Part I

Spook Town

A tall, amber-haired girl was checking out her footwear.

The arches on the boots Tasìa wore were on the excessive side. Perhaps that is what drew the girl's attention.

Burgundy red treated croc leather with black ink filigree based on Japanese alphabet-numerical.

"How cool are these, huh?"

"Do your feet hurt?"

Tasìa squinched her nose. The bitch was checking out her footwear for all the wrong reasons, and not because they were chic and gave the illusion that she had a butt.

"Nah."

"You must have walked a long way."

That accent? It was North American but Tasìa could not place it. Not Canadian.

She looked at the amber-haired girl. Likely naturally dark curly brown due to an African heritage, but now highlighted and sun-kissed. Nicely smooth tan, slender, and she wore sandals.

The cotton banding of her clothes strongly suggested that nowhere on her physique could a weapon be stashed without pulling the ties apart.

She manned a long kiosk propped up along a motel wall where she sold crystals to passersby that ventured up and down the sidewalk.

Tasìa glanced back to the girl's feet, once more.

She wears sandals. Everything here is trying its best to kill you, but she wears sandals.

"Are you from California?"

"No. Tuscon, Arizona. I'm Alisha."

Tasìa nodded along with the Arizona girl, as if that answer explained away her curiosity, while she shook the guileless summer soul's hand.

"I'm Avellana," Tasìa pointed at the crystals. "What do they do?"

Alisha let loose a broad and beautiful smile.

"They attune our psychic energy into a mutually beneficial frequency so together we fulfill our common goals of healing ourselves and saving the world."

Tasìa was taken aback by Alisha's utter sincerity.

"Wow. I wasn't expecting that."

Alisha raised her brow, knowingly.

"It's okay to be skeptical. Only the simple-minded accept unconditionally without seeing some kind of proof."

Alisha bent a finger upward to make sure she had Tasìa's attention. In her other hand, she picked up a smoky quartz.

Alisha held it in front of her.

"Look carefully, Avellana. Do you see that this crystal is as still as the calmest lake?"

"Yes."

"Repeat after me what I am about to say, and keep your eyes on the quartz, and there will come a moment when it is not so still. Okay?"

Tasìa nodded.

"I will allow for your wisdom to come into me."

Tasìa repeated the words but she felt like an idiot as she did so.

"I will accept your truth with all due gratitude that you have granted me a glimpse inside your mystery."

Wow, what a mouth full.

Tasìa hushed her snarky inner voice and continued.

"I will accept your truth with all due gratitude that you have granted me a glimpse inside your mystery."

As she finished the last several words the smokey nebula inside the quartz twirled like oil on the surface of water.

Then, she blinked in astonishment, its surface was calm once more.

Tasìa raised an eyebrow as she looked up into the eyes of the Arizona girl.

Is she a hypnotist? Did she plant that suggestion in her head?

"Wow, that was amazing, but . ."

Alisha nodded her head sharply as she wiggled her indented button nose.

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"You are skeptical still because you feel I may have mesmerized you by pushing a suggestion to affect your perception? That is exactly what I did."

Tasìa's jaw slacked at the admission of this mischief. Alisha giggled at the sight of her.

"If I have one bit of wisdom I have accumulated in my twenty-five years of earthly existence to share it is this: you have to push and manipulate to even the point of fraud to get at the truth, that being, the magic that is at the heart of everything around us and inside of us."

Alisha picked up a rose quartz in the shape of a Chinese dragon.

"Humor me for just a moment more, and I'll show you exactly what I mean. Please hold this in the palm of your hand for a moment and return it to me."

Tasìa recognized the repetition of keywords in Alisha's verbiage. A key concept in the practice of hypnotism.

Tasìa did as she was instructed. She was itching to ask Alisha the questions she had put together before she began her hike that morning. To build trust with the American girl she had to play along.

"How did the stone feel in the palm of your hand?"

"Cold?"

Alisha raised her chin as she cast her eyes down. Her voice grew husky.

"Avellana, only you can determine how it felt in your hand."

"Cold."

Alisha held the rose quartz in her own hand. Her fingers spread out in delicate, affected curvature.

"Good. Now, repeat after me, 'I will allow for the stone to open its wisdom into my heart.'"

Tasìa repeated the phrase. Alisha reached towards her and placed the stone once more back into her palm.

She had Tasìa repeat the phrase, before moving on to the next set of words.

"Oh, fiery dragon, breathe your healing warmth into my flesh for which I shall be grateful to receive."

After they had repeated the phrase thrice the rose quartz began to feel warm in her hand. Her skin tingled beneath it.

Though the transformation lasted but a moment, this time Tasìa was certain it was real. She examined the rose quartz dragon between her fingers and thumb.

It's just quartz. There is nothing deceptive built into it.

