by Holley Trent
She opened her eyes and caught the devastating smile that immediately made her head throb again.
“I take that back. The hipsters are nothing compared to the ones who do yoga and wear shoes without socks.”
December let out a strained titter.
“There, there.” He patted the top of her head.
She poked his sternum and growled at him, which only made him smile broader.
“God, I hate you.”
“Yeah?” His smile ebbed and his gaze fell from her face. In a flash, her hands were on his cheeks, molding his flesh back into something that looked less stricken.
“Tito, I didn’t mean it.”
“Maybe you should, though. Maybe you still hating me would be better.”
“Hate is never better. It’s never better than anything, and as angry as I’ve been at you, I’ve never hated you. I shouldn’t have said that word, but I’m frustrated, and when I’m frustrated, I sometimes say things I regret.”
He wrapped his fingers around her wrists, and just held her hands where they were for a seconds. Then he slowly peeled them away.
She didn’t like that. Touching him was reckless, maybe, but being made to stop made her stomach clench and lungs seize.
“Breathe,” he said.
She couldn’t. She worked her mouth open and closed, fisting her hands at her sides, but she couldn’t take in a breath.
“Cough, maybe, and then try again.”
She managed to expel a little air.
“Breathe deep. Slow. Try not to touch my skin again unless you want a repeat of that.”
She doubled over, because surely she was going to hyperventilate. She concentrated on pulling in long inhalations and expelling all the spent air in long blows. Behind her, Hannah and Cruz were sitting on the curb, where Cruz appeared to be investigating the contents of Hannah’s wallet.
“What was that?” she asked in a pant.
“Magic flaring up, is all.”
“It didn’t do that yesterday.”
“Nah. You don’t catch colds as soon as someone sneezes, either. Same principle.”
“So, you did that?”
He grimaced. “Not precisely. It’s the particular combination of me and you.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Supernatural shit. Sure you want to know?”
She wasn’t so sure she did. She didn’t think she was capable of understanding much more, and especially not at the pace the people in Maria were tossing information at her.
She put her palm to her forehead and made that croaking sound again.
“Well, do you?”
“There’s so much. I … ”
“I’ll help you get caught up if you want, Dee. Can’t really do that if you’re in Tucson.”
The so-called magic he had over her must have fully dissolved then, because she rolled her eyes and looked back at Cruz again. “You just want me to stay here.”
“You’d be safer. You just saw for yourself that there’s so much you don’t know.”
She couldn’t debate that. She was no longer equipped to make judgment calls about the people around Cruz, or perhaps she never had been at all.
“Also, I like your face.”
“Do you?” The first time he’d told her that, he’d been wearing a troublemaking grin and making origami out of bar napkins. He wasn’t grinning there in the parking lot, though.
His brow was furrowed and posture rigid.
“I understand why you’re afraid,” Tito said. “This is a lot of shit to take in all at once. The circumstances would be too much even for someone who didn’t have to worry about a little girl. Remember. That’s why I stayed away.”
She was starting to understand.
Taking a step closer, he put up his hands, just beside her bare arms, perhaps mindful of the sudden chill in the breeze or the fact she’d started to shake a bit from nerves. He didn’t touch her, though. He held his hands as if he were sizing her up to make a coat or build a coffin, and then skimmed the fingers of one hand along her forearm.
The touch should have felt completely platonic, but the ground may as well have shaken beneath her for the way her core tightened and breath sped.
It felt good.
Too good.
He’d warned her.
December nudged his hand away and took several steps back from him. “Cruz can see. She’ll ask questions.”
“Like what? ‘Why was he chastely petting you, Mommy?’ Kids at school dances stand closer together than we are right now.”
“That’s exactly the kind of logic that got us in trouble in the first place.”
“The trouble felt good.”
“Stop. You’re awful.”
“You like me awful. Admit it.”
“No, and I should go. It’s getting late.”
“No, you should stay, and not just because you like me petting you. What’s another day, Dee, until we figure out what kind of mess we’re in?”
“Which mess? The December-and-Tito mess or the your-murderous-cousin mess?”
“Is there a December-and-Tito mess?”
“No, I guess not. That implies a relationship.”
“We don’t have one?”
“I’ve only known your cell phone number for two days. What’s that tell you?”
Before he could open his mouth, she told him, “We don’t really know each other. We made a baby, and that’s great, and maybe she’s a little weird because you’re weird, too, but we can co-parent around that.”
“I don’t want to co-parent.”
She let out a scoff that almost rivaled one of Tarik’s. “Oh, there you go.”
He dropped his hands from his eyes and shook his head, hard. “No, no, no. Don’t go there. Don’t start trying to read between lines that don’t exist. I’m doing the best I can. Maybe I’m not going as fast as you’d like, but I don’t think we’d be doing either me or Cruz any good if I came charging into her life like the Kool-Aid man through a brick wall.”
She clapped her hand over her mouth but couldn’t get it there in time to suppress her cackle. With circumstances being so dire, she didn’t want to laugh, but he always made her laugh. That wasn’t such a bad thing.
“Stay another night?” he crooned sweetly. “I’m wearing you down, ain’t I?”
