“I don’t understand.” Asher was supposed to be gone, just like everything else from before the shun. And now he was here—and I was going to lose him again, already? “So you picked being Hector? Over … going crazy?”
Asher nodded.
“Is Hector real?”
“He’s a clinic doctor in Miami. I touched him years ago, and started being him in Port Cavell after New Year’s. We were the same age, and he has no family. The real Hector doesn’t know he has a doppelgänger here, and he never will.”
“And so … who are you then, now?” I asked, squinting at him.
“Asher all the way. Still. But I’ve been trying to be Hector. To let him win.” His eyes finally found mine again. “I need to let myself go. But seeing you every day has been making it hard.”
I bit my lip for a moment before asking him my next question. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. “How long do you have?”
He looked away from me. “Not long now. Every day I wake up, and everything’s cloudy. It’s hard to sort out what’s me and what’s him. And I shouldn’t even try, because if I don’t forget, if I don’t give myself over to really being Hector, I’ll—” His voice drifted off.
“Go insane,” I finished for him, remembering the tortured patient we’d had to tranquilize back on Y4. I hadn’t realized that being a shapeshifter was like having the supernatural version of Huntington’s. “Is there any way to stop it?”
“No one in the entire history of shapeshifters has ever managed to escape before.” Asher sighed. “Except for maybe one.”
I pounced on the idea. “Who? Can we find them? Talk to them? Get them to tell you how?” I couldn’t stomach the thought of losing Asher again so soon.
“He’s already been trying to contact me. He found me a few months ago.” Asher stared stonily at the ground. “Sometimes he sends thugs over to paint my birthday on the clinic walls.”
“No way—Maldonado’s a shapeshifter?”
“Yeah. Who also happens to be my dad.”
My jaw dropped. Maldonado being a shapeshifter made sense; it explained how Adriana had been duped. But him being Asher’s father— “How can that be?”
“I don’t know. It shouldn’t be possible.” Asher tensed as he faced his past. “He left when I was a kid, abandoned me and my mom. She said he knew his time was coming, and he was going to try to find a way to survive. What my mother didn’t tell me was that it happened all the time—and that everyone who went out like that almost surely went insane. I spent my whole childhood waiting for him to come back.” He snorted softly. “Talk about a waste of time.”
I sat on the hood of his car, giving him room to pace. “How do you know it’s him now, though? Do they look alike, or what?”
“No. It’s his interest in me. Things he says, the way he acts. And the fact that everything is going to happen on my birthday, on the seventeenth? It’s his way of letting me know he’s still in there, even if he’s not completely in charge. I always wondered what happened to him…” Asher frowned and shook his head. “He must have gone out and looked for the most powerful person he could find, to touch them so that he could mimic them before he went insane.”
“And now he’s pretending to be him—like you’re pretending to be Hector?”
“Like I’m becoming Hector.” Asher made another face. “Although for all I know, he killed the original Maldonado and took his place.”
I blinked. “That’s a thing? That you all do?”
He shrugged one shoulder. “I’m not proud of my people all of the time, Edie.”
“Remind me to never hang out with you in a dark alley.”
Asher gave me a look. “Why would I want to be a nurse when I could be a doctor?”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “You’re gonna need to be someone else entirely when I’m through with you.”
“I kid.” He snorted softly. “I’ve been trying to figure out how he did it, ever since I realized he’d managed to. It’s not like we can have a tea party where he tells me all his tricks. I don’t think he’s able to come out all the way yet, not without breaking his mind, so his interest manifests repeatedly in shitty ways. Graffiti, personal threats, the birthday timing.”
“Nothing personal, but your dad is kind of a jerk.”
“Agreed.”
A silence passed between us, in which I couldn’t believe I was hanging out with Asher again. I wish it’d been under different, better circumstances. But despite the cloud hanging over us both, it was nice to be on the same team again. “Do you know what his plan is? And why now, anyhow?”
“Because he thinks he can control Santa Muerte. And because if he can, he wants to save me. I think. As much as I can guess at anything. I know he thinks Santa Muerte’s the answer. And after the way you described seeing Adriana—she must be the key.”
I swallowed at this. I couldn’t forget Adriana’s suffering, but I didn’t want to condemn Asher. He held his hand out to me, and it was changing, rippling, strange. I willed it to be a trick of the lamplight, and not him losing his form. “I don’t want to know what’s inside my heart on this, Edie. I don’t want to live over the bones of some girl’s corpse, but I don’t know how much longer I can manage to be both Hector and me.” He clenched his hand into a fist, and brought it back to his side. “I don’t want to condemn Adriana to die. But if there’s some way Maldonado can save me—it’s not the kind of choice anyone should ever have to make.” He hung his head. “I honestly thought she was dead, Edie. I had no idea.”
I nodded, even though he couldn’t see me.
“I don’t want to lose myself. That’ll be like dying. And I don’t want to go insane, either. I can feel the voices getting louder, inside my head. They’re all so … angry. It hurts me.”
I didn’t know if he meant emotionally or physically. I didn’t think I wanted to know.
