“The answer, little fool,” said Ghede, letting his smoke drift upward in the shape of a skull, “is no. And just between the two of us and these smoky skulls here” – the smoke had split off into three separate human skulls that floated, staring at Heath – “you should have known that without asking. But since it seems you need a reminder, you tell me. What’s going to happen to you when you die?”

  “I…” Heath shifted his lips around and realized he had a vague sense of his muscles moving. But he kept his attention on the question at hand. “I’d like to think I’ll go to heaven.”

  The smoky skulls, five of them now, laughed, and unlike any words of this conversation their laughs echoed the way those distant voices had.

  “Well, as to whether or not that’s your final destination it’s not for me to say. But we both know what happens to you, Heath Cyr, when you die. So you tell me. Because if you can’t even tell me that—”

  “Wait!” Heath smacked his hand against his other palm, which brought neither sound nor sensation, but the barest feeling of movement. “Papa Legba. When I die, he said he’d make sure my bones went to Mama Brigitte, and…”

  “Go on.” Ghede rolled the hand holding his cigar and the smoke spilling out of it formed another skull. Seven of them now.

  “…and…” Heath swallowed, and he could almost feel the lump in his throat go down. “…and he said Ghede would carry my angel back across the water.”

  “And has that happened?”

  “Not that I know of,” Heath said slowly, “but you are here, and I’m not sure how I got where I am.”

  “Now that’s a fair point.” Ghede rubbed his hands together and Heath could hear the friction. “Though it does show a certain arrogance on your part to think this little part of you is your angel, but your education in religious matters is kind of lacking, wouldn’t you say?”

  “I…” Heath stopped himself and tried to take a deep breath. His body went through the motions, but nothing came in or went out as far as he could tell. “I’d say you’re more qualified to judge that than I am.”

  “Much better,” said Ghede, and the smoke from his cigar stopped forming skulls. Still, nine of them floated in the air looking back and forth at Heath and the Lwa as though watching a tennis match. “So now that we’ve established that there’s still some life in your body, wherever that is – and I’m not going to tell you that right now so don’t ask – the question becomes where are you now?”

  “I’m … between, aren’t I? Not quite dead but not quite alive?”

  “DING DING DING,” the skulls chanted over and over. In fact, they kept chanting it until Ghede said, “Hush now.”

  Ghede put his lit cigar back in the inside pocket of his jacket.

  “Perfect place for you in some ways,” said Ghede. “Smack dab in the middle, like you’ve been all your life.”

  “I have to get back.”

  “Been waiting for those words. I swear, every man, woman and child who ends up here says them.” Ghede leaned down and brushed his boot, the one he had next to him on the gravestone. “Most of them say it right off though…”

  “Please,” said Heath. “My friends need me. There’s a—”

  “I know all about what was happening before you got here.”

  “Then you know why I have to go back.”

  “Never doubted it.” Ghede pulled a tin flask out of what looked like the same jacket pocket that held his cigar. He sipped from it, and Heath could smell the rum. “Don’t know why you feel the need to go on and on about it though.”

  “Please, you have to send me back.”

  “Me?” Ghede laughed, and his skulls joined him. “Boy, I’m here to make sure you don’t try to cross into the land of the dead.”

  “You mean…”

  “If you want to go back to the living, you’ll have to do that your own self.”

  13

  Heath stumbled away from the laughter of Ghede and those smoky skulls, the only sounds he could hear. Heath couldn’t walk right in this place between. The dirt, so black as the night sky, didn’t feel right under Heath’s muddy boots. His feet could barely tell it was there, so he lurched from gravestone to gravestone.

  But the granites and marbles and cheaper stones weren’t much help. It was as though Heath’s nerves hid from this world behind cushioning layers of cotton. No sensations for his skin save the barest hints of pressure and muscle movement. No smells but that rum-soaked tobacco of Ghede’s, though Heath’s tongue reported the sweet aftertaste of Ghede’s rum, which Heath had not sampled.

  Above him only the white-gray nothing of the featureless sky.

