Blessed

by Cynthia Leitich Smith

  She fluffed her hair. “Not a problem.”

  Zachary said, “You don’t think they’re just trying to show their support?”

  I frowned up at him. “Of course they’re trying to show their support. But they’re also checking up on me, and —”

  “Quincie,” Sergio called from the dining room, “can I have a word with you?”

  From the sidewalk, Sergio and I tried to look nonchalant as we cased the eco-activists who’d set up camp in our parking lot. Two or three blocked each space. They wore black mesh ponchos with prominent BADL logos.

  The Bat Anti-Defamation League.

  The world’s largest urban bat colony made its home under the Congress Avenue Bridge, a few blocks north of the restaurant. BADL had been suspicious of Sanguini’s negative PR effect on the city’s beloved eco-mascots since before we’d first opened.

  It was unfair and vexing. I personally considered myself bat-friendly.

  Back in the day, Uncle D would’ve asked Vaggio to handle it, and Vaggio would’ve just slipped ’em a fifty and told them to get lost. I suggested that strategy.

  “They’re trespassing,” Sergio countered. “Let’s call the cops.”

  “If it goes live on the police scanners, the media will be —”

  He gestured at the news van. “BADL already sent out a news release.”

  Just then, I noticed Miz Morales stolling toward us in her Morticia getup. “Do you need any help?” she asked Sergio, like I’d become invisible.

  That’s when I realized that, owner or not, I wasn’t getting full blame or credit for anything at Sanguini’s, which was fair enough, considering the fact that, day to day, when it came to most of the management stuff, I wasn’t the one in charge. Except . . .

  “Everything’s fine,” I said. “Sergio has the situation under control. Don’t you?”

  “Oh, yes, yes,” he assured her. “Thanks for the offer, Meara, but I’d hate for your wasabi-deviled quail eggs to get cold.”

  “They’re already cold,” Miz Morales countered. “I —”

  “You’re the top wedding planner in the city,” Sergio said, “and I’m so pleased that you and Roberto could join us tonight, but this isn’t the Junior League crowd.”

  Not everyone could get away with reprimanding her like that, however gently. But, to my surprise and relief, Miz Morales made a nonapology apology for overstepping her bounds and headed back toward the restaurant.

  Eyeing the BADL protesters, I suggested, “Talk to Aimee.” She did have that KEEP AUSTIN BATTY sticker on her school locker. “I suspect she speaks their language.”

  By 8:30 P.M., I’d failed to catch Freddy alone, but thanks to Aimee, Sergio had agreed to designate all proceeds earned tonight from table seven to a more reputable and reasonable local bat-preservation organization.

  Meanwhile, Clyde had needed help with the dishes. So I’d covertly taken a picture of the Moraleses with my cell phone and then ditched the pillbox hat and little black dress for an old T-shirt and jeans that I’d stashed in the office filing cabinet for just such an occasion.

  “Hey, Quincie!” Zachary called over the din of clanging pots, water sprayer, and frantic chatter. “You free after work?”

  Clyde leaned closer to me. “Remember, a Lion is still a Cat. Shifters can be dangerous, too.” He was obviously thinking of Ruby.

  I nodded, not wanting to rehash last weekend’s argument. “Yeah, but . . .”

  Brad had caught me off guard. He’d been older — much older, utterly diabolical, and he’d had Uncle D on his side. Plus, I’d been more vulnerable after Vaggio’s death, especially given that Kieren had been a prime suspect.

  My consequences had been more dire than most, but a lot of girls had trusted the wrong guy once. I didn’t intend to make a habit of it.

  “Quincie?” Zachary called again, his tray held high.

  “But what?” the Possum prompted me.

  “I’m not that naive human girl anymore.”

  After clocking out, Zachary retrieved a sword that had been stored with a White Sox cap in his break-room locker. He left the cap where it was.

  I made sure no one else was around and asked, “Is that a costume prop or the sword you stole from the cops?”

  He looked offended. “It was mine in the first place.”

  Fair enough. “And it’s in your locker because . . . ?”

  He winked at me. “If I wore it in the dining room, I’d bang the scabbard into a table every time I turned around.”

