Blessed

by Cynthia Leitich Smith

  As a TV news van turned onto my street, Miz Morales put the sedan into gear.

  “Did you call Kieren?” I asked from the seat beside her. Meara had stepped outside with her cell phone while I’d been talking to the police. “Do you know when he’ll be back?”

  “Quincie,” she began, “I’m sorry, but no.”

  “But —”

  “Regardless of the investigation, Kieren agreed to leave for the Wolf pack.”

  “I know, but —”

  “He can’t manage his shift, so he can’t live in the human world — period.”

  In my excitement, I’d almost forgotten. Full Wolves like Miz Morales could shift at will to Wolf form and back. No drama, no trauma, no carnage.

  From what I understood, it was harder for them not to shift when the moon was full, but moonlight was by no means required.

  Meara’s half-human son, Kieren, on the other hand, couldn’t even make it halfway or control himself — his teeth and claws — once a shift began. He was a danger to himself, to everyone. As much as he’d wanted to, Kieren had never mastered his inner beast.

  “But now he doesn’t have to go right away. He could wait until he turns eighteen, like you’d planned. Or until after graduation.”

  “Quincie, it’s done.” Her voice left no room for argument.

  I argued anyway. “What if the Wolf pack helps him? If he can finally fully —”

  “Don’t get your hopes up,” Miz Morales warned, hitting her turn signal. “Hybrids . . .” She pursed her lips. “They’re rare for a reason. Most werepeople are too responsible to bring bi-species kids into the world.”

  Whatever that was about. I turned my face away from Miz Morales’s watchful gaze. If I got too upset, my eyes might turn red. My fangs might come down. I couldn’t chance revealing myself. Undead or not, I had lives to save, a restaurant to run.

  “How long will it be before I can go back home?” I asked, changing the subject.

  “What do you mean, go back home? You’re only seventeen.”

  I wasn’t sure what Miz Morales was getting at. I didn’t have any parents or grandparents. Uncle Davidson had been Daddy’s only sibling, and Mama had been an only child. “If you think I’m going into foster care —”

  “Of course not!” Miz Morales exclaimed. “While you were packing, I called Roberto, and he called our lawyer. From now on, you’re going to live with us.”

  As Miz Morales and I hauled my luggage through the back door of the white stone and stucco McMansion, her husband, Dr. Roberto Morales, was stirring a tall pot of potato soup in the kitchen. He put down the long wooden spoon, wiped his hands on his checked apron, and gave me a hug. “Meara told me about your uncle. You know —”

  “Yeah, I know.” I stood, awkward a moment, before disengaging myself.

  It wasn’t that I didn’t like Roberto. He was one of those king-of-the-grill dads, the kind with season tickets to University of Texas football games, but also geek chic with his neatly trimmed mustache and engineering faculty gig. Plus, he was a hell of a lot less intimidating than his wife. But I’d talked myself out with the cops and was still pissed at Miz Morales, at the world, about Kieren’s leaving.

  I made a show of setting my bag down and rubbing my shoulder, even though the weight had felt like nothing. I’d have to be vigilant about keeping up my charade. It was ironic — a vampire pretending to be human for a mixed-species family, a mixed-species family pretending to be all human for the human world.

  “You should hydrate,” Miz Morales said, sliding her cell out of her purse. “Roberto, how about you grab Quincie a bottle of water and help her upstairs with her luggage? I need to check messages, and then we can all sit down and discuss plans for Davidson’s memorial. Unless, Quincie, you want to wait a —”

  “No,” I replied, louder and harsher than I’d intended. “I mean, no, he’s not worth it. You don’t have to go to any trouble.”

  The Moraleses exchanged a look, and then Meara put an arm around me. “Of course you feel betrayed. You’re entitled to your anger. But listen, love, you need to understand something.”

  It was all I could do to not shrug her off.

