Chip and Dunbar journeyed out the next morning and did not return during the next two weeks. Day in and out, Diamond worried for Chip and mourned for Dylan. It became a struggle to acquire only enough energy to get out of bed and put her wig on.

  Gustavo always waited, whether she emerged downstairs in the afternoon or evening. He would teach her one song on the piano or take her on a walk with his spider monkey, or listen to her share emotions from anger, to guilt, to worse of all helplessness. He learned the names of those who had departed along the way: the Innkeeper, Sandy, her lover, Dylan, and companion, Giant Chief Big Owl.

  An evening arrived where streaks of clouds appeared to churn in a bruised colored sky. Gustavo, the spider monkey, and Diamond had wandered far from town to a place Gustavo called the Hospicio Cabanas. Once a sanctuary for the sick and orphaned, it now stood abandoned.

  “I’ve never seen anythoing like it,” Diamond said to Gustavo, inside the cobblestone courtyard. Decorative trees and countless single-story units stretched far and wide on either side of the bricked chapel. Famously, the chapel’s pillared, domed roof towered to majestic heights.

  Diamond began to tread toward it, but Gustavo rushed in front of her. “Mujer, it’s not safe. Best to admire from afar.”

  “How do you figure?” Just as Diamond spoke, a shadowy female form appeared by the distant chapel. With a pink rifle, like Diamond’s own, she blasted the ground and hot ember rocks spread in their direction.

  “Huh?” Diamond said.

  “This way,” Gustavo said, pointing at the shadowy entrance of a unit. Ember rocks chasing them, they hurried inside.

  Before they could catch a breath, its heavy door slammed on its own. When Diamond lifted her gaze, she saw the painting of a mustang on the wall. It seemed to draw her in. With every step forward, she began to remember more of the woman she was before that dreadful day in the graveyard cemetery.

  A familiar voice from behind whispered, “The picture is pretty, isn’t it. That’s a wild horse, the way I use to love them.”

  Chills shot up her arms. When she turned, a figure with Dylan’s likeness was glaring at her. She noticed all his contrasts that she’d come to know too well: his rough working hands and young face, his short, neat haircut and thrill-seeking stare. She hesitated, having seen an entity take his form before.

  “That shadow girl,” he said. “She’s tormenting all of us in these units. Only you can stop her.”

  Shaking, Diamond said, “I can’t. Since I lost you, I can do nothing.”

  “That life of pitifulness aint worth living. Look, I’ll be fine, just as long as that shadow will let my soul go on. It’s you who you need to worry about. You aint riding, Diamond. You aint fighting, and that’s what life’s about.”

  As Dylan’s apparition faded, a concerned Gustavo examined her. “El Sobrenatural is haunted. That includes these cabanas. Don’t trust it.”

  “Who is this shadow girl?” Diamond said. “Why is she messing with me?”

  Diamond stepped outside and saw Chip Blaze walking into another one of the units on the far side.

  “Chip’s here,” she said with a note of excitement in her tone.

  “Impossible,” Gustavo warned. “There’s no chance of the real him meeting us here when there’s three-hundred other places he could be. Let’s run.”

  “What do you say, Mr. monkey,” Diamond said.

  The spider monkey tilted his head in consideration.

  The shadow girl fired another round of ember rocks that came spiraling for their feet. Without hesitation, Diamond sprinted to where Chip had gone; the others reluctantly followed.

  When they entered, Diamond drew back in confusion. Instead of finding Chip as a grown man, they found him as a teenage boy. In a nearly shaven head and knee length coat he dawdled forward, as if he were alone and in deep thought, soon to disappear to an utterly dark end of the room. Cold air coming from that direction brought along a deathly smell.

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  The boy’s trembling voice came through between creaks in the walls. “M-mother?”

  “I told them, I don’t want to see you.”

  “But mother, I’m scared.”

  “You’re a failure, Chip. It’s only killing me faster to know it. Your father warned me you would be a dumb one. God, I should have listened. Only… when I first met you at the orphanage, you reminded me so much of Albert. So disappointing that you couldn’t be like him.

  Albert never got into fights, was well read and mannered, would have been a United States president had the sickness not taken him. Now I’m dying, too, with nobody to carry my legacy. What is all this worth?”

  “I’ll save you.”

  “You couldn’t save a pussy cat. Go on to your poor house prostitutes. I mean it, go on!”

