Luminous Part 18

V stared at her. Consuela, wide-eyed, stared back.

"See anything?" he prompted.

"What? Oh!" Fl.u.s.tered, she blushed and was completely surprised when she did, in fact, see something.

"Wait a minute . . ." she said. Her vision telescoped down, zooming to focus on a pen. She s.h.i.+fted her eyes-the pen disappeared, replaced by a book nearby. She could still see the barest ballpoint tip.

Consuela tilted her head to read the t.i.tle on the hardcover spine: Faust. She looked back to the first spot; the book had disappeared and the pen was back. The faux-wood grain beneath them remained the same. Consuela figured out that she could only spy a four-inch circle of s.p.a.ce at a time.

She slowly discovered details, a jigsaw-puzzle picture, enough to piece together that there was a small side table on which there was a book, a pen and reading gla.s.ses, an adjustable lamp, a tin of mints, and an otherwise completely unnoteworthy smear of something wet leading up to a take-out coffee cup. TALBOT was handwritten on the cup in black marker. When she saw the plastic lid, the coffee smell hit her with the force of a truck.

Consuela swooned and gagged under the zero-to-eighty French roast filling her nose to the tear ducts and her mouth to the teeth. She pitched forward in the chair. V dove to catch her shoulders.

"Bones?"

At first she wasn't sure which of his voices had spoken. As she blinked back the tears, she thought, maybe, both.

Consuela shook her head and clucked her tongue against the phantom taste. "I'm fine," she said, incredibly aware of V's hands on her body. She wanted to move closer, but pulled herself back.

"Wow," she said, covering the moment.

"What happened? " V asked.

"Coffee." She described the smell as best she could as V tucked his hands into his back pockets.

"Sensory memory," he said quietly. "I've heard of it." Consuela realized she was still reliving the feel of V's hands on her skin, her own sensory memory. He'd also called her brave and beautiful. It was hard to think straight after that.

She glanced back at the chair. Was this really how it had been when Tender crossed over? What had Tender's life been like to be frozen like this?

Consuela reached out for the s.p.a.ce that should have held the table and the gla.s.ses and the copy of Faust, but she walked clear through the white nothingness. She reconsidered the chair, alone on the floor.

"We should tell Sissy," she said.

"The Watcher," V corrected.

"The Watcher." Consuela groaned. "Fine. We should talk to her. She can find where this is. She wanted to get Maddy and . . ." She swooned as her vision plummeted out of focus. V grabbed her again. The movement was less romantic than strong.

"You okay?"

"What?" It hit her like the coffee truck. Her head spun and she all but fell onto the floor. V was there, his arms holding her up. The world was impossibly crooked. She tried saying something, but the words came out upside down.

"Hold on," he said, and physically lifted her up, cradling Consuela in his arms like he was some sort of Italian Prince Charming. She thought he was probably breaking his back.

"I can . . ." she slurred.

"You can't," V corrected, and sliced them through the ornate mirror in the hall. Her head kept spinning even as he crossed her room and laid her down on the bed, settling her softly onto her pillow, where she felt she'd keep sinking into layers of sleep. The pillow was cold and still slightly damp from Sissy's towel.

"Consuela," he whispered, brus.h.i.+ng back her hair. His lips didn't say: * I'll watch over you. *

She thought she'd said his name, but realized she was already dreaming her dream.

It was dark, purple-dark. The hallway was lined with tall candles and bouquets of autumn blooms. Consuela could see the dancers in their places, hopping and swaying through their cotton-quiet songs. The men in their flames, the women in their flowers, their skeletons weaving poetry their lips could no longer speak.

It was an eerily beautiful sight.

Knowing the door was there, knowing it would end this scene, Consuela ignored it and bent to watch the tiny dancers. She searched for the old calavera with the impossible mustache and the brushed-black sombrero, finding him gentlemanly and oddly fetching in his silver-threaded suit. He was on his wax perch halfway down the hall, stamping his s.h.i.+ny boots as if he were big enough to be the only angel dancing atop of his white-hot pin.