  “Vampirism . . . It’s a kind of evil and unearthly insanity. It corrupts the victim until they’re no longer the same person. Your uncle died when he became a vampire. He lost the last vestiges of himself once his soul rotted away. Don’t mistake the fiend he became for the man he was. Both of you deserve better than that.”

  “The real Davidson Morris loved you,” Dr. Morales added.

  I understood what they were saying about Uncle D, and that helped. The idea that the real him never would’ve played matchmaker between me and Brad.

  On the other hand, it’s not like I hadn’t heard of the concept (vampires equal scary badness — got it), but I hadn’t dared to think the whole thing through in such a matter-of-fact way. At the risk of being self-absorbed, what about my soul? If I was damned, who was I to save anybody? And how long could I trust myself? I never wanted Kieren’s family to feel about me the way that I felt about Uncle D.

  “Where’s Meghan?” I asked. A four-year-old sounded more manageable at the moment, and I owed the cub an apology.

  “Stomachache, she says,” replied Dr. Morales from the stove. “Yesterday, it was a cold. I let her stay home from preschool, but she’s just upset about Kieren leaving.”

  “And Brazos,” I said. As if killing people weren’t enough, Bradley and friends had also poisoned the Morales family’s dog.

  Dr. Morales ladled a bowl of potato soup for me to deliver to his young daughter.

  I’d claimed I wasn’t hungry and passed on a bowl for myself. I’d found out early that being undead meant it was nearly impossible for me to keep down solid food, though I could get by on animal blood. God, this whole thing was a nightmare. How on earth was I supposed to handle the logistics of eating (or not) in front of the Moraleses? But I couldn’t think of a way out. I had no one else, and they knew it.

  I paused, halfway up the stairs, listening. I heard Meara mention the word suspicious and then Roberto, more reassuring, say something about shock.

  The Moraleses cared about me. Maybe more so now that Kieren was gone, because of how close we’d always been. Because I was orphaned again, and they’d just said good-bye to their only son. It wasn’t enough to give Miz Morales a blind spot. She was too much the Wolf to let down her guard completely, but deep down, she wanted to believe the best of me.

  I kept climbing the stairs, more slowly than I had the thousands of times before. This time, Kieren wouldn’t be waiting. Not today, not ever again.

  Upstairs, the air felt thick and soggy. In her white wicker bedroom, Meghan napped, snuggling with her stuffed toy rabbit, Otto. I bent to click off her humidifier, which had run out of water, and set the steaming bowl of soup on her nightstand.

  Meghan startled awake, and I glimpsed the animal in her eyes. “Quincie?”

  Yesterday evening I’d stopped by, looking for Kieren, only to find myself overcome by blood lust when Meghan had opened the door. It could have gone much worse. From what I understood, the initial thirst upon first rising was the most intense. But I could still be a danger to this sweet little girl.

  Tugging at her waffle-weave blanket, she said, “You yelled at me.”

  I had. I’d raged at her to shut the door, to shut me out for her own safety. “Sorry, kiddo. I wasn’t myself.”

  I left it at that. It wasn’t like I could explain, not really. The whole situation was too terrible, and she was too young to understand. I longed for her absolution, though. I adored the cub, thought of her as almost my own baby sister. Kieren would want me to look out for her. She was the closest person to him that I had left.

  Meghan hugged Otto tighter. She wasn’t stupid, but she was only four. At four, the word sorry carried more magic. Her nostrils flared, and her gaze flicked to the nightstand. “Is that soup for me?”

  At my nod, Meghan grabbed
the spoon and, after wolfing it down, stuck her finger in the bowl to catch the last few drops. Finally, she banged the bowl on the nightstand and practically snarled, “I don’t know about you.”

  I didn’t know if Meghan meant that she didn’t know if I was still human or if she meant that she didn’t know if I was still a nice person. So I just picked up her dish and spoon and hoped that, whichever it was, Meghan would forgive me soon, and that, in the meantime, she wouldn’t tell her parents.

  As long as nobody shish-kebab-ed my heart or chopped off my head or lit me on fire or dunked me in holy water, I’d live forever. Supposedly.