"With practice, the warmth you felt, Avellana, will sustain for much longer than a mere fleeting moment. A mere fleeting moment tends to give rise to doubts about the veracity of the entire experience. However, with practice, that moment becomes greatly sustained. The longer that the moment of magic lasts, the more you can be assured you are on a true and righteous path, and the more healing you and the world around you will receive.

"Something worth noting. If we had reversed the ceremony and asked for the smoke quartz to give us its flame and we asked the dragon to unveil its mystery. Nothing would have occurred.

"Fire is at the heart of the dragon and mystery is at the heart of the smoke quartz. These qualities are intrinsic to what they are. What they always will be. That is where the magic in our world lies."

Tasìa found herself nodding along at what she felt to be the best sales pitch she had ever heard in her life.

Alisha retrieved the dragon. With palms cast over the quartz stones she offered them both up to Tasìa with a turn of the wrist.

"So, my question for you, Avellana. What do you feel you need the most? A cleansing fire that will mend your tendons from your heart to your flesh, or do you need to solve the very mysteries of Life"

Tasìa looked at each crystal, noting the individual character and quality, then down at the sales price on their display stands. Twenty for the smoke quartz, and thirty for the dragon.

"I need both, my friend. I cannot imagine how one necessarily excludes the other."

Alisha's neck tightened with a reluctant nod even as she continued to smile; evidently, she felt differently.

After they made their exchange, Tasìa admired her purchases one last time before finding space for them in her fanny pack.

Okay, Tasìa, so we are into crystals, now.

"Will that be all?"

Tasìa rubbed her chin and looked Alisha in the eye as she decided how she would proceed.

"I do have something else in mind if you could indulge me a moment of your time."

Alisha shrugged her shoulders with what appeared to be carefree abandon as if blissfully ignorant that Tasìa could possibly possess ulterior motives.

"Sure," she said, her pitch high before it settled back down to normal as she continued. "I'm just here waiting for the next customer to walk by."

Tasìa gave her a friendly nod of understanding as if to say:

Sure. Sure. Sure.

However, she knew better. Kutuzov sent his trusted agent Val Vitaliy to investigate his daughter's disappearance.

Vitaliy, himself, after only a few weeks devoted to chasing leads, went missing.

Tasìa was dead certain by the way Alisha answered her with the word 'sure' pitched high that for the last three weeks Alisha and her friends were expecting someone to show up asking questions.

She decided to show off the neoPalm's holographic capability. She picked a spot on the kiosk display. A shimmering miniature of the detective Val Vitaliy sat in a swivel chair.

He was speaking but no audio recording accompanied the three-dimensional form of him and the chair. His manner was calm, but his right knee shook.

"You are asking me about that customer? I remember him, somewhat vaguely because there was a lot of foot traffic that day.

"Asunción these days is somewhat of a tourist trap. You know, supposedly the one place you can travel in the Quadra that is safe. Where the decontamination to get back out into the outer world is minimal."

Nice deflection! Tasìa allowed herself to seem caught up in it.

"You are not a tourist, Alisha?"

The American bristled at the suggestion.

"Poverty tourism is for assholes. I and my friends were contract workers."

When Alisha pointed a finger up and passed Tasìa's left shoulder, she didn't have to look to know where it lead.

The tower pervaded the Asunción skyline.

"You worked at the SkyTether?"

"For three years. But back to your question . . ."

Tasìa tried to contain her excitement. Her curiosity was now stoked that an obvious deflection needed its own deflection.

". . . that gentleman now sitting on my display introduced himself as Val. He had a pic of a Russian woman, a lawyer if I recall, correctly. He asked if the Russian woman had shown up here, asking questions."

A cargo dirigible flew above them, casting its lengthy shadow down on the sidewalk, kiosk, and abandoned motel wall that propped the display racks like a lean-to.

"You are new to Asunción, Avellana?"

"My slacked jaw gawking at the dirigibles make it that obvious? We don't get that many sightings of them in San Pedro."

Alisha giggled.

"A little obvious."

A pair of ladies walking by started to show interest in the contents of a large rack behind Alisha where large figurines lined up in display.

"What did you tell him," Tasìa asked.

Alisha's eyes were fixed on her potential new customers, but she patiently answered Tasìa's question.

"About the Russian woman? I told him that I had never met her, but he was welcome to ask my friends at the motel."

"Is it okay if I do the same?"

Alisha nodded and finished with the English word, "sure" for the second time in their conversation.

Tasìa stepped aside to let the curious ladies behind her have their turn.

Something about the way Alisha said the word 'sure' didn't comport with her otherwise warm and laid-back personality. If Tasìa advised the American girl, she would tell her to strike the word from her vocabulary altogether.

When Alisha said 'sure,' it didn't convey 'be my guest', more like, 'oh, Avellana, you little shit, you are about to ruin everything.'