Blessed

by Cynthia Leitich Smith

  I still had the Moraleses and my “family” at Sanguini’s. But last night I’d had Kieren, too, and tonight our time together was a memory.

  I pulled the spell book I’d hidden from Miz Morales out from beneath the pillow beside me, and a three-by-five photograph came with it. A photo of me, taken in August at the wedding of one of Meara’s bridezilla clients. Kieren and I had tagged along to help manage the event, but I’d quietly imagined that the night was ours.

  I could hardly believe it. Kieren — studious, serious, at times maddeningly distant — had slept with a picture of me under — on? — the pillow beside him.

  Crawling beneath the denim comforter, I rested my cheek on the cotton pillowcase where his cheek had rested, curled my body between the sheets that his body had warmed. Imagined him by my side. It almost didn’t seem possible. But Kieren might’ve loved me as much as I loved him.

  In the dream, I’d gone back to the day Kieren had first mentioned getting a water bed, maybe a month after my parents had died. We were seated across from each other at a two-top at Fat Lorenzo’s, splitting an order of fried mozzarella sticks with dipping marinara. Some sauce had spilled onto the checked plastic tablecloth, and I wiped it up with a napkin.

  “What if you start to Wolf out in your sleep?” I asked, keeping my voice low. “The claws go wild. The mattress leaks all over the place. You know how your mama is about her Berber carpeting.”

  “The most important part of being a Canis dirus sapiens,” he replied, gesturing with a cheese stick, “is controlling the Wolf, regardless of circumstances. The water bed is a night-by-night test.”

  Kieren had always been ungodly hard on himself.

  “Besides,” he added, sipping his Coke, “what if I don’t always sleep alone?”

  It had been the first time either of us had come close to hinting about sex.

  The memory dimmed, replaced by his body pressed tight against mine on a thin twin mattress. It felt wrong, suffocating.

  I smelled peppermint, blood, and Chianti. I heard the creak of the bedsprings and the clicking hearts of mice. “Kieren?”

  A voice chuckled. “You’re the bee’s knees.”

  Brad. He’d drugged me, entombed me in his basement. Just like the night I’d died.

  I yanked at the thick ropes binding me to the rusted iron headboard. I remembered suspecting Kieren of Vaggio’s murder. I remembered Brad promising to never leave. How empowering it had felt, the way he’d thirsted for me.

  Were those his lips nibbling beneath my breast? Didn’t they feel divine?

  “Come morning at Sanguini’s, Miz Morales’s Endless Love van had already been towed for repairs. But The Banana — a yellow 1970 Cutlass convertible that had belonged to Uncle D — was now parked behind the Dumpsters and covered with a tarp. It hadn’t been there yesterday morning.

  Bradley? God, I hoped not. So far as I knew, he really had left town. Detective Zaleski had swung by the Moraleses’ last night to report that APD had searched Brad’s house and it had looked like he’d packed up and shipped out for good.

  The werecat Ruby? Possibly. It would’ve been nothing for her to snatch Uncle D’s keys. Zaleski had also mentioned that her DNA in Uncle D’s bedroom had been a match to that at Travis’s murder scene and on one of two sets of partial remains — identified as missing police officers — that had been found behind the bushes in my backyard. The medical examiner had determined that scavengers had gotten to the bodies.

  Partial remains — where my little-girl sandbox had once been. It was all too gross and depressing to think about.

  Just then, I heard a car engine and, running to the alley, spied the back end of a gleaming SUV with Illinois plates, turning west into the neighborhood. Black, not beige like Brad’s Ford Expedition, and much, much bigger.

  I heard a footfall behind me and, fisting my hand, spun to face —

  “Mornin’, Miss Quincie. Morning light. Lighter. Sure is bright, awful bright outside. Aren’t you awfully bright?”

  Mitch. He was a dear pal and an Austin celebrity who, at sixty-plus, served as an unofficial ambassador for the local homeless community. He was also an early victim of one of Bradley’s “experimental” dishes and a full-blown vampire — one of many if I didn’t do something about it. And soon.