  As I stood in the doorway to Kieren’s messy bedroom, forever sounded like a long time. More than once I’d called the room a Wolf studies hot zone. Modern and historic texts in various languages crowded the shelves, and more dotted the white Berber carpeting. Not to mention the maps — yellowed and new — all dwarfed by the colorfully pushpin-marked one of the Western Hemisphere that nearly covered one wall.

  Kieren had explained once that pack membership was earned through brains or muscle. Because of his human heritage, he wasn’t as physically strong as a full Wolf, so Miz Morales had insisted that he devote much of his time to scholarly pursuits.

  I wandered to Kieren’s desk, glancing at the JFK quote on the calendar: “In a time of turbulence and change, it is more true than ever that knowledge is power.”

  With luck, Kieren’s library might tell me what I needed to know — about what I’d become, whether it might be possible to save the baby-squirrel eaters, and, if so, how. But first I had Sanguini’s employees to think about, Mama’s restaurant.

  I didn’t just feel responsible for what Bradley had done to who-knew-how-many among the staff. They needed their jobs to support themselves, their families, to pay tuition or pay back student loans or buy frozen burritos and instant noodle soup.

  Besides, I had to keep a close eye on the infected among them. The transformation process made people unstable, emotionally erratic. Worse, if they somehow died before the month was up, they’d turn into monsters immediately.

  I plugged in my cell charger and pulled my laptop from my backpack, grateful that the house was wireless.

  TO: Sanguini’s Staff

  FROM: Quincie P. Morris

  RE: Temporary Closing

  DATE: September 17

  I’m sorry to report that Sanguini’s manager, Davidson Morris, died today. No memorial plans have been made at this time.

  In addition, Chef Henry Johnson/“Bradley Sanguini” is no longer employed by the restaurant. (If you see Brad, do not approach him, and please immediately contact Detectives Wertheimer and/or Zaleski of the Austin Police Department.)

  Consequently, we are temporarily closed.

  Initial interviews for a new manager and chef will be September 23, and Sanguini’s will reopen at sunset on September 27. We also need to hire two bouncers and two dishwashers.

  Please help spread the word.

  Paychecks will be calculated based on a standard work week and direct deposited that same day. My apologies for the inconvenience. Thank you for your understanding.

  I stared at the screen for a long moment before pushing SEND. The e-mail wasn’t enough. Not informative enough or sensitive enough. It wouldn’t begin to reassure the employees who’d watched me grow up. And they’d all be deeply suspicious of Brad, which wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. But I didn’t know what else to say.

  I sprawled across Kieren’s water bed, logged on to a food-service-industry job website, and posted help wanted ads for the chef and manager positions. Then I surfed to the Cap City News and did the same. Just in case we ran into trouble, I ordered the announcements to run through the end of the month.

  Satisfied, I pulled a black leather-bound volume of incantations off a shelf and flipped randomly to a chapter labeled “Human Sacrifice.”

  Miz Morales strolled in and set a tray of food on the nightstand. Under her predator’s gaze, I stirred the steaming potato soup, noting the accompanying iceberg wedge salad topped with sliced radishes, scallions, and a diced hard-boiled egg.

  The white dishes with green trim matched the folded napkin, the green tumbler filled with Dr Pepper, and the thin green-and-white-striped straw sticking out of it.

  I hadn’t managed to fully hide the spell book beneath the pillow beside me, and a corner of it peeked into view. I hadn’t managed to fully hide that I was still mad at Miz Morales for not summoning Kieren back, either.

  “Try the soup,” Meara said. “It might make you feel better.”

  I sipped from the straw. “I should head over to the restaurant. My —”

  “Why don’t you take a few days?”

  I shook my head, trying to sound reasonable. “Sanguini’s has only been open for two nights. Three, if you count the launch party. If I could reopen today at sunset, I would, but it’ll take time to —”

  “Quincie, I know how much the place means to you, how much it meant to your mother.” Miz Morales pulled the desk chair to the bed and took a seat. “Think about it, though. As your new guardians, Roberto and I are responsible for the restaurant.”

