Jim Butcher - Mean Streets

"All right," I started. "You tried to give the dog to Jimenez before, then you decided to give it to Hector, and then you gave it to me to give to Hector. Why?"

She hung her head. "At first, I was angry. Iko never liked those lawyers-"

"A good judge of character," Hector injected. "Iko was all I had after Papa-went away. And when Iko died, that was all I knew how to do, all I could think of to keep him for a little longer-to take me to Mictlan someday."

"Some people think this is a very bad kind of magic." "It's not. It's just… the dark kind. The death magic. What is death but part of life? And my dog was dead. I had done bad things with the magic when I was angry at that… man who called himself my father," she spat, "but I never meant harm with keeping Iko. But I found out Jimenez had lied to me. He had never tried to find out what happened to my father. He spied on me and he took the information to Leon and they tried to kill my father a third time so he had to run here and hide. I was so angry when I found out what he had done, I wanted to punish him! I thought Iko would keep him from Mictlan. Keep him in limbo and torment, forgotten but never released to the third death, wandering the way he had done to the sailors on the Dulcia."

"Tell the rest, pequena" Hector urged.

She sobbed for a moment. Mickey sat next to me, wide-eyed and still, watching the ghostly woman weep until she raised her head and looked at him. "You understand the magic, you know how hard it is… to be good. It was so hard, but I thought I should do a better thing. I changed my will so Iko would go to my father, to help him find the road, and I gave all the money for the families of the sailors. Leon and the insurance company gave them nothing. I thought I could repair the wrong, even if the magic was a little… dark."

"But the will I saw doesn't give the money to the families of the Dulcia's crew."

"No." She hung her head, ashamed. "Banda changed it. I don't know why I thought he was different than Jimenez. They were both charming liars…" "Banda forged your will."

She nodded. "He is my father's man, even after death. Just like that pig," she added, spitting in Jimenez's direction. Her spittle hissed and raised a red spark on the ground where it hit. Jimenez recoiled, but kept silent. Hector tapped her again and motioned her on. Maria-Luz sighed the smell of earth and copal. "The spirits told me of you. I was sick with the cancer that killed me, but they came when I called and they said you could fix the horrible mess of this. I believed them. I told Banda to give the dog to you. 1 thought you could solve my puzzle of the graves, find out what had happened and make it right. And my papa and Iko could be together again."

"So… this bit of junk controls Iko's soul…"

Maria-Luz and Hector nodded together.

I studied the bit of hair and thread. I glanced at Mickey.

"What do you think? Eternal torment for Jimenez? Or can we do something else with this?"

The boy was trembling. "Why are you asking me?" he demanded.

"Because you have the magic. And Maria-Luz doesn't anymore. She's dead, Mickey. She can't change the things she did."

"I don't have any magic! Just the ghosts! That's why I read up on the Santisima Muerte-so I could use the ghosts for magic," he finished in a harsh whisper.

"You already have the magic. You do. Look at your hands."

"They're just hands!"

"Look at them the way you look at the ghosts-sideways, through the worms and lights and crazy mist. Look softly."

He stared down at his gangling, oversized paws, flexing them slowly in and out of fists and turning his head side to side. Tears began to well and fall over his lower lids as he stared without blinking. "It's-there's something on my fingers…"

"Yeah. That's it. That glowy stuff. Real magic, brat-boy. Live magic."

He stared at me. "Do you-?"

I shook my head. "No. I don't have anything like that. I just see ghosts." That wasn't strictly true, but that wasn't the time for messy little details. "But I can tell you that's life magic, not death magic. If you die, it goes away. That's what's happened to Maria-Luz."

He glanced all around the panteon, taking note of the ghosts, the living, the dead… and Tio Munoz, who sat on the ground among the tombs of the Arbildos and smiled at us, glimmering with a golden sheen.

"What do you think?" I asked again. "Should we sic Iko on Jimenez for eternity? Poor old Iko, faithful unto death and beyond. I'm not sure he deserves an eternity spent snapping at the heels of this scum."

"No," the lawyer agreed, and was silenced again by the drowned crew that surrounded him.

Maria-Luz and Hector hung on the moment, watching Mickey.

"What… what about the other one? The guy who faked the will?"

"Banda," I supplied. "Yeah, he's a piece of work."

"Can you-?"

"You, Mickey. I can deliver the bomb, but only you can build it. Iko hates him. All you have to do is make the magic go the right way so it's alive. If the magic is tuned for Banda, Iko will seem to be alive to him, but he'll still be a ghost dog to everyone else."

I cut a glance at Maria-Luz. "Then all we have to do is tether Iko to Banda…"

She nodded. "I think… it can be done. If you rewind the thread just right."

"But what will happen to the dog? Will it… be…"

"Doomed to eat lawyer in hell?" I added.

Mickey nodded, but he was looking at Maria-Luz now.

"Wind the thread the other way, wind it to the life of the man," Maria-Luz whispered, beginning to fade. "Iko will come to me when his job is done. Or when you break your binding."

Was it so late… or so early that the night was ending already?

No, I could see it was still dark. But she was tiring, her energy fading after such an evening-her first and probably last return from the Land of the Dead. Only the sailors and Jimenez were as present as ever. Hector and his daughter had started to slide away.

"You'd better start before Maria-Luz is all gone, or you might lose the chance," I prompted Mickey.

"But…"

"Try it. What's the worst that can happen? You let the dog go. Right?"

"Yeah. Right."

I handed Mickey the bag of Iko's shards. He took the bundle of hair out and began picking the red thread loose. He concentrated, pulling the thread loose, unwinding it with care.

Iko began to fade with a whimper.

"No, Iko," Hector called to the dog in a singsong voice, thin as steam. "No, perrito, stay. Good dog…"

"Think of the man," Maria-Luz whispered. "Think of him, Jimenez's partner, Banda, the lawyer, the thief, the fraud…" She pointed toward the thread, a stream of her knowledge flowing out of her skeletal fingertips, touching the boy and the bundle of hair.

Mickey rewound the red strand the other way, muttering under his breath. The gold threads from his fingers caught on the hairs in the bundle, caught in the twist of the thread and bound up, muttering with Mickey, singing magic, alive and golden and hot as the sun.

Hector and Maria-Luz stepped backward, back, back, fading as they went, until they were only a whisper and a shred of smoke on the air. Iko stopped whining.

A hush fell, as if all the spirits of San Felipe del Agua held their breath .Mickey tied off the string. "There. OK? You think?" he asked, holding it out. But there was no one left to see it but me and Tio

Munoz.

The old man had come up on us without any warning or apparent movement.

"Muy bien!" he cackled.

Mickey started with surprise, jumping to his feet. The old man backed away, chuckling.

"Where did they all go?" Mickey asked, bewildered.

"Back where they came from, I'd guess. The sailors took Jimenez-I think he may be in for some trouble in the afterlife," I said.