The Wrong Goodbye

Which made sense, on account of he wasn’t alone.

She was slight of build, and stunning in all the obvious ways. Sun-kissed hair spilled down over shoulders both shapely and deeply tanned. A spaghetti-strapped tank top of heather gray barely contained a pair of breasts just this side of ostentatious. A glimpse of midriff peeked out above a skirt that started so low and ended so high, in simpler times it would’ve caused a riot. Her legs gleamed with reflected candlelight, and went all the way to the floor.

In her hand, she held Psoglav’s skimming blade.

I turned my attention back to Danny, who was wearing a strapping lad of twenty-five or so, with pale blue eyes and teeth so white they seemed to glow. He looked unperturbed by my arrival. In fact, he appeared the picture of confidence in his yarn-dyed linen shirt and khaki shorts, a pair of leather sandals on his feet. “Who’s the skirt?” I asked him. The gnawing feeling in my gut told me I already knew.

“Who’s the skirt?” she repeated back to me, her crisp Balkan accent an added barb to her mockery. “Honestly, Sam, is that any way to greet an old friend?”

Ana. I should have known. All the magic. All the planning. Danny never could have managed this without her.

I took a step toward them. Danny raised a hand and waved at me a ludicrous revolver. Seriously, the thing was so big, Dirty Harry would’ve thought the thing excessive. And the way Danny was holding it, he was just as likely to break his wrist as hit me. But I knew him well enough to realize his carelessness was affected. He could put a round in my chest at twice this distance. So I stopped moving. Stayed put.

“That’s a good chap,” he said. “You’d be wise to stay outside the circle, or I fear I’ll be forced to get quite cross.”

I eyed the circle. I hadn’t noticed it until he’d called attention to it. The last one I’d seen was alder ash, the sacrifice of the trees’ lives enough to protect an entire building from the underworld’s reach. This one was smaller, only ten feet across, and made from blood.

“Yes,” Danny said, “the loss of life required for this little parlor trick, and the one you encountered downstairs, is unfortunate —but I assure you, I had the good grace to get the poor indigent who unwit tingly donated it nice and pissed on decent whisky before I tapped him. In all likelihood, it was a better death than he had coming.”

“Yeah, you’re a real peach,” I said. And then, to Ana: “How can you go along with this? Don’t you realize what’s at stake?”

“Go along with this?” she said. “Why, Sam, you’ve got it wrong. Do you think our Daniel could have planned a rite so intricate as this? Do you think he has the skills to carry it out? I learned long ago, Sam, no one is coming to rescue me —so I decided to take it upon myself to do so.”

Of course. It seemed so goddamn obvious in retrospect. Only Ana could have conjured Abyzou so easily. Only she would have the mystical mojo to pull all this off.

“So it’s been you all this time? You who set Danny up as a runner for Dumas? You who sent him to double- cross me?”

“I’m my own man,” Danny protested. “My decisions were my own.”

“Sure they were. So you’re saying it sat OK with you, stealing the Varela soul from an old friend?”

“It was a necessary evil; the ritual requires a truly corrupt soul. The energy it releases upon its destruction breaks hell’s bond of servitude as it fuses soul to flesh forever. Hence the young, choice meat-suits —we’ll be stuck with them from here on out. And besides, you’re one to talk of bloody loyalty. I’ve not forgotten what you did to Quinn.”

“Damn it, Danny —I’ve told you a thousand times, I’m not the one who got Quinn shelved.”

“Yeah, right,” he spat. “I suppose Ana didn’t hear you rat him out, then.”

My God. All these years, I’d had it backward. Danny hadn’t turned Ana against me. Ana had turned Danny.

And that’s when the pieces clicked into place.

“This building,” I said to her. “The design, the construction —the research to get the ritual just right. Inserting Danny into Dumas’s operation. Hell, calling in an angelic air-strike so you could get your hands on a grade-A skimming blade… the groundwork to orchestrate all that must’ve taken years.”

Ana laughed, short and bitter. “Years? Try decades. I first had to pinpoint the exact moment and location of the necessary celestial alignment —no small feat given how deep any mention of this ritual was buried. And even with a Collector’s unique skill set, getting money enough was a challenge. Transferring the funds from wealthy meat-suits to procure the land seemed simple enough, but it proved slower than anticipated —I had to do so without raising hackles. And then there was the matter of organizing today’s celebration.”

“But the Dia de los Muertos has been celebrated in this square for over thirty years.”

Ana laughed. “You think that’s by accident? Every year, this festival has grown, and every year, it’s free of charge to all who wish to come. Oh, I’ll grant you, the folks who throw it haven’t the faintest idea I’m involved —I’ve been careful to shield both my money and my more arcane influences from public view. And it all culminates in one night, in one moment —after which Danny and I will both be free. Danny, the Varela.”

Danny removed from his pocket a swirling, grayblack orb. The Varela soul. I inched forward, but he once more trained his gun on me, and once more I stopped, chastened.

“Danny, don’t. Don’t give it to her. You have no idea the hell on earth that you’ll unleash by going through with this.”

Danny smiled then, his youthful expression painful in its naivete. “Ana’s found a way round it,” he said. “A spell that’ll disperse the energy safely once it’s freed us. Those nearest the ritual —like you, perhaps, or the two you’ve brought —might not fare so well, but I assure you, those beyond the fence will be fine.”

“Do you really believe that?”

“Why shouldn’t I? Unlike you, she’s never lied to me.”

“No? So it’s not possible she’s the one who turned Quinn in?”

Ana bristled. “The Varela, Danny.”

“She said herself she’s been working toward this night for thirty years. Tell me, have you known the whole time what she had in store? Or did she only bring you in when she realized she couldn’t pull it off alone? When she realized someone would have to stick their neck out to get the tools, the soul, the expertise she needed.”

“Don’t listen to him,” Ana snapped.

“She brought me in five years ago,” he said. “But I never thought…”

“What? Never thought that she was using you? That you were nothing but a patsy to her? Maybe that’s what Quinn was once, too —or maybe he overheard something he shouldn’t have. Twenty-seven years he’s spent shelved, and for all those twentyseven years, she’s told you it was me who turned Quinn in, while the whole time she schemed in secret, working toward this night. Tell me, Ana, was Quinn helping you? Did he prove a liability —a loose end in your plan?”

“Quinn was a mistake!” she screamed, and then caught herself —her shoulders sagging, her face falling in dismay.

“Ana?” This from Danny: quiet, unsure.

“I never wanted this for him,” she said. “He was a friend. Hell, he was scarcely more than a child. I hadn’t thought when I asked of him a simple errand it would end so poorly, but then, I had no idea the boy spoke Latin.”

“He was Catholic, Ana,” I said. “An altar boy. In those days, they all did.”

“I’d sent him to procure a manuscript from a monastery in the south of France —a scroll of unknown origin that hadn’t seen the outside of the stone reliquary in which it had been sealed in centuries. I’d been tipped to it by a demon contact who swore he’d had a hand in writing it, and his tip was sound; it proved the fullest account of the Brethren I had ever seen. The problem was, young Quinn had seen it too —seen it, and translated its contents — and his enthusiasm at the prospect of escaping this life was too much for him to bear. He wanted to tell the both of you —to attempt the ritual immediately —and try though I did, I could not persuade him otherwise. So instead, I had to silence him.”

“Ana,” Danny said. “Fuck. How could you?”

“I did what I had to do,” was her retort.