Blessed

by Cynthia Leitich Smith

  Bradley had infused our signature dessert — the chilled baby squirrels, simmered in orange brandy, bathed in honey cream sauce — with his own blood. He’d hoped that those most predisposed toward viciousness, most likely to relish a vampiric existence, would order the horrific-sounding dish, ingest his blood, and thereby eventually join him — us — among the demonic.

  According to Ruby, his intention had been to create an undead army to help him take over the underworld of Texas, whatever that meant. God only knew how he’d hoped to control the newly risen, but anyway, I didn’t find out about the plan until it was too late.

  Before he left, Bradley had told me to consider the soon-to-rise neophytes a “parting gift,” but I didn’t for a minute believe that, after all of his scheming, he had any intention of actually abandoning them. Or, for that matter, me.

  Regardless, Brad had been serving up death at my restaurant. What had been Mama’s and, before her, Gramma and Grampa Crimi’s restaurant. That made his victims my responsibility.

  Frank in hand, I sprinted to the reservations book on the hostess stand in the foyer. Sanguini’s wasn’t big. We could serve fifty at a time, and we’d done only one seating for Friday’s party and two on both Saturday and Monday nights.

  So, we’d served some 250 guests — plus those in the bar area. I figured upward of 325 total, give or take. I couldn’t know for sure how many had tasted the tainted dish, though, especially since people often split dessert orders.

  I remembered chatting with guests from as far away as El Paso, Oklahoma City, and New Orleans. Not to mention the foreign exchange students from Ethiopia, the family on vacation from London, and the Middle Eastern studies professor on her way to Iraq. And then there were the innocents they would eventually kill or contaminate in turn.

  I didn’t have to be a math whiz to realize that, in no time, the world could be faced with a full-scale preternatural crisis. But it wasn’t just about numbers.

  Members of my staff — including my hostess, Yanira; my expeditor, Sergio; and my waitress pal, Mercedes — were among the infected, and they were practically family.

  I turned to the calendar in my planner book. It took about a month after ingesting demonic blood for the transformation to occur. The first wave of Bradley’s victims would rise undead sometime after October 11, more with each passing sunset.

  Happy Halloween to me.

  Anticipating my arrival, Bradley had apparently excused the kitchen staff from cleanup. So, after posting the closed signs outside, I cranked Stevie Ray Vaughan on the sound system and attacked the job like I’d been tipped off to a health-inspector visit. I sprayed, wiped, and scrubbed. I spared no chemical cleanser, taking refuge in the mindless, familiar work. It felt surreal, like sleepwalking, but right then I couldn’t obsess over Kieren leaving or my own undeath or what my uncle and Bradley and the vice principal had done. Overwhelmed, I’d shut down inside. So I sprayed, wiped, and scrubbed some more.

  Once the stainless-steel countertops gleamed, I threw Brad’s copy of A Taste of Transylvania and his prized collection of black-cherry cooking utensils into one of the trash bags and then hauled it outside to the Dumpster.

  Cutting through the parking lot, I noticed Kieren’s mama’s van in the back row. The side read Endless Love Bridal Planning. Hours earlier, he had ripped the driver’s side door from its hinges so he could get to me. It made sense that Kieren had chosen to leave the damaged, easy-to-ID vehicle behind, but then what? Did he take Uncle D’s convertible or Clyde’s car? And where was Kieren going, anyway? The Wolf pack’s location was a secret that, until recently, even he hadn’t known.

  It was just after 5 A.M., the sun wouldn’t be up for another couple of hours, and I’d run out of to-dos to distract myself. The shock of all that had happened had begun to dissipate, and my throat ached. I felt my knees buckle from the losses, and nearly fell to the asphalt. It seemed like the right thing to do. Dead things had no place walking around.

  Then the headlight beam of a motorcycle zooming north on Congress Avenue glinted against metal lying in the beaten brown grass of the empty lot next door. I jogged over to discover Kieren’s turquoise-and-silver crucifix. He’d torn it off last night before we’d gone inside to confront Brad. I’d flinched at the sight of it, but had my reaction been psychological or supernatural?

