Ann Aguirre - Shady Lady

“You’re doing that for me and Eva, huh? Hitting him where he lives and all.”

“Yeah. Jesse too.” And Ernesto and Señor Alvarez. For the fact that Shannon and I are now homeless. Oh, yeah, Montoya had given me many, many reasons to fight.

“You got a good head for battle, prima .”

“I want him shaken.” I sighed softly. “I’m not thrilled with hiding while I send other people to do my dirty work, but—”

“It’s better than dying,” Shannon finished.

Chuch nodded. “Nothing wrong with delegation. Speaking of which, you never did tell me how you swung an alliance with Escobar. He never sees anybody. Dude’s crazy cautious.”

“He tested me and found me worthy.” I refused to say more.

The time I’d spent with Kel was too personal to share, even with my friends. I couldn’t let myself think about him right then, where he was, whether he was lonely or loathed his orders. I would later, no question. Kelethiel, son of Uriel and Vashti, had forged a path in my heart that nobody else could tread.

“ Claro ,” he said, as if that were the natural outcome. “So what’s my part?”

We didn’t have Chance to dowse this time, even if we got a list of properties from Escobar. After our last raid, I doubted we’d have it so easy if we attempted a frontal assault, and with his son or daughter about to be born, I wasn’t sending Chuch into battle anyway. The current plan must stand.

“I need you to use your contacts to get a message to Montoya’s people. I don’t want you carrying it yourself. But you know people who can.”

“That’s it ?” His offense was obvious.

“It’s crucial. Now that I’ve done some damage, I need to talk some shit and up the stakes. But I can’t come into the open prematurely.”

“What do you have in mind?”

“For the message? I’m a ghost; he’ll never catch me—I’m unkillable. Maybe even that I’ve made a deal with the devil.” Considering what I’d done for Maury, that statement was closer to the truth than I liked. “Oh, and that anytime he wants to surrender in person, he should drop me a line.”

Chuch laughed softly. “Damn, cuz. That’s gonna burn right into his brain. He’ll probably kill the chingado who brings him word.”

“It’s a risk you take working for crazy-ass cartel bosses,” Shannon noted.

“So can you find someone to carry the message?”

Chuch considered. “Yeah, but you’ll have to write it down and seal it. Otherwise, nobody’d be dumb enough to take that shit to Montoya.”

“I can do that. And I’ll send this along as my calling card.” I held up the red hair extension. In this light, it was so obviously fake it wasn’t funny.

Rummaging turned up a pad of paper, and I always had a pen in my purse. I scrawled my comments in particularly taunting cursive, and I didn’t sign it. The red hair would do that for me.

Shannon watched, half-horrified, half-amused. “I hope to God Escobar knows what he’s doing.”

“Me too.” I abhorred bullbaiting, but we were doing exactly that to Montoya. Only I didn’t feel sorry for him at all. However this ended, he had it coming.

Chuch stood. “Do you want me to come back after I get this done?”

I considered. The less traffic here, the better, so I shook my head. “Just e-mail me a simple confirmation.”

After he’d gone, I realized I’d treated him like one of Escobar’s men. Find a Chuch-shaped task and aim him at it. I almost called him back to hug him or something. I didn’t want to start seeing people as useful. Christ, that would make me just like Escobar—worse, even, because I knew better. I’d been a better person once.

“What can I do?” Shannon asked. Not her too. But the truth was, I had an idea, and she read it in my expression. “Spill!”

“Since I don’t know much about Montoya and nothing about his sorcerous brother, I can’t target them. The spells my mother left me rely on personal experience or sympathetic magic.”

She nodded. “Right. You need hair, blood, or nail clippings. I’m familiar with the process.”

“Without those components, I need to know where they are and what they look like. So even if I was an experienced, well-trained witch—and I’m not”—frankly, I wasn’t sure what I was, and right then it didn’t matter—“it would be unlikely I could get a spell to work.”

“I get that. How can I help?”

“The pants I wore the night Jesse was shot are bloodstained. Two of the shooters died at the hospital.” Surely she’d see where I was heading with this.

“And you want me to try to use that to call one of those ghosts.”

“Not if you don’t want to. But we might be able to use his spirit in lieu of scrying. Find out how Montoya is handling the stress, which would offer insight on where to strike next. I want to break him, so he’s ready to act on Chuch’s message when it arrives. I want him frothing at the mouth at the prospect of killing me himself.”

“What if he does ?”

“Kill me? He can’t. Heaven doesn’t want me and hell can’t handle me.”

She smiled at the stupid line. As I’d known she would, she said, “I can try.”

“You have your radio, right?”

“It’s in my bag. I never leave it behind.”

She’d carried it away from the ashes of her old life in Kilmer; it had belonged to an elderly man who spent his life fixing broken things. Too bad he’d died before he could take a crack at me.

“Then I’ll leave it up to you. If you’re scared . . . or even a little nervous, we don’t have to do this.”

“Check the cupboards for me.”

I went into the kitchen, since I knew why she’d asked. If this went wrong, she needed a quick fix to offset the damage. I found some sugar cubes and tea bags. Not a Snickers bar, her preferred prescription for a nasty spirit suck, but it would do the job. I put the kettle on, just in case.

“You set?” I asked, coming back into the living room.

“I’m good. Get the focus item.”

Gross. I went into the bedroom and rummaged in the flowered suitcase. I’d stashed my bloody clothes in a plastic bag. The stain didn’t amount to much, just what I’d stepped in, helping Jesse to the sofa. Hopefully, Shannon could work with it.

I rejoined her and gave her the jeans. “On the hem, there.”

“What did he look like?”

“I don’t know. Want me to try to find a picture?” There might be photos in the newspaper. Sometimes they put convicted criminals in the headlines, along with old mug shots, but I didn’t know whose blood it was for certain.

“I’ll see what I can do without it.” She put one hand on the radio and the other hand on the denim. Immediately, the room chilled and the antique device crackled with an unearthly sound. A shiver ran through me. No matter how many times I saw her do this, it always caught me in the gut.

“Restless dead, I call you,” she whispered. “You’re lost, and I can help you find the way home.”

That might be a lie. I didn’t know what happened to the spirits when Shannon finished with them. The room temperature dropped further, so that I could see my breath when I exhaled. Her voice softened, becoming crooning and tender.

My knees gave way and I sat on the edge of the couch, trying not to get in her way. When the shade manifested fully, it passed through me. Reaction hit in stages, like the sudden shock of ice crackling beneath your feet, followed by the inevitable fall. The preternatural chill lingered.

She tinkered with the tuning dial, looking for this spirit’s frequency. “Are you there?” she asked yet again. The radio read 1490 AM.

“I’m here,” came the tinny response.