He spun for her. Cavorted. Bowed. Brandis.h.i.+ng his sombrero like a bullfighter's cape, he swept it grandly in a circle, as if daring her to dance.

Seized by a mischievous impulse, Consuela licked the tip of her finger and plunged it through the flame.

Color exploded like tinsel and paper flowers. Music swelled to life-driving guitars, clacking maracas, and the pleading whine of trumpets-heartbreakingly clear and beautiful. The n.o.ble skeleton dancer appeared, full-scale, taking one of her hands in his and placing a guiding palm at her hip. He held her like a grandparent, both proud and frail; Consuela fell into his steps, feeling that she should be in her lace-trimmed quinceanera dress with satin ribbons in her hair.

The fiesta burst loud and hot and bright all around them, but he held her protectively through the steps of the dance that popped beneath their feet like coals. Strings of papel picado swayed overhead, paper cutouts hanging like portraits in garish hot pink, purple, orange, and green. He pulled her hand up into an expert twirl, handing Consuela to another dancer with a tip of his incredible hat.

A female calavera hooked an ulna to Consuela's waist, pulling her wrist flat against where the woman's belly ought to have been. The dancer wore a blazing red gown ruffled in stiff, black lace, a tight bun of hair pinned to the nape of her neck with a tortoisesh.e.l.l comb. She laughed as they spun, teeth chattering like dice in a cup, before whirling away, clapping her hands over her head, inviting Consuela to do the same. Dance with the dead. Her partner curtsied, leaving Consuela with the impression of plucked, hawkish eyebrows arching up and away.

Consuela swung wildly with young men in dapper kerchiefs and minced daintily with a woman in a tight, fitted dress and an enormous Victorian hat with silk flowers and little, stuffed birds. Consuela tried matching steps with a stooped man in a voluminous, stained poncho and a weather-beaten hat. He had one hand wrapped around a bottle of tequila as he repeatedly pumped his trigger finger, unloading explosive blasts of memory into the air. He leered at her as she whirled away; Consuela noticed that several of his yellowed teeth were missing.

A tall skeleton in a silk tuxedo pressed close against her, a lit cigarette between his teeth flas.h.i.+ng like a firefly by her head. A trio of short, squat women encircled her with their hands on their hips, swaying with their shoulders; the fringe of their shawls mimicking batting eyelashes. A child in multilayered skirts and a wreath of paper flowers held Consuela's fingertips and twirled in careful circles until she grew dizzy and fell down. The little girl laughed like a windup toy. Consuela laughed, too, and helped her up. Her tiny party shoes tap-tap-tapped away to cuddle against her mother's lap.

And then she was there.

"Grandma," Consuela breathed.

Grandma Celina's skeleton gathered Consuela gently in her arms-the smell of her, like rose water and melons, filled Consuela's memory with sweet, warm, and loving things. Consuela's eyes swam with happy tears and she laughed into what little s.p.a.ce hadn't been filled with music and tobacco and clapping.

Grandma Celina still gave the impression of being heavy and solid, flesh packed invisibly onto her bones. She held Consuela's hands as if she were a bird in flight and they danced, their hips and feet mirroring one another, embracing arm in arm. Consuela couldn't take her eyes from the s.h.i.+ny gold cross, the favorite coral brooch, or the rosary wrapped around her grandmother's wrist that she'd last seen buried with her grandma in the earth. It was so good to be with her now, so good to be with family, dozens of generations, hundreds of years . . . so good-so good!-to dance, reunited, to be whole once again. Consuela didn't want it to ever ever end.

But Grandma brought her to the midnight door. She mimed the motions, urging Consuela to grasp the handle, to open the door, to step through. Consuela resisted.

"No, Grandma," she whispered. "I want to stay here with you."

