American Craftsmen (39 page)

“Unknown, sir. Langley isn’t talking. My analysis is that she’d want her remains to be where her spirit will be needed, but where she’ll be needed is the big secret.”

“Hmm. Must be nice to still have plans.” The general stared at his spectral hand. “I’m not much more than a thin copy, but it still feels lonely here.”

“We can talk anytime you’d like, Dad,” said Endicott.

“And risk sin?”

“It’s only a sin if you’re not real, sir,” said Endicott.

“And we’re real, son.” Endicott’s grandparents had manifested behind his father. As in life, a quick hug and a firm handshake were their only overt signs of affection. Those signs were enough.

*   *   *

I had my own ghostly relations crisis. Grandpa was right in Dad’s face again, full of bluster. “I suppose you think I have to let you in now.”

“What the…,” I started to protest, but my father held up a hand.

“I have other places to be,” said Dad. “Maybe I’ll visit for the solstices, and May Day.”

Grandpa sputtered; his eyes darted from me to my father, bluster replaced by sincere horror. “What kind of ingrate idiot do you two take me for?” The old spirit clasped the younger by the shoulders. “Goddamn it, son. The dead might not change; but the past does. I was wrong about too many things. Please, come home to stay.”

The embrace only lasted a few seconds before Grandpa was off running across the graves toward a lurking black amorphous shadow. The Left-Hand spirits had helped to end the power of Abram and Madeline over their former leader, Roderick. But their new zombie bodies were crushed, and they had nowhere to go. They hesitated between malignity and fear on the border of this family gathering. They might eventually fade, but what mischief could they accomplish in the meantime?

“You, Mortons,” called Grandpa. “Line up and prepare to move out.”

“
Old man, we obey no one, we…”

“What did you say, soldiers? Don’t make me come in there. You’re marching with me. I’ve got a secure place for you to wait this out.”

“
Wait for what? We have nothing.
” There was a new element in the Left Hand’s collective voice, a birdlike call plaintive with fresh loss.

“That’s need to know, soldiers, and way beyond this dead captain’s pay grade. Hup to!”

Grandpa and the Left Hand disappeared, and I stood alone with my father.

“Dad, why were you so set against Scherie, against my involvement in this fugazi? We’ve won. The Mortons have won.”

“I take the long view,” Dad said.

I didn’t push it. Sometimes, the dead were just skipping records, and I had another animal to fry. “On the long view, there’s something I need to ask you about. About Sphinx—”

“Yes, she’s the one who hinted to me about the coming risk to our House and Family. I tried to opt out, yet to put my future ghost in a position to help if worse came to worst. Grandpa, well, he trusted her too much. Uh-oh, he needs help corralling the Left Hand. Got to go.”

Dad disappeared. “But—that’s not what I wanted to ask you!” But maybe that was the start of an answer.

*   *   *

After the inevitable, endless debriefings and scant time to heal, Colonel Hutchinson ordered Endicott and me to a meeting in her temporary E-ring office.

Her recovered files and belongings were in neat boxes, everything except an envelope and one of the photos of happy children on which she rested her hand.

“Well, boys,” she said, rising at our salute. “I thought you should be the first to know. I’m retiring.”

The static of very bad news played on my skin. “Retiring from the military, ma’am?”

Hutch smiled with pity in her eyes. “No, Captain, I think you know what I mean.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” said Endicott. “I refuse to know what you mean.”

“If it’s Chimera’s curse, we can fix it,” I said.

“Not the curse,” said Hutchinson. “It’s what happened before. Seems my soul and body don’t get along anymore. That type of possession probably should have killed both. Only Left-Hand craft kept my body alive, and that kept my soul bound to earth. But now that my business with Madeline and Abram is settled, I feel like an adverse possessor myself. I think it’s past time to say good-bye.”

I looked at Endicott, hoping that he might have some prayerful miracle up his sleeve to stop this. But Endicott was looking back at me with the same desperate question on his face.

“Gentlemen,” said Hutch, offering her hand.

“Don’t be stupid,” I said, choking back a sob, and Endicott and I wrapped our arms around the colonel.

