Mean Streets

"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.