Devil's Punch cs-4

by Ann Aguirre

  Butch trotted to meet me, his nails clicking on the tile floor. He’d gotten a little pudgy since our return. He preferred staying with Tia while I worked at Chance’s place, as she had a nice courtyard where he could nap in the sun or chase birds. Usually it was the former—hence the Chihuahua spare tire.

  “Anything exciting happen?” I asked, kneeling to scoop him into my arms.

  He snuggled in with two quiet, negative yaps. It might not be normal for me to talk to my dog and get an answer, but it had been going on long enough that it didn’t seem odd to me anymore. I’d considered asking why he could understand me, but I’d decided some mysteries were better left alone.

  “Did you keep Tia company?”

  An affirmative bark.

  I stroked his head, then scratched behind his ears, just as he liked. “Good boy. Did she remember to feed you?”

  Yap. Yes. But Butch stared up at me with sad eyes, despite the fact that everything seemed to be okay in his world. I thought I knew what it was. “You miss Shannon, huh?”

  Me too.

  Shannon had been my best friend ever since I rescued her in Kilmer. She’d become my roommate and my closest confidante. Before the shit went down in Laredo, we’d discussed opening a consignment store in the new building, becoming true partners. The girl had been the closest I had to a sister.

  With Butch in my arms, I curled up on the bed and remembered.

  Witchy Business

  Laredo. A summoning spell had gone wrong due to my ignorance and lack of training, and Shannon was injured. The memory and regret swallowed me.

  I had to stop putting her at risk. Maybe I should put her on a bus, even if she didn’t want to go. Before it was too late. “Look, Shan, I really think—”

  “No.” She slammed the first door open and stomped to the apartment. “If you want to get rid of me, I’ll go. But you’re not sending me to my dad. I’m not a little kid.…I can get a job. Maybe I’ll try Cali. I hear it’s pretty there.” She glared, as if daring me to object. “You did fine on your own.”

  “Not really,” I said softly. I’d never told anyone this. I didn’t like thinking about it. “I landed well at first. I found a job in a used-book store, and I had a room in a boardinghouse. But when the store went under, I couldn’t find anything else. Pretty soon I had no money and I had no place to stay. I don’t make friends easily, so I had nobody to turn to. I moved on with only enough money in my pocket to get to the next town. I found myself sleeping in the bus station. I did things I’m not proud of.”

  I’d taken insane risks, and it was lucky I wasn’t diseased or dead. It would break my heart if I drove Shannon to that with my good intentions.

  “Like what?”

  She wouldn’t be satisfied unless I told her. I wouldn’t reveal my past to anyone else, for any other reason—only to keep Shan from repeating my mistakes. I was over it, mostly. I’d learned to deal. But she needed to know how much I trusted her.

  So while I wrapped an ice pack, fixed a glass of water, and set out two pills, I revealed the whole story. Nobody knew this much about me—I’d picked up men for food and shelter, using serial monogamy as a means of survival. Those relationships never lasted long, because I chose men who wouldn’t reject me, ones who’d take me home and were lonely enough not to complain if I stayed. But I always moved on, feeling worse each time, because I lived with them out of desperation, not desire.

  My past left me with such low self-esteem that I didn’t demand to be an equal partner with Chance when he came along. I didn’t feel worthy of him, and I did anything to please him; I spurned my old identity because it was awful and tawdry, and I wanted to forget that woman, the sad, desperate Corine. It would kill me if Shan ever thought she wasn’t equal to any man who wanted her.

  I went on. “By the time I met Chance, I had gotten myself together. I had a place of my own and a job at a dry cleaner’s. But you know how hard it is to get work if you don’t have an address? How hard it is to keep clean in public restrooms so people’s eyes don’t slide away from you? It’s easier if you’re young. But if you’re old and homeless, it’s the next thing to an invisibility spell. I knew people who died on the street, people who froze to death and nobody noticed. Nobody cared. The city just removed the bodies like they were leaves in the street.” I bit my lip against the burn of tears and the throbbing in my head. “So if you think I’m letting you leave with nothing, you’re out of your mind. I want better than that for you.”

