatever is going on, it’s clearly centered in the city. The others are talking about going after the Morrigan. I’ll ask them to wait until you’re safely out of town.”
“Done,” said Cassie. “It’s sad that your best sister is not related to you by blood.”
“I was going to do it,” said Jane. “I just wanted to make a bigger deal out of it.”
“Why is all this centered in San Francisco?” Cassie asked. “Seems like it should be a worldwide thing, right? Did you guys figure that out in your meeting?”
“I suppose that’s something we should have talked about,” said Charlie.
When Mike Sullivan first stepped into space, into Concepción’s arms, he was surprised not only that it didn’t hurt, but just how completely joyful he felt.
“My beautiful Nikolai,” Concepción said.
“You said that before,” Mike said. “But I’m not—” Then he felt it, the thread of time, going back from the bridge, through a dozen lives in a dozen times, men, women, births, deaths, strung out like lights, the brightest the Russian, the count, Nikolai Rezanov, made radiant because of the light of Concepcíon de Argüello, his love. He kissed her, as he perceived that he could kiss her, because the boundaries of their bodies no longer existed, and they were, for a moment, completely and absolutely one. But she pulled away, and again he could see her, and she him.
“Not yet,” she said.
“No? But you waited so long.”
“I had to wait, but I was happy to wait, I could do nothing but wait, and I can wait a little more? Then—”
“So, you had to find me before you could rest?”
“Rest? Oh, no, my love. We will be together, at last, but it will not be to rest. Look at them, feel them, all of these ghosts?”
Mike looked, then reached out, aware of every strand and rivet of the bridge and the ghosts that flowed over and through them, over and through one another, oblivious, the bridge their only anchor to any world.
“There is much to do,” said Concepcíon.
“I can feel that,” said Mike, feeling the tug of the thread of his past lives like fish on a long line.
“And they and many more than them are trapped if we do not find the Ghost Thief.”
“Did you look under the couch?” Mike said. “In my many lives, I remember that lost things are often—”
“You fell off a fucking horse?” said Concepcíon, the spell between them broken for now. “You couldn’t have told someone to send word. A note?”
The Morrigan were gathered at a sewer junction under Mission Street, staying pressed against the walls, flat as shadows, to avoid the light filtering down from a grate above. Babd was manifesting a slight, blue-black, feathered pattern on her body, while her sisters were merely flat masses of darkness. Babd had managed to snag one of the little creatures who carried human souls—souls that they could consume as they once consumed the souls of dead warriors on the battlefield in the days when they had ruled as goddesses. She ate it in front of her sisters as it squealed, and they watched jealously as the feathers appeared on her with the power in the soul. When she had consumed all but a few gooey drops of the red soul, she threw them each one of the creature’s legs, which they sucked out of the air like groupers snapping down fry.
Babd speared the piece of meat the creature had been carrying, bit into it, then spit it out in revulsion. “Just meat,” she said. “Ham, I think.”
“I thought we liked ham,” said Nemain, looking enviously at her sister’s talons, which had manifested with the power of the soul she’d just consumed.
“These things holding the souls, aren’t they made of ham?” asked Macha. She very much wanted to pick up the little creature’s head, which lay in a stream of water in the pipe, but didn’t have the corporeal substance to pick up and hold anything. It would make a lovely pendant, at least until she could get a human head to replace it, which was her preference.
“No, it’s just meat,” said Babd. “But they are gathering it for something. Maybe they have a nest.”
“A nest?” said Macha, a dreamy tone to her voice. “A nest, built with bones of men. Lamps of skulls all around—”
“And cushions,” said Nemain, joining in the reverie. “To lie on.”
“To push a dying warrior down on and fuck him to death,” said Babd.
“—lick his soul from your claws as his light goes out,” said Macha, shuddering at the pleasure of the thought.
“Oooo, a nest,” said Nemain. “We should go back to the tunnel near the Fort, for when Yama brings us the souls.”
“No, we should wait for more of these things,” said Babd, pointing to the skull. “Follow them to their nest.”
“With the souls we get from Yama we can go above,” said Macha. “Above! Find the soul sellers. Grow stronger. Hold dominion. Build a nest.”
