‘Better turn the phone off,’ A woman’s tinkling voice said in Thai. ‘No interruptions.’
I want to say I felt like I’d been kicked in the stomach, but the fact is I’ve been kicked in the stomach plenty of times and it was nothing compared to this.
Well,
I thought.
Looks like I’ll die here. And Shea’s already got female company.
I wondered if she knew about his ‘problem.’
Mya set about ransacking the drawers of the apothecary chest. Pills and powders and syringes came out of the drawers. Bottles. Bags of fluid. Ugh. Then Mya gave a little cry. She held up a bag in her hand. Except for a few specks of blue powder, it was empty.
A soft voice said, ‘A good thief never burgles the same house twice.’
Richard Fuller was standing in the doorway that led to the rest of the house. He held up a second bag, this one full of a blue powder.
‘Fortunately, you will not be a thief the second time. I have saved you from that.’
Mya’s face had become a mask. She must have been terrified, but she showed no expression at all.
Richard Fuller was gawky-looking. Harmless and soft-spoken. His physique was waxy and weak, but his voice had a quality of persuasion.
‘You try to do good, but everything goes wrong for you. When you steal food and bring it to the animals in the forest, you only prolong their suffering.’
He paused, but Mya did not move. She knelt by the apothecary table, as still as a statue.
Mr. Richard shook his head sadly as he moved out to the porch. ‘This is foolishness, Mya. You are a child. You have misunderstood everything, and your actions have lost merit for your family.’
Mya’s body was shaking but her face gave nothing away.
‘When we are together, then you will understand. My wisdom will guide you and you won’t make all these tragic mistakes. It is time for us to be joined as a single being, to move through all the worlds as one.’
At last Mya moved. She shook her head slowly from side to side.
‘Go back, Mya,’ I told her. ‘Run away. Don’t listen to him. He’s a scumbag.’
She didn’t look my way. I wondered if she could still hear me. I wondered if I was already dead and this was how it was going to be, like in movies where ghosts talk and can’t get through to the living.
Then the video application chimed from the computer, announcing a call. Mya jumped. I felt a surge of hope—could it be Shea?
It was Tommy Zhang.
Richard Fuller ducked through the bead curtain and glanced at the screen. Shea’s contact information was still up there. His eyes narrowed as he took this in, but he just clicked on ‘answer’ and Tommy’s voice filled the room.
‘I did what you asked,’ Tommy Zhang said. I wasn’t even sure whether he was speaking English or Thai. It didn’t seem to matter anymore. ‘She disappeared. Like magic. Was that supposed to happen?’
‘It is all part of the plan,’ Fuller said. ‘Play along, pretend she has left of her own free will. Hint that she may have staged some kind of stunt to escape the police, because she has had some trouble with the law back in New Jersey. But don’t make any open accusations, and be sure you show every concern for her safety.’
‘Yeah, uh, that’s what I wanted to ask you. There’s a problem with her insurance. They’re asking me if the show will pay for her treatment. My lawyer says the show is not liable. So do I pay or not?’
‘You pay for the best doctors,’ Fuller intoned gently. ‘Don’t be foolish about details. Act as though you’re dreadfully worried about her and say you will pay.’
‘They talking about flying in a specialist from Chicago. How much is this gonna cost me?’
‘Don’t be a bloody cheapskate, Tommy.’ Mr. Richard’s voice went from mellow to biting. He rifled through the papers on his desk as though looking for something. ‘They don’t even have a body. How can a specialist charge for a patient he never sees?’
Tommy said, ‘Richard, I don’t like this. It’s not what we agreed. You are landing me in the middle of—’
His voice cut off. Fuller had come up with a large color photograph, which he now showed to the webcam.
Tommy said, ‘No, wait, I thought—’
‘It’s not your job to think, Tommy. Never has been. You do what I say. Sort it out, or this image and others like it will be all over the internet in a matter of minutes.’
‘OK, OK, calm down, I—’
‘Shut up, Tommy. It’s too late to change your mind. Jade Barrera is dead. Deal with it.’
Fuller cut the line.
His words rang in my mind, over and over.
Jade Barrera is dead?
A Family Way
T
HE ONLY THING
that could distract me from the news of my own death was the fact that I recognized the photograph Richard Fuller had shown Tommy. The same picture Shea had showed me at the diner. The old white guy was Fuller, pictured with a tall Asian beauty.