“I spent my whole life doing what shapeshifters were supposed to do. I saved money up, I contributed to the safe houses—the sanatoriums—we send our kind to when they lose their minds. I thought I was ready to go, at peace with my fate. And then Maldonado appeared, telling me to do things like my dad used to do—and then I saw you and—I don’t know what happened to me.” He took a deep inhale. “It’s not too late for me to just give in to Hector. I could just sink into him, and let him win.”
“And that Hector won’t remember me, will he,” I said. It wasn’t a question.
“He wouldn’t know anything about my past. Just his. He might remember this conversation—but he’d write it off like a bad dream. I’ve seen it happen before.” He snorted and looked up at me, the emotion on his face raw. “My own mother doesn’t even remember me. She thinks she’s a housewife upstate.”
I swallowed against the rising knot in my throat. What was happening to Asher was awful. But was it more awful than what was happening to a kidnapped, starved, and tattooed girl? I couldn’t swallow that down—and from the look on his face, neither could he.
I didn’t know what to say, so I opened my arms to him. Asher came over to me and stepped in. I wrapped my arms around his waist, and pressed my head against his chest, as his arms looped over me. I could feel my hair catching on the stubble on his chin. “I don’t want you to go away again.”
He didn’t say anything, just held me close.
If it’d been up to me we would have stayed there forever. I didn’t want to let go. But sooner than I would have liked, he squeezed me one last time and began pulling away from me. I sighed and leaned back.
“I swore to Catrina that I would let her know today, Asher. I’m not going back on that. She deserves to know.”
He nodded above me. His face was Hector’s face. “Today is technically after dawn, and Luz will be asleep. Just give me until tonight. We can regroup and go in with Luz instead of her racing off half-cocked, not knowing what she’s up against, right before sunrise. I don’t think he’ll kill Adriana if he needs her for his ceremony.”
Don’t t
hink didn’t equal know. I bit the inside of my cheek. We were betting somebody’s life either way. Why shouldn’t I bet on Asher’s?
Who the hell was I to make that choice?
I evaded my shadowed conscience by talking. “Why didn’t you tell me earlier that it was you?”
He snorted. “You were being shunned.”
I waved my hand to draw a circle around us. “You’re not doing a very good job of it.”
“Don’t forget you were the one who came to be interviewed,” he said. He was close enough that it would have been so easy for me to touch his face. “When I saw your name on that résumé I didn’t know what to think. And then when you walked in—I tried to not hire you.”
“So me getting the job was some pretense? To keep me in your memories?”
“I don’t know what I was thinking. Maybe I didn’t want to let go.” He gave me a smile full of regret. “If those gangbangers hadn’t come in, you would have been out the door. But when they did, I thought maybe it was a sign. You’re good in dangerous situations. You’re foolish sometimes, but you don’t back down from a fight. And if something happened to me, you’d actually keep working at the clinic. I know you’re the type that’ll go down with the ship.”
I kicked my heels against the side of his car. “Gee, I don’t know if I can take much more flattery.”
“I’m sorry, Edie. I wanted to say something to you so badly. Every single day. Seeing you struggle to find answers hurt me more than you could know.” He looked solemn and sad and worn out. Despite all the lies before, I knew he was now too tired to tell me anything but the truth. “I just didn’t want to drag you down with me. I wouldn’t wish this on anyone.”
If I was going to split moral infinitives tonight, I needed some guarantees. “From here on out, I want to go with you. I don’t want you doing anything without me.”
At this, his face lightened a degree. “Good. I want you there.” He inhaled and exhaled deeply, all the while staring at me like he might not see me again. I couldn’t imagine being forgotten—or being forced to forget everyone I ever knew. “Living like this,” he said slowly, “knowing what’s coming for me—it’s been so lonely.”
I nodded to agree. Being shunned was bad, but his fate was so much worse. “Can you give me a ride home?”
He shook himself, as if coming back to the present, and backed up to give me room to hop off his car. “Of course.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
I was quiet in his car while he drove us. The car, which I hadn’t noticed much of before, was a Datsun from last century. I watched his face in the rearview and his hands, one on the wheel, one on the stick shift beside me. I reached out and laced my fingers through his for old times’ sake. Who knew if we would ever get to make new memories? He nodded, though he didn’t turn his head.
“So why Hector?” I asked him, when the silence had gone on too long.
“I’ve spent most of my life being either a dick or a rogue. I figured it was time to give something back. I saved up a lot of money—my bank account can coast.”
I watched Port Cavell pass by outside in the night. “How old will you be on the seventeenth?”
“Thirty-three. Assuming I can remember that.” We made a left-hand turn onto the highway. “What Dren said back there—was it really Ti?”
“Yeah. And speaking of forgetting—” I blew air through half-parted lips. “I don’t know what he was. He didn’t know me, and he wasn’t acting like him.”
“How long has he been like that?”
“I don’t know. He came over to see me the other night, and he was normal then.” His grip tensed slightly—if I hadn’t been holding his hand I might not have felt it. Or maybe I was reading too much into things; maybe it was just another gear change.
“What happened to him?”
“He said he was in town because someone here could cure him and give him back the other half of his soul so he could finally die. A great magician,” I said more slowly, adding two and two. “Shit.”
