Excerpt: Hungry Ghosts

A bowl clattered to the floor and everyone froze, waiting: Tighe with the knife; Kenda at the door; the doctor kneeling on the floor.
“Up, up, up,” Kenda said. “Let’s go.” She rested her shoulder blades against the door, darting a glance at Tighe.
“I have two kids,” said the doctor.
Tighe made a gesture with the knife. The tip bobbed, catching a glitter from the fluorescent lights. The doctor’s face was pale and sagging and the rolls of flesh at the back of his neck were slick with sweat. His eyes followed the tip of the knife.
“Up,” Tighe said, and the doctor scrambled to his feet. There were dark creases of sweat in the wrinkles at the backs of his knees. He held his palms out flat as if to placate Tighe.
“I don’t have much money,” said the doctor. “My wife is sick, and it’s so expensive…”
Tighe boosted himself up onto the examination table, the handle of the knife clacking against the edge of the table. He looked at the knife, then up at Kenda, then at the doctor again. “You work for La Locura, yeah?”
The man’s eyes went wide and he briefly sagged again at the knees, starting back to the floor. Tighe lifted the knife and the man froze in sort of a half crouch, watching.
“I-I d-don’t—” the man stuttered. “I—”
“You do their harvesting, right?” Tighe pressed, his voice louder as if that was going to help.
The man wet his lips, breathing shallowly. “I don’t know what—” he said to the knife.
Kenda pushed off from the door, startling both of them. She stalked across the room and held out her hand to Tighe. There was one stretching moment when the doctor’s eyes started to shift to the doorway and Tighe held onto the knife, and then Kenda made an impatient gesture and Tighe tossed her the knife and the doctor’s eyes followed the trajectory. He turned to face Kenda now, wisely following the change in authority.
“You work for La Locura. You do their harvesting,” Kenda told him flatly, and the man nodded slowly. In her hand the knife was still, fixed in space, as if it were carved into the air and the world moved around it. The man would have nodded if she’d said “You killed my mother” or “I’m going to gut you like a fish.”
“You’re going to take out his kidney.”
This time the doctor was surprised. He looked briefly at Tighe before he nodded. Tighe rubbed damp palms on the knees of his pants. Kenda studied the doctor with an inimitable gravity. The doctor met her eye again, nodded again just to make it clear.
“If he dies, I’m going to cut out your heart,” Kenda added.
The doctor swallowed. “It’s dangerous. I don’t usually…” He spread his hands, trying to make them understand. “My patients usually…”
“I don’t care what you usually do to your patients,” Kenda said softly. “We’re not thinking about them. We’re thinking about you, and this knife, and your heart beating in your chest. Do you understand me?” A pause in which Kenda didn’t blink and the doctor blinked enough for the both of them. Kenda’s voice, when it returned, was even softer. “Do you want to keep your heart in your body?”
“Yes,” the doctor whispered.
“Then you’re going to make sure that my brother survives.”