Scott Westerfeld: The Last Days

Elvis and I traded our funny little salute, which we’ve been doing since I was nine, and we both smiled. But then he glanced up at the house, lines creasing his forehead. Something skittered in the garbage bags by our feet—stray cats or not, rats were in residence.

“Are you sure you won’t be wanting a ride home, Pearl?” he rumbled softly.

“Positive. Thanks, though.”

Mom likes all conversations to include her, so she scooted closer across the limo’s backseat. “What time did you get in last night anyway?”

“Right after eleven.”

She pursed her lips the slightest discernible amount, showing she knew I was lying, and I gave her the tiniest possible eye-roll to show I didn’t care.

“Well, see you at eleven tonight, then.”

I snorted a little for Elvis. The only way Mom was coming home before midnight was if they ran out of champagne at the museum, or if the mummies all got loose.

I imagined old-movie mummies in tattered bandages. Nice and nonscary.

Then her voice softened. “Give my love to Minerva.”

“Okay,” I said, waving and turning away, flinching as the door boomed shut behind me. “I’ll try.”

Luz de la Sueño opened the door and waved me in quick, like she was worried about flies zipping in behind. Or maybe she didn’t want the neighbors to see her new decorations, seeing as how Halloween was more than two months away.

My nostrils wrinkled at the smell of garlic tea brewing, not to mention the other scents coming from the kitchen, overpowering and unidentifiable. These days, New York seemed to disappear behind me when I came through Minerva’s door, as if the brownstone had one foot in some other city, somewhere ancient and crumbling, overgrown.

“She is much better,” Luz said, ushering me toward the stairs. “And excited you are visiting.”

“That’s great,” I said, but I hesitated for a moment in the foyer. Luz’s take on Minerva’s illness had always been a bit too mystical for me, but after what I’d witnessed the night before, I figured the esoterica was at least a little noncrazy.

“Luz, can I ask you a question? About something I saw?”

“You saw something? Outside?” Her eyes widened, drifting to the shaded windows.

“No, back in Manhattan.”

“ Sí? ” Luz said. The intensity of her gaze was freaking me out as usual.

I usually understand where people fit, organizing them in my head, like arranging Mom’s good china in its case. But I was totally clueless about Luz—where she came from, how old she was, whether she’d grown up rich or poor. Her English wasn’t fluent, but her accent was careful, her grammar exact. Her unlined face looked young, but she wore these old-lady dresses, sometimes hats with veils. Her hands were calloused and full of wiry strength, and three fat skull rings grinned at me from her big-knuckled fingers.

Luz was all about skulls, but they didn’t seem to mean to her what they meant to me and my friends. She was more gospel than goth.

“There was this woman,” I said. “Around the corner from us. She went crazy, throwing all this stuff out the window.”

“ Sí .” Luz nodded. “That is the sickness. It is spreading now. You are still careful, yes?”

“Yep. No boys for me.” I put my hands up. Luz believed everything was because of too much sex—part of her religious thing. “But it looked like her own stuff. Not like when Minerva broke up with Mark, hating everything he’d given her.”

“Yes, but it is the same. The sickness, it makes the infected not want to be what they were before. They must throw away everything to make the change.” She crossed herself— the change was what she was trying to prevent in Minerva.

“But Min didn’t trash all her stuff, did she?”

“Not so much.” Luz fingered the cross around her neck. “She is very spiritual, not joined to things. But to people, and to la musica .”

“Oh.” That made a kind of sense. When Minerva had cracked up, she’d thrown away Mark and the rest of Nervous System first. And then her classes and all our friends, one by one. I’d stuck with her the longest, until everyone hated me for staying friends with her, and then she’d finally tossed me too.

That meant Moz had been right: the crazy woman had been getting rid of her own stuff, throwing her whole life out the window. I wondered how he’d known.

I thought about the mirrors upstairs, all covered with velvet. Min didn’t want to see her own face, to hear her own name—suddenly it all made sense.

Luz touched my shoulder. “That is why it is good you are here. I think maybe now, Pearl, you can do more than I.”

I felt the music player in my pocket, loaded up with Big Riff. I couldn’t do anything myself—I wasn’t some kind of skull-wielding esoterica—but maybe this fexcellent music…

Luz started up the stairs, waving for me to follow.

“One more thing: I think I saw angels.”

She stopped and turned, crossing herself again. “ Angeles de la lucha? They were fast? On the rooftops?”

I nodded. “Like you told me to watch for around here.” “And they took this woman?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. I got the hell out of there.”

“Good.” She reached out and stroked my face, her fingers rough and smelling of herbs. “It is not for you, the struggle that is coming.”

“So where do the angels take you?” I whispered.

Luz closed her eyes. “To somewhere far away.”

“What, like heaven?”

She shook her head. “No. On an airplane. To a place where they make the change firm in you. So you can fight for them in the struggle.” She took my hand. “But that is not for you—not for Minerva. Come.”

The rest of the way up, there were lots of new decorations to check out. The stairway walls were covered with wooden crosses, a thousand little stamped-metal figures nailed into each one. The figures were nonweird shapes—shoes, dresses, trees, dogs, musical instruments—but the wild jumble of them made me wonder if someone had put normality into a blender, then set it on disintegrate.

And of course there were the skulls. Their painted black eyes stared down at us from the shadows, every floor a little darker as we climbed. The windows up here were blacked out, the mirrors draped with red velvet. Street noises faded as we climbed, the air growing as still as a sunken ship.

Outside Minerva’s room, Luz bent to pick up a towel from the floor, sighing apologetically. “It is only me tonight. The family are more tired every day.”

“Anything I can do to help?” I whispered.

Luz smiled. “You are here. That is help.”

She pulled a few leaves from her pocket, crushing them together in her hands. They smelled like fresh-cut grass, or mint. She knelt and rubbed her palms on my sneakers and the legs of my jeans.

I’d always kind of rolled my eyes at her spells before, but tonight I felt in need of protection.

“Maybe you will sing to her.”

I swallowed, wondering if Luz had somehow divined what I’d been planning. “Sing? But you always said—”

“Sí.” Her eyes sparked in the darkness. “But she is better now. However, to keep you safe…”

She pressed a familiar little doll into my hands, stroking its tattered red yarn hair into place. It stared up at me, smiling maniacally, one button eye dangling from two black threads, setting my stomach fluttering again.

The doll was the creepiest of Luz’s rituals of protection. But suddenly it made sense. It had always been Min’s favorite back when we were little, the only object she’d ever really been attached to, besides the ring she’d thrown at Mark in front of the whole System. I was glad to have the doll tonight, even if Minerva hadn’t been violent since her family had given up on drugs and doctors and had switched to Luz.