“I can see you’re lost in thought. I suppose you’re still trying to come to grips with your recent loss.”

He nodded and sipped his wine. “Yes. I guess it’ll take me some time.”

“Talking to your mother will make it easier, believe me,” she said. “What’s keeping you, Tony? She’s just a phone call away.”

He shook his head, refrained from pointing out that you can’t make phone calls to someone who has passed away. He didn’t want to go into all that again.

“You know, Tony, I still talk to my husband for any important matter that comes up. I find it extremely satisfying. I was talking to him just there.”

“Yes, I know,” he said. She was making phone calls to her late husband all the time indeed. So many people these days subscribed to BeyondLink, but he had never fancied the idea. People calling the loved ones they had lost were only fooling themselves. He wouldn’t fall into that trap.

“Why don’t you give it a try?” she insisted. “Have your mother’s profile made. I’m sure you have enough material of her. You’ll quickly discover why the rest of us use BeyondLink all the time. Once you’re used to it, you can’t be without.”

It was probably that company’s intention all along to render its services indispensable, not to say addictive, he replied in thought. To them it’s merely a money-making opportunity that became a runaway success.

“It’s just not right for me,” he said. “The whole idea doesn’t ring true.”

“Try it. You’ll be convinced.”

He desperately looked for a way to change the subject, and was happy to see his wife and daughter arrive. His mother-in-law immediately turned her attention to them, getting drinks and something to eat, mercifully forgetting her proposal. Tony was relieved. He had escaped BeyondLink’s lure, at least for now.

His wife and his mother-in-law launched into one of their lengthy conversations, while his daughter was playing around and talking to her imaginary friend. She seemed to do that quite frequently these days.

He drifted off into thought again, staring at the darkening sky. Memories of his mother, who had passed away a few weeks ago, flooded back. It would be a while before her face and voice would fade from his mind. Next week it would be his birthday — the first one she would miss…

***

“This is the strangest birthday present I’ve ever had,” Tony said, eyeing his cell phone with great suspicion. His wife and daughter were cheering.

“You’ll notice there’s a new number in the list,” his wife said. “Call that number. Come on, Tony.”

He hesitated. They did it, he thought. They’ve had my mom’s profile made and added to my phone list by way of a birthday present. I should have known there would be no escaping this.

“Tony?” His wife grabbed him by the arm, a questioning look in her eyes.

“All right,” he said and called the new number.

After a few seconds he heard a very familiar voice say: “Tony? Happy birthday! How nice to hear you. How are you?”

It was his mother’s voice indeed. It sounded perfectly like the real one. The computer simulation was incredibly realistic. Of course it was based on authentic recorded material, and on any additional information on the deceased person’s personality the family had been able to supply.

“Tony? Are you still there?”

“Yes, mom,” he said and allowed himself, to his surprise, to engage in a short conversation with his virtual mother. After a few minutes he hung up, but not without promising to call again soon.

He had to admit it was all very convincing. No wonder so many people turned to BeyondLink to talk to their deceased relatives and hear their beloved voices again… You had to remind yourself constantly that the voice at the other end was not a real person, but a product of programming. BeyondLink performed to perfection.

Would it help him to get to grips with his loss, or would it rather make that process more difficult, he wondered. No doubt that idea was far from BeyondLink’s programmers’ minds. They were happy when people made calls and paid their bills…

He promised himself to use the hotline to the hereafter sparingly. However pleasing it was, he knew very well it was fake. There was no way he would grow dependent on it, like his mother-in-law who was talking to her late husband all the time.

“Well, how do you like it?” his wife asked.

“It’s wonderful,” he replied. “Thank you so much for getting me back in touch with my mother. And for making sure she wouldn’t miss my birthday.” He hugged her, and then she went inside to get some drinks. In the garden his daughter was playing, while talking to her imaginary friend as usual.

An idea occurred to him. One day, he thought, BeyondLink’s software developers will come up with a system allowing kids to make phone calls to their imaginary friends. Wouldn’t that be an interesting market to exploit? These guys were cynical enough to do that. They might well be working on it this very instant.