  The boy came darting back, making fists before fading. A lamplight could be seen in front of them. Present day Chip held the light over a paper scrawled all over with dark ink. He read aloud one sentence at a time.

  “Sam Hill has learned the ability to steal the shapes of humans. He steals their shadows and fuels them with the humans’ darkest inclinations.”

  “Sam Hill has restored youth back to Calamity, stolen the Nagawitchi people’s shadows, healed the sick, and predicted the future. He’s proven that the miraculous is possible. If all we do is…” Chip rubbed at his forehead, frowning, then continued reading. “If all we do is replicate one of his signs and wonders, we’ve done something powerful.” Chip threw his hands in the air. “I can’t concentrate. What the hell does all this mean?”

  My own berating words could be heard interrupting Chip’s thoughts. “How many more people will fall under your watch, Sheriff?”

  Chip slapped the table. “If only I could show these documents to Diamond and see what she makes of them. I can’t. She’s been through enough.”

  The vision of Chip at the table faded, giving the room back to its stone reality, murals of Mexican orphans in the care of nuns across the walls, an empty single bed for a child in the corner. Diamond put her hands on her hips. “What’s the deal? Who sent the mirages, dark entities or light entities?”

  Gustavo shook his head. “I do not know, mujer. I only know something very real is haunting us.”

  A sight on the wall turned Diamond’s attention. She gasped. “My shadow—It’s gone.”

  Gustavo and the monkey’s silhouettes stood side by side, but hers was noticeably awol.

  Diamond spoke to herself, with a newly found realization in her voice. “The shadow out there belongs to me. But how can that be? She’s so strong and scary and determined.”

  “Only your dark side could be fueling her. You must still have her strength and determination within you. For example, I’m embarrassed to say but I’ve been—how do you say it in English—shitting my pants? You, mujer, keep fighting on.”

  “Dylan’s ghost told me, ‘If you aint riding…fighting… you aint living.’ The posse noids me, Gustavo. Chip noids me. Dylan would want me to ride on.” She rushed out the door.

  “Mujer, I’m not fully convinced you won't be slaughtered. Perhaps, the will to fight is enough?”

  ***

  With the spider monkey and Gustavo watching on from the unit’s pillars, Diamond’s own shadow faced off with her from across the cobblestone. When she paced about and folded her arms, her shadow did as well. Only her shadow was armed with a pink Whitworth, one like what she had left behind at the house.

  The shadow said, “Let’s ride” and blasted out the hot ember rocks. Startled, Diamond yelped at a high pitch and went to the ground. As the embers threatened to immerse her, the shadow said, “You’re only a precious princess, nothing but a wig and long dress.”

  Diamond pushed to her feet, kicking her shoes off and darting over where the embers lay. With too much a blood rush to feel all the heat against her feet, she reached the shadow and struggled for the gun. Both of them clenching it, Diamond forced her to her knee and yanked the weapon away.

  A quick spin rotated the gun butt downward in walloping position, and a single blow knocked the shadow out. Satisfied with her work, she posed, clicking the gun. “Don’t let the wig and blue eyes fool you. I’m a saloon girl, a gunfighter, a wild west princess. Now you get your behind behind mine like a good shadow.”

  The lifeless form oozed up and took her shape. Diamond nodded.

  Gustavo hollered, “The chapel doors have opened.”

  “Well, what are you waiting for? Let’s check it out.”

  ***

  Inside the domed chapel, murals of Mexican and catholic figures stretched along walls that reached out too wide for their eyes to follow, and staircases extended higher than any that Diamond ever saw. More exciting than all of that, something golden glistened in the center of the room.

  Gustavo rushed to it but was careful not to touch. “It’s a weapon made by the legendary Ocho Disruptors.” Etched in the weapon, the number eight and a star, recognized by Diamond as the same symbol on Chief’s bow and arrow.

  With hands clasped together, Gustavo turned to Diamond and exhaled. “There’s much about the Ocho Disruptors that you must learn. But know this... They are neither on the side of the light entities or the dark ones but are weaponsmiths by trade and tricksters by passion.

  On this day, they have trolled you and found you worthy of this javelin. Mujer, it takes force and precision to throw such a thing. You’ve proven yourself worthy. Vamos, take it!”

  With a sparkle in her eyes, Diamond moved forward and seized the weapon.