A century later…
Black Tom, still trapped out amidst the hibiscus blooms where Ingrid had evoked and bound him earlier in the afternoon, watched as the tattooed man who’d been spying on her padded silently out of the greenery.
He circled around Tom’s invisible enclosure, looking him over slowly and thoroughly. Tom did likewise. His examiner’s hair was shaved down to a shadow, and his dark jeans and sweatshirt were each voluminous enough to conceal multiple weapons. He had a greenish-black teardrop inked under the outside corner of his left eye. His sunglasses’ thick frames didn’t quite cover it up.
“You Tomas Delgado, ain’t you?” the gangbanger said. “I get it-del Gato. That’s cute, ese. That’s real clever.”
He got close and looked Tom in the eyes. Through his shades, of course. They were each wearing their own set of impenetrably dark lenses.
“You recognize me, then, ese?” the gangster asked. “You remember me, Tommy del Gato, mister black magic man? Huh? Do you?”
Black Tom shook his head.
Winston pulled off his disguise. His fleshmask, ‘Xavier’s’ secondhand face. “Perhaps this helps to refresh your memory, Tom?” the skeleton underneath asked in his familiar, dry British accent.
Tom felt his eyes go wide behind his glasses. He beat and scrabbled at the walls of his invisible cell in a way that made Winston’s uncovered skull seem to grin. He knew by now that he couldn’t get out, but he was unable to keep from trying again anyway. Like a wild animal caught in a trap.
“Ahh, yes, there we are,” the skeleton on a two-day furlough said. “I didn’t think you’d forget me so soon. You must have known that someone would have to fill the position you were groomed for when you opted to breach Mictlantecuhtli’s contract.” He leaned in and said, ominously: “Do you know how long time feels in Mictlan, Tom? How many millennia of servitude I’ve already endured? Because you opted to ditch your freely assumed obligations?”
Winston stepped back and slipped his face on. He covered his empty sockets with his shades and grinned Xavier’s vicious grin at Black Tom.
“Hardface be comin,’ ese,” Winston said, dropping back into his character’s voice. “An’ he is gonna mess you up. If not him, then me. Count on it.”