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“Where am I?” I skittered backward from him, wrinkling the foil.
“Edie—” A familiar voice from behind me. I turned around and saw Hector at the door.
“What is this?”
“You were sick. So I brought you here. ”
Olympio peeked in behind him. Suddenly I knew where I was at. “Oh, God. Take me to a real hospital. ”
“You don’t need a real hospital now! My grandfather cured you!” Olympio pointed at the strange man behind me. I looked back, and he tapped out his pipe into a wastebasket by his good knee.
There were no windows in this room. “What time is it? Tell me. ”
Hector found his phone inside his coat pocket. “Three A. M. ”
I’d taken an Ambien at ten P. M. No way I was awake now. Oh, shit. “How long was I out for?” I stood, unsteady, my feet slipping against the tinfoil I’d been lying on. Now that I was standing, I could see it was in the shape of a cross.
“A whole day. You were very sick. ”
My mother had probably been freaking out for almost two days. She already had one derelict child—she didn’t need two. “I need to get home. Right now. ”
“It’s only been a day. I’m sure your cat’s fine. And I’m your boss, it’s not like I’m going to fire you. You were really ill. ”
There was a wetness on my neck. I reached up and found a poultice there. I pulled it off, and it crumbled in my hand. It smelled like tobacco. “Jesus Christ!” I flung the remnants of it down. “If I was really ill, why the hell did you bring me here?”
Hector’s face darkened, but it was Olympio who spoke first. “Hey! I told my grandfather that you were cool! Worth saving!”
There were still pieces of what looked like wet spinach stuck to my hand. I looked back at Olympio’s grandfather, who was stoically contemplating what an asshole I was. I took in a few huge gulps of air to calm down. “It isn’t—I’m sorry. ” I made sure to look at his grandfather. “I’m really sorry. Thanks for healing me. I think. But I’ve got some other things I need to be doing with my time. ”
He leaned forward and held out an egg to me.
“Don’t touch it,” Olympio said. “He’s just showing it to you. ”
I thought it was stone, black marble in the shape of an egg, until Olympio went on. “The egg holds what my grandfather took from you. The badness, muy malo, very bad. He put it into the egg to protect you. And when you leave, he’ll take care of it, so it’ll never attack you again. ”
Olympio’s grandfather spoke, and Olympio translated. “But he won’t be able to stop you from putting new bad stuff back inside yourself. ”
“Thank you,” I said, as sincerely as I could, then turned to push my way through the door.
* * *
Hector followed me down the hallway and stairs as I raced my way out. I didn’t know where I was going, I just needed to get home.
Halfway down the hall I realized that those had been statues of Santa Muerte in his room. I should have asked him about her. Of course. If anyone had a direct line to obscure supernatural entities, it was a man who took badness out of people and put it into gothic Easter eggs.
I made it out of the building, hitting the street almost at a run. “Hey—slow down!” Hector called after me. I darted through a group of people standing, and they laughed, either at some joke or to see a lost white girl on the lam. Hector caught up to me.
“Where are we? I need to go. I have to get home. ” He reached out to feel my forehead, and I ducked away. “I’m fine. I just have to go. ”
“What is wrong with you?”
“Me? Why did you take me to him? What was that about?”
We were underneath a sputtering streetlight, and Hector’s face was full of concern. “He was the best doctor for the kind of illness you had. ”
“Does he cure cancer?”
“No. ” He pulled back as if I’d hit him. “Do you have cancer?”
“No. My mom does. I was supposed to go see her the other night. ” I went through my pockets, looking for my phone or anything at all, but then realized that when Hector had gotten me out of my house, he probably hadn’t thought to bring my purse along. “I’m sure she’s worried sick. Sicker. You know?” I laughed at my own poor joke.
“Edie—I didn’t know. I’m so sorry. ”
“It’s why I started working at your place. I couldn’t bear to be at the sleep clinic one more night, once I knew. I couldn’t just sit there, not doing anything. It’d drive me insane. ” I looked around, trying to figure out where I was, where the nearest train station would be, only I didn’t have any money on me. I whirled on him. “I need to go home now. I have to call her tonight, even if it wakes her up. ”
“Or you could just ask me for my phone?” He held it out to me.