When Shea showed me this picture in the diner, I’d thought the beautiful girl looked familiar. At the time I assumed she was a model, somebody I’d seen on a magazine or in a shampoo ad. I’d missed the truth entirely.
I’d seen ‘her’ before, all right. She’d put on muscle since then, and she was was older. And she didn’t dress as a ‘she’ anymore. In fact, ‘she’ had been on the cover of men’s magazines, displaying ‘her’ abs.
I had beaten her up in defense of a cat named Quinton.
‘She’ was Tommy Zhang.
It all made sense now. Richard Fuller knew he had control of Tommy. The old man wanted Mya back, and he knew Mya would come for the antidote to save me, so he set Tommy up to put the poison on Gretchen’s gloves. Fuller must have been behind Tommy’s fake change of heart towards me, too.
I can’t even describe how I felt. Tommy Zhang had set me up. When it came to my murder, he seemed more worried about the effect on his wallet than on his karma. I should hate him, right?
But I felt uneasy. I remembered the ladyboys that visited Coat’s gym. I remembered Nong Toom and her courage in fighting Muay Thai in lipstick. I knew ladyboys were a normal part of life in Thailand, but people in the US wouldn’t get that when this picture was splashed all over the tabloids. They’d see Tommy’s past as shameful and hilarious—especially his beer-swilling, monster-truck-driving fan base.
Maybe that was why Tommy acted so macho and aggro—to compensate for the reality of his situation. Or maybe Richard Fuller had pushed him into it. To get his career in Hollywood Tommy had beefed up and swallowed charisma drugs and spin-kicked his way into the ultra-macho world of action movies. Now he had fanboys all over the world who worshipped him as a Real Man.
Tommy used to annoy the hell out of me because he posed as a fighter without being the real thing. He’s an acrobat, a model, an actor, yes. But a fighter? No way. The deception pissed me off because the risks I take in the ring are real, not CGI.
Still, if I’d known Tommy was hiding a bigger secret, maybe I wouldn’t have been so quick to relocate his nose. I felt a weird pang of sympathy. Faking your martial arts is one thing, but having to hide who you really are? That has to eat away at you.
My head was ringing and flashing like a pachinko machine.
I thought about the video contact list and Richard Fuller’s stationery with its international names. I pictured the nasty old dude with his invisible tentacles spreading across the world, manipulating power-hungry rich people.
And now he wanted to possess Mya. It was sick.
‘Give back the phone that you stole.’
The phone held murder evidence. What would the old guy do when he found out Mya had set Shea free with the phone?
Mya didn’t move. She needed protection, and here I was disembodied, powerless to protect her. Some bodyguard. My blood was boiling. OK, my blood would have been boiling if I’d had any blood. All I had were thoughts.
Somebody had to stop this evil piece of shit.
‘Mya, you better get out of here,’ I said. ‘Forget the antidote. Get out of here before he does something bad to you.’
‘I can’t,’ she whispered. The old man’s gaze followed her glance to me, but he couldn’t see me. I guess he wasn’t so magical after all.
‘Have you been talking to ghosts? I warned you about that.’
He turned his back on Mya. He returned to the prayer room and dumped the blue powder into a metal bowl.
‘Last chance to change your mind, Mya. It is your fault she is poisoned, and her death will count against your karma.’
‘What about your karma, bucko?’ I shouted noiselessly. I tried to grab him but he was completely unaware of me.
He lit a match.
‘Wait!’ Mya lunged toward him. Fuller held the match, poised, above the powder. That was my life, in that bowl.
‘Wait,’ she said again. ‘I don’t have the phone. But I can get it.’
Richard Fuller dropped the match in the powder and my last chance went up in green and white flames. A smell like burning hair filled the room.
‘You’re lying,’ he said in a distinct, measured tone. ‘I’m not a violent man. You know that I practice compassion for all beings. I eat no meat. I kill no insects. I’ve helped countless young people escape desperate circumstances. But you. You test my patience.’
Mya had been backing away as he spoke, until she literally had her back to the wall. She slithered sideways, toward the computer, jerking when she passed the stuffed monkey.
‘Get the photographs and go,’ I told her. ‘They’re right behind you.’