“With cushions,” added Nemain.
“I don’t trust Yama,” said Babd, emboldened by her easy soul score. “The last time—the banshee.”
“And the gun,” said Macha.
“And the way he walks in the light,” said Nemain. “How does he do that?”
“Shhhh,” shushed Babd. There were voices in the pipes. Not filtering down from above, but in the pipes with them. Small voices. She bridged herself over the top of the pipe, disappearing into the darkness there as best she could, fighting the form she had gained. Her sisters moved away from the grate above and became part of the darkness once again.
The procession of creatures moved by them, perhaps ten of them, each with the little light showing through his clothes, each carrying some bit of meat or animal part, except the last, who carried what looked like a porcelain candy dish that also glowed with the light of a human soul.
The Morrigan followed them for blocks, flowing along the sides of the pipes, watching as the little creatures climbed a makeshift ladder and hopped, one by one, through an open storm grate. Babd moved to look out but the daylight singed her and she pulled back.
“Wait,” she said.
When darkness fell an hour later they gathered at the storm grate and looked out.
“I remember this place,” said Nemain.
“That tall green one kept running over us here,” said Macha. “Cars suck.”
Babd rose up, spotted a very large Victorian house across the street, a sign in front that she could not read.
“What is it?” asked Nemain.
“The nest,” said Babd.
The director messaged Lily to see him in his office when her shift was finished. She set an alarm on her phone that would go off five minutes into her appearance and would sound like a phone call. The door was open and she could hear Mr. Leonidas and Sage talking. She listened long enough to determine they weren’t talking about her, then knocked.
“Come in,” Leonidas said. He was dark and a little doughy, with eyebrows that Lily found it hard to look away from because they really looked like they might have ideas of their own. Because of her fascination with his eyebrows, Leonidas thought that Lily paid rapt attention to everything he said and consequently showed her favor over the other counselors. Leonidas had a background in psychology and public health, so being a snarky bitch around him was deeply unsatisfying because he would always try to find the root of her discontent, the hurt behind her hostility; getting a rise out of him was like trying to give a handjob to a parking meter: you were going to end up frustrated and exhausted long before a cop came along to haul you away. In spite of herself, she kind of liked Leonidas. Having Sage in the room, the enemy, was presenting a dilemma.
“Mr. Leonidas,” Lily said. “What can I do for you? I can wait until you’re done with Sage if you’d like.”
“No, please have a seat. Sage brought something to my attention and I thought it fair that she be here to see how it was handled.”
“Oh, right,” said Lily. “For her thesis. Sure.” She sat down, looked over the array of a dozen or so family pictures propped across Leonidis’s desk. “How’s the fam? Have any more kids?”
“No, still just the six, same as when you asked me two weeks ago.”
“Well, I know how busy you are,” Lily said. “What’s up?”
“Lily, Sage heard some disturbing dialogue in the call center today, and I thought we would all listen to the recording together so we could understand what happened.”
“I don’t see what she has—”
Leonidis held up his hand to stop her right there. “Let’s just listen.”
He hit a key on his PC keyboard and Lily heard her own voice coming out of the speakers. Sage sat back and nodded, as if she’d just wrapped the big case on Law & Order.
“Crisis Center, this is Lily, what’s your name?”
And there was silence. Nothing.
“Hi, Mike,” Lily’s voice said on the recording. “How are you doing today?”
And there was another gap. And Lily’s voice continued, her entire half of the conversation, and only her half, and as the recording ran, Sage started to squirm in her chair and Lily fought, fought very hard, not to grin, and was really thankful when the alarm on her phone went off so she could make a big deal out of ignoring the imaginary call.
They listened to the entire conversation, Lily’s side only. When it ended, Leonidas looked at Sage and said, “That’s it. That’s the entire call.”
“But she always does—” Sage stopped. “I’ve heard her before, she’s so profane.”
“I think we can see what was going on here,” Leonidas said. He raised his eyebrows at Sage in what he probably thought was an open, understanding manner, but Lily thought they looked like two bristly caterpillars crouching, ready to pounce. He turned to Lily and she pushed back a little from his desk—the eyebrows, they were sizing her up. “Lily, while I don’t approve of high jinks in the call center, I understand the point you were making with this little performance.”