“All right, boys,” said Hutch, patting our backs. “You’d better take care of each other, even if you don’t like each other much. And that reminds me.” She stepped back, pulled the envelope off the desk, and handed it to Endicott with a mischievous smile. “This is the matter we’ve discussed. Please see to it.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, envelope shaking in his hand.

There were some other words of memory and protest, and then Hutch sat in her chair, closed her eyes, and in a soft moon glow of magic, left her body for good.

*   *   *

In Providence, what had been a hole in the ground had risen up to new life. Workmen had been busy clearing rubble and reassembling the gothic Morton master folly with new materials. They worked in the mental fog of overpaid people in productive dreams. That did not explain why they had left an irregularly shaped gap in the keystone of the basement arch. Wooden and metal scaffolding still supported the arch; a stepladder stood beneath it. Scherie and I looked up at the arch and down at the ruins of the subbasement. We would have to finish up down there later.

Scherie grimaced. “What kind of loan can we ever get on this place?”

My mouth curled up on one side. “The Pentagon defense wrapped a mortgage of bad odds around our necks for the rest of our lives. We’re not going to have much luck.”

“Who said anything about luck?” said Scherie.

“That’s the spirit. Ready?”

She held out her hand. “Hooah.”

Like the House, slowly resurrecting stone by stone, we’d had time to rebuild the trust and simple affection that had crumbled some when we’d fled from here, and now, hearts full of love and ready for the coming days, we needed only one more piece to bind us together.

With two swift and skilled motions, I cut Scherie’s palm and then my own. We let our blood drip on the chunk of stone that I had saved. I stood up on the stepladder, stone raised in my right hand. Like the last piece of a puzzle, I fit the blood-soaked stone into the empty slot.

My father had written to me that “with a holographic medium, a little piece can preserve the whole image, though the resolution might fade. The Morton dead, the Morton past, and the spirit of the Morton House are holographic.”

A warm glow filled the room, like a slow sunrise on a spring day. “Hello, House,” I said. “We’re your family.”

A dark line of spirit emerged from the stone in the form of a large fist, which shook with menace at us. Grandpa and Dad manifested to its left and right. “Downstairs with you lot,” said Grandpa. Bound by new blood, the darkness retreated to its old prison.

We moved in the opposite direction, seeking sunlight. The new front door swung loose on its hinges. At the threshold, Scherie paused.

“You don’t have to do this now,” I said.

“No, now is right,” she said. She raised both hands to the sun and cried in Persian: “
Come!
”

And they came. The dead of the house of Rezvani—men, women, and children from pre-Pahlavi to post-Khomeini—swarmed bright green through the front door and literally faded into the woodwork. Scherie called after them: “You could at least say hello.”

“Give them time,” I suggested. “They’re probably a little shy. Now we celebrate.”

I swept my cut hand across the sky, and a glowing rainbow followed its path, each color clear across the full arc from horizon to horizon. “A sign of my covenant with you,” I quipped.

“I love you too, weatherman,” said Scherie.

*   *   *

The private basement blood ritual would have been enough of a marriage ceremony for the craft world, but it wouldn’t do for mundane family and friends. In terms of living versus ghostly attendance, the outdoor wedding in the Morton courtyard was a small affair. Scherie had her parents and a couple of bewildered and not completely approving bridesmaids, and Dale had his old pal Chuck as best man, who made far too many unfunny jokes about the damage to his “pride” at the last Morton celebration. Acting as minister was a colonel from H-ring with a raspy Harry Belafonte voice named Calvin Attucks. The word was that he would soon be promoted to general and replace Michael Endicott’s father as head of countercraft ops.

The Rezvani family hosted the reception at their restaurant. Mr. Rezvani was beaming, expressing pleasure with his daughter and her choice of husband at every opportunity. His wife, however, seemed slightly on edge. While Dale was explaining to Mr. Rezvani and Chuck the nonconfidential version of how he had changed his mind about retiring from the service and how Scherie had decided to join him in his vocation, Mrs. Rezvani took Scherie aside for a private word.

“I hope this isn’t about the facts of life,
Madar
.”

“Oh God, no!” said Scherie’s mother, with a blush and laugh. “But seriously now. I know, you say you love Dale very much. Do you plan on having children?”