  And that was part of the reason I couldn’t turn down Escobar’s money. I wanted her to have a future brighter than I could provide alone. Having a place of our own mattered desperately, and now maybe she’d understand why. If Chance knew, he might get why my pawnshop had meant everything to me, and with it blown to shit, why I felt as if someone I loved had died. I needed a home, damn it.

  “I had no idea,” she whispered.

  “Nobody does.” I exhaled shakily and got my own Aleve and agua.

  Her expression said she understood; we didn’t need to speak of this again. Thank God. Though I’d come to terms with my mistakes, I didn’t enjoy reliving them, even for Shan’s benefit.

  But she had her own point to make as well. “Look, I’ll stop threatening to leave if you stop talking about sending me away. I know it’s dangerous. I’m not an idiot. But for the first time I feel like I belong and I’m not giving that up. Okay?”

  I downed my water like it was a shot of something stronger. “Fair enough.”

  Now, she didn’t remember me. Part of me—the selfish part—wanted desperately to cast something to negate what I’d done, but with my lack of control, I couldn’t risk making Shan and Jesse worse or hurting them again. So I lived with the consequences and missed my best friend. I’d do pretty much anything to have her back in my life, but my options were limited.

  I went to bed that night and dreamt of old mistakes. In the morning I had some fruit for breakfast, showered, and dressed. Tia was cleaning this morning, so the house was empty when I left. I left her a note saying what time I’d be home and headed to my meeting, where I argued with Armando, the foreman, about his projected date of completion.

  “If you don’t step it up,” I said in Spanish, “rainy season will set in, and there won’t be time to finish.”

  “We’re doing the best we can, señorita. There have been delays. Materials—”

  “Let me make this simple. You will have the building finished by”—I named a date—“or I will hire someone else to take your place. Understood?”

  “Sí, claro. I’ll get the work done.”

  Tia was waiting when I got back. She greeted me by demanding I cast a blindness spell.

  I protested, “What if I blind you permanently?”

  She cackled. “I’m mostly blind already, nena. So get to work!”

  Under her supervision, I spent four hours drilling the five spells she insisted would be most useful: Blind, Trip, Steam, Freeze, and Open. I’d mastered Blind by the time we knocked off for the day. Trip and Steam, I executed successfully 75 percent of the time. I had less luck with Freeze and Open. Those were more complicated, requiring complete focus. I had perfected Light weeks ago and no longer needed practice. At the end of the day, she added a new spell, Truth-sense. That one wasn’t complicated, but it required a fair amount of focus. I failed it the first couple of times, but then, once I fell into the correct pattern, I understood it instinctively.

  “A good day’s work,” Tia said. “Soon you’ll be casting like a proper witch.”

  “Gracias.” I kissed her cheek and grabbed my purse. “I’m going shopping, Butch. Interested?”

  He shot me an as-if look, but followed me as far as the courtyard. I refilled his water dish at the outside spigot and then went out to the El Camino. Fortunately it wasn’t market day, so traffic on the narrow road wasn’t heavy. I drove down and hung a left, then a right, and then another right. Roads were weird, with odd roundabouts called glorietas, but I didn’
t mind because the medians were always so green, full of trees and flowers and beautifully landscaped. I turned around and went back down the mountain a few blocks to the gated community where Chance lived. The guard greeted me with a raised hand and let me in. This was a small complex with one- and two-bedroom flats, up the hill from an expensive private school, no more than twelve buildings, two units each, but there was ample parking. I didn’t wait long for Chance, who bounded down the stairs to meet me.

  He swung into the car and kissed my cheek as I backed out. “I thought we’d go to Soriana first.”

  “That’s nearby, right?” Chance still didn’t know where everything was, even in this neighborhood, but that wasn’t so bad. I’d lived here for two years before I could find the nearest mall on my own.