She groped behind her back and took the sheaf of them, easy as pie. Her grace under pressure was amazing.
‘Did Tommy send you?’ Fuller seethed. ‘The two of you are ungrateful children. Tommy owes me his career, and you owe me your life. And your family’s lives. All of them would be dead if I hadn’t sent for you. Think what I will do to them if you betray me.’
‘Mya,’ I cried. ‘Run! Go to the forest. He has no power over you. Don’t listen to him. Run!’
But she didn’t. She was too young, and the way he used her family to control her, it was sick. He had her believing he was the powerful one when all along it had been Mya who could do the business.
Everything about it was wrong.
She made herself small. I saw her looking into the branches of the trees that grew close to the house. The wind tossed droplets from their branches on to the porch.
‘Your family live or die by my command.’
Her face went completely still.
‘Goddamn it!’ I shouted. ‘In and out of my kitchen like it’s Grand Central Station but now she stays put? Mya, get out of here!’
Mya’s lips moved in prayer. She called the forest, and it came. The house was built on stilts ten feet above the ground, but now the other forest was outside with its floor right here on her level. All she had to do was step out of the porch and she would be free. She lifted one leg over the railing.
Richard Fuller grabbed her by the shoulders. He jerked her back into his world.
‘You dishonor your family, your ancestors, your nation,’ Fuller whispered against her neck. And she was buying it. I could see the drug haze around him, the aura of the medicines he took that made people so gullible around him. It was like actual visible bullshit pouring into her ears and eyes and nose. Poison. Mya’s whole being seemed to compress in fear and dread.
‘Mya, he’s a fake. He has no power. He can’t go to the forest. He can’t even hear
me
, right now. He’s just a scuzzy blackmailer. He’s not a wizard, he’s a child abuser. He’s not fit to be in the same room with you. Dust him, already.’
The old man was all up in her face, and his fingers flexed on the fabric of the t-shirt I’d given her. Visions of his violent death passed through my mind, but I couldn’t do jackshit.
A yellow smile seeped from between his lips.
‘You are becoming strong, Mya. A superior vessel for my power. That is why I let you go. You didn’t think you escaped on your own, did you?’
In my disembodied state, I could feel Mya’s pulse as if it were my own. Her heart skipped a beat when he said that. Of course she had escaped on her own... but now he was making her doubt herself.
I’d seen my father do it to my mother. They call it gaslighting. The abuser makes the other person think they’re crazy. Erodes their confidence in their own powers, so the abuser can control them. Mya was only twelve years old. He had her in the palm of his hand.
Mya looked away from him, toward me. Her gaze fixed on something behind me and her body gave a jerk.
‘Mya!’ I called. ‘Don’t listen to him. Get out of here!’
What was she waiting for?
‘I wish I could have saved you, Jade,’ she said. ‘He is too powerful. I can’t leave her.’
Leave her? Leave who?
‘Just
leave!
’ I said. ‘Just—’
Then I saw the new kid. She must have come from inside the house and now stood beside the computer. She looked like a younger version of Mya, and for a second I thought Richard Fuller had somehow dialled her up from out of the past... but her face was a little different. And she had none of Mya’s ability to control her emotions. Her mouth was half-open and her eyes were wide.
‘Mya!’ the girl breathed. ‘My sister!’
The Fight in the Dog
T
HE OLD MAN
told Mya, ‘If you go, I will join myself to her instead. But you won’t go, will you?’
Mya’s face went blank as a mask. Her eyes turned inward. She didn’t even seem to see her little sister, who bit her lip and stood uncertainly, waiting for a response.
‘If you let her go home I will stay,’ Mya whispered.
He smiled.
All my life I been getting angry. All my life I been acting out. I’ve made a career of it. Put somebody I don’t like in front of me, and I will hit them until they bleed or pass out or beg for mercy. And I’ll be happy about it. Because it’s a fucked-up world and the power to fight is the one thing I got.
Until now. Now the fight in me had nowhere to go. My spirit was moving through some other plane of reality, where ghosts and animals and gods and mortals are all mixed up, and the trees move and the flowers are too bright and the light is never the same as the light on Earth. A place beyond the world. And I was plugged into everything: dirt, sky, trees, worms, elephants. I was in everything.