“I should say no. I’m supposed to go to work.”
He hissed and shook his head. “Yeah, me, too. I didn’t even get a chance to get my uniforms cleaned this week. They’re gonna start calling me Sergeant Sucio.”
“Do sheriff’s departments have sergeants?”
“Nope, but it was either that or Deputy Dirty, and the word dirty already gets a bad enough rap. It’s one of my favorite words.”
“I remember,” she whispered hoarsely.
Suddenly, swallowing was hard. Harder still when he leaned in close and whispered, “What else do you remember?”
She remembered the imaginative places he’d put his fingers and tongue. She remembered all the threats he’d made good on when her clothes were off, and sometimes even when they were on. She remembered that when he went down, he didn’t come up for air for a long, long time.
Her breath had caught again, and her skin was prickling with the sort of anticipation that was usually a harbinger of the next morning’s regrets.
She knocked his hand off her forearm, forced a swallow down her tight throat, and massaged the tingles out of her skin. “Nothing I’ll mention with my child watching me.” She turned her back to the motel and added, “I’m sure she’s close to knowing how to read lips.”
He laughed. “I could never get away with anything with Ma. She had a knack for always knowing what trouble I was getting into and when.”
“Yeah, but your mother is a goddess. I’m just a lowly human who’s trying to stay one step ahead of a child who obviously has superior intellect and speed. What am I going to tell her about this stuff, Tito?”
“Don’t worr
y about that yet. You’re doing fine, Dee.”
She sighed. “Fine shouldn’t be such a compliment, but given the context, I’ll take it.”
He gestured toward the motel. “Come on. Why don’t you finish clearing out your stuff? Call into work and stay at Ma’s tonight.”
“That makes me so nervous. Just because my brother-in-law manages the bar doesn’t mean I can’t lose my job.”
“We’ll find you another one. There’s plenty of stuff to do in Maria.”
“Tito—”
He put up his hands. “I know, I know. I’m just sayin’. The job market here ain’t so bad. You could get work pretty much anyplace.”
Tempting.
She pulled her bottom lip between her teeth and gnawed as she watched Cruz examine Hannah’s engagement ring. Then she sighed and started walking. “I don’t want to work in a bar indefinitely, but my job’s always been stable. I guess if I were going to make a switch, there wouldn’t be a whole lot of difference between being a barmaid in Tucson and being a barmaid here.”
“Isn’t a bad place to be, once you set aside the fact supernatural folks seem to be clumping here.”
“That’s the part I’ll have the hardest time setting aside.”
“Maybe it won’t be a bad thing. The good ones’ll help me keep an eye on you.”
“And you really think that’s necessary?”
“Unfortunately, I do.”
Grimacing, she ruffled Cruz’s hair as she passed into the room, then grabbed her purse from the armchair by the door.
One more night couldn’t hurt.
She’d made the trip to Maria because she’d wanted to make Tito do the responsible thing, but she had to do the same. She couldn’t do that if she didn’t understand all the possibilities, and the possibilities became more diverse every day.
She turned off the television, then the lights, and grabbed the room key.
Possibilities were a good thing, even if they were frightening ones. She wasn’t used to having so many.
chapter TEN
The following morning, rather than immediately collapsing onto his sofa after work, Tito stood rigidly on the walkway in front of his mother’s house holding his phone in his hand.
He hovered his thumb idly over the touchscreen, pondering deleting the series of invasive images. They’d poured in one after another when he’d turned his phone back on at seven A.M.
He hadn’t recognized the number they were from, but Necalli never left anything up to doubt.
Hey cousin, said the text between two pictures of a very angry December from two days prior. The pictures must have been taken when she’d gone to get Cruz from the diner, and were blurry enough to have been taken from a moving vehicle. Got a thing for humans, huh?
That message was sent right after a picture of Tito, December, Cruz, Hannah, and Sean in the motel parking lot.
Are you ready for another sacrifice? It’s been so long.
There was a picture of Ma leading Cruz by the hand toward her house, and Ma looking hostilely over her shoulder at whoever had held the phone.
It’s your turn again to give the gods their sustenance.
Tito had responded, “What have you ever sacrificed?” but the text had immediately bounced back, and the automated voice that picked up the call Tito had made said the number was no longer in service.
Anger pooled in his gut, and memories of Necalli’s self-satisfied smile after Eztli’s death floated to the forefront of his mind. When Tito had woken far from the calpulli where Ma had left him, Nec had been there in his ostentatious Eagle Warrior getup, crouching and looking down into his face.
“Don’t you feel cleaner now, Yaotl?” Nec had asked.
Tito had reacted too slowly. By the time he’d sat up, Nec had shifted into some lightweight beast and scampered into the trees where Tito couldn’t follow.
I won’t be slow next time.
Tito deleted the pictures and the texts, checked his watch, and waited.
Tarik appeared in his usual retina-searing flash of light.
Tito bobbed his head in acknowledgement. “Why bother with discretion, right?” he asked in a flat tone.
