The ghost peeled her lips back from black rotting teeth, an’ I was glad as hell she didn’t have enough breath to stink. “Long hunt.” Her ruined face crumpled and she reached out, not to any of us, but toward the sea.
Not the sea. Any idiot coulda seen that, and I wasn’t that much of a fool. Toward Korea. Toward her home. “Last blood.” She came alive all of a sudden, throwin’ off the smoky air an’ insubstantiality to look like a real girl. Just a kid with eyes haunted by death, same way as we’d all been back then. She wasn’t anybody, not a face burned inta my memory, not one of the regular nightmares that came through the long years to remind us what we’d done. She was just a girl, and we’d prob’ly dropped a bomb or fired a bullet and earned ourselves some’a what the brass called collateral damage.
She hadn’t been one of ‘em, though. I could see it now, the bloody hole in her chest an’ the shadow of the knife that had put it there. She’d killed herself to haunt us, an’ there was a kinda horrible sick honor in that. “I am so sorry, darlin’. But you been pickin’ us off slow, when you coulda taken us all at once at one of these get-togethers. Why’s that?”
“Pain.”
A laugh that wasn’t funny came right from my gut. Pain, for alla us who knew each other and had to watch each other die slow over the years. Thank God the ghost was a kid, ‘cause real pain woulda been takin’ us all out at once and leavin’ our families to cope with the shattered remains of their lives. Still, I said, “Guess we got what we deserved,” and a big part of me meant it. “You’re hurryin’ it up now, though, sweetheart. Why’s that?”
Her face collapsed, no more girl, just ravaged wretched spirit. She reached toward home again, speaking in Korean. I ground my teeth an’ did my best to make the same sounds. I’d never managed ta learn Spanish, nevermind a tonal language. But I guessed I got it right that time, ‘cause Danny started translatin’ and what he said made sense: “I need strength to cross the water. I thought I was the last of my family, that all the others had been lost in the war. But I feel it now, even from so far away. My daughter, the baby, she lived, and now she dies. I don’t want her to die alone, and I want to lay down my burden when she does. So you must all die now, to end my vengeance and give me strength to cross the water.”
“I thought spirits had trouble with crossin’ water. Or maybe that’s witches. Nevermind. Sweetheart, you got any idea how far that is? You ain’t gonna make it. Not even if you press us all dry, there ain’t no way you’re gettin’ across the Pacific Ocean on willpower alone. People been tryin’ forever, an’ it just don’t work.”
Turned out that wasn’t such a smart thing to say. She whipped toward me, leapin’ like a cat. My tortoise hunkered down, ready to take a hit, but Danny got between me and her and started shoutin’ in Korean. She slammed into him, but backed off again, listening instead of tryin’ ta gobble his soul. I edged toward Andy and Ack, makin’ sure they were okay. Andy was still clutching his chest, but he nodded, so all three of us sat there starin’ at Danny talk to a ghost. She finally nodded, then looked at me expectantly. “She’s noddin’, Danny. Whatever you’re doin’, keep it up.”
“I’m taking her home.”
“You’re what?” Ack and Andy drowned me out, shouting louder and louder about all the reasons that was a dumb damn idea. I started out agreeing with ‘em, but I was the one who could see the ghost. The more they shouted, the angrier she got. She got smaller, crouching, and I could just about see her gettin’ ready to uncoil and jump on us all.
I reached out an’ slapped my hands over Andy and Ack’s mouths. “Shut up. Shut up. It’s more’n that, ain’t it, Danny. She’s gonna let us go as long as we shut the hell up. She needs to get home more than she wants revenge.”
“Almost more. What I didn’t translate was she was saving me for last, Muldoon. Because I betrayed Korea. She didn’t care that I was born in America.”
“Oh no.” I got to my feet, hopin’ the tortoise was feelin’ up to a real fight. “You ain’t goin’ off to sacrifice yourself for us. Trust me, buddy, I know sacrifices are bad magic.”
“I’m not sacrificing anything. She didn’t care that I was born in America. But if she was nodding, she understands what I told her. If she has family left, grandchildren, I’ll bring them back here. I’ll say that they’re mine, from during the war. North Korea’s a hard place to live, Muldoon. Her family will have more opportunities here.”
“That line woulda worked a lot better back before DNA and paternity tests were possible, Danny-boy.”
My old friend, the one whose heart scars I didn’t know a damned thing about, gave me a pained smile. “That’s not going to be a problem.”
I almost didn’t get it. Then Ack breathed, “Son of a bitch,” and it all came tumblin’ down.
“Her name was Lee Sun Soo.” Danny watched the place where the ghost stood, but he was lookin’ at a memory. “We had been together more than a year. A year, but not many days. I only saw her when I could slip away at the end of an assignment. But it was enough, until her soldier brother came home on leave. He heard me teaching her English, before we knew he had arrived. Someone higher up realized my cover was blown before I even knew it. They snatched me out and bombed her village. So many people died. I thought Sun Soo was one of them. I thought our daughter was one of them.”
I shoulda known. I shoulda known, because Jo’d run into ghosts a time or two, an’ they always had some kinda strong emotional connection that kept ‘em going, usually to people. I shoulda known it wasn’t the whole unit, even if it coulda been. I said, “Damn, Danny,” ‘cause there wasn’t much else to say.
“I’ll see you guys next year.” Dan came back, shook each of our hands, then walked back to Lee Sun Soo.
He couldn’t see it, maybe, but I could: smoky black tears on her face, and her hand tucked into his elbow as they walked away together, fifty years too late.
Me an’ Andy an’ Ack sat there on the sidewalk for a hell of a long time, not one of us quite willin’ to look at the others. After a while the sun came up, and a while after that a cop came along to tell us to get our drunk old asses off the street. We got up, dusted ourselves off, and headed for the nearest diner.
“Well, shit,” Andy finally said, over bacon and eggs. “I guess maybe I’d better tell you about Brer Rabbit and Big Man-Eater, then.”
Petite
“Petite” takes place moments after SPIRIT DANCES (Book Six of the Walker Papers) ends. The author feels strongly that you should read SPIRIT DANCES first. Very strongly.
The most infuriating woman I had ever met handed me the keys to her car, kissed me, and walked out my front door.
Every bone in my body said to follow her. Not just to stop her from leaving, but because I lived in a residential neighborhood. She wasn’t likely to catch a taxi on my block at four in the morning. Smart money would be on me driving her to the airport. But I stayed where I was, looking at the keys in my palm.
Joanne Walker had never voluntarily handed those keys over to somebody else in her life, and she’d just given them to me.
“Michael. Michael Morrison. It’s good to meet you.” I’d repeated the same words, the same solid handshake, dozens of times already. Seattle weather was cooperating, pouring sunshine down on a Fourth of July picnic, and it looked like everybody from the Seattle Police Department’s North Precinct who wasn’t on duty that day had turned up. The man introducing me around, Captain Anthony—Tony—Nichols, was pleased. It was a good opportunity to meet my new team in less formal circumstances than the department building, he said. It would warm them up to me.