  Now I could find five different ones—without GPS.

  “Yep.”

  “I went grocery shopping today. I’ll cook dinner when we’re done tonight.”

  That was an interesting offer. The Chance from my memory preferred takeout menus to working the stove. In his new place, he had a nice kitchen with pretty white ceramic tile and pristine counters, so it was good he intended to make use of the space.

  “What’re we having?” I asked as I nudged out into traffic. Between the bodyguards blocking the right lane, waiting to pick up the ambassadors’ kids, and the delivery trucks that didn’t want to let me in on the left, the merge took longer than it should have.

  “Chapchae noodles. Or as close as I can get, anyway. I doubt there’s a Korean grocery around here.”

  “Superama has a small Asian foods section, but it’s eclectic.” I glanced over at him. “It’s been a big adjustment, huh?”

  “I like the energy. And it’s…different.”

  No arguing that.

  I didn’t say more until I parked at Plaza Jardines, a small shopping center with one anchor store—Soriana—a couple of midsize places, like DormiMundo, where you could buy mattresses, and Altimus, which had furniture. But those places both took a week or more for delivery. I didn’t want Chance sleeping on the floor that long. Soriana would let you carry anything out that you could buy and fit into your vehicle.

  Chance followed me past several vet clinics, beauty salons, and a dry cleaner’s. Inside Soriana, it was kind of a mess, but I threaded through women looking at glassware to where the mattresses were stacked up in stalls. It didn’t take long to pick out a reasonably priced set. Fortunately, he’d brought his own linens because I could only think of one store that sold thread counts high enough to content him.

  Then Chance and I wrestled the mattresses out to the El Camino. I’d been canny enough to bring rope, so once we got the set situated, I helped him secure it. Though we weren’t going far, it wouldn’t help afternoon traffic if the box springs bounced out onto the road. I navigated the parking lot carefully, leaving via the Sanborns exit and driving up the hill, then back down and into his lot. The afternoon passed in shopping, hauling, delivery, and more shopping. Three hours and four trips later, he had enough furniture in his apartment for it to be functional. I helped him put the shelves together so we could unpack his books. By the time he started dinner, I was exhausted. I slumped onto the cushions on the floor, which we’d moved in from the balcony.

  He’d bought an odd assortment of stuff. No living room or dining room furniture, but candles and shelves and a flat-screen TV. From my vantage point on the floor, I watched him cook for a while, and then I went to put expensive sheets on his mattress. I found his comforter neatly folded in the closet. I guessed he’d used a pile of blankets for a makeshift pallet last night. When I finished arranging his bed, it looked inviting.

  After dinner, we sat together, bent over his laptop, and I showed him a site where he could order all his furniture online. Mercado Libre was similar to eBay, only it served Latin American countries. Ingenia Muebles offered elegant, minimalist designs, which I felt sure would appeal to Chance. And I did know him that well at least. An hour later, he’d ordered stuff for bedroom, living room, and kitchen. The flat would be lovely, once it all arrived.

  That took a week, during which time I hounded the builders and Armando, then took lessons with Tia. Chance and I—our nights fell into a comfortable routine. Sometimes we ate at home; he was a better cook than me. Some nights we went out and had dinner at some unlikely American chain, like Applebee’s or P.F. Chang’s. He was always surprised at how American influence had permeated Mexico, but if you turned down another road, some neighborhoods felt as exotic as the jungles of Peru. Once a week we went to the VIP cinema, which had spoiled me for regular showings. On Fridays we visited the farmers’ market and bought produce and fresh cheese. From what I could tell, Chance enjoyed it all. I fought the bad memories and dared to hope we could build a life here. I also wondered if we should be sleeping together. With an ex, it was hard to be sure of the pace. Butch had no answers for me, and Tia counseled that sex should wait until he put a ring on my finger.

  I didn’t even know if I wanted jewelry with such strings attached.

  “Are you bored yet?” I asked Chance one night.