  There should have been dead trees to complete the image. Maybe with twisted branches and the decayed remains of old nooses. But no. Only rows and rows of graves stretching to the horizon in every direction, each looking freshly dug.

  There had to be something. There had to be some hint. Some way to find out which direction he was going. Which way back to the land of the living.

  Heath pushed on, his progress slow but steady from one gravestone to the next. A name on each stone, but no hints or clues.

  “This is the slave section,” said Ghede, from Heath’s right. The words tight and clipped, as though no air actually carried them. “If you’re looking for a name you’ll recognize, I’m afraid you’re a bunch of rows away from any.”

  Heath turned his head slowly.

  Ghede leaned against a gravestone, his top hat forward at a jaunty angle, one gloved hand on the stone supporting him and the other holding his gravedigger’s shovel casually across his shoulder. His nine smoky skulls floated in the air around him, grinning their death’s head grins at Heath.

  Ghede smiled.

  “You understand I’m going to keep an eye on you,” said Ghede. “A terrible inconvenience to me, I know, so I’d appreciate your doing your part and not making me chase you though the whole of this graveyard.”

  “I don’t want to go to the land of the dead. I want to go back.”

  “Maybe you do. Maybe you’re lying. Or maybe you think the only way out is through, like this is some sort of epic poem.”

  “You mean—”

  “I prefer limericks myself. A woman once went to the Ritz / With nothing covering her tits / The men they all stared / The women all glared / But not a one noticed her zits.”

  Ghede and his skulls started laughing, but Heath only shook his head. He tried to sigh, but if his lungs drew any air, he couldn’t feel or taste it.

  “Here’s another,” said Ghede, sitting on the edge of a gravestone now. “Maybe you’ll like it better.”

  “I don’t need limericks. I need to go home.”

  “Well, I’m certainly not stopping you.” The nine floating smoke skulls chuckled. “A zombie is no good in bed / Especially if you want head / Their lips are sewn shut / They can only rut / And they lie there like they are dead.”

  Ghede and his skulls laughed again, and sorrow began welling up in Heath. Zombies. Uncle Andre had zombies with him, and Nariko and Colin didn’t know the first thing about zombies. All they knew were the stupid movies. They…

  Zombies.

  Hope began creeping around the edges of that sadness.

  “Zombies are between too, aren’t they?” Heath said to Ghede. “They aren’t living, but they aren’t really dead.”

  Ghede shook his head. “You making another of your declarations?”

  “No.” Heath’s hands were shaking. When had they started shaking? He ran them over his face and through his hair. “I’m asking you. Are zombies caught between too?”

  “Interesting question.” Ghede pulled his cigar back out of the inside pocket of his jacket. “But you’re not a zombie, if that’s what you’re asking. Ain’t nobody back there pulling your strings.”

  “Wait. Does that mean I’m free of the grimoire?”

  Ghede chuckled. “You never hold onto one idea any longer than you have to, do you?”

  He puffed his cigar, but the smoke trailed up without forming more skulls.

  “Right. Zombies first. Are zombies between too?”

  “You tell me. Do they get to move on to whatever’s waiting for them?”

  “No, they…” Heath stopped, blinking fast as he tried to make sense of things. “Wait. Part of them gets trapped, but I don’t know what happens to the rest. The angel.”

  “DING DING DING DING DING,” said the skulls, their words managing an echo that grew metallic as it faded.

  “Well, if you want to get technical” – Ghede frowned at the word as though it tasted bad – “you have two angels. The big one and the little one. If you had a proper education, you might know what happens to the big one.”

  “Does that mean I’m the little one?”

  “Keep asking questions like that,” said Ghede leaning forward, “and you’ll end up staring at the sky. Implications and all.”

  Ghede chuckled and puffed on his cigar.

  “All right,” said Heath, tapping the center of his forehead with the knuckle of his right middle finger, trying to keep his focus in this … place. “What happens to the big angel doesn’t matter. The bokor—”

  “Listen to him,” muttered through a grin Ghede, “throwing Kreyol around like he speaks it.”