The expressionless skull seemed to soften, capturing the forgotten-yet-familiar gesture, cupping her face like a drinking gla.s.s and pressing cheek to cheek. The bone was warm against Consuela's cool skin. The moment was so invitingly real, if Consuela closed her eyes, she could see her grandmother's face clearly-full of wrinkles, laugh lines, and dove-gray hair sprayed in place with Aqua Net.

Her grandmother turned Consuela's chin to look upon the shadow door. Purpled layers blossomed outward, revealing a Gypsy's glimpse of a faraway place. The image sharpened. Consuela's heart stopped.

Mom and Dad sat on a picnic blanket weighted down with picture frames; a huge wicker basket lay open at their feet. They were laughing, smiling, waving h.e.l.lo to other people as Dad cranked a corkscrew into a bottle and Mom lit citronella candles with a thin butane lighter.

Consuela watched as they hugged each other close, her father whispering something around the chewed end of his cigar. She could almost smell the burned-cherry smoke, almost taste her mother's roast chicken and the creamy potato salad with dill. There was even a pitcher of tart lemon iced tea-her favorite-beading a little with ice-cubed sweat. She saw three paper plates, three plastic cups, and three folded fabric napkins that matched the basket set. But she was here. Did they notice? Did they care? Consuela held out a hand as if to grab the pitcher, but it was too far away.

It hurts. She felt it. It hurts to be this far away!

She didn't belong here. Not yet.

I'm not dead! Mom? Dad? I'm here! I'm not gone!

Consuela needed to hold them like an ache, pull them hard against her and feel them close. She needed to be there. She need to be living, breathing, real. It turned her eyes to water and her chest to stone. She felt heavy, sinking-this is too far away!

"Grandma . . ." she whispered into the primordial party-food, love, friends.h.i.+p, and music, absorbing and re-forming, spinning into a frenzied pitch. The skeletal hands wrapped in beads were an offering, a benediction, a blessing: Go on.

Consuela turned quickly and wrenched open the almost-door, plunging suddenly, deeply, into a familiar quiet.

She was in her room. Her hand on the door handle, she realized that she'd been sleepwalking again. Pus.h.i.+ng down, both feeling and hearing the click-click of the catch, Consuela hesitated, wondering if this was her last step before death. She wasn't afraid, remembering Grandma's touch and the fiesta of flowers and flame. But she was . . . unfinished. Too restless, yet, to rest in peace. There was too much left to be done. So much more to do.

Mom. Dad.

With a strange, fluttering, all-body sigh, Consuela let go of the door handle and crawled back into bed, returning to herself, asleep.

Only later did she identify the feeling as regret.

V paced the length and breadth of her room, unable to sit still and unwilling to watch her fitful sleep. Without the comfortable distance of silver and gla.s.s, it felt like a hospital, like a deathwatch, like he was a voyeur. And if he stared at anything too long, it felt uncomfortably like prying.

V coiled around the worry and the room. If he stopped, he might touch her. If he touched her, he might wake her. If he woke her, he wasn't sure what he would do. It was best to keep moving, trying to ignore the smell of her skin and clean sheets.

He didn't realize the moment when he stopped walking. He didn't realize that he'd marched past her as she twisted sleepily in the bed. He didn't see the mirror or feel the slicing transition as he walked through, answering a familiar pull of invisible threads.

He was gone before he'd ever noticed and no one saw him leave.

Except for a little white mouse that dashed out from under the bed skirt, squeezed itself under the door, and ran into the nothingness with a flick of its tail.

V burst through her bedroom mirror with enough force to make her sit up straight.

"What?" she said, feeling stupid, half awake. "What's happened?"

"It's burning. Joseph Crow's place-it's burning!" V pointed as if it were happening just over his shoulder. Consuela threw back her blankets and stood up, thankfully dressed.

