Graves' end

be alive, alive and unchanged, untouched by age? He’d long ago deduced Mictlan to be a realm devoid of time, because he and other clever necromancers had discovered they were able to communicate with the future dead, with the possible ghosts of generations-yet-to-be as well as with their ancestors, at the pleasure of el Rey. It was where the mantic or prognostic part of the art came into play, really. Could the time-free property he’d observed possibly allow a witch equipped to cross from one world to the next also to hop around the ages with no regard for linear chronology at all?

Time-travel went well beyond any grace of Mictlantecuhtli’s Tom had ever experienced, or heard tell of either. This woman was obviously no ordinary initiate, however.

He’d been taken in utterly by the lies she’d told to Lia. He’d wanted to help her, even more than Lia had. He’d also wanted to keep her safe from the influence of the King, as soon as he realized exactly where it was she thought her ‘brother’ had gone.

Well, he always had been an idiot for a pretty face. This was one of the few times he’d ever regretted it. He acknowledged that Lia’s instincts on this had been better than his own, right from the start.

“Here, kitty kitty,” Ingrid cooed. When Tom was visible enough to recognize, she said: “Ohh, I remember you, you’re the one who thought I didn’t see you at the restaurant yesterday. Or the other time, either.”

Black Tom folded his arms.

Ingrid’s cellphone rang almost as soon as he’d materialized all the way, into full visibility, despite his continued efforts to send out or otherwise break free of her reinforced trap. Smiling, she answered the call.

“What did you do with him?” Lia shouted down the line. The volume on the little device was turned up high enough for Tom to hear, though Lia’s side of the conversation sounded tinny and distant.

“Lia,” Ingrid said brightly. “So nice to hear from you again.”

“Who are you, anyway?” Lia demanded. “What are you, Ingrid?”

“Why Lia, I would have thought you’d have that figured out by now. I’m just like you.”

“That whole sob story you told me about the missing brother with the occulty friends was bullshit too, wasn’t it?”

“Well, yes, I suppose it was,” Ingrid said. “But that doesn’t matter now.”

“It matters to me!” Lia yelled, loud enough to make the phone’s speaker crackle and Ingrid wince. “I don’t like being played with, and I don’t like being lied to. And if you’ve hurt Black Tom I’ll, I’ll-”

“Lia, you don’t understand. I can help you, but you have to trust me. If you’ll just for gods’ sake come back out here with Dexter, then we can-”

Tom saw Ingrid spot a liberally-tattooed henchman in sunglasses watching her from a distance that probably left him within earshot. She abruptly changed her tone.

“-we can, ah, talk over all the things that Mr. Caradura wants me to, you know, tell you. It’s important. Trust me, and I won’t have to do what I don’t want to do. To your, you know, your cat.”

Ingrid turned away from the inked-up creep, grimacing. She looked to Tom like she knew this conversation was going poorly, but she couldn’t say more with that baldheaded lurker so plainly listening in. Tom guessed that all of this would get back to el Rey, then. Everything the man heard. So Ingrid had to choose her words with care, and hope they’d play the way she needed them to, for both of the audiences who’d receive them.

Tom could tell when somebody was working both sides of an angle. He didn’t yet know why she was doing it, however. Couldn’t fathom it. Nor could he reach out to communicate with her from inside her hex. Not without the benefit of a voice he could raise.

“Trust doesn’t apply when you take away somebody’s options,” Lia said darkly, from the speaker on Ingrid’s little phone. “But you win, Ingrid. I’m coming. I can’t do anything else.”

“Just do it soon,” Ingrid said. “Please.” She dropped her voice to a whisper. “It’s already late, and there won’t be a damn thing we can do after dark.”

Black Tom looked on calmly as Ingrid broke the connection, appearing frustrated and pensive. She turned on the henchman with the dark glasses, away from Tom, and snapped: “It’s hard to work with a fucking audience, you know.”

The tattooed man said nothing, but he stepped creepily back into the foliage and out of sight.

Ingrid looked back to Black Tom, who raised an eyebrow at her.

Chapter Thirty-Six

Lia folded up her phone, scowling and thinking. “She’s an operator,” she said, meaning Ingrid. She, Hannah and Dexter were standing on the shoulder of Mulholland Drive, where Lia had paced back and forth during the call. “She’s like me. I guess maybe better than me. I think I’m still aging at a normal rate.” She looked to Dex. “She’s bound my Tom the way I did you, yesterday, Dexter.”

“How do you know?” Hannah asked, having never seen Black Tom out of his catbody before. She’d parked their car at a scenic overlook, though none of them had eyes for the view. “How did you know?”

“Normally I see him, or at least I feel him,” Lia said. “He’s always with me, in one way or another. And now he’s not.”

“Always?” Hannah said, thinking about it. “Always always? Does he look like a cat?”

“No, he mostly looks like a man,” Lia said. “Like he looked when he was alive. He was an operator too, years and years ago. His patron was Mictlantecuhtli. That’s how I know about the Tzitzimime and all that stuff, from him. But he skipped out on the deal they made when he died and escaped into another body. A cat’s body. My cat’s like his tenth or twelfth ride. So if Ingrid’s aligned with Mictlantecuhtli, and it’s pretty clear by now she is, then Tom’s in real danger.”

“What’s a Mictlantecuhtli?” Dex asked. “Like an imported beer or something?”

“He’s the Aztec personification of Death, Dexter,” Lia said shortly. “The King of the Realm of the Dead. You’ve heard him called Miguel Caradura or Mickey Hardface, I guess.”

“Hey,” Hannah said, as a weird thought occurred to her. “Does that mean the Aztecs had the right religion, then? Lia?”

“It means everything that can be dreamed or imagined lives a life in the otherworld,” Lia said.

Dexter looked thoughtful. “Ingrid told me Hardface was just a mobster,” he recalled. “Or at least implied it. She was pretty vague, but I chalked that up to her being scared for her life. She said she got mixed up with Caradura, said he was crazy and threatenin’ to kidnap her off to Mexico or someplace and force her to marry him, if she wouldn’t tell him where to find a baby of his she’d given up to get adopted.” He paused, touching the ragged exit hole above his eye socket. “Then she went and shot me through the head when I was trying to rescue her from that.”

“Hannah, give me the keys,” Lia said.

Hannah did so without hesitation. Lia went to the car that was parked some yards behind them. Dexter followed after her.

“Lia, we are not goin’ out there. Not without a plan,” he said.

Lia opened the driver’s side door, but stopped and stared at him over the top of the stolen BMW before she got in. A soft tone chimed to remind her the door was ajar. She looked to Hannah, too, who was visibly frightened.

“You’re right,” Lia said, coming to a decision, although it still fell pretty far short of anything that might be called a plan. She’d hoped to have more time up at Esteban’s extravagant estate to formulate one, but it hadn’t been in the cards, and all she could do now was trust in her instincts. “It is too dangerous for us all to go out there. That’s why I’m going, and you’re staying here.”

“Lia, no!” Dex shouted.

She ducked into the car, shut her door, and hit the locks. Dexter saw the plastic nub drop down into the passenger-side doorframe, but he scrabbled at the handle anyway, scratching up the paint with his calcified fingertips.