Scherie had decided that she had to be honest with her mother even about questions that were none of her mom’s immediate business, because there was too much already that she couldn’t talk about. “Yes. If we can.” Scherie didn’t mention how it was their patriotic duty to try, and instead added, “After my training, when my work and deployment schedule settles down enough. But yes. Most definitely.”

“That’s good!” said Mrs. Rezvani, with obvious relief. “But how will that work with your different names?”

As usual, her mother had intuitively found the most interesting question in a seemingly trivial detail. Scherie hadn’t taken the Morton name not just because of her feminist convictions, but because it was still unclear whether she was starting her own craft lineage or sharing in the continuation of the Morton line. That would probably only sort itself out with children, particularly a daughter. If she had Scherie’s talents instead of the Mortons’, by tradition that daughter would bear the Rezvani name, and that name would be carried down the matrilineal Family line.

But Scherie couldn’t say all that, so she had to find another honest thing to say. “Don’t worry, Mom. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.” Even if the bridge was an invisible path through a land and a future that was far more magical and dangerous than she had ever dreamed.

*   *   *

It was a dark and stormy night. There came a gentle tapping, rapping at the Morton door. I opened it, and found a rained-soaked Endicott in a black trench coat. “Can I come in?”

“Business or pleasure?”

“Not sure. Could be pleasure.”

“Won’t know until you try. Come in.” I felt House’s warm welcome, the smell of fresh-baked bread.

“Hey, it smells nice,” said Endicott.

“Good, but please don’t talk like House isn’t here.”

“I’m glad to see you too, House. Where’s Ms. Rezvani?”

Remembering where she was, I held a finger to my lips. “I think she’d like it if you called her Scherie. She’s resting. Off to boot camp tomorrow. We may need her to pay a visit to Tehran. She seems enthused.”

“Hooah,” said Endicott.

“Hooah,” I agreed.

We went quietly back into the kitchen and sat at the table. “So, married life treating you well?” asked Endicott.

I chuckled. “It’s the old Fighting Family curse—we had to get hitched just to see much of each other. That, and my signing up again will help. Though with our low ranks, it’s still going to be a challenge.”

“I envy you,” said Endicott.

“Whoa, don’t rush into anything. She’s brought all these fresh ghosts to the place. House seems happy with the chaos, but all these Farsi speakers get on my nerves. If it wasn’t destiny, I don’t know what I’d do.” I realized with unease that I was talking freely and off-duty with an Endicott. “Isn’t this contact against regs?”

“Regs keeping us separate nearly got us all killed. Or worse. But maybe we can do a little government business, so I can get my travel costs reimbursed?”

“OK. Have a beer?” I asked.

“An American one.”

“Patriotism?”

“No, just avoiding strong drink,” said Endicott.

I went to the fridge. “You’re wondering about the Left Hand? They’re downstairs, chastised, bound again. They like being bound, in their creepy kinky Left-Hand way.” Endicott didn’t blanche, so I continued. “They had nowhere else to go, and being tied to something has kept them intact longer than otherwise. Oh, and there’s a distinct new strain in their collective malice. Madeline has finally come home.”

“That’s good?” asked Endicott, dubiously.

“Better than the alternatives.” I set down our ice-cold Rolling Rocks.

“Have you seen…?”

“Abram? No,” I said. “He might just be gone; he was pretty damned old. I don’t know if he loved Madeline enough to be absorbed into what he’d always loathed.”

“We’ll see. Do you suppose Roman died down there?”

“With all due respect to your father, I don’t assume anyone died down there.”

I popped the tops off our beers. Endicott cleared his throat. “I didn’t come here to talk about the Left Hand, Major Morton.”

“Ah.” I didn’t pause in taking a swig of my beer. “That’s a good one. I’ve rejoined as a captain. The Five were very clear on that point.”

“They’ve changed their minds.”

“Now what the hell would make them do that?”

Endicott smiled with surprising mischief. “I told them I was out if they didn’t. And Hutch’s letter convinced them that I wasn’t crazy.”

I shook my head, dumbfounded. “That explains why she smiled like a cat in a midget penguin exhibit. Does ‘thank you’ even begin to cut it?”

“No, but I’ll say it anyway, thank
you
, Dale. For too many things. Consider it a down payment.” Endicott took a sip from his Rolling Rock. “I didn’t respect how difficult it was for your family to fight against the Left-Hand temptations. No one did.”