The Hollow Ones(60)

Back outside in the driveway, Odessa could hear Yoan Martine inside, still talking, his voice occasionally rising to a yell. “What did he want?”

“Limpieza. A cleansing to remove malefic influences.”

“Could you do such a thing?” she asked.

“Such a thing is possible,” he said. “But not for Martine. Including mercury in the spellcasting is a wish for madness in one’s enemy. I can’t help but think it backfired on them. She was using Palo as an aggressive magic.”

Odessa said, “It fried his brain.”

“I could no more cleanse an insane person of their psychological mania. He is mad. He is lost.”

Odessa kept one eye on the double doors, expecting him to come out after them. “As are we,” she said. “Lost. Shouldn’t we have checked the house?”

“No one else is there,” said Blackwood, with a finality she did not question.

Something smashed inside the house. Odessa wanted to get going. She started toward the high gate.

“Sounds like she crossed a line in one of those rituals,” said Odessa. “Like your John Dee.”

Blackwood said, “Everything is linked. There are no little things, no random coincidences.”

“But why Peters in Montclair? And Colina on Long Island?”

Blackwood said, “The design of the world is complex, and the Hollow Ones are its thirteenth floor.”

“So no leads. Without Juanita, we are at a dead end.”

“No such thing,” said Blackwood. “The world will give us a sign. We only have to be ready to see it.”

Odessa shut the gate behind them. The Rolls-Royce Phantom rolled to the curb, Mr. Lusk at the wheel. They climbed into the back. Odessa felt better when the door was closed and she was farther away from Martine’s corrosive psychic energy.

“While we wait for the world to give us a sign,” said Odessa, “I need to eat something.”

“As you wish,” said Blackwood, distracted.

“Where to?” asked Mr. Lusk.

“We’ll find something on the way to Flushing, Queens.”

Mr. Lusk looked at Blackwood, waiting for the order.

Blackwood said, “On the other side of Manhattan? Why? What for?”

“For Earl Solomon,” she said. To Mr. Lusk, she said, “NewYork-Presbyterian Queens Hospital.”

“No, no,” said Blackwood.

“Why not?” said Odessa. “We have time. Solomon asked to see you.”

“We have no time for needless errands,” said Blackwood. “I understand that food is a necessity, but—”

“Needless errands?” said Odessa. “Earl Solomon is a dying man. He asked to see you. Don’t you want to say goodbye?”

“Goodbye?” said Blackwood. “What is goodbye?”

“You’ve known him forty-five years.”

“And?” said Blackwood.

Odessa felt a rage welling up inside her. “He’s dying. Okay, so you say you’ve lived for centuries. What are you, like a vampire who’s forgotten what it’s like to be mortal?”

Blackwood sat back in his seat, looking at her, interlacing his fingers on his lap. “What do you imagine my and Agent Solomon’s relationship is?”

“Forty-five years!” she said again.

“You’re very angry,” he said.

“Of course I am! You’re very cold!”

Blackwood cocked his head a few degrees, seeing her from a slightly different angle. “This isn’t about me at all, Agent Hardwicke. You want this. You want to see us together. This is about your own curiosity.”

She fumbled her words a bit, because there was some uncomfortable truth in his. “This is about saying goodbye.”

Blackwood smiled. He said, “Take her where she wants to go, Mr. Lusk.” And then he tipped his head back and closed his eyes.





1962. The Mississippi Delta.



The sun was low over the cotton fields when Solomon rolled up outside the field path leading to the sharecropper’s house occupied by the Jamuses. Blackwood walked alongside him toward the low structure, a pair of crows lifting off from the laundry line off the rear corner of the house with a panicky CAW-CAW. The heat of the day hadn’t abated yet, Solomon billowing his damp shirt under his jacket.

“How old?” asked Blackwood.

“Six,” said Solomon.

Solomon’s shoe squeaked upon the board before the front entrance. He knocked on the door, Blackwood standing behind and to his left.

A young girl answered, wearing the same blue cotton dress he had seen her in before. “Hello again, miss,” he said. “Agent Solomon, do you remember me?”

“I thought you were Pastor Theodore,” she said.

“May I come in again?”

She looked behind her, uncertainly. There was no one there.

“Do you want to get your mother?” he asked.

The little girl shook her head. She stepped back from the door. Solomon entered, standing on the dirt floor.

“Maybe an older brother?” he said. Solomon wanted to be acknowledged by someone of age before moving farther into the house to see the sick boy, Vernon.

She went away down the hall, along where the wooden flooring started.