The Resurrectionist. Sierra Woods
see you around eight.” I slid a piece of paper across the desk. “Write down your address.”
I walked them to the door with a mental sigh. It was going to be a long night. Calling Sam occurred to me, but after our conversation this morning I was feeling ornery. Besides, I wasn’t doing a resurrection. Just information gathering, so technically I didn’t have to call him.
I just love technicalities when they work in my favor.
* * *
I arrived at the Ramirez house a few minutes early. I like to watch a house for a little while before walking in. Opening the door for a person I didn’t know got me killed once. It ain’t happening again.
Instincts on full alert, I approached the door. Letting my senses reach out, I felt for imminent danger, but found nothing, so I rang the doorbell. Burton and the other-siders had to be mistaken. There was no big, bad darkness out to get me, just a missing boy who needed to be found. Looking overhead, I saw no threat. I was just a simple resurrectionist doing a job. I wasn’t any threat to a universal force.
But I kept my right hand free to grab my gun, anyway. I carry a 9mm semiauto. I also tuck a derringer in the top of my boot, but that requires a little extra maneuvering to get to. Most people aren’t used to women carrying weapons openly, so I wear a light blazer over my shirt and shoulder holster. Basic black, goes with everything. And hides the dagger strapped to my left wrist too.
“Miss Wright, please come in.” Julio opened the door and ushered me in. Here, everyone says Miss, not Ms., but it means the same thing. “We’re here, like you said. Tell us what we need to do.”
Oh, he might not like what I was suspecting he had to do. “Thank you. How about I just talk to everyone, and we go from there?”
“I don’t know if it will help.” He swayed slightly as he held on to the door, and I detected the faint odor of tequila leaking from his pores. After what he’d been through, I couldn’t begrudge him a shot or two of fortitude.
“Someone knows something.” He shrugged, but led me to the kitchen table, which was the hub of the family activity. This was a typical Catholic-Hispanic household with crosses of various sizes around the house and a small shrine in the living room. My grandmother’s house is nearly identical, except she has a shrine to Buddha. No matter, same deal.
“We’re here because I believe someone here may have information about Roberto they haven’t told the police. On his own he’s not going to survive for long.”
“You think he’s still alive? After all this time can he be alive?”
This question was posed by one of the family matriarchs. Although only two days had passed since his disappearance, I was certain it felt like an eternity. Anger and grief warred for control in her eyes. She was afraid to hope, afraid to believe he would be found, and terrified something she didn’t want to think about had already happened. I wanted to help this family, but I knew I was going to bring more bad news. That part wasn’t my problem to deal with. Recovering a child was. I hoped.
“That’s what I’m here to find out.”
“Are you a curandera?” she asked, watchful and suspicious.
That’s the Hispanic version of a witch-woman or a healer, depending on the interpretation. Not my gig, but most people, especially the highly superstitious, are more comfortable with that term. “No. I’m a nurse, not a healer in the way you mean.” Once a nurse, always a nurse. We’re kind of like the marines that way, but without the firepower and snappy haircuts. “Tonight I’m here to see if I can help find Roberto.” I looked away from her and the grief pouring out of her. That kind of energy messes with my mojo. “I need everyone to go outside and form a circle in the yard.”
This family understood the need for ceremony and rituals, so there were no complaints. I entered the circle the family created. Turning, I moved toward Roberto’s parents and held my hands, palms out, toward them.
I don’t have the power to see energy or auras that other resurrectionists do. I feel them, sense them, and almost taste them if they are strong enough. Not very palatable, but it’s not as if I have a choice. I’ll brush my teeth later.
The little charge of energy that flowed from Juanita and Julio was clean. I don’t know how else to explain it, but it wasn’t tainted with evil or deception. I guess I have an evil-ometer in my hands. I have to be careful of whom and what I touch because my senses pick up things when I don’t want them to. One of the undisclosed perks of coming back from the dead.
I focused on the present and the possibility of finding this child. Alive or dead, I wasn’t sure, but at least we could find out what had happened to him.
I moved around the circle with my radar on full alert. It was as if I had a bubble of energy around me with tendrils that reached out for information and drew it back to me. Kind of like an electrical octopus feeding information instead of fish. I felt the vibrations flowing around and over the bubble and absorbed some of the energy. Not unlike static feels when you rub a balloon against your hair. Assuming you have hair. You know what I mean.
One of the women shivered as I approached her and made the sign of the cross, then rubbed her arms. Whatever makes you feel better, I guess. She wasn’t my target, and I moved on. Women were rarely the perpetrators of crimes against children. Sure, you got the ones who murdered their entire families, but those people were mentally ill. They had to be or I couldn’t sleep at night. I was in search of a male. And I had found one. Possibly abused himself, but had never dealt with it.
My hands nearly glowed with golden light, and I began to sweat. Damn. I hate being right sometimes. “Filberto?” I asked. Fear and shame oozed out of this thin young man. In his early twenties, he still carried that uncoordinated stance of a teenager who hadn’t quite found his place in the world. Filberto was going to find his place in the world, and it wasn’t going to be to his liking.
The hairs on my arms stood up, and my evil-ometer went nuts. This was the guy. I knew it. Looking into his eyes, I knew that he knew that I knew it, too. He stepped back, scared shitless of me. My eyes must have been going wild again. I’d have to work on that.
“Get away from me.” He backed up. I stepped forward.
“What did you do?” I didn’t want to touch him and see every blasted detail of it in my mind. I wanted him to confess to these people. Making him tell of his crimes was so much more powerful on the universal scale. It wouldn’t balance the scale, but at least it would help add a stone or two to the side of justice. There needs to be equal parts of good to counter the evil in the world.
Gasps and screams filled the air and broke the circle apart. Juanita wailed the way only a wounded mother could, and the sound set my nerves on edge. I had made that sound once. But now I couldn’t let it or my memory interfere with what was going on in front of me. Filberto continued to back up until he stepped against a large cottonwood tree. “Get away from me. Witch!” he cried and held out his hands. Pfft. As if that was gonna stop me.
I stepped into his personal space, and we both began to glow. From my feet all the way to the top of my head, I was encased in a golden light. It was both healing and protective. Filberto, however, glowed sort of a dark green. Bad news for him. So maybe I’m seeing auras after all.
He broke into a run. Shit. That meant I had to chase him. I hate running in boots. Fortunately, all of the yards in Albuquerque have some sort of fencing. To keep things in or out, I was never sure. So I had to chase him only a few feet and caught him as he was trying to climb over the fence using the trumpet vine like a ladder.
I grabbed him by the back of his jeans and yanked. He came flying, and we landed in a heap. Screams and hysterical Spanish, most of which I didn’t want to have interpreted, landed on us as the family descended. Filberto was ripped out of my hands, and I was left in a heap all by myself. That’s sort of hard to do, so I got up and went after them.
I had to stop them before they killed him. We needed information, not another murder. That wouldn’t