  This morning I noticed that Mitch had traded in his famed flannel pj bottoms for camouflage cargo pants and that his latest cardboard sign read:

  “That’s a very rectangular sign,” I said. “And your handwriting’s improving.”

  Color me new to supernatural small talk.

  “Yep, yep,” he replied. “Mitch wrote the words like they looked in his head. You got any to spare? Not words. No, not . . . Hardly anybody, nobody’s out anymore.”

  Any blood to spare, he’d meant. I remembered the first glass of wine that Bradley had offered me, a ’99 Sonoma Zinfandel to wash down his rigatoni marinara. The bottle had been cold, refrigerated, as had nearly all the wine he’d served up, even though reds should be kept at room temperature. Contaminated and recorked — of course! Bradley had kept his own stash — for me, for himself — in the restaurant kitchen.

  “Let’s see what’s in the fridge,” I said, reaching for my keys. It seemed foolish to let Mitch leave thirsty. Or me, either. “We’ve got to hurry, or I’ll be late for school.”

  He puttered inside after me. “I see you look, that you’re looking like a regular girl again. Who’d you chomp?”

  It had been Mitch who’d explained that after my “first bite,” I’d be better able to control my blood lust and hide my demonic features — the red eyes and fangs.

  “Kieren,” I replied, shoving away the memory. The way his breath had become short and ragged. The way I hadn’t needed to breathe at all.

  “Gonna miss, miss that boy. Too bad he’s dead.”

  I froze with my hand on the fridge handle. Had Mitch heard something? “What?”

  He looked confused. “Didn’t you drank, drink, suck him dry?”

  “No, he’s . . .” Thank God Mitch had only been assuming. “I stopped in time. Kieren’s alive. He’s safe.” Or at least he had been the day before.

  Leaning against the butcher block, Mitch scratched his stubbly chin. “Huh. That’s, it’s really something, Miss Quincie. It’s . . . something else.”

  I suspected from his tone that Mitch had killed the first person he’d fed from and no doubt more since. I didn’t have high hopes that he’d ever adjust to a low-key preternatural existence. Mitch had barely scratched by as a human being.

  I’d heard what Miz Morales had said about vampires and souls and inevitable damnation, and my foray into Kieren’s Wolf studies had only confirmed her words.

  I knew I couldn’t let Mitch go on the way he had been, that I might have to take the axe from the safe and hunt him down. But, like me, he hadn’t chosen his fate. Maybe together we could find our way, at least for the time being. At least until I found some means of preventing the baby-squirrel eaters from turning toothy like us.

  Rooting around, I counted three bottles (labeled chef in black ink), hopefully enough to get us through the school week. Once Sanguini’s reopened, I’d arrange for a steady supply of animal blood. But for now, we’d have to rely one last time on Bradley.

  I grabbed a bottle, yanked out the cork, and sniffed, confirming that the house Cabernet had been spiked. As a human, my nose hadn’t noticed the distinction. Now I had a heightened sense of smell, if only when it came to blood.

  “Grab a seat, Mitch.” I poured him a tall glass and myself a shot.

  “This Bradley’s blood?” he asked.

  “Probably,” I said, repulsed by the thought, then more repulsed by other possible alternatives. “But we should drink it. There’s nothing more he can do to us.”

  Mitch slowly blinked his Santa-blue eyes. “No, no, I don’t know, Miss Quincie.” He coughed. “You think so, do you?”

  I spent most of first-hour Econ scribbling every word
Mr. Wu uttered or wrote on the board. He kept talking about the elasticity of supply and demand. He might as well have been speaking ancient Sumerian. No wonder I was getting a D+.

  Under the circumstances, school felt like an extraordinary waste of time. But the last thing I needed was the counselor calling the Moraleses, who might well, in turn, reduce my hours or even forbid me to work at the restaurant so I could study more.

  After the bell rang, I shuffled to stand in front of Mr. Wu’s desk. He hated students. He ridiculed questions, denied hall passes, and God forbid you fell asleep during class. Rumor had it he was a Marine.

  Mr. Wu held up a finger, instructing me to wait until the room cleared, and I braced myself for a tirade about my having missed so many days.