  “—traps the little part, the little angel. That’s what he commands. Must be what I am then. The little angel, here without my body.”

  Ghede tilted his head back and forth, not confirming but not denying.

  “But you say I’m not a zombie. So I’m not trapped here and I’m still free.”

  “Never said you were free.” Ghede pointed at Heath with his cigar. “Said you’re not a zombie.”

  “You said no one’s pulling my strings.”

  “Not the same thing.” Ghede puffed again, and the smoke came out as an enormous pair of breasts that dissipated. “Free is another one of those words with implications.”

  “Well, we wouldn’t want that, would we?” muttered Heath under what would have been his breath, had he any air to breathe. He leaned on the nearest gravestone, squeezing tight to get any sense of pressure at all. Louder he said, “But I’m not trapped here. Which means I can get back without someone summoning me.”

  “It means you have to go back without someone summoning you.” Ghede tilted his head. “Assuming you’re actually trying to go back.”

  “Why wouldn’t I?”

  Ghede shrugged, looking into the distance. The shrug of a man who knew more than he let on, but then Ghede was a Lwa.

  “I want to go back,” said Heath, stronger this time.

  “So you keep insisting,” said Ghede, popping one of his skulls like a balloon with the end of his cigar. The other skulls laughed. “But you’re still here.”

  “Wait—”

  “You keep saying that too.” Ghede popped another skull. Seven remained. “Like I’m going anywhere.”

  “Can you help me with my uncle?”

  “Now there’s an interesting question,” said Ghede, a slow smile stretching his dark, cadaverous face. “So you’re going to fight him from here then?”

  “I … what?” Heath shook his head. “I wouldn’t even know how to begin—”

  “So, that’s a no then.” Ghede chuckled. “Thought not.”

  Heath let out a yell of frustration, but its tight sound only drove home how trapped he felt.

  The laughing skulls made it worse.

  Heath looked at Ghede, who smiled back as imperturbable as a sphinx. But he wasn’t a sphinx. And Heath wasn’t trying to guess a riddle and pass him.

  On the other hand, Ghede wasn’t trying to eat him either.

  “You’re not going to help me at all, are you?”

  Ghede grinned and shook his head.

  “Is it because…” the words trailed off and Heath leaned forward on the marble headstone. Almost no sensation at all in his body, yet Heath felt tired beyond his ability to express. “It doesn’t matter. Why doesn’t matter. You’re acting as bouncer to a club, when all I want to do is catch the first taxi home.”

  “A woman whose body was fab / Couldn’t quite pay for her cab / She offered a look / The cabbie’s head shook / For a ride, he wanted a grab.”

  Ghede and his skulls laughed at that while Heath pondered what he could do. He had no roots, no incense, nothing. He knew prayers, but Ghede seemed to imply they wouldn’t work here. Not here in between things.

  How could Heath get home?

  “Is my body waiting for me?”

  The question merely bubbled out as the thought occurred to Heath, but Ghede actually answered.

  “Of course. It knows you weren’t supposed to take off like this.”

  Heath swore. “I don’t know anything about this astral stuff. Spirits yes, but here everything’s—”

  “Dead?” suggested Ghede.

  “Missing. No air. No animals. No plants. Nothing. Not even zombies astrals waiting to be called.”

  “Those only come here until they’re bound the first time,” said Ghede, gesturing to the graves with his cigar. “Then, it appears that even they have better places to be than you do.”

  “This isn’t dirt I’m standing on. I’m not really here either. And neither are you.”

  Ghede cleared his throat.

  “Well, maybe you are, but you’re a Lwa.”

  Ghede nodded.

  “So I don’t have to fight to get back. I don’t have to do anything.” Heath looked at Ghede for confirmation, but Ghede was swirling his cigar in the air, spinning his smoke skulls in loops. “Do I?”

  “You tell me,” said Ghede, not bothering to look over.

  “This fragment of me should want to rejoin the body. I should try to just … do nothing.”