  Sergio had abandoned his scythe and hooded robe for similar reasons.

  On one hand, it made me nervous that Zachary was capable of stealing something out of wherever they kept evidence at APD. On the other hand, it suggested that maybe he could be useful in ways that went beyond waxing poetic about my jeopardized soul.

  Outside, the sidewalks had nearly emptied, but one last appreciative whistle trailed Zachary down South Congress.

  “It doesn’t seem to faze you,” I said. “All the attention, I mean.” I admired that about him. A lot of guys — Brad, for example — would’ve soaked it up.

  “My heart is spoken for,” Zachary replied.

  Miranda again, poor guy.

  The warm air felt sticky, like the sky ached to rain. Central Texas had been suffering from a drought since last spring.

  Making our way past renovated motels, neon-lit storefronts, and music clubs, Zachary and I talked shop. About BADL, the customer whose hoop skirt wouldn’t fit between the tables, the drunken grad students singing “Mamma” along with Pavarotti.

  Zachary teased, “I didn’t realize restaurant owners washed dishes.”

  “My mother always did whatever needed doing,” I explained, shifting the backpack strap on my right shoulder. “And I do, too.”

  “You talk about your mom a lot,” he said. “Not so much your dad.”

  “It was always easier with him.” I glanced at a newspaper kiosk. According to a headline, some teenagers had gone missing outside San Antonio. I paused, wondering briefly if Bradley had something to do with it. Shaking off the thought, I added, “I never felt like anybody expected me to be an archaeologist when I grew up.”

  “Do you really want to run the restaurant someday? Or was that your mom’s —?”

  “People always ask that. I guess . . . it’s harder now. With Sanguini’s vampire theme, smelling all the food I can’t eat, it’s like I never have a chance to forget what I’ve become. But the restaurant isn’t work to me. I never dread going or feel sorry for myself because I’m there so much. I guess I’m not really the wannabe-homecoming-queen-where’s-the-party-this-weekend-will-you-sign-my-yearbook type.” There was more to the social side of high school than that, but he didn’t argue.

  “Basically, it’s your whole world.”

  “Basically.” At least without Kieren, my family, or a heartbeat, but I didn’t say so out loud. Mama had hated whining as much as she’d loved Fat Lorenzo’s, and I’d inherited that, too.

  Faced with the boisterous late-night crowd outside All the World’s a Stage — the costume-shop owners had decided to stay open around the clock through Halloween — Zachary led me to the other side of the avenue.

  We stepped up on the curb, and I brightened when Mitch appeared directly in our path from behind a giant yucca. Tonight his cardboard sign read:

  All of the words were spelled right, too. He seemed fine, for him, anyway. Apparently, I’d been worried about nothing. “This is my friend Mitch.”

  Zachary extended his hand. “Good to see you, buddy.”

  Mitch batted it away. “Where did you come from?”

  “Zachary’s new at Sanguini’s,” I explained, suddenly wary. “He’s a waiter.”

  “Golden boy.” Mitch spat at Zachary. “Leave, leave her alone.”

  “Mitch!” I exclaimed.

  He dropped his sign and ran into the street, almost knocking down a Harley rider, then blending into the costume-shop crowd.


  “Alone,” echoed a voice only I could hear.

  I frowned. “He’s not usually like that.”

  “Yeah, I know. He’s a sweetheart of a guy. Or at least he was before.”

  As we resumed walking down the hill, past more funky shops and restaurants, I asked, “How do you know Mitch? You just moved here.”

  “We’ve met in passing a few times. I’ve lived in Austin before. I was homeless myself back then.”

  “You?” I asked. From their clothes and the way they carried themselves, I’d figured all three Chicagoans were pretty well off. “You were homeless?”

  Zachary shrugged. “It can happen to anyone.”

  Like I hadn’t known that. “Well,” I began, peering at him sideways, “you don’t have to sound so damn pious about it.”

  He laughed. “I don’t, do I? It’s strange. Being with you brings back a lot of memories, not all of them good. You’re more assertive than Miranda was. You know, before the vamp took her. But she’s not much older than you. She’s also from Texas — Dallas. She bossed me around all the time, too.”