  “Only until my twenty-first birthday,” I reminded her — not that as a wedding planner and an engineering professor they had a clue about running the place.

  Besides, I couldn’t risk them poking into my business, especially at a time when I was worried that, say, the bar staff might sprout fangs.

  “Why don’t you take it easy for a while?” Miz Morales tried again, and I could hear her much-faded Irish accent thicken. “Give yourself some time. Heal. Think about regular teenage-girl things. Have you sent in your application to U.T.?”

  That’s when it fully hit me. I had honest-to-God parents again. Not just a devilish, devil-may-care uncle-guardian. Roberto was a professional academic, and he and his perfectly coiffed werewolf wife had raised a supernatural studies scholar, one who’d also been at the top of our high-school graduating class. Now that their priorities dictated (to some degree) my priorities, school had just become a hell of a lot less optional.

  It meant so much to me that the Moraleses cared. But it was also going to be a major pain in the butt if I didn’t get on top of the situation. And fast.

  I pushed my advantage as a grief-stricken waif. “I get what you’re saying. I do. Thing is, with losing my uncle and Kieren, working at Sanguini’s is the only thing I have left that seems normal. I mean, I hugely appreciate you and Dr. Morales taking me in.”

  “But that’s a big change, too,” Miz Morales said, glancing around the bookish, boyish room. “Besides which, we’ve just plopped you in the middle of Kieren central.”

  I took a chance on the broth. “I’d be thinking about him all the time anyway.”

  She scratched behind her ear. “Me, too.”

  Pity I’d never learned to read German, Latin, or any of the other languages in over half of the leather-bound books. I dismissed a handful of the rest as fiction, including a paperback copy of the novel Dracula by Bram Stoker. The spine wasn’t creased, and the first few pages were still stuck together at the top corners.

  After hours of squinting at tiny print, I came across a red spiral notebook and, flipping it open, recognized Kieren’s handwriting. Jackpot.

  Vampirism:

  Demonic infection that turns humans into the undead and rots the soul

  Vampires:

  Exist indefinitely by drinking blood

  May travel in the company of werescavengers for victim-disposal purposes

  Origin:

  Unknown; possibly created by Wolf sorcery to cull the human threat

  Cinematic/Literary Myths:

  Don’t reflect/cast a shadow at all; must sleep on unhallowed earth; require invite to enter private homes; possess power over the weather and to enthrall others

  Carpathians: Count Dracula and his spawn

  Powers:

  Neophyte: heightened strength, speed, reflexes, hearing
(?), healing (?), climbing ability

  Young: ability to take wolflike form

  Age 50+: ability to turn into mist or dust

  Old Blood: ability to take batlike form

  Vulnerabilities:

  Religious symbols (effect varies), holy water and wafers, sunlight (weakens), garlic, wild roses, being deprived of blood (may trigger blood lust)

  Methods of Destruction:

  Fire, beheading, holy water, impaling (any stake/knife, not just wooden), or removal of the heart

  Opposition:

  Wolves, Bears, Cats, interfaith coalitions, freelance hunters

  Spiritual Status:

  Damned. Some theorize that neophytes can be saved if beheaded, their mouths filled with garlic, and their hearts staked; considered a controversial theory

  Again with the eternal damnation.

  My gaze flicked back up to possibly created by Wolf sorcery to cull the human threat.

  Kieren had never said anything about that. I wondered how long he’d known, what he’d felt about it. My Wolf man had been vocal about his hatred of vampires, but he’d softened his stance on the demonic infection after it had happened to me. Well, maybe not on the demonic part, but on the blaming of the infected themselves.

  I slipped the paper into my backpack and resolved not to think more about it until tomorrow. My body could’ve kept going, but my brain needed rest, and as for my heart . . .