  Once we were alone, he leaned forward and whispered, “Your boyfriend, he’s the one who beheaded the blood-sucking vice principal?”

  I tried to guess which answer would help my grade. “Yes?”

  “With the blood-sucking vice principal’s own battle-axe?”

  “Yes,” I said, surer of myself.

  “Good for him! Good for you! And this is why your Econ grade is abysmal, because you two have been locked in battle against the undead?”

  “Definitely,” I agreed, and happily enough, it was sort of true.

  “Mrs. Levy told me all about it this morning in the faculty lounge. Here, take this.” He handed me copies of his lesson plans from the classes I’d missed. “And here’s my card with my home number on the back. If you have any questions, give me a call.”

  Mrs. Levy beamed at me and continued passing back essays while I took my seat. I vaguely remembered the assignment, a response to “The Lottery.”

  Later, while the other students looked over her comments, she called me to the front of the room. “It’s a relief to see you safe, though I missed Kieren today.”

  I shifted my weight. “Me, too.”

  “I also missed him at Travis Reid’s funeral,” Mrs. Levy added.

  I struggled not to lose my patience. Kieren had been mine, but not all mine. Other people cared about him, and Mrs. Levy had fought by his side.

  Lowering my voice, I explained, “So far as I know, Kieren’s okay. He, um, transferred to a fancy prep school up north.” It was what the Moraleses had decided to tell people.

  “So far as you know . . .” Mrs. Levy didn’t look satisfied, but she didn’t push it, either. Switching to teacher mode, she began making notations on her desktop calendar. “Well, you have missed a lot of school. You owe me a few papers and several journal entries.”

  I opened Frank to record my make-up work.

  “I’ll need to see an essay on ‘The Lottery,’” Mrs. Levy went on. “Oh, and one on Metamorphoses and its retellings. You flunked the quiz on ‘Young Goodman Brown,’ but given the circumstances, if you want to write a paper on it . . .”

  God, I had no time for this! Why did the Moraleses have to be so responsible? For all of Uncle D’s drawbacks, he’d hardly glanced at my report cards.

  My Chem teacher had ditched us for a conference in Houston and the sub had no clue, so class had defaulted into a study hour. Better yet, since I’d elected to do work-study in the afternoons, it was my last class of the day.

  Which brought me to Kieren’s locker. I doubted he’d left anything too personal in there, anything that screamed “werewolf,” but it seemed prudent to check.

  I waited until after the fourth-hour bell, glanced both ways, and then slammed the combination lock into the door, breaking it loose. Supernatural strength could be handy.

  Opening the door, I smelled the garlic before I saw the long rope of it dangling from the coat hanger. I pinched my nostrils closed and waved my hand to clear the air, though I honestly couldn’t tell if the scent was awful because I was a vampire or if it was awful because it had mixed with that of — I spotted Kieren’s gym bag on the shelf — overly ripe workout clothes. He must’ve forgotten to bring them home to wash.

  Shaking my head, I smiled, remembering Kieren for who he was — a real fur-and-flesh-and-bone boy — instead of for the fact that he was gone.

  Beyond that, the locker was mostly empty. There hadn’t been a need to bring a coat to school yet, and shifters ran on a hotter body temperature anyway.

  I’d return the stack of honors and AP textbooks to the office, and — thank you, Kieren — put the handwritten class notes in his English folder to good use myself.

  The folder felt bulky, and flipping it open, I noticed a thick envelope shoved into one of the divider pockets. Welcome to the University of Texas!

  It took me a minute to process. Kieren had applied to U.T., and he’d been in the first round of admitted students. Regardless of his mama’s fatalistic attitude, Kieren had been holding out hope that he’d come to manage his shift before it was time for him to leave, that his future would be here in Austin with me.

  I closed the folder, knowing I’d always treasure the letter — proof that I, not the Wolf pack, had been Kieren’s true dream.

  In Sanguini’s kitchen, I poured myself a taller glass of blood wine than I’d had that morning. My body seemed better able to metabolize (or whatever) it than when I’d been human. The effects still felt slightly intoxicating — my fangs descended once. But I could concentrate.