  You’d think we were the only two girls he’d ever met.

  We rounded the corner of a sprawling gated stucco apartment complex before escaping into the quiet of the old Fairview neighborhood, headed toward the Moraleses’.

  As the sidewalk dead-ended, I bent to retie my new Nikes. “It was awfully coincidental,” I began, tentative, “you and Nora and Freddy all moving to Austin, fitting in perfectly to those open jobs at the restaurant —”

  “Coincidences are rare. I’m not sure I even believe in them anymore.”

  Straightening, I asked, “What do you believe in?”

  “Old love songs, best friends, the collected works of J. R. R. Tolkien, crispy pork egg rolls with just the right amount of grease, the Big Boss, and eternity.”

  “The Big Boss?”

  Zachary pointed up, as if to heaven.

  “Pious,” I teased.

  We moseyed down the winding residential street, past cottages, bungalows, artsy modern houses, and a B and B whose owners had had their dead lawn sprayed green.

  “Listen, Quincie,” Zachary began again, his hand resting on the hilt of the sword. “I know this isn’t easy to talk about. But I was wondering about the night you first rose undead.”

  I paused on the sidewalk, and so did he. “What about it?”

  “Well, you mentioned the lakefront.”

  Mitch. He was looking for confirmation that Mitch was a killer vampire.

  I took a few steps and shook my head. “I don’t want to discuss it.”

  “Quincie —”

  “No.” I faced him. “Look, the Moraleses’ house is just another block down. We’re both tired, and I don’t feel like talking anymore.”

  He opened his mouth to say something, but I cut him off. “Good night, Zachary.”

  “Good riddance.”

  “Stop that!” I exclaimed.

  “I’m sorry,” Zachary said, assuming my rising frustration was all about him. “I didn’t mean to . . . I’ll see you tomorrow.” He turned to leave and retraced our steps, pausing to glance back at me as a sports car passed by.

  I waved a little. Then he waved back, and we were almost friends again. Almost.

  Earlier tonight, I’d assured Clyde that I wasn’t naive anymore. I’d felt so confident right then, but now, I wasn’t sure what to think.

  Moving on, I noticed a scarecrow seated on a hay bale on the porch of a lime-colored cottage. A homemade-looking ghost hung from a tree branch. Plastic tombstones littered the yard. The one closest to the street read RIP. A tempting thought.

  As I rounded a bend, from within a row of tall hedges, a viselike grip seized my wrist and began dragging me around and onto the nearby front lawn of a deeply set-back Spanish Colonial. It was the suit-and-tie vampire with the mullet ’do from Friday night.

  “Zachary!” I shouted, remembering that he had his sword with him.

  I twisted my wrist free, grabbed the strap of my backpack, and swung it, knocking my assailant into the air. Seconds later, as Mullet Man climbed to his feet, a heavy mist solidified into his dressed-for-success female companion, the one with the beauty mark.

  “I told you,” I said. “I don’t know where Brad is, and I don’t give a damn.”

  Slowly circling, their arms spread like basketball guards, the vampires didn’t bother to answer. Just my luck. I had all these spiffy new superpowers and no idea how to use them in a fight. The holy water stashed in my pack and bra might work as a weapon, but I needed to keep my hands free. “Zachary!”

  Suddenly, he was there — winded from running, furious at the scene, and with his sword drawn. “As a member of Her Majesty’s gentry,” Zachary began, “this girl is entitled to certain rights under the Mantle.”

  Oncoming headlights caught my eye, and Mole Woman tore a thin branch off a pecan tree. She sprang, her makeshift weapon aimed at my heart.

  Zachary neatly stepped between us, bringing up the blade of his sword — his suddenly flaming sword — and slicing her diagonally in two. The body fell in pieces, combusting, and I turned to see Mullet Man run off toward the city.

  “Duck!” Zachary shouted, and I fell forward onto the dry grass as his fiery weapon flew overhead.

  I pushed to my knees to witness the male vampire struck, to watch the flames engulf and decimate his dead body.