  Heath lay down on the not-dirt. He let his eyes fall closed. He stopped trying to smell the air. Tried not to shift about to make his boots more comfortable. And most of all, tried to think about nothing.

  That part wasn’t working. Heath was worried. About Nariko and Colin. About his body. About his uncle. About the Black Book.

  Normally, Heath would try deep breaths to clear his thoughts, but he couldn’t even let himself do that. So he tried imagining this was a dream and he needed to wake up.

  Heath had no sense of how long he lay there, trying to do nothing. He did know that when he opened his eyes, he was still in that graveyard. And Ghede was still right there, leaning against a gravestone, with his gravedigger’s shovel standing up in the not-dirt in front of him.

  The skulls were gone though.

  “It’s not working,” said Heath.

  “Doing nothing usually doesn’t accomplish very much,” said Ghede, who then took a swig of his rum.

  “But nothing’s holding me here.” Heath sat up. “Wait. Is something holding me here?”

  “Ding ding ding ding ding,” said Ghede, in a mocking voice.

  Heath looked up at Ghede, hopeful that more information would be forthcoming, but Ghede appeared interested in buffing a spot out of his tin flask.

  Heath buried his face in his hands. Stuck between worlds in a semblance of a graveyard, with no smells (except rum-soaked tobacco from Ghede’s cigar), no wind, nothing. Only endless graves in the space-black dirt, and the cadaverous Lwa of the dead, Papa Ghede, in purple and black finery that, every so often, looked decrepit for a moment.

  “Wait,” said Heath, and Ghede snickered. “Why you? Why not Baron Cimitière? Isn’t guarding graveyards his job?”

  “Might be your best question yet,” said Ghede with a broad smile. “Follow it.”

  “Because this isn’t an actual graveyard you’re guarding. It’s the land of the dead. No! It’s the place between, but you’re guarding the land of the dead, keeping me out because I don’t belong there.”

  Ghede winked.

  “So you’re Ghede Brav.”

  Ghede bowed, burping as he straightened up. He drank more of his rum.

  Heath thought about that for a moment. Brav was more of a guardian, but there was a Ghede who functioned more as a psychopomp. A psychopomp usually only ferried people to the land of the dead, but still…

  “Could Ghede Nibo bring me back to the land of the living?”

  “Perhaps. But Nibo isn’t here.” Ghede Brav slipped his flask back into his jacket’s inner pocket and pulled back out his lit cigar. “You are here. And I am here.”

  “All right,” said Heath, trying to convince himself that his line of reasoning had somewhere to go. He had trouble feeling confident, sitting there on dirt that didn’t feel like dirt, under a gray-white sky that…

  “If” – Heath raised one finger and Ghede Brav mocked him by mirroring the move with a deadly serious expression – “and understand I don’t want to do this. But if I wanted to try to get past you to the land of the dead, where would I find the entrance?”

  Ghede Brav chuckled and smoke from his cigar formed another grinning skull that promptly split into three, all laughing at Heath.

  But Ghede Brav did answer the question.

  “All around you, little fool. All around you.” He waved his cigar to gesture toward all the graves. “Each and every one an opening to the land of the dead, if you know how to pass through. Helps to be dead for that part.”

  “That’s not all there is to it though, is it?” said Heath, realization dawning within him in the brightest, most positive sensation he’d felt since before the Black Book appeared in the Witch’s Castle. “That dirt’s no different than any of the rest of it. It’s just disturbed because … because a soul has already dug its entrance down!”

  “Not quite,” said Ghede Brav with a glance at his shovel, “but close. Don’t go getting ideas though.”

  “And if the entrance to the land of the dead is below me, the entrance to the land of the living must be…”

  “Say it already. The anticipation is splitting my skulls.”

  “Through the sky.”

  Ghede Brav gave Heath a golf clap. “Does that solve your problem? Are you leaving now?”

  “No, I still…” Heath’s words trailed off as he stared at the featureless gray-white sky. “Is that what the sky usually looks like here?”