  Contrary to popular opinion, the effect of religious symbols varied, depending on the symbol, depending on the vampire, but I’d always thought of myself as a believer. If I touched the crucifix now, would my fingertips burst into flames?

  I crouched in the hard-packed, dirt-and-weed lot, feeling watched, even though the normally bustling restaurant-shopping-entertainment district was empty and quiet. Was Brad watching me from the shadows? From around a corner or some nearby rooftop? Had he left for good or just gone into hiding, biding his time?

  I hesitated as a black bird landed a few feet away and began pecking and scratching at the ground. Another joined it. Another, another, another . . . until I was surrounded by swooping, prancing, cawing. I’d never seen so many crows. Ravens? Hundreds? Thousands?

  They blanketed the empty lot and lined the arch of the streetlight, the roof lines, the phone and power lines, the branches of nearby trees, the restaurant itself. They chattered and danced and then, as if on command, went eerily silent. Eerily still.

  Someone else might’ve viewed the birds as a bad omen, but I’d always thought crows were magnificent and proud and, really, what could be scarier than me? Besides, they were creatures of God, like human beings and the shape-shifters who straddled the human and animal worlds. I was the unnatural one.

  A train whistle blew in the distance, and I snatched the necklace from the ground before one of the birds could beat me to it. Kieren had broken the chain, so I fastened the latch to a link. His neck was thicker than mine, and the cross fell against the V between my breasts. I braced for the burn, but the metal against my skin felt blessedly neutral.

  Tension leaked from my knotted muscles, and, startling the crows, I spread my arms wide. As they rose, screaming, flowing in black waves into the dying night, I closed my eyes and raised my grateful, tear-stained face to heaven.

  In the break room, I watched a News 8 cycle, making sure Kieren hadn’t been arrested, until dozing off on the faded floral sofa.

  “I’m here,” he said. “You’re not alone, never alone.”

  I found myself back on Sanguini’s dance floor. “Kieren?”

  “You can’t forget me,” he answered, leading me in a waltz. “We’re one blood.”

  “Who?”

  “I know you,” he replied. “You’ll try to fight it. But you’ll only be fighting your true self. It’s done. It’s destined. In time, you’ll come to accept it.” He pulled back his sleeve to reveal two dress watches. “In time, you’ll come to me.”

  “Bradley.”

  Sure enough, Kieren’s legs and torso lengthened, his chest narrowed, and his goatee disappeared. His brown eyes shone hazel, his complexion lightened, and his dark hair slipped away like a shadow to reveal a blond widow’s peak.

  I fought to free myself from his embrace, but Brad was strong. Stronger than I’d realized. Stronger than he used to be?

  “Relax, baby.” He threw back his head, flashing his neck. “Have a drink!”

  I awoke on the sofa, alone and trembling.

  I’d slept so long that, on foot and careful to proceed at a casual, natural speed, I couldn’t hope to make it to Travis’s burial service until noon. I’d considered skipping the whole thing, but regardless of all that had happened, it felt important to pay my respects. Travis had been one of Kieren’s best friends, after all, and a Sanguini’s employee.

  Dealing with the cursed baby-squirrel eaters would have to wait.

  And of course at some point, I’d have to face the macabre mess waiting back at my house. Uncle D. Or what was left of him. I wasn’t ready for that, either.

  I felt weaker outside in the sunshine. N
ot like I was sick, but more like a human being. Movie myths aside, daylight couldn’t destroy me. I’d seen Brad and my uncle out and about often enough, and Austin was famed for its sunshine.

  I’d always taken long strolls in the old neighborhood — listening to the wind chimes and clucking chickens, checking out the new construction, nodding to the statuary of saints. My walks had usually grounded me, given me a leisurely chance to think, away from the bustle of work and high school.

  Today felt different. I was agitated. Wary. Every once in a while I’d feel a tingle at the back of my neck and — to no avail — scan the landscape for Brad. I might exist like this for centuries. How long would it be before I stopped looking over my shoulder?

  No, it was worse than that. Brad could travel short distances as mist, dust — unseen. I shuddered despite the sunshine. If I started obsessing, I’d be useless.

  Along the way, I passed a pink cottage and noticed piñata remains littering the side yard beneath an oak tree. Children lived there. Vulnerable children.