I’ll have to talk to my mother about that, he thought, chuckling. He always used to discuss his ideas and insights with her first.

A knock came at my door, and I rose. Carefully, I set aside the trailing threads of a silver strawberry from the North Wind’s wedding banquet. My tidiness was just one of the reasons I excelled at my craft.

Attention to detail was another, and those I noticed when I opened the door were telling. The man smelled of cedar incense — tree sacred to the God of Justice — which meant he had been in the voting hall. The purple dye-print that edged his tunic indicated he was an official, but the ill fit also pointed up this was a recent post. That his hands twitched as he saw me told the rest of the story.

“What offense do the new representatives of Paranae say I have committed?” I asked. “Why should they not send someone more senior?”

His eyes widened. He might have marked my guesses for prescience. They were not: anyone who looked and deduced from what they saw might have made the same statement.  “Mistress Asilithe?” he asked.

“I am called that, yes,” I said.

“By popular vote,” he was trying not to stammer, “you have been banished from the city, not to return until ten years have passed.”

I stared. I had not guessed this. “How… no one knows me to banish me, surely? Has there been a campaign of slander on my name?” How would I not have heard?

“It is a mystery to me, mistress,” he said. “I only know that the vote was cast and the voice of the people was heard. I hope you will not protest the decision?” His expression was hopeful.

I sighed, sensing my pleasant corner of the world withering. “I will not.” I knew better: my name would be pronounced across the city, and anyone who knew my face would shun or report me.

The official peered past me. “The tall figure in the back, with the terracotta curls,” he said. “She looks very much like you.”

I laughed. “I use personal experience to make my tapestries look authentic.”

“Not as if any but the gods would know,” he said. “I may help you pack? That’s not against the rules, and you have until sundown.”

“Thank you, but I can manage,” I said. I didn’t want to show my feelings in front of him.

He bobbed his head hurriedly and legged away. I took the loom apart in my own fashion, with a low sigh of regret. Paranae had been good to me, a lovely refuge from other duties. I wasn’t sure where I would seek sanctuary next.

I spoke to the birds to determine if they had heard anything of the reason for my banishment. None knew so much as a whisper of foul words against me. It was as if the clay shards on which the names were written had simply tumbled into my misfortune of their own accord.

Before leaving, I visited other weavers, leaving them gifts: the silver thread to this one, my second-best spindle to that. All thanked me profusely and promised to remember me. I told them that devotion to their craft was the best remembrance.

I left just before sundown. It would take four days to reach the next town, where I might hire passage on a boat and float downriver to the sea — a tiring, slow journey, mired in pitfalls for the average person.

After some thought, I risked a swifter route. I called the winds to retrieve me and stepped through the clouds, moving through divine landscape where I could travel at will. I chose my destination at random, another city, another place of obscurity…

“I thought that might roust you out of hiding,” a familiar voice rumbled.

I turned with exasperation to face Tanuth, God of the Skies and King over All. When young mortal women say they find him impossibly handsome, they are muddled by the shroud of divinity. It’s a low trick, but does well for disguising a bit of paunch and sunken eyes.

“There might have been someone Paranae actually needed to cast out,” I said. “However did you manage it?”

“I asked your brother for a favor, of course,” he said. “Now will you please come home? Even the cupbearers are talking.”

“You wouldn’t have that problem if you didn’t complain about my absence so much,” I said.

When he growled, lightning flashed, and somewhere, it rained. “I need my wife back.”

“I’m afraid I can’t,” I said. “I’m working on a tapestry for Tanur — your city, I believe?” That was true, of course: I had just begun to design it in my head. “A tapestry of prosperity that would increase the fortune of the city a hundred-fold… if it were completed.”

He looked surprised. “I thought you were angry at me.”

Livid, I thought. His philanderings and petty insults were too frequent to easily forgive. “Nothing time won’t heal. But to construct it properly, I must be amongst the mortals for whom I am making it.”

Tanuth frowned.  “So — you want to finish this tapestry. Then you’ll come back to the Mount?”

Of course, it would take a very long time to find the right colors, even longer to set the loom, and it would be slow weaving when I unbound most of my work every night…

There was a mortal woman who tried this tactic once. She managed twenty years.

