“I’m Miguel!” Miguel said, giggling. He grabbed me by the hand and pulled me into the house. “Come on, Aunt Domino, I’ll take you to Papa.”
Miguel led me through the kitchen where Chavez’s wife was making sandwiches and struggling to control the damage inflicted by her youngest daughter’s assistance. She smiled when she saw me and stopped wiping mustard from the countertop long enough to give me a hug.
“Domino, you don’t visit us anymore,” she said. “It’s been too long.”
“I know, I’m sorry, Cecilia. Things have been a little crazy at work.”
“Yes, but you still have to take time for yourself. Like the king back there.” She nodded in the direction of the backyard and laughed.
“Can I have a few minutes with him? I promise, I won’t be long.”
“You’re always welcome here, Domino. Elsa will make you a sandwich.” The little girl nodded and smiled, reaching for the mustard bottle.
I went through the back door and out onto the patio. Chavez’s backyard wasn’t much larger than the front, but it was big enough for a grill, a picnic table, a few patio chairs and an above-ground pool. A small wooden trestle canopy provided shade for the patio. Chavez lounged in a wicker chair, drinking a Tecate and watching a couple more kids splashing in the pool. He was wearing plaid shorts, flip-flops and a faded red tank top with enough holes to let his belly breathe.
“Looking good, Chavez.”
“Hey, chola,” he said, pulling another of the wicker chairs closer to him. “Come and sit with me.” He opened a plastic cooler next to his chair and grabbed another beer. He popped the top and handed it to me. I noticed there were three cell phones sitting on the glass-topped wicker table next to the cooler. Chavez never completely stopped working.
I sat down and took a pull on the bottle. It was cold, and crisp, and little flecks of ice clung to the bottle and slowly slid down the glass.
Chavez leaned back in his chair and took a long swig. He sighed. “Life is fucking good, chola,” he said. Then he looked sharply from side to side to see if any of the kids were in earshot. “Cilia works me over when I cuss around los ninos,” he said.
I laughed. “The domestic bliss is almost more than I can take, Chavez.”
He shook his head. “This shit here’s what it’s all about, chola. It doesn’t get any better. You should try it.”
For some reason, I felt a little lump in my throat and took another drink to wash it down. “Hey, Chavez, you have a Xolo, right?” I’m not sure whether it was the sense of urgency I felt or I just wanted to change the subject.
“Yeah, he’s around here somewhere. Why? You thinking about getting a dog? It’s a start, I guess.”
“I was wondering if I could talk to him.”
Chavez stopped with his beer halfway to his lips and looked at me. “You want to talk to my dog, chola?” I filled him in on my theory about the zombie problem and the missing psychopomps. When I finished, he just shrugged and whistled.
“Caesar!” he called.
“Your dog’s name is Caesar?”
“Yeah.”
“Caesar Chavez.”
“Yeah,” he said, grinning. “Like Cesar Chavez, only Caesar instead of Cesar.”
“Yeah, I get it,” I said.
Caesar turned out to be somewhat smaller than you might expect from his name. He might have come up to my knee. He was long and lean, with an angular snout and a tapered tail that whipped back and forth. And he was hairless. His color was something between a dark gray and blue. Honestly, he looked a bit like he had a full-body bruise. He came loping around the side of the swimming pool and sat down in front of Chavez with his tongue lolling out.
Chavez scratched his head and nodded to me. “Go ahead. I can’t guarantee he’ll have much to say.”
“I won’t freak out your family?”
Chavez shook his head. “They know the game. They see what you’re doing, they’ll probably want you to translate so they can talk to him, too.”
I’d learned the Doolittle spell when I was a teenager. It hadn’t taken long to figure out most animals weren’t much for engaging conversation. It had probably been close to twenty years since I’d last used the spell.
“Our expression and our words never coincide,” I said, incanting the words of the spell, “which is why the animals don’t understand us.” The pattern formed in my mind and I let the juice wash over Caesar. He yelped and jumped to his feet, then turned in circles a few times before sitting down and looking at me.
“Tickles,” he said.
I nodded and smiled at him. “Hello, Caesar. I’m Domino.”
“I remember. You were here before, when I was new to this pack. Smell is the same.” He had a slight Chicano accent, though it must have been coming from my subconscious, through the magic.
“That’s right,” I said. “I remember you, too, Caesar. I have some questions for you. Will you answer them?”
The dog’s tongue flopped out of his mouth again and he lay down. “I will answer. Maybe the male will give me food. The female is making sandwiches.”
“Yeah, with lots of mustard.”
“I like mustard,” Caesar said.
“Okay, answer my questions and I’ll bet Chavez…uh, the male…will give you food.” I’m not above bribery to get what I want, and anyway, it was Chavez’s sandwich.
“You want to know about the ghost walkers?” Caesar asked. “The Xolos who walk with the dead?”
I was so surprised, my jaw dropped open. Most of what humans would call intelligence was coming from the magic, but even so, Caesar was one insightful dog. “You know about them, Caesar? About what they do?”
“Yes, the truebloods, they set humans free when they die. Xolos don’t need any help with dying, but humans are too stupid to find the way on their own.” He dropped his head to his paws, and added, “No offense.”
I laughed. “None taken. How do they do that, Caesar? How do they set the humans free?”
“With their teeth,” Caesar said. He said it in exactly the same tone my mother had. Okay, so maybe it was a stupid question.
“They bite the, uh, bodies? How is it no one notices this?”
Caesar sighed. “Not the bodies. They cross to the other side and bite the spirits, to tear them loose from the bodies.”
“How do they cross to the other side?” I asked, and then had an idea. “Is it when they’re dreaming?”
“No, when we dream, we mostly just chase rabbits. Some times birds. Or cats-but cats can be scary.” Caesar laid his ears back.
“So how do they cross?”
“They just do. They can cross over whenever they want-only when they’re awake, though. Usually they wait until no humans are looking.”
I’d never heard of anything that could cross physically from our world to the Between without a gate. Maybe ghouls. I’d run into a ghoul once and it wasn’t my fondest memory. “But you can’t do this, Caesar? Cross over and free humans, I mean?”
Caesar whined. “No, I’m not a trueblood. I think I’ve got some Chihuahua in me.” I thought I detected a disgusted note in his voice.
“You’re a wonderful dog, Caesar. Your pack loves you.” I wasn’t sure he needed any encouragement from me but I didn’t want my spell to leave him with an inferiority complex.
“I love my pack. They give me food, and I have my own house at the back of the yard, and I have my own bed in the kitchen where all the best smells are, and I don’t even mind when the little ones pull my tail or twist my ears.”
“That’s great, Caesar, it sounds like you have a nice life here. Can you tell me about the ghost walkers? Do you know what happened to them?”
