When Riley’s bones stepped up next to Hannah, Lia broke down completely. The young skeleton squatted and drew her into his skinny arms.
While Lia wept, grieving for her lost friends and family (even though they were, in some sense, still right there in front of her), Hannah looked over and spotted Black Tom standing alone in the outer office, wringing his insubstantial hands.
She came over to the doorway and tested the invisible barrier with her bony palm, just to confirm that she really could go no further.
“You’re Black Tom?” she asked straightaway. “Lia’s Tom?”
He nodded. Hannah’s empty sockets now saw everything her living eyes never had-including him.
“Nice to meet you,” she said. “You heard of a retired operator called Big Juan?”
Hannah Catrina was obviously grasping at straws, but it seemed she couldn’t let herself stand by without doing something. Not when people who didn’t need to be were dead. Tom liked that about her.
“Juan San Martin?” she continued. “He knows an old friend of Dexter’s, Charlie someone or other, in Sherman Oaks? You think you could find him?”
Black Tom nodded again. Yes to both. Oscar’s boy Juan, Ramon’s grandson, was the one she meant. Tom would always be able to find him, if he tried.
“Then I need you to deliver a message for me,” Hannah said. “The thing that killed Riley and Ingrid is loose in the world. It’s dangerous. You have to tell Mr. San Martin to, oh, I don’t know… to warn somebody, at least! He used to know about these things, maybe he knows people who can help.”
Black Tom nodded a third time, agreeing that Juan San Martin might indeed still have connections. Winston Watt had also killed Juan’s father, Oscar, more than a century before, and Tom would be able to communicate his memory of that event directly, mind to mind. He imagined Juan was going to be quite interested in finding the King’s rogue manservant, even after all these years.
Hannah Catrina returned his nod before turning away from the door between worlds. She went over to join Riley’s remains in trying to soothe an inconsolable Lia, leaving Tom to vanish in pursuit of his final errand.
Chapter Fifty-Four
Ingrid reached the bottom of the pyramid’s staircase at long last. She knew how she must’ve looked by now, stripped bare of her flesh but still draped in her long satin gown: like a redheaded version of LaCalaveraCatrina, a famous old piece of Mexican folk art.
The King and his heir were exchanging futile blows down near the structure’s base, neither of them doing or incurring any damage that didn’t right itself within seconds.
“Dexter! Mickey!” Ingrid’s breathless skeleton scolded. “This is pointless, you can’t hurt each other over here, so stopit.”
“Sorry, mom,” Dexter said, infuriatingly. “But you don’t get to show up at this late date and start bossin’ me around.”
“You have to push him out that door between the rooms at the top of the pyramid without you,” Ingrid told him, her ribs heaving for air even though she had no lungs to fill anymore. “You can’t beat him over here.”
Mickey snarled at her, but he couldn’t silence her. Her voice was still her own, thanks to Lia. She would hold on to that much of her life’s free will until the lighter in her hand grew as cold as the corpse she’d left behind, back out in the realworld. Her King wouldn’t control her fully until then.
“I will throw you through that door and burn away the life of your pet witch, Dexter Graves,” Mickey spat. “Why do you fight this? She will still be yours, yours in every way!”
“Yeah, to dress up and pose and play with, like a frilly, pretty doll,” Graves sneered. “Right. Gifts like that don’t count unless they’re freely given. Like I once heard a wise woman say: people’s choices gotta be their own!”
Dexter punctuated his declaration by throwing his father-figment over one extended leg and slamming him to the ground. “Thanks for the heads up, Ing,” he said, and then looked back down at Mickey, who was laid out flat on his back, dazed and staring up at them. “C’mon, dad,” Dex teased, planting his hands on his knees and leaning over to look down into Mickey’s face. “Let’s play catch.”
He turned on his heel and raced back up the side of the pyramid, taking the narrow steps three at a time. Mickey leapt to his feet and powered right up after him. Neither of them experienced any physical limitation over here in Mictlan. They could behave like cartoon characters for an eternity if they felt like it, bashing away at each other relentlessly, without suffering any lasting consequence.
Ingrid Catrina sighed and began dragging her own weary bones (which were subject to a very different set of rules) back up the endless steps after them.
Graves led King Caradura in a chase back up to the top of the pyramid, running effortlessly, magically, as though they were in a dream. It was fun, if anything, but Graves was already coming to see that no escalation in the level of violence was ever going to put him on top of this situation. He and Hardface were too evenly matched for that. Ingrid hadn’t been lying. Not on that score, anyway.
A re-awakened Lia and two new skeletons he was pained to recognize as Miss Hannah and that Riley guy all stood aside when he blew past them upon reaching the summit, ducking under the temple door’s low stone lintel and darting back into the King’s inner sanctum. He didn’t know how Lia’s friends had come to lose their skins, but this hardly seemed like the time to ask.
Caradura burst into the dim, torchlit chamber after him. Graves positioned himself in front of the doorway on the far side of the altar stone, the one that led out into the empty antechamber and then the realworld after that, taunting the King.
“C’mon, pops, gimme a push,” he teased.
Caradura jumped up onto the altar and leapt at him from it, his small eyes glittering with rage. Graves dodged aside at the last second. Caradura nearly tumbled through the doorway barrier, but caught himself against the jambs before he fell. Graves tried to push him out of the chamber and across the dividing line before he could scramble back from the threshold, but the King grabbed hold of his arm and swung him hard against the mud brick wall. The impact was concussive enough to break Graves’ nose. It sent one of the torches that had flickered for ages tumbling from its sconce, and Graves’ injury evaporated before it went out in a burst of orange sparks against the cold flagstone floor.
Ingrid’s elegant skeleton led Lia and the remains of Hannah and Riley back inside the temple, away from the Mictlan-side door. Lia was the only one of the bunch who still looked alive. There was no sign anywhere of the Archon who’d taken her captive. Graves assumed the creature had been dealt with-at the cost of Riley and Hannah’s lives.
“Dexter,” Ingrid said, raising her voice to be heard over the ruckus he and the King were making. “If you go through that doorway first, what he is goes with you and it’ll take over your body. You’ll be him, not you. You’ve got to throw him through on his own, into the realworld, and someone on this side has to willingly assume his office, so he can’t come back.”
“Who’s that gonna be?” Graves gasped, craning his head to see her as he struggled with Caradura at the doorway.
“Me!” Ingrid’s skeleton said. “I’ll do it. I’m ready. And I bore his son, so I have a right to succeed him.”
“Your tortures for this treason will never end, Ingrid Redstone,” Caradura bellowed, while Graves tore at his hair. “You’ve refused to be my Queen before!”
“Oh, I’ll be Queen, Mickey,” Ingrid said. “I just won’t be yours.”