Apparition (The Hungry Ghosts) Read Online Free PDF Page B

symbols. She had howled with amusement, then had shown him the symbol for infinite, with the word me in the center of it. He still didn’t know if that meant yes or no.
    Wayra directed everyone out onto the enclosed back deck and he and Illary went into the kitchen to get drinks and food. She sliced up vegetables and fruits while Wayra prepared drinks. His wife looked especially beautiful at the moment and he ran his hand slowly down her spine.
    Illary glanced at him, her smile quick, elusive. The hawk tattoo on the side of her neck seemed to move. “And so?” she asked.
    “There’s too much we don’t know.”
    “Do you still have that stone we found?”
    Wayra nodded and slipped it out of his pocket. Smooth and dark, it was about three inches long and half as wide. He had picked it up at the edge of the area where he and Illary believed the blackness had begun. “I’m going to ask Sanchez to read it.”
    “That’d be a good place to start. Tess is going to grill you about Ricardo. I think it’s important to tell her everything you know.”
    “She just caught me off guard. I haven’t thought of him in centuries.”
    Illary rolled onto the balls of her feet, kissed Wayra, and handed him the platter of goodies. “I’ll get the drinks. We’ll figure this out.”
    Wayra returned the stone to his pocket and made his way back through the house. Local art covered the walls, pieces he and Illary had collected in their years here together. His favorite artist, Oswaldo Guayasamín, had his own wall. Guayasamín, born in Quito in 1919, was famous for his paintings depicting Andean people. He had exposed racism, poverty, political oppression, and class division in his work, and it reflected that misery and pain.
    The painting Wayra loved the most hung in the middle of Guayasamín’s wall: that of an alienlike face that portrayed such profound isolation it spoke to the deepest parts of Wayra’s being, and to the life he had known when he had thought he was the last shape shifter in existence, before he’d met Illary.
    “Salud, amigo,” he whispered to the alien as he passed.
    Once they were all settled on the back deck, the lights of Esperanza spread out below them, Tess and Ian related what had happened.
    “Wow,” Maddie said softly, her green eyes widening. “It sounds like brujo trickery, especially coming on the heels of Tesso’s confrontation with this Ricardo dude.”
    “That’s the most obvious explanation,” Wayra said, and glanced at Tess. “To answer your question about Ricardo, he and Dominica were the only children of a Spanish nobleman in the late 1400s, her last physical life. The family was arrogant and broke, so they planned to marry Dominica off to a wealthy nobleman. And I, a sheepherder’s son, was in the way of their plans. Her father grew to hate me because she and I loved each other. He ordered Ricardo to track me down and kill me. Ricardo stabbed me in a bar, nearly killed me. Fortunately, I’d been turned by then. My shifter blood saved my life.”
    “But what’s he doing here now?” Tess asked.
    “I have no idea.”
    “What happened at the café may not have anything to do with Ricardo or brujos, ” Ian said. “Look at it from a journalistic perspective. Here in the city of hope, we talk to the dead, break bread with them, negotiate and commune with them. The sick who come here are healed and everyone lives a ridiculously long time. We have shape shifters and chasers, and once upon a time we also had brujos , who seized the living and possessed their bodies so they could enjoy the banquet of physical pleasures. But we’ve been free of them since Dominica’s tribe was annihilated. The last two ancient shape shifters in the world live here. One of them is at least six hundred years old and the other is…” Ian looked over at Illary. “I don’t even know.”
    “Two thousand,” Illary said quietly.
    Ian opened his hands. “I rest my case. The dark matter may be just