“I love you,” he whispered to Matteo as he laid his head on his shoulder and took his hand. The three words he uttered were of the here and now, didn’t mean forever and ever, amen, didn’t mean anything beyond appreciation and care and a commitment to be the best person he could be with this dude whom he adored. “I love you, and I’m sorry. I was scared. I didn’t think I deserved… what we have. I’ve been messing up.”
Fonsi peppered his man with kisses on his cheek, on his forehead, his lips. The woman next to them was aghast.
“I knew you were scared,” Matteo whispered. “And it’s okay. I’m scared sometimes as well.” He gently placed his hand on Fonsi’s cheek, aware of his injuries. The sandpaper palm, a treasure. “I love you, too, hon-eey. Love you very much.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
LINDA
She entered Smithie’s, the first time she’d done so in well over a month, and was greeted by thunderous applause. Linda turned to Maxine with a hard stare. “You told them we were coming,” she said, deadpan. Her business partner shrugged with an exaggerated grin that meantYep.Clea bounced beside her mother, clapping and yelling with the crowd.
“Hey, you,” Monica said with a humongous smile.
“Hey. Afternoon, lady.” Linda was besieged by an overwhelming urge to pull the bartender close, to hold her tight. And to finally ask the fine woman out.
“We saved a booth for you in the back, just in case you wanted privacy. You and your crew, order whatever you want. On the house.” Monica looked down at Clea. “And we always have chocolate treats for you, cutie-pie. I’ll bring you some goodies after you eat.”
“Thank you!” Clea shouted. She darted her eyes between Linda and Monica, and said in a stage whisper, “Auntie Linda, she’s a fox.”
“I agree,” Linda said, and gave a bashful nod to Monica, who beamed in return. “Uh, we’ll sit wherever you want us to.”
The three were given a booth in the back though a few patrons stillspotted Linda and stopped to convey heartfelt thanks. While most people who’d witnessed the battle with the dorlis hadn’t thought to take out their phones as they scrambled to survive, a few mavericks had captured footage of the battle. And most of the police had worn body cams. Thus, the public would see that the swirling, shadowy mass of malice that seemed ready to swallow Linda whole or lacerate her into a million pieces had quavered and squalled and vanished as she stared into its void. Linda, left tattered and battered by the steps of her agency. Her right arm, covered in glass and debris, a few feet away. Everything captured for the world’s consumption. The woman who’d chased down the first of the Afflicted was also the woman who’d eradicated the horrible thing rumored to be behind the entire mess. An international hero.
Linda thanked Elegua that she’d been so out of it after her injuries that she didn’t know just how famous she’d become. That her face had been shown prominently in countries across the globe. That people from a wide array of spiritual practices and religious traditions prayed for her survival and recovery. One of the smartest things she did months earlier was to establish that Maxine had power of attorney and was effectively in charge of Nueva Investigations if anything happened to her. The agency had received such an onslaught of calls and offers for work that Maxine had hired four full-time investigators, though she also had to explain to some of their new clientele that the team wouldnotbe handling supernatural affairs. That was Linda’s domain, and Linda’s alone.
Linda had been laid up in the hospital and then her town house for weeks in recovery. A team of surgeons had toiled around the clock and managed to reattach her arm, though she would never have anything close to full functionality. Something she was struggling to adjust to. Still, once she was sure she was in full control of her faculties and the pain became manageable, she got to work. “Folks don’t need to know where the dorlis originated from,” she declared to Fonsi over a phone call, paranoid that CNN would invitehim on as a return guest. She had a hunch that his earnest desire to inform the traumatized masses would usurp common sense. Racists would have a field day blaming this new wave of destruction on Black folks if they knew the dorlis originated from the Caribbean. Didn’t matter that the entity had been driven insane by European enslavement. It was best to label the thing a deranged incubus from the ghostly realm and leave it at that.
