CHAPTER ELEVEN

"Shouldn't they have been here by now?" Marco complained, searching the street outside their building through the closed blinds. "Where are they?"

A knock sounded at the door and a smug Tina said, "They're here."

She was the one who opened the door with Marco on her tail as Raul walked in from Teresa's room. A casual man with short crown curls that were shaved off the sides and hipster glasses walked in and warmly shook Tina's hand. "You must be Valentina. I'm Nate."

Tina dazedly shook his hand and then plastered herself to Callie's side. Nate looked past her to the Sanchez brothers and said, "And you must be Raul and Marco."

Marco's eyes widened. "Did you read our minds?"

Nate snorted. "No, dude, Callie gave me the low down on the drive over."

Marco sagged in relief. "Oh—okay then. Are you the medium though?"

Nate playfully saluted him. "Sure am, buddy. I can already sense some nasty shit in this place too. This whole building, even. It's not uncommon with apartment buildings. Lots of people moving around, sometimes they die and get attached and that kind of stuff can build up. Eventually they overflow and stuff like hauntings happen."

Raul tried to hide his skepticism. He was at his wit's end and would try anything at this point to help his sister.

But it seemed that Nate could see through him. He chuckled and said, "It's okay to be doubtful, Raul. I would be. It won't hinder my process. You know you have a scam when they start ranting about how nonbelievers block their powers or the spirits or whatever."

"Duly noted," Raul deadpanned. "So? Can you help?"

"I hope so," Nate said seriously. "Usually, we try to rule normal phenomena first. Shin scans for electrical issues, electromagnetic jumbo, DC fields, and stuff. Nomi—"

"Nozomi," the woman corrected sternly from the still-open doorway.

"She usually interviews others that live in the house, looking for signs of mental illness, drug or alcohol abuse, other abuse, that kind of stuff," he finished as if she'd never interrupted him. "But considering everything Callie's explained to us, I feel pretty secure in ruling all of that out and moving onto the other stuff."

"What's in those?" Marco asked, eyeing the black cases Shin and Nozomi wheeled in as Tina closed the door.

"Our equipment," Shin said. "We set up cameras around the hotspots of activity. They're rigged with sensors that make the cameras go off when they detect changes in the atmosphere, electric or temperature, so they capture phenomena. We also have this…" He pulled out a steampunk style view master device from his messenger bag at his side. "It has different UV filters that allow us to take a look and see what turns up."

"Where are the supernatural hotspots?" Nozomi asked stoically, stepping forward.

Raul stared at her dubiously. Callie leaned in from Tina's side to whisper, "She means where has most of the weird stuff been happening."

"Oh," he said. "Well, Teresa's room mostly."

"The hallway too, Junior," Marco chimed in. "That's where I saw the nasty guy."

"And you heard piano music here in the living room," Tina added.

"Anywhere else?" Nozomi asked expectantly.

Raul shrugged. "No, not really."

"We can work with three spaces pretty easily," Nate said. He looked at the older couple and said, "Have at it, guys."

Shin wheeled closer to Raul. "Can you show me your sister's room?"

Raul nodded and led him while Nozomi and Nate rearranged the living room for their purposes. They moved the coffee table to the corner and set up two chairs, so they were directly facing the couch. They posted cameras from Nozomi's case around the room while Nate made casual conversation.

"It's been almost two months at this point, right?" he asked Marco.

Marco nodded solemnly. "But she was already talking about Carmela and the others for a few months before that."

"When your parents left," he mused.

Marco frowned deeply and walked off to the kitchen silently.

Nate watched after him and murmured to Callie and Tina, "I didn't mean to upset him. Sometimes I talk out loud without thinking."

"It's not that…" Tina trailed off; eyes cast down.

Callie quietly shuffled away while they continued to work and snuck her way into the kitchen. A tense Marco was staring into the open fridge. He didn't seem to notice her.

"Marco," she whispered softly. She didn't want to startle him.

It seemed she had anyway, judging by how quickly he turned around. But at least he seemed relieved that it was her. "Can I offer you anything to drink?"

She played along and said she'd accept a glass bottle of water. Once he handed it to her, she simply fiddled with the neck of it. She didn't know what to say or where to start.

"Our parents aren't in Mexico," Marco suddenly blurted.

She wasn't surprised per se, but she hadn't been expecting him to say that. She looked up, trying to convey patience and trustworthiness. "Where are they? Valentina said they were deported."

Marco nodded, curling his fingers around the kitchen counter behind him, knuckles turning white. "ICE got them at Teresa's school when they dropped her off one morning. Took them to the detention center. We tried to appeal, tried to fight it. But we couldn't. It didn't matter. A strain of meningitis broke out in their center and they both died before they could be carted across the border."

Callie held in her gasp at the new information. It was one thing to suspect, another to hear it admitted. She also noticed the tears in Marco's eyes and reached over to take his hand. "You're afraid that you're never going to see them again – don't be. You're worried you're going to lose Teresa – don't be. Because this, we're going to fight. Nathan, the Watanabes, myself. We're all here with your family to save your sister. You don't have to hide in here, though, no one is going to judge you for feeling human emotions."

Marco inhaled sharply, fighting the tears. "I gotta be strong though. I don't want Junior worrying about me – he's got so much other shit to worry about—"

"Marco, stop," she said softly, squeezing his hand. "You shouldn't have lost your parents this young, and your family has gone through some tough struggles. You're still a kid. A big kid—" she paused to gesture at their severed height difference, getting a watery chuckle out of him. She continued. "But still just a kid and that's what you get to be. There will be plenty of moments to come where you have to be strong and older than you are, but you can't forget to be a teenage boy. Does that make any sense?—because I haven't been a teenage boy for a long time."

Now Marco was laughing. A few tears escaped his eyes as he let go, and he wiped them away with the sleeve of his flannel. "Yeah, yeah, that makes sense."

"Everything okay here?" Raul's voice startled them.

Marco turned his face away to wipe traces of tears from his cheeks. Callie took it upon herself to answer the older Sanchez. "Yeah, just getting water. Want one?"

"I'm good," Raul said. "That guy, Shin, saw something on the view master thing."