She has nothing on my ingenuity.

“I swear on the rivers of the afterlife,” I said.

Then I was up again, running to the plane which waited for me sputtering at the end of the Estrellita’s private runway, bullets snapping past me through the sultry Mexican air.

I fell into the open door, and Tomas thrust the throttle forward. The plane lunged ahead, and the roar of our takeoff was punctuated by the patter of bullets as they passed through the light body of the Cessna.

We landed on a small dirt strip just a few miles north of the border. I helped Tomas push the plane into the rickety hanger and peeled off a few bills from the roll in my pocket. “Patch the holes and change the numbers. I’ll be back a little after dark.” He nodded, the heat inside the tin-roofed hanger making his pock-marked face glisten.

The bar in San Antonio was dark and cool. Vicente waited in the corner booth. I paused at the bar, and traded Luis’s one year sober medal for a drink to his memory.

“I have already heard,” Vicente smiled through capped teeth when I sat down. He spun an antique gold ten pesos coin on the table between us, his good luck piece.

I tossed back the shot of Wild Turkey and tapped the USB flash drive against the table. “All here: account numbers, passwords, all of your late uncle’s business.”

“Then all that remains is the matter of payment,” the young man said.

***

By daylight I was back across the border and landing on a small dirt strip we had prepared a few weeks before. I made sure the car we had hidden started before paying off Tomas.

The crossing back across the border was uneventful, and by mid afternoon I sat at Dyer’s desk in the Federal Building in Austin, sipping his fine single malt scotch.

“I’m sorry about Luis. He was a good man,” Dyer said.

“Not that good.” We both grinned.

“Hell of a way to end a career.” Dyer poked his finger at my gun and badge, which lay on the desk between us.

“Retirement comes to all of us. Yours will be soon enough. Do like I did, get some time in the field before they put you out to pasture.”

“Too exciting for me. You just barely got out before the shooting started. Reports are that someone gunned down Eduardo Estrellita and his whole family and burnt down the villa. The Federales think it might have been a rival trafficante family. They must have gotten Luis at the same time.”

“Yeah, I missed all that. Was in Monterrey saying goodbye to Mexico, busy changing my trail just in case. Estrellita was a nasty piece of work, didn’t want my cover blown and him coming after me.”

“Well, whoever it was, they got Vicente, too. Left him propped in his booth at the Faro Bar in San Antonio, shot in the groin and left to bleed out.”

“Well, it couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch.” I tipped back my drink and stood.

“Too bad your last case was such a bust. It would have been nice to have gotten some convictions. As it is, another family will just take over at the top.” Dyer shook his head and smiled. “Gonna move up to your cabin in Montana? I hear it’s cheap to live there, a great spot for a guy on a government pension.”

“I might. Been thinking about the islands, though. I’ve put a little away, made some investments.” I rubbed the USB flash drive in my pocket.

As we shook hands my thoughts went to the antique gold ten-peso coin in my other pocket. It already was luckier for me than it had been for Vicente.

“Wish it’d hurry up ‘fore everyone wakes up,” Patrick said. He squeezed his legs together and shifted back and forth. 

“Ain’t comin’ if you keep jabberin’, fool,” Leon said. He eased slack out of the string he was holding. The string led to a stick which propped up a battered shoebox. The crust sat on a dirty saucer under the box.

Ten minutes trickled by. Patrick couldn’t take it anymore. “I gotta go.”

He crept down the hallway, wincing with every floorboard creak. A stench flowed beneath the bathroom door like bad juju. Mamma hadn’t cleaned in weeks and Uncle Albert forgot to flush again. The bathtub had more rings than Mr. T, but it was cleaner than the potty. He climbed in and peed down the drain, running a little water after. The inspector-man was coming today and he wouldn’t be happy seeing pee in the bathtub.

Patrick tiptoed back down the hall and curled up behind his brother. Leon turned around, scowling.

“Back off, Trick, you gonna mess everything up.”

Something small and nimble zipped across the living room floor in a flash of gray, or was it green?

