absurdly wide street (you could walk three dozen sheep abreast down a trail like that one, and no other sort of traffic was likely to use it), and a few moments later they heard the gasoline motor that powered the rickety-looking supply elevator cough to life. As the lift platform ascended, up the girders that framed the structure’s southwestern corner, they saw Watt’s skinny silhouette looking back down toward them.
“How are you really, Oz?” Tom asked.
“Married, for one thing,” Oscar said, holding up his left hand so that Tom could see the gold band around his ring finger. “Last spring. Almost an architect too, one more semester till I have my degree, and I just found out I’m gonna be a father.”
“Congratulations,” Tom said, feeling his heart sink as he wondered whether a third generation of San Martins would now be pledged to the service of the King. Architecture also surprised him as a career choice. Tom didn’t recall him ever expressing an interest in any such thing, but then he supposed a lot really could change in the course of ten years. “Got names picked out?” he asked.
“Not yet.” Oscar grinned. “Maybe Juan, after Connie’s father, if it’s a boy. I think she’d like that.”
Tom nodded. “He’ll be a big one, if he takes after you. Hope your missus knows what she’s getting herself into.”
Oscar laughed and nodded, then turned quiet. “I know you’re shocked by all of this, Tio Tomas,” he said, nodding over at the partially-erected skyscraper. “But I don’t think it’s the first time there’s been a building here.”
“What are you talking about?”
“When we cleared the site,” Oscar said, “there were bits and chunks of old broken mud bricks, all over the place. For miles around, too. Like maybe something was built here a long time ago and then got torn down again, and the bricks got scattered everywhere. And then the old Tree grew up in its place.”
“Like somebody planted it to mark the spot,” Tom mused.
Oscar shrugged. “Maybe,” he said. “They smashed up what they built, but somebody didn’t want to forget what’s, you know… up there. That’s what it made me think of, anyway, finding all those little pieces of brick. Farmers around here tell me they’ve been plowin’em out of their fields since the beginning, just thinking they’re dirt clods that have edges and corners for some reason. They either crush ’em up or throw ’em away.”
“Huh,” Tom grunted, thinking of the tales los Muertos sometimes told about the Great Step Pyramid that stood on the other side, beyond and beneath the King’s unbreachable chamber. On this side, a Hole in the Sky, stationed a hundred feet above the earth. On that side, a monumental Pyramid with stairs down each of its four faces and doors that opened onto other worlds. Old Ramon’s bones had spoken of it to Tom more than once, while standing at the door between the Chambers. The conversation of the dead tended to be disjointed and rambling, however, and many of the things Ramon said after his death had made little sense to Tom.
Ramon had died crazy, guilty to the point of madness over some cataclysm he believed he’d set in motion. Over some secret he said he’d given away. That betrayal had been enough to send him over the threshold between the rooms, and Tom had never even figured out what it was he thought he’d done.
Tom now wondered if people older than the old people had long ago erected a real-world counterpart to the Temple of Mictlantecuhtli right here in this field. Perhaps the ancient forbearers of the Aztecs themselves had done it, before moving south from their mythic homeland of Aztlan. Maybe their temple had even been the original, and the one lingering on in the otherworld was a copy. Who but el Rey could know?
Tom also wondered who’d torn the structure down again, feeling a certain kinship with those wise folks, whoever they may have been.
“Makes me think of what the dead say, about what’s outside the second room,” Oscar said, echoing Tom’s thoughts uncannily. Of course the younger man would’ve heard the same stories. Even from some of the same ghosts. “You know, about the pyramid el Rey’s supposed to have over there, in the land of Mictlan.”
“Me too,” Tom murmured. “So what’s the plan here, anyway? How’re you supposed to keep all those men from finding out about the Hole?” He waved an indicative hand in the direction most of the departing workforce had taken.
“Well, I’m to finish off the top floor myself, for one thing. At least the rooms right around the Hole, me and maybe a few handpicked guys.”
“And you think you can expect them to keep the secret?”
Oscar shrugged. “Not really. I’ve been thinking it might go better if I give the work to some of the men I hate, like the ones who get drunk and punch their wives for fun on a Friday night, and then when they’re done just, you know… push ’em through.”
“That’s coldblooded, mijo,” Tom said. It was also smart, he reflected, and safer than letting rumors of the Hole spread amongst these new people. Still, he couldn’t quite bring himself to encourage it out loud.
“I know it, Tio,” Oscar said, lowering his voice. “But the King’s reach into this world is getting long enough already, I think.”
Tom looked up at him. “What do you mean?”
“He has money of his own now,” Oscar said. “Investments, bank accounts. He owns land. He’s got people on a payroll who think he’s completely human, just a weird recluse. Watt handles it all for him, for now, but he’s gonna snap under the pressure soon. He’s wound too tight for it.”
“Is it that bad already?”
“Things are moving fast, Tio. The King’s even picked himself out a name to use in the realworld: ‘Miguel Caradura.’”
“‘Michael Hardface?’” Tom said. “I guess that fits.”
“I think it was the witch’s idea of something clever,” Oscar said. “He’s working on a face and a body to go along with it. He stands there in the second room wearing a suit to practice looking like a real person. I think he means to hold business meetings and crap like that when the building’s done. He’s already had me drag office things up there so he can start learning to handle them.”
“Oscar,” Tom said, looking up at the younger man. “Do I have to tell you how bad an idea all this is?”
“Not really, Tio,” Ramon’s boy said, and Tom felt both relieved and proud of him upon hearing it.
The curtain came down on his moment of hope when Oscar took a small gun from inside his overalls and pointed it, reluctantly, right at him.
“But I still have to take you up to the Hole, and watch you go into the second room,” Oz said.
Tom looked at the gun. “You gonna shoot me? What would be the point of that?”
Oscar also looked down at the sorry little pistol in his hand, acknowledging the absurdity of it. He put it away, tucking it in at the small of his back. “Not much, I guess,” he said. “You need to give up your flesh of your own free will if you’re to be useful to the King. It’s the deal you made with him. I just need to make sure you honor it.”
“How come, mijo?” Tom said softly. “What arrangement has he made with you?”
Oscar’s face creased with shame and sadness. “My son,” he whispered. “The child Connie’s carrying right now, Tio. The King says he won’t call for him when he’s older, if you make good on your promise.”
Oh. Tom might’ve known. He nodded.
“Let’s go, then, if we’re going,” he said, and Oscar looked down at his boots, unable to meet Tom’s eyes.
Part Four: All Souls’ Day, Afternoon
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Graves thought his stolen fancyass car looked made for the driveway Lia instructed him to pull it into. An automatic gate closed behind them as they glided up towards a sprawling, Spanish-style mansion perched on a rocky outcrop high above the city, way up in the exclusive Hollywood Hills. Graves didn’t know what sort of architectural magic kept it up there. Every house they’d passed on the drive up winding, twisting Coldwater Canyon looked like it could’ve gone sliding down the side of its mountain at any second.
Lia was out of the car almost before it stopped at the top of the circular drive, leaving the passenger door