He was right. I’d had my mother’s phone number memorized since we’d moved in second grade. I stuck out my hand without saying anything. Hector dropped his phone into it, and I dialed.
“Mom? Peter—Peter, yeah, I’m fine. I’m sorry. I was really sick. No, I’m better now, thanks. Really sick. This is actually a doctor friend of mine’s phone. ” I glared at Hector. In case my parents called back to check on me, he’d better cover for me. “Yeah. Tell her I love her, and not to worry, okay? Okay. Thanks. ”
I hung up, a small portion of my guilt lifted, and gave Hector back his phone.
“If I’d known, Edie—” he said, his voice heavy with apology. “What about just taking it easy for a week? Letting the news settle in?”
“Because. I suck at being alone with myself. And I’m the most alone person I know. ”
He looked down at me. “I find that hard to believe. ” His arms were open, palms facing up. I could step into them, just for human contact, for human warmth.
I took a step back so I wouldn’t do anything foolish. “Believe what you want. It’s true. ” I couldn’t let him hug me, so I hugged myself. Now that we were outside, it was cooler, and the shirt Hector had picked out for me was thin. Oh, God, he’d put my bra on me. Yes, he was a doctor and all—I knew that for me penises were a dime a dozen, I’d seen so many at work—but he was still my boss. Ugh. “What happened to me?” I touched my neck, where the claw marks had been. They were still there now, but fainter, and they didn’t hurt to touch.
Hector’s arms dropped; our moment was gone. “Susto. In layman’s terms, some of your spirit leaked out. The curandero caught it, and put it back in. ”
I snorted. “Is there a cork on me somewhere I should know about?”
“No. But you need to go easier on yourself. ” He stepped nearer and stood quietly, as if by being calm he could force me to be still. He didn’t have his coat on, and from this near I could smell him. Deodorant, and the sweat it fought. He smelled like a man. The night was cool and I would bet his hands were warm.
“How’d you know to check on me the other night?” I looked up at him, without stepping away.
His eyes searched mine, and I didn’t know what question he was trying to answer there. “I just had a feeling. ”
“At eleven o’clock at night?”
“I’m like Olympio. I see things. ” He shook his head and looked away from me. “Sometimes when an addict comes in, I can see their addiction, like a black snake tied around their chest. Not every addict—and it’s not always a snake. Sometimes I see other diseases. When I see those people, I do what I can, and then I tell them to go see the curandero. Their problems are not entirely of this world—and they’ll need more than medicine to solve them. ”
I looked down at myself. “So all those times he told me I needed healing, you saw it too?”
“To a lesser degree. I suspect he’s got stronger sight than I do. And better training. I’m sorry—I didn’t know it would get so bad so fast with you. ”
“Heh. Don’t feel too bad, you’ve still got all of Western medicine on your side. And penic
illin. Which is what I was pretty sure I needed. Or Cipro. Bactrim. The big guns. ” I looked back up at him, and he was still too near to me. He was close because he wanted to be. “What do you see when you look at me now?”
He was still for a moment, and then tapped my breastbone. “There was a black flower here. Unfurling, like an anemone. ” He waved his fingers in the air. “Sucking your life away. You were already barely hanging on—you didn’t have any strength left to fight it. ”
“Is it still there?” I asked, my voice small.
Hector nodded, and held up his fingers, an inch apart. “He shrank it, but it’s not gone. It’ll just grow until you solve whatever causes it. ”
My life? I wondered, and then laughed aloud. He opened his mouth, like he was on the verge of making a confession, and then he looked hurt.
“You don’t believe me?”
“No—I’m not making fun of you. I already know there are strange things in this world. ”
“Like vampires?”
I nodded.
“Why do you want to meet a vampire?” he went on.
“To help my mom. Their blood can heal almost anything. ”
A gamut of emotions ran over Hector’s face, from wisdom to disgust. I wasn’t sure how he’d wind up feeling—if despite his seeing things he’d think that I was insane or if he knew better and would finally break and tell me.
“You give that extra blood to someone, right?” I pressed, hoping I could help him decide.
He nodded, slowly. “Yes. I do. ”
“¡Médico! Doctor! You forgot your coat!” Olympio came running out of the building behind us, yelling for us to stop, like we’d been going somewhere. We turned to watch him, and he drew up short, wide-eyed, pointing behind us. “Donkey Lady!”
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