Gaspar was shaking, a little from the effort, a little from fear. Juan remembered the first time he had expelled a discarnate: it had been just as easy for him, maybe even easier, given the circumstances. Hopefully this would be the only ability Gaspar had inherited. Hopefully he would never achieve the level of contact Juan was capable of. Rosario had been sure the boy would inherit all his gifts. Suddenly, the memory was so vivid that he felt it, like accidentally touching an insect in the dark: stubborn Rosario sitting on the bed in her white cotton underwear, her hair pulled back in a high ponytail. Gaspar was going to inherit everything, everything that Juan himself bore. He felt his eyes grow hot.

“Now I’m going to go back to sleep, because in a while I’ll need to drive.”

“I want to sleep with you.”

“Don’t be scared. Go to your bed. If you can’t sleep, read your book. The light doesn’t bother me.”

But Gaspar didn’t want to read. He lay faceup and waited for sleep to come with a discipline that was strange for his age. Juan hadn’t lowered the blinds, so the few streetlights illuminated the room a little, casting the shadows of tree branches on the walls. Juan waited until Gaspar’s breathing indicated he was asleep, and then went over to look at him: lips parted, small baby teeth, hair plastered to his forehead with sweat.

He could do it sitting in his own bed with Gaspar beside him, but he didn’t want the boy to wake up and see him. The bathroom was as good a place as any. He didn’t need much: just silence, Rosario’s hair, a sharp instrument, and the ashes.

Sitting on the cold tiles, he balled up the lock of Rosario’s hair that he carried with him, stored in a little box. You promised me, he said in a quiet voice. And it had been a serious promise, a promise made in blood and wounds, not in sentimental words.

He took a handful of ashes from the plastic bag and scattered them on the floor in front of him so that he could draw the sign of midnight. He had done this every night since Rosario’s death, always with the same result: silence. A desert of cold sand and dull stars. He had even tried more rudimentary methods, and the reply was always the same: wind blowing over the abyss.

He repeated the words, caressed the lock of hair, summoned her in the virulent language that must be used in the ritual of ashes. With his eyes closed, he saw empty rooms and corners, quenched bonfires, abandoned clothes, dry rivers, but he went on wandering until he returned to the hotel bathroom, to its silence and his son’s distant breathing, and then he summoned her again. Not a touch, not a tremor, not a feint, not even a treacherous shadow. She wasn’t coming and she wasn’t within his reach, and, since her death, he hadn’t received a single sign of her presence.