“Yeah.” Asher merged into the fast lane of the highway, and then we didn’t have anything to say at all.
* * *
He pulled into the parking lot of my new place, and I tried to pull my hand back casually. He caught it. “Wait.”
“Okay.” I turned to face him. My brain was still having a hard time merging Asher’s personality with Hector’s body. Was this the first time this had happened, us in a car together, or the fortieth? He swallowed before speaking to me.
“It’s just really good to see you again is all, Edie. I’ve been wanting to tell you that for a while.”
“It’s good to see you too, Asher,” I said, because it was. “No matter who you look like.” I leaned back against the closed car door. “I’m going to call the clinic and leave Catrina a message to call me—and when she does, I’ll tell her everything.”
“That’s fair. Don’t tell her about me, though—or this. And call me Hector. It’s easier on me.”
“When I talk to Catrina this morning—doesn’t Luz deserve to know what she’s up against?”
“Luz already knows Maldonado’s a shapeshifter. It’s how they captured Adriana in the first place, I think. He went as someone she knew—Catrina, Luz, or me. Who knows. And the Three Crosses wouldn’t be freaked out by him showing off his powers. They already know he’s magical.”
“Don’t you think she would have searched his current home first?”
“You saw how weak Maldonado made Dren … maybe she couldn’t get close enough to see?”
Which brought up a good point. “If Maldonado is so strong he scares vampires, and he’s trying to control the saint of death, how can we succeed?”
Asher shrugged. “You’re not asking me anything I haven’t already asked myself. There’s a chance I could get in with him, but there’s no guarantees.”
I tried to think out different scenarios, pushing players around on a chessboard inside my mind. “Luz might get killed if she goes in alone. Us going with her isn’t much better, but there’s a chance.”
“I could get us in the door, get his guard down—maybe,” Asher offered.
I nodded. It wasn’t much of a plan, but it was better than Luz running in to replace Dren on Maldonado’s cutting board.
“Just get her to wait for the rest of us, once she finds out. Tell Catrina it’s vital to keep Luz at the Reina’s fortress after sundown tonight until we get there. Tell her you’re bringing Jorgen if you have to. I’ll act surprised when she tells me at work, and then agree to go along with it, and that way we can both encourage Luz to accept our help.”
Encouraging and convincing vampires. Wow. I didn’t know if either of those things was possible. “I feel so much better now that there’s only a fifty–fifty chance she’ll go off and get killed during a rampage.”
Asher snorted. “Me too.” He glanced over my shoulder at the apartments behind me. “I still have to get to work. See you at sundown?”
I smiled softly at him. “I wouldn’t dream of being anywhere else.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
I called the clinic and left a message for Catrina—I hoped by the time she called back I’d still have some tact. It’d been a long night and I was going down.
I got a call shortly after eight A.M. “Well? What?”
I’d been dozing on my couch. It took me a second to remember who it was on the other end of the line.
“Was she there? What did you find?” Catrina’s voice rose, taking my silence for bad news.
“She’s there. She’s alive.”
Catrina whooped on the far end of the line. “Where is she? Is she okay? Did you get her out?”
“Go into a closet, will you?” I told her, and I heard doors open and slam in her path. “Okay. You need to promise me something before I say anything else.”
“Anything. What?”
“I couldn’t get her out, Catrina. She was caged. But she’s alive—she saw me. I told her I�
�d be coming back.”
“You? Pffft. Reina will have her back tonight!”
“No no no. That’s what you have to promise me. Maldonado’s a bruja—he’s more powerful than you think he is. I only made it out alive because I had Jorgen with me. If you send Reina in there alone, there’s a chance she’ll die, and then where would we be?”
“But we’re going in—we’re getting her.”
“We are. I just want you to tell her to wait for us. So she’s not alone.” I could feel her weighing my advice against her urge for expediency. At least she couldn’t tell Luz anything until it was dark. “Please, Catrina. I don’t want to see Luz get hurt.”
“All right. I’ll tell her that. I can’t make promises, though.”
“Not many people can, where vampires are concerned.” I inhaled and exhaled. All my chores for the night were finally through. “I’ll meet you at Reina’s at sundown, okay? And then we can set off together. I’ll bring the Hound.” It was a white lie, but maybe another reason to get Catrina to make Luz wait—she’d already seen it gobble one man alive.
“Okay,” Catrina said, and hung up on me.
* * *
After the night and morning I’d had, I thought I’d be too wired to sleep, but no—the second I was out of my shower, I fell into my bed. I set my alarm for three, and I woke up in almost the same position I’d landed in. I’d slept like the dead.
I got up and walked to the train station. The humidity was worse, and there were thunderclouds overhead. It was fitting it would rain.
I arrived at my mom’s house before the first fat drops. I crouched under the overhang above my parents’ front door, and I almost fell in when Peter opened it.
“You look a sight,” he said.
“Is she up?”
He nodded and let me in.
I walked into what had once been my home. Pictures—some of me—hung on the walls. My mom had framed a drawing I’d made of a fall leaf in the fifth grade. There was a picture of all of us, me, Mom, Jake, minus Peter, plus bio-dad, at the Grand Canyon, when I was like four.
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