“Uh, thanks, Mr. Leonidas,” Lily said. Point them at Sage. Point them at Sage.
“And, Sage, while you may not immediately see the efficacy of Lily’s method, she does get results, she connects with the clients, and ultimately, that saves lives. Perhaps less focus on her process and more on yours and we’ll be able to connect with more people. Help more people. Don’t you agree?”
Sage nodded, looking into the abyss of one of the buttons on her cargo pants.
It was a Leonidas ass-chewing—as close as he ever got to one. Lily resisted doing a booty dance of triumph against Sage’s stupid sweater because that would be immature, so she did it mentally and said. “Friends?” She stood and held out her arms to force Sage into hugging it out. And as she held Sage a little too long, feeling the slight woman get tenser and tenser as the embrace continued, even as she puffed Sage’s frizzy-ass hair out of her mouth, exhibiting her victory—nay—her domination, Lily also warmed with the satisfaction of her own specialness.
She was the only one who could hear him—the only one who could talk to the ghost of the bridge.
21
Killing Villarreal
Mike Sullivan hung from one of the vertical suspension cables by one hand. “Look, I’m as light as a feather. There’s hardly even a breeze and I’m standing straight out.”
“You are lighter than a feather, my love. Let go and you will not fall, and the bridge will not let you blow away.”
“Yeah, I think I’m going to wait on the letting-go part.”
“You are beyond fear. And you are bound to the bridge just as you were drawn to it.”
“Just the same, you died of what, diphtheria? What if right after you died I was to offer you a big steaming cup of diphtheria, how would you feel?”
“They can put it in a cup now? It was invisible in my day.”
“A Cleveland steamer was a ship, in your day, my sweet Conchita.”
She reclined on the oceanside railing—the walkway on that side of the bridge was closed most of the time, the foot and bicycle traffic confined to the bay side. Not that it would have mattered. People would have walked right through her and have only felt a chill, which was normal for the Golden Gate.
She said, “There is someone who needs to speak to you, my love.”
“Another one? I don’t understand. Why do they want to talk to me?” There had been scores of them, each telling a different story; a woman who was trapped overnight in a stationery cabinet with a janitor after the earthquake of 1989 and didn’t share the Pepsi she had in her purse, a man who hallucinated he was being pursued by a giant squirrel in John Muir Woods. The
only thing the stories had in common was some unresolved element, some lesson unlearned, something sad.
“I don’t know why, my love, any more than I know why I had to wait two hundred years for you, and that you have been on your way here for two hundred years, but I trust there is a reason. I have faith.”
“Faith? But all those years as a nun, didn’t you—I mean, did it prepare you for this?”
“For this? No. True devotion is done not for a reward, but for the devotion itself. All my works, all my prayers, were for forgiveness of my selfishness, my weakness, because I could never love God as much as I loved you. What my time as a nun prepared me for was the damnation of being without you for these centuries, which I deserved. For this, you, here, with me, this joy, for this I was not prepared.”
Mike settled on the walkway beside her and took her in his arms; she embraced him, and in an instant they were a single entity—the only thing the third ghost could see of them was a white gardenia that Concepción wore in her hair, glowing.
“This is where I’m supposed to talk to the guy, right?” said the third ghost.
Mike and Concepción divided like a luminous amoeba and each stood on the walkway.
“My love, I am going to drift,” she said. “Good day, sir.”
The third ghost, who wore a baseball uniform, tipped his cap. “She asks someone what a Cleveland steamer is, might be your last—uh, whatever that was you two were doing for a while.”
“You heard that?” asked Mike.
“Yep. You want to have a smoke or something?”
“I’m good. How long have you been there?”
“Awhile. You don’t get many conversations here, as you probably know. Most people are kind of flighty.”
“Good description.”
“Besides, I wanted to see what happened if things got hot. Never seen that before either.”
“How long you been on the bridge?”
“Ah, not long, ten, maybe fifteen years. Hard to say exactly. Time, right?”
“Do you know why you’re here? I mean, any of us, but let’s just say you?”