“No one’s watching.” Tarik freed his dreadlocks from his coat’s collar—or likely the strap of his sword’s holster—and glanced around the quiet neighborhood. “They’re all tucked away in their little homes preparing for work, if they’re up at all.”
“I guess we’ll find out for sure later. What’d you learn?”
Tarik forced some air through his parted lips and slid off his sunglasses. “Your suspicion was correct. I’m certain December will be pleased to learn that her parents aren’t complete derelicts after all.”
“There’s someone there in the house?”
Tarik grunted. “I didn’t want to risk discovery on the chance something in the area would be sensitive to my presence, but I got close enough to witness.”
“Your tendency to hold audiences in suspense is tedious,” Ma said from the porch.
She’d joined the conference in her typical stealthy way, looking very human for once with her uncombed hair draped over the shoulders of her fuzzy purple bathrobe and wearing her “lesser” chanclas—the rundown house shoes that had been upgraded with a couple of strips of duct tape. She saved her good pair for Sundays.
Tarik gave a slight bow in her direction and put his sunglasses back on. “Demon.”
“The uncle?”
He grunted again.
“What kind?” she asked.
“Does it matter?”
“No, I imagine not. All that is important is what they’re there to do, not what they are. Is there just one? December said the uncle had a child.”
“Not truly his child. Another demon. They often work in pairs, and in whichever bodies they see fit to use.”
“Shit,” Tito said. “Don’t they usually move on after they’re done tearing the family apart? If that’s what they get their energy from, why are they still hanging out?”
“Likely waiting on another assignment.”
“Can you compel them to leave?”
“No better than you. Gulielmus would possibly be able to given his former affiliation, but he has yet to regain his memories.”
Ma grunted. “He’ll have them back soon enough.”
“How could you possibly know that?” Tito asked.
Gulielmus, like Tamatsu, was a long-time acquaintance of Tarik. They’d all fallen at about the same time, but before they had, they’d had the same job. Gulielmus had gone the demon route after arriving on Earth, and had only left the gig two years prior. He happened to be related to the Foyes through marriage, but lately, it seemed everyone was.
Ma made a circular gesture with one of her hands and then tucked it her bathrobe pocket. “Memories, like karma, have a way of catching up to people. I fear he’ll have to confront both soon. His sons should get ready.”
“I’ve given them the same warning,” Tarik said quietly.
“Good,” Ma said and turned to Tito. “December’s family in Rhode Island isn’t a priority concern right now.”
“Nah, Nec is,” Tito said. If he could wait a little longer to drop one more bomb on the woman, he wanted to try. Better—they could take care of the problem before she learned the truth. Knowing the situation was resolved might soothe the heartache. “How the hell did he home in on Dee so fast, anyway?”
“Not December. Cruz.”
“What?”
“They’re kin, Yaotl. Blood. Just because you can’t always sense when there are relatives around doesn’t mean that Necalli can’t. He has some of his mother’s magic. All he needed was to do the math to figure out who she belonged to.”
“Fuck.” Tito slid his hands into his hair and gave it the hardest yank he could. “And in a town this small, they wouldn’t be so hard to find.”
“Doesn’t matter where they go. He could track them with human means if he wanted to. Paper trail.”
“If my memory of such things is trustworthy, Necalli would deem Cruz a valuable sacrifice,” Tarik said gravely. He had a way of stating the obvious that always managed to send a chill down Tito’s spine. “He won’t simply harass her because of your pantheon’s rules.”
“He’d find a way to exploit her,” Ma murmured.
“Mmm. She’s young and innocent and has a goddess as a grandmother. The gods would be pleased with Necalli.”
“Well, they’re not getting her,” Tito said. “This is the kind of shit I wanted to prevent from happening. Nobody should have to live in fear of that.”
Ma pulled in a long inhalation. “And Cruz won’t. I promise you, I won’t let anything happen to her. Cruz will be safe here as long as she’s with me.”
“Why wouldn’t he be just as interested in you, though? You’re the fountainhead. You’re the one with the power. You’ve got the most nourishing blood.”
“I am not so easy to kill.”
Had anyone else said the same words, they might have sounded cocky, but Ma had a way of making everything sound like simple, unvarnished truth.
Tito sailed his fist through the air, and growled that there was nothing for it to make contact with. “I don’t get that. He sees people as expendable, and they’re fucking not.”
“Is that not the point of sacrifices, Yaotl?” Ma said soothingly. “They have to hurt people. You wouldn’t give someone a gift with no value, would you?”
“But what would he get out of it? He’s not a god.”
“No, but perhaps he still aligns himself with them.”
“Well, if he wants to play god, he can go slit his own chest open and join the rest that make the Earth spin or whatever.”
“You believe he is so brave?” Tarik asked.
The question brought Tito up short.
He’d never considered that perhaps cowardice had come into play, only malice.
“This time,” Ma said, “I believe he would stand on ceremony. He’d want to make Cruz bleed because blood sacrifices nourish the gods. He didn’t bother with your wife and son. Perhaps he decided they weren’t good enough sacrifices—”
“They were good enough to live, though.”
She slashed her hand through the air. “You tell me things I already know. I was there.”