  Kieren’s blood had made for a filling meal, but how much control did I have? How long might it be before I prowled this neighborhood on the hunt?

  Magnolia Shade was a cozy, slightly overgrown cemetery kept up by the historical society. I hoisted one leg after the other, like scissors, over the white wooden border fence. The Reids must have had a family plot here for generations.

  By the time I spotted the grave site, the crowd had begun to break up. I estimated over a couple hundred mourners. From a distance, I recognized most of the sophomore class, plus a handful of Sanguini’s employees.

  In my Fat Lorenzo’s T and running pants, I wasn’t dressed for the occasion, and I had no desire to make small talk. So, I hung back, behind a pecan tree, and watched.

  A crow settled on a nearby branch as snippets of conversation floated my way.

  “. . . so young.”

  “. . . closed casket.”

  “. . . grab some barbecue?”

  A handsome woman in a tailored black dress strode in my general direction and, a beat later, I recognized her as Kieren’s mother, Meara Morales. She looked pensive, preoccupied, at least until I stepped from my hiding place.

  “Quincie!” Miz Morales rushed to hug me like I was her own cub. “Are you —?”

  “Fine,” I said. “I’m fine. It’s just been . . . an intense few days.”

  Her generous eyebrows drew together. “You smell of Kieren and blood.”

  Rolling down the gravel road in the Moraleses’ Chevy, I launched into an edited version of last night’s events. I emphasized that Kieren had delayed leaving only because he’d discovered that I might be in danger and that his injuries were on the mend. I made a point of mentioning Miz Morales’s van, still parked in the restaurant lot. But I didn’t say word one about Uncle Davidson or my own undeath.

  “So,” she interrupted, “Sanguini’s ‘vampire’ chef was a real vampire.”

  “You knew?” I had no idea how much Kieren had told his parents.

  She turned at the cemetery gate. “Mrs. Levy told me.”

  “Our English teacher?”

  Navigating through the neighborhood, Miz Morales explained that Mrs. Levy had stopped by the house to say that she’d helped Kieren slay Vice Principal Harding yesterday at school. “She knows about us. She swore, though, not to reveal our secret to anyone.”

  Miz Morales was talking about her Wolf heritage and, by extension, that of Kieren and his baby sister, Meghan.

  The existence of shifters had been widely dismissed as legend until the mid-1800s, when a Maine senator shifted into a werebear at President James Buchanan’s inaugural ball. The poor Bear was promptly shot dead, setting the standard for the majority of human-shifter interactions that followed. Consequently, many werepeople, as they preferred to be called (regardless of the fact that the term “man-people” didn’t make literal sense) and hybrids chose to pass as human beings.

  Miz Morales braked at Congress and Academy. “By now, the medical examiner has confirmed that the vice principal was undead. And certainly an attack by a vampire in wolf form could explain Mr. Bianchi’s murder every bit as well as — if not better than — an attack by a werewolf.”

  Vaggio Bianchi had been our original chef, the world’s biggest Sinatra fan, a hit with the older ladies, and my honorary grandparent. It was his murder that Bradley and friends had timed to occur in Sanguini’s kitchen right before Kieren had arrived at the scene. The facts against Kieren were circumstantial, but if the cops ran his DNA and found Wolf, the truth wouldn’t matter. Equal rights, equal justice . . . those concepts weren’t generally applied to werepeople, not in the human-controlled world, anyway.

  Even before the murder, the Moraleses had already decided that Kieren would leave home to join a Wolf pack at age eighteen. But the investigation had moved up that timeline. Though the police had only questioned him, it had quickly become clear that Kieren’s lingering in Austin wasn’t worth risking his being arrested and outed as a hybrid.

  I glanced over at Miz Morales. “If the cops are thinking vampire . . .”

  She parallel parked on my dead-end street. “It helps, of course, but Vaggio wasn’t simply drained. Vampires typically kill to drink, and APD hasn’t been able to pinpoint a motive for such an elaborate setup or anything to link the vice principal to —”

  “What about me?” I asked. “I go to Waterloo High, Vice Principal Harding worked there, and I own Sanguini’s.”

