Four Summoners Tales Part 33

Enoch stopped, lowering his pipe.

"That's enough," he said.

"But . . . ," Lester said, looking around. "Where are the others? I count nine."

Enoch slipped his pipe inside his brown wool coat. "The others are buried in metal coffins. They're going to need your help. Mr.Vickers has shovels in the back of his truck."

Arturo Sanchez made the sign of the cross.

"Dig them up," Enoch said, his stormy eyes alight with golden sparks as whatever magic he'd wielded began to burn off.

As he turned, Zeke strode up and grabbed his arm. "The cost, d.a.m.n it. What's the price?"

Enoch glanced at the lumbering, shuffling dead who were even now being embraced by the living who had summoned them.

"Tomorrow night I'm going across the border," Enoch said. "There's a compound, a house where the cartel lieutenant who oversees all their local business lives and works. The drugs. The murder. His name is Carlos Aguilar, and I intend to kill him and everyone who tries to stop me.Your people-he gave the orders to the men who killed them-your people, they'll come with me and help me do this, and so will you."

Mrs. Hawkins began to shake her head, covering her mouth as she cried.

Zeke thought of Savannah facing down cartel enforcers with guns, hardened killers. He steeled himself, knowing the bargain had been struck, the gift Enoch offered and the consequences of refusing.

"You need us to control them," Zeke said. "Pull their strings."

"That's right, Mr. Prater. And you'll be happy to know that no more harm will come to them. Right now they're dead, more or less. They're . . . recovering. Another bullet hole or a knife wound will add to their recovery time, but it won't hurt them."

"What about us?" Linda Trevino asked, horrified.

Enoch's gaze was hard as flint. "I suppose you'll just have to be careful."

Zeke went to get a shovel.

5 Late the next morning, Zeke stood on the scattering of hay and dusty horse s.h.i.+t that carpeted the floor of his stable, wondering if he had run out of tears. His eyes burned and he knew it was partly from the lack of sleep-he'd surprised himself by dropping off for a couple of hours just as the sun came up-but he thought the sandpaper feeling came from the unfulfilled need to cry. He felt empty in so many ways; the inability to summon tears was just one more.

"Come on, bud," he rasped. "Say h.e.l.lo to Jester. He missed you."

His voice cracked on that last bit, but Savannah didn't notice. She stood in front of the stall where her horse, Jester, snorted and chuffed and turned his back to her. From the moment Zeke had led Savannah into the stable, playing the ugly tune on his pipe-which still had the coppery scent of his blood on it- Jester had done his best to stay as close to the back wall of the stall as possible.

Zeke clutched the pipe in his hand, forcing himself to loosen his grip, afraid he might break it or rub off some vital part of its magic.

Ain't magic, he thought. It's a curse.

What could it be but a curse that let him see his daughter like this? Savannah still wore the rose-hued dress she'd been buried in, a lovely thing she had persuaded him to buy her for the fall dance at her school and that had garnered far more attention from the boys than he would have liked. The funeral director had gently implied that the color might be too red, that it might trouble him to see such a red on her, there in her casket at the wake, but Zeke had insisted, remembering the smile on her face when she'd worn it.

Now it seemed obscene. A party dress on a corpse.

He stared at her pale skin and noticed the way the warm breeze through the barn stirred her limp, dead hair, and bile burned up the back of his throat. He turned away, dropping to his knees as his stomach revolted and he vomited in the sawdust and hay. On his knees, trying to breathe, waiting for his stomach to calm, he thought for sure he would weep then, but still his eyes were dry.

After a few seconds, he rose shakily to his feet and looked at her.

There were bruise-dark circles under her eyes and she had the tallow complexion of old candle wax. Her blue eyes had paled, faded like their color had been nothing but paint, left in the sun too long. In the warm, late-morning light coming through the open doors at the far end of the stable, the shadows around her had acquired a gold hue. In that golden darkness it would almost have been possible to believe she was merely ill, were it not for those eyes, staring into a null middle distance, as if she could still see back into the land of the dead.

"Come on, honey," he breathed. "Do it for Daddy. Say h.e.l.lo to Jester.You love your Jessie-boy, don't you? He's right here."

It felt to Zeke as if something at the core of him was collapsing inward, a little black hole growing in his gut. An invisible fist clenched at his heart.

"Hey. I'm here, bud."

Something darted along the left side of his peripheral vision and he turned to see a furry orange tail vanis.h.i.+ng into an empty stall.Tony was a marmalade cat who had been born in the stable. His mother had been a stray who had taken up residence there, and Zeke had never tried to drive her away because he believed that every stable and barn needed at least one cat to catch the mice who would invariably find their way in. The rest of the litter had been given away, but Savannah had kept the orange marmalade and named him after Tony the Tiger, the mascot of her favorite cereal.

The memory struck him hard-seven-year-old Savannah sitting on the floor of the stable, holding Tony and stroking him and giving him his name. She'd put a little bow in her hair that morning that nearly matched the color of Tony's fur, her way of making the moment into a sort of ceremony.The image led to a rush of others. Zeke closed his eyes and let them come, a sad smile on his face as he recalled nine-year-old Savannah's first ride on horseback, and the squeals of delight a year later when he brought Jester home and told her the new horse was hers and hers alone.

Mine forever? she'd asked.

He could still hear the little-girl voice in his head.

"Oh, Jesus," he whispered, though not in prayer.