  He shook his head. “I’m considering my options.”

  “Do you want to work in the shop with me?”

  “Doing what?”

  “Appraising items? Customer service? Inventory? Bookkeeping? Financial—”

  “Bookkeeping,” he said at once. “I can handle that for you, and I’ll probably do some online trading. Advise you on good investments.”

  I wasn’t averse to increasing my nest egg, and Chance had a knack. “Of course.”

  “I won’t be at the store full-time, though. Just as needed to keep the books balanced.”

  At some point I needed to replace Señor Alvarez, who perished when the Montoyas firebombed the pawnshop, but that was a raw spot, and I couldn’t bear to consider it yet. There would be time once the workers finished the new building. Assembling the pieces of a broken life couldn’t happen overnight.

  “Then I should ask a different question, a more important one. Are you happy here?”

  Chance considered, delving into his pocket for his silver coin as he always did when he was thinking. He spun it along his knuckles until he decided what to say. The silence didn’t worry me. I’d rather have the truth than a polite lie.

  “I’d be happier with you,” he admitted finally. “Really with you. Because that would mean you trust me. But I enjoy figuring things out. It’s an adventure, though I do feel a bit Stranger in a Strange Land at times.”

  “It took me a year to acclimate. You’d do better if you took some Spanish classes.”

  “Can’t you tutor me?” He arched his elegant brows. “The fringe benefits are exceptional.”

  “I’ll take a class with you,” I offered.

  My Spanish was good, but not perfect. It couldn’t hurt to learn more. Gratification spilled through me when Chance nodded. His willingness to try made me believe, more than anything, that he wasn’t just screwing with me, trying to even the scales or something so he could be the one to leave me this time. Yeah, my ego was fragile enough to wonder, but only a lunatic would uproot his life this way for such a petty revenge. Chance was many things—obsessive among them—but I didn’t believe he was nuts.

  “How much longer are you going to live with Tia?” he asked, nuzzling my neck. “It makes sense for you to move in here.”

  Mmm. He remembered perfectly what to do with the side of my neck—wandering lips, gentle scrape of teeth. I contemplated his soft bed and tried to recall why I wanted to go slow.

  “Does it?” I breathed.

  “Mm-hmm. Even after your property’s rebuilt you still have to furnish the upstairs apartment. Whereas mine’s ready for you, and you helped decorate it.” He pressed a trail of kisses down my throat, nuzzled my collarbone. “It’s a smart business decision. You could rent the flat above the shop. That’s more income.”

  “So you’re only thinking of my financial future?”
<
br />   He flashed me a wicked grin. “Well, I didn’t say I had no personal stake in the matter.”

  The kisses grew more heated. Chance drew me down on top of him, so I could feel how much he wanted me. I teased him a little, and he groaned.

  Eventually I said, “If things are still…this way between us when construction’s complete, I’ll give your proposal serious thought.”

  It wouldn’t be as convenient, living here, but it wouldn’t hurt me to walk six blocks to work instead of running downstairs with my hair wet. At the least, the sun and the wind would dry it a little by the time I arrived. And the exercise would be good for me.

  “Until then, you’ll go back to Tia’s every night?” His disappointment rang like cathedral bells.

  “It seems prudent.”

  He muttered something that sounded like Fuck prudent, but I just grinned. “Speaking of which, it’s time for me to head out.”

  “I’ll walk you home.”

  Dating Chance was turning out to be unexpectedly sweet.

  Bad News Travels Fast

  Like berries fermenting on the bush, that sweetness couldn’t last, of course. But it wasn’t Chance’s fault.

  With disbelieving eyes, I read the words:

  Save the girl or claim your crown. Either way, you’ll come to us.

  Whoever had sent this must be talking about Shannon. Visceral fear crackled like lightning in my veins. Please let this be someone’s idea of a joke. But since it was in English, not Spanish, it probably hadn’t been written by one of Tia’s bruja friends. Those witches didn’t like me, but they weren’t pranksters, either.