  I retrieved Kieren’s vampire fact sheet from my backpack. I read it. I reread it. I chanted it. Sang it, proclaimed it, and eventually memorized it. Then I turned on a gas burner, lit it on fire, and dropped it to burn to ashes on the stained concrete floor.

  I had to get organized, to make checklists. It was how I’d handled everything since my parents’ fatal car accident, back in middle school.

  Maybe I hadn’t figured out the solution to Brad’s mass-infection coup. At least not yet. But I could do some basic, everyday things that needed to be done, and that would make the world seem slightly less overwhelming.

  In the manager’s office, I called to order the installation of a security system, including indoor and outdoor video cams. Then I bought a couple of mirrors for the restrooms and checked the incoming résumés on my laptop.

  Because Sanguini’s had so quickly become famous, or at least infamous (what with Vaggio’s murder and all), chef applications had zipped in from across the country. Plus, I’d counted two Canadians, an Australian, a Parisian, and someone from the restaurant at the Four Seasons México in Colonia Juárez. Oh, and a chef from Scotland, another from Poland, and a one-time Iron Chef contestant from Tokyo.

  Only one woman, though, which was disappointing. She’d included a scanned-in magazine clipping. “The Top Chef in the Southeast,” according to the headline. Apparently, butter had been her ingredient of choice.

  The article was dated not long before I was born. From the black-and-white photo, Nora Woodworth looked to have been anywhere from her midforties to midfifties at the time and projected a down-home charm.

  According to her résumé, she’d recently spent over a decade working as a personal chef at a private estate in Whitby Estates, Illinois. The cover letter explained that Nora’s previous employer had passed away last spring and she had newly relocated to Austin.

  I had a good feeling about her. But obviously, a homespun type couldn’t play the sexy vampire chef.

  Applications for manager were fewer, less interesting, and mostly local.

  Checking messages, I found a slew of condolence notes — along with offers to bring by casseroles, tamales, and honey-baked hams in response to the e-mail I’d sent yesterday.

  I replied individually to Sergio, the veteran expeditor (and, hopefully, my new work-study adviser), asking that he meet me here tomorrow afternoon to help review applications so we could start scheduling interviews. Then I sent a reassuring note to the whole staff, saying that I was staying with friends and coping as best I could.

  After clicking SEND, I made a call.

  “Zaleski here,” was the answer.

  “Detective Zaleski,” I began, “this is Q
uincie —”

  “Did that Bradley character show up again?”

  Only in my nightmares. “No, nothing like that. I was just wondering . . .”

  “Yeah?”

  If I was stereotyping werebears, I hoped he wouldn’t take offense. “By any chance, do you happen to have any family members interested in the growing field of restaurant security?”

  The main phone rang. “Sanguini’s: A Very Rare Restaurant.”

  “It’s me, Clyde. I’m at the back door.”

  I slammed down the receiver, burst out of the office, and poured on the speed through the back hall and the restaurant kitchen, skidding on the concrete floor.

  Throwing the door open, I found Clyde yawning wide on the step and yanked him inside.

  “Take it easy!” he hollered. “Watch the shirt!”

  “Kieren,” I said, letting go. “How’s Kieren?” I knew better than to ask “where.”

  “Chill.” Clyde crossed his hirsute arms. “I dropped him off near Denton. He’s jiffy, believe me. Yesterday he inhaled two orders of barbecued beef ribs, a pulled pork sandwich, and a tub of coleslaw from some hole-in-the-wall joint in Waco. He says howdy, and that you shouldn’t worry, even though you will anyway.”

  Denton was about an hour past Dallas. “He’s on foot? Alone?”

  Clyde strode past me into the kitchen. “There’s a safe house outside town.”

  “What’s a safe house?”

  He paused, and I could tell he’d thought it was something Kieren and I had discussed before. “A house that’s . . . well built.”

  It sounded more like part of an underground railroad for werepeople wanted by human law enforcement. It was a relief to know that such a thing existed.

  “Can you get a message to him? Tell him he’s not a murder suspect anymore?”

  Clyde did a double take. “Come again?”

  He listened carefully as I explained. Then he said, “Sorry, it’s not like Wolves clue in lowly Possums on their secret hideouts.”