“Pull it, pull it!” Patrick yelled. Leon yanked the string and the box came down with a cardboard thump.

“We got it!” Leon said. “We got a leprechaun.”

The boys hopped up and down, hugging each other and slapping high-fives.

“I told you they was real,” Patrick said. His counselor, Mr. Doyle, had told him all about the leprechauns in their last session. He and Mr. Doyle talked about a lot of things — school, drugs, and how come his daddy left — but Patrick liked it best when Mr. Doyle told stories about growing up in Eye-or-land and chasing faeries and leprechauns. Mr. Doyle said you normally caught leprechauns around rainbows. Patrick had never seen a rainbow, but Mr. Doyle said on St. Patrick’s Day you could catch ‘em inside just fine, too.

The brothers listened to the frantic scratching inside the shoebox for a half minute before Leon carefully slid the torn cover of a phone book underneath. 

“You sure this ain’t a rat, Trick?” He flipped the box right side up and raised the cover to look inside, but Patrick stayed his hand.

“You can’t go peeking at him or you lose the wish,” he said. He tightened his grip on Leon’s wrist. 

“Okay, no peeking, but we better wish quick, case he gets loose,” Leon said. “What we wishin’ for?”

They’d discussed it, of course, when first planning to catch the leprechaun. Patrick wanted to wish for Uncle Albert’s brains to unscramble so he could talk again, but Leon was old enough to remember when Uncle Albert could still speak and said he just complained a lot. Leon wanted to wish for a million dollars, but Patrick worried that all the family would come swarming in like they did when Mamma got a paycheck day.

“How ‘bout a new apartment?” Patrick asked. “This one here’s nasty.”

“Yeah, I’d like that,” Leon said. “Fresh start might be good for us. Some place nobody knows so they won’t bother us no more.”

Patrick took the shoebox from Leon and knelt on the floor, holding it in his lap. “We want a new home, we want a new home,” he chanted. Leon joined in. The scrabbling noises stilled.  A prickling started along the back of Patrick’s neck.

“Boys, what fool thing you up to now?” Mamma’s voice started him so badly he nearly dropped the shoebox. She shuffled into the room, her oversized bathrobe cinched tight across her bony chest. “Damn heat’s off again. You put your sweaters on, hear me?”

“Mamma, mamma, guess what we caught?” Patrick said. “We got us a leprechaun.”

Mamma’s eyes narrowed and she moved toward them, two fingers crooked.

“Give it here.” 

Just as Mamma took the box, there was a knock at the door. Mamma ignored it and held the box up to her ear, one hand firmly on the makeshift lid. The knocking persisted. Balancing the shoebox in one hand, she unlocked the door. Without warning, a man in a grey sport coat, carrying a clipboard, walked in. 

“Mrs. Johnson? I’m Herman Volker with inspections.” 

The man made a quick survey of the room and started making notes. 

“County Services requires a certain, ahem, standard of maintenance to continue receiving support,” Volker said. 

“It’s not my fault, Mr. Volker,” Mamma said, her voice rising. “Y’all put us up in this drafty old box and it’s all we can do to stay from freezing. How I’m supposed to keep steady work with the children home sick half the time?”

“I suggest blankets, Mrs. Johnson.”

Mr. Volker didn’t notice it, but Patrick distinctly heard Mamma’s last straw break. Her last straw wasn’t particularly strong to begin with and it didn’t take much to snap. She read the inspector up one side and down the other, her voice banging off the dingy walls like pots and pans being flung around in a tornado. 

“Besides,” Mamma finished, “County says we don’t have to stay here if there’s vermins. And we got vermins.” She thrust the shoebox under Volker’s nose. The leprechaun resumed its violent scratching. Volker raised the trembling clipboard in front of him like a shield.

“Okay, Mrs. Johnson, you’ve made your point. I’ll see about finding you a new place. Somewhere midtown. Maybe near a park. Please, just take it away.”

Mamma handed the box back to Patrick. She dropped her angry face for a moment and winked. 

“You done good,” she whispered.

That afternoon, Patrick took the shoebox to an alley behind their apartment. He removed the cover, but didn’t dare peek.