To her surprise, Elton actually visited the town house to give Linda a breakdown of all that had gone down. His demeanor was sorrowful as the two sat in her office. He could barely bring himself to look at her injured self. Of the 156 people who’d become demon eyes—quite a few hiding in their homes, never discovered by authorities—more than two dozen had died. Linda presumed that the entity had sucked folks dry the more power it used to manifest and rage, feeding on the weakest. A dozen more people had been attacked and killed by the entity right outside her agency. Many others had to be hospitalized. Linda didn’t want to think about the chaos that would’ve overtaken the district if the thing had remained loose. The terror and mayhem that would’ve ensued if Georges hadn’t chosen peace, finally.
All replicas of the dorlis amulet that could be found had been destroyed, along with the original. Rayo, on the other hand, was nowhere to be found. During the battle with the dorlis, he’d vanished. Elton immediately wondered if there’d been a mole among law enforcement, if Rayo had hired someone to help him escape. “But I realized I was looking for a logical answer to something that’s clearly mystical,” he confessed to Linda. “Whatever that man is involved in, whatever deal with the devil he made to bring that creature to life and cause all this pain, beyond my pay grade. I hope he vanishes into the depths of hell and we never hear from him again.”
Guilt oozed off Elton in waves as he spoke. Linda felt sympathy. Yes, the man was a haughty, unnecessarily skeptical pain in the ass, but she wasn’t sure if anything would’ve turned out differently with the dorlisbased on what they knew when the crisis began. They’d done the best they could.
Linda slowly realized that life was forever changed. That her hidden mystical world was part of a larger social fabric. There was no going back to secret modes of existence. As she recuperated, she sat with her altar dedicated to Elegua for hours and let her mind wander. It all came down to the choices made at the crossroads. Despite her misgivings, she’d chosen to enter into ritual with Evelyn, who held the key to defeating the dorlis. If she hadn’t met with Evelyn, hadn’t revealed her beautiful soul self that the dorlis tried to consume, where would the city be?
Yes, it had come down to choice. Elegua was an ever mysterious orisha.
Linda actually enjoyed taking a break from work and making time for reflection, but she was also tired of being a recluse in the town house, the reason why she’d made her way to Smithie’s. She might look worse for wear, not be 100 percent, but fuck it, she was who she was. She wasn’t going to hide.
“Almost everyone here offered to pick up your tab,” Monica said as she brought beverages to the table. “You’re going to be eating and drinking for free for the rest of your days.”
“I appreciate that, Monica, thanks.” Linda enjoyed the attention, realized she needed the boost. To be around people before she made a trip that would be one of the most difficult of her life. The next day, she took the Amtrak to New Rochelle, caught a rideshare to the hospital, and met with Dr. Singh, who was thrilled to see her. And then she sat with Imani, as she’d done for so long. But this time, she didn’t take her girl’s hand. She didn’t break down into tears. Linda remained still in her chair and recalled when Imani woke up in her dream.
She took a big, deep breath.
“I’m sorry, babe, but with these visits of mine, I’ve put us in a cage,” Linda said, voice soft. She pushed herself to speak. “This thing I’ve beendoing… with us… it can’t go on. I… I’ve been scared, to own up to my mistakes. I think… no, I know I’ve been entering into ritual with my Broken Hearts so I can live through them. So I can experience other people’s passions and hopes and fears that I thought I didn’t deserve to have. Because of what I did to you. I don’t know if I can ever forgive myself, but… something has to shift.”
Linda couldn’t say the rest, not yet, that she wanted to truly date and meet other women. That devoting herself unequivocally to someone long gone was no way to live.
Guilt surged forth, as she knew it would. She tried her best to let it go, to sit with how sorrowful she was while making room for truth. Linda couldn’t abandon Imani, yet there were so many unexplored possibilities with her power. She was no longer the young woman who didn’t understand her gift. Change was overdue.
For the first time in over a decade, Linda touched her beloved’s mind with her empathy. A gentle ripple of thought.
Imani, hello…
CHAPTER THIRTY
EVELYN