"Can you show me?" she asked. He nodded dumbly and took her hand without asking permission. Moving like a fire engine slicing through traffic, he stepped through the mirror and she forgot to close her eyes.

The Mirror Realm was a split-second slice across her retinas, tricking her with painful splinters of fragmented silver light. She blinked against the pain-tears. Her eyes stung and kept on stinging as they crossed onto the open plain.

Smoke billowed and filled the sky; the singed specks of ash in the air were horribly hot and real. Consuela coughed, squinting against the light and heat as V crushed her hand in his. He felt cold.

The tepee was a huge pillar of white-orange fire capped in black smoke, its triangular insides outlined in ash. Some of the fire had spread to the gra.s.s, but they were feeble flames.

V stared. Consuela could see the fire reflected in his eyes, yellow-red-gold obliterating the brown. She didn't have to ask if Joseph Crow had been inside, she already knew. But the expression on V's face-glazed, mouth slightly open-she didn't need a different skin to sense what he felt. Rapturous. Yearning. Guilty. Afraid. It was a wordless radiance that bubbled off his skin.

She shared the fear, at least.

"How can this be happening?" she asked. "Things don't . . . do this sort of thing in the Flow. They don't change."

"Nothing affects the Flow but us," V whispered woodenly. "Joseph Crow had a fire because there was a fire in the pit when he crossed over, but it always stays in its circle."

"Like my bathroom stays misty," she said. "How could it spread?"

V took a long time to answer, his eyes never blinking.

"Everything reverts back to its original form unless one of us changes it."

Silence s.h.i.+elded them against the roar and crackle of the fire as it burned. Someone had changed it. Someone from the Flow.

"Will it change back?"

The violin-voice ignored the rush of fiery death song. * No. *

"Tender . . . ?" Consuela said, trying to make the word fit the crime. "Could Tender do this?"

V's eyes sank to the ground, although their look still smoldered. "No," he said. "No, he can't. Only I can do that."

* I can taste it again * I can smell it everywhere * Change * hot and burning. *

Consuela dropped his hand, forgetting, until that moment, that she'd been holding it.

"What do you mean?" she said.

The noise of the crackling, popping, impossible flames chattered in her ears. Bits of singed surreality kissed her skin and seethed. V said nothing. It made her nervous. Angry.

"You wanted to show me," she pressed. "You wanted to show me this." A flash of insight: "You wanted me to ask!"

V wouldn't look at her. He struggled with something that wasn't there, something that belonged in his hands, which opened and closed with need.

"I... used to set fires," V admitted.

"Fires?" Her brain slipped on his words. They made no sense.

He nodded. "Little ones, mostly," he said. "Sometimes big ones."

* Beautiful. Wild. Free. They whispered. . . *

Consuela remembered the curtained room singed at the edges.

He glanced at the burning wreckage and the ecstasy-shame evaporated. His rapture gone, a hollow emptiness remained.

"This," he said, taking out a cigarette lighter and turning it over. "This is the one thing I have that can cross over." It sparkled, reflecting malevolent light. "It's the only thing I know of that could do something like this."

Consuela thought about her skin of flame, the box of matches from her scented candles. Her candles regressed to being unlit. There were always fourteen matches in the matchbox, no matter how many she watched burn. Nothing changes in the Flow, unless we change it. Could I do this with my fire-skin, if I wanted to? Does it work that way?

"Did you?" she finally asked. "Did you do this?"

"No!" V shouted, but the electric chorus doubted.

* Tender! * It has to be Tender! * Me? * It couldn't be me . . . *

Consuela faltered. How could he not know?

The central pole finally gave way, collapsing the tent in a cough of sparks.

Consuela placed a hand on his arm. V flinched. She spoke softly. "Then let's find out who did." Her hand sought his and he took it. A tentative touch, permission to be let in. "Bring me back," she said, and V's face pinched with worry. "Just for a minute," she a.s.sured him. "I can find out. Evidence, remember?"