  Within seconds, smoke swirled from the ground where each soulless monster had been destroyed. Impressive. A little too impressive. There had been no torch that night at the park when I’d collided with Zachary. It was the sword all along.

  I’d been comfortable with the idea of him as a shifter. I lived with shifters, called them friends. I loved a hybrid Wolf. Werepeople were natural, like humans — only stronger, faster, with keener senses, and able to change form.

  As Zachary moved to my side, I said, “What you just did, that was magic.”

  And not black-cherry-scented-tea-light, would-you-like-some-herbal-tea-bags-with-that-packet-of-lemon-bath-salt magic. We were talking destructive magic. Demonic magic? Was Zachary magic, or just his sword?

  Like he had on his first night at Sanguini’s, he offered me a hand up.

  This time I stood on my own. “Don’t touch me.”

  “Quincie,” he began, “I can explain.”

  The oncoming car had veered off at the V in the road. A neighbor’s dog was barking. The upstairs lights of the Spanish Colonial had all been turned on. We had to get out of there, but should I be going anywhere with him?

  “It’s not what you think,” he said. “I, um . . .”

  I’d officially had enough of mysterious, good-looking, older guys from Sanguini’s who weren’t what they seemed. I ran from my self-proclaimed savior, ignoring his calls, into the night.

  As the laptop booted, I could hear animal paws — too small to be a shifter — padding around on the Moraleses’ roof. I hadn’t noticed them before, but I hadn’t been on full alert to the same extent, and I didn’t have Meara’s hearing either.

  Varmints, Roberto had called them.

  Angelina had stuck her head out of Meghan’s room as I’d come up the stairs that night, but she and her pups were quiet.

  I keyed flaming sword into a search engine, clicked a link on related mythology, and started reading. After making a page of notes in Frank, I tried the keywords again. As I scrolled a bit, a reference to the Garden of Eden caught my attention.

  Without pausing to think too hard about it, I went to the bookshelf for Grandma Morris’s Bible and turned to Genesis.

  I recalled the reappearance of The Banana in Sanguini’s back lot . . . the first time I’d seen Zachary, battling a vampire not far from a certain failed hex-removal spell . . . the way he’d saved my hairspray-shellacked head from the falling tray of flaming brandied peaches and ice cream . . . how he and his friends had filled the open jobs and leased my house and invited me to move back to my bedroom whenever.
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  I remembered Zachary standing against the hazy neon of South Congress on Sanguini’s roof and the way he’d been so protective of me against the Mullet Man and Mole Woman, both in the dining room and in the neighborhood.

  A flaming sword.

  I heard a skittering from above and a woof from down the hall. Glancing at the ceiling, I kissed the leather-bound Bible and returned it to its place on the shelf next to my parents’ wedding album. Then I crossed to the window, crawled outside, and began scaling up the front of the Morales house.

  Even though I’d come up to the roof planning to confront Zachary, it still delighted me to find him there, sitting with what might’ve been the same three young raccoons from the park. One walked across his lap while the other two sniffed around.

  “You’re not a werelion,” I announced, pushing up to stand.

  “Are you trying to start an argument?” he began. “Because I never said I was.”

  I crossed my arms. “How about this one: you’re an angel.”

  “What?” he replied, not meeting my gaze. “Who? What?”

  Nice comeback. Raising my voice, I replied, “I said —”

  “Shhh!” he scolded. “Kieren’s mom might hear us.”

  “You want to play it that way, fine,” I said, opening my arms wide. “Catch.”

  I free-fell backward off the two-story McMansion, and before I could panic or doubt, strong arms scooped me up safe. I glimpsed enormous white wings and then was plopped down barefoot on the dry grass in the side yard, faced with a very cranky angel.

  “What were you thinking?” His wings had vanished, apparently at will. “You could’ve broken bones, severed your spine, ended up in a wheelchair or with permanent brain damage. Do you want to spend your supposedly immortal existence in a vegetative state?”

  “I knew you’d catch me,” I exclaimed, bouncing on the balls of my feet. I hadn’t been this bubbly about anything since before I’d died — no, before that, since before my parents’ accident. A real live angel, and we were friends. Sort of.