  “I’m sure the police have already considered that.” Miz Morales ran a hand through her thick hair. “As have I.”

  Something in the way she said it hinted that Meara suspected me of she-wasn’t-sure-what. Or at least that she hadn’t ruled out she-wasn’t-sure-what.

  I couldn’t blame her. She had been best friends with Mama since before I was born, had always treated me like family. But nobody — however unwittingly — had been in thicker with the evil vampires than me.

  Shifters might be immune to demonic infection, but humans certainly weren’t.

  As I gazed out the passenger-side window at my cheerful-looking green-and-purple house, my jaw clenched at the memory of last night’s events. I’d walked in on Ruby in Uncle D’s second-floor bedroom only moments after she’d staked him through the back.

  The werecat was some kind of spy or assassin or both, working undercover against the undead. She’d been pretending to be my uncle’s girlfriend.

  Ruby had taken one look at my newly red eyes and extended fangs and sprang at me — claws out. I’d had no choice but to shoot her in self-defense.

  Fortunately, it had looked like only a flesh wound, and as a shifter, she’d heal quickly. Wherever she’d gone.

  Gone. Ruby was gone. But Uncle D’s body was still upstairs.

  Suddenly, it clicked. “I know the motive in Vaggio’s murder,” I announced, “and I can prove a direct connection between him and at least one confirmable vampire.” Opening the car door, I added, “I can clear Kieren’s name!”

  “My God!” Miz Morales made the sign of the cross. “That’s your uncle!”

  I winced at the sight of Uncle Davidson — the medically verifiable vampire who’d managed the restaurant where Chef Vaggio Bianchi had been murdered — sprawled facedown and naked on his bed, his bottom half mostly covered by brown-and-gold linens.

  His neck had been broken and bloodied. His heart had been staked.

  “They killed Vaggio,” I explained, “to bolster Sanguini’s mystique, to frame Kieren, and most of all, so Brad could take Vaggio’s place as Sanguini’s chef.”

  “But why Kieren?” Miz Morales asked. “Why did he matter to them?”

  I’d been afraid she’d ask. “Brad viewed him as a rival. For . . . my affections.”

  While Miz Morales punched 911 into her cell, I retreated from the bloody scene, taking refuge in my own bedroom. It felt familiar, but not. Like everything else today.

  I glanced at the long-stem red calla li
lies in the crystal vase on my dresser — a gift from Brad — and then bent to pluck the gauzy, white sleeveless nightgown from my Oriental rug. This was what he had dressed me in on the night I’d died.

  Without thinking, I ripped it in two and then ripped it again.

  By the time Meara had finished her call, I’d thrown the scraps away.

  Minutes later, Detectives Zaleski and Wertheimer arrived.

  Zaleski towered — at six foot five, six foot six? — and was built like Sasquatch. At one in the afternoon, he already had a five-o’clock shadow. Wertheimer was slight, with an upturned nose, and he stood an inch shorter than me. I’d have bet money that Zaleski was a Bear and Wertheimer some kind of omnivore shifter (maybe a Possum, like Clyde). I suspected they already knew that Kieren was both innocent and a Wolf.

  All I had to do was fill in the blanks, leaving out a few minor details (like the fact that the bad guys had killed me). Over Meara’s protest, I admitted to having shot Ruby on the theory that the police would’ve figured it out anyway.

  Zaleski said he believed that I was acting in self-defense, though Wertheimer did confiscate my grandfather’s gun and take a sample of Ruby’s blood from Uncle D’s room.

  I wasn’t worried about being charged with anything. Even if they thought it had been attempted murder, there was no recorded history of anyone ever being convicted for a crime against a wereperson, and we all knew it.

  I also mentioned that Ruby and my uncle had bragged last night about killing the officers who’d been originally assigned to investigate Vaggio’s murder.

  I’m not sure it was all by the book (possibly, as shifters, the detectives had their own way of working within a system that sometimes discriminated against people like them). Their demeanor did become more formal after the small army of uniformed officers showed up. But in any case, everything had changed. Kieren had not only escaped being officially charged in Vaggio’s murder; now he was cleared of suspicion for good.