—I guess,—Julio thought. He had started shrugging off hugs when he turned twelve, embarrassed by them. But he occasionally stood still for one if there was no one around to see. He climbed to his feet and went to the door. “Let me take those, Mom,” he said.
—What is all this?—asked his insider, peering at the groceries.
—Food.—
—Food. Food? Tell me. Show me. Touch her. Now.—
—Cut that out.—Julio took the bags from his mother. “There’s more in the car,” she said. “Are we having a party?”
“Looks like you’ve been shopping for a party,” Julio said.
“Of course. I’m catering a birthday at the Larsons’ tomorrow, and you’re helping, remember?”
Oh, yeah. He had forgotten he had this job. What about the meeting at the haunted house?
“Julio,” said Mrs. Hawkins and Mr. Marino at the same time.
“What did you do this time?” his mother asked.
“I was playing my music too loud. I got carried away for a minute, that’s all.” He crossed the living room and went into the kitchen/dining room, set the grocery bags on the red kitchen counter, and headed back out.
“That’s not the problem,” said Mr. Marino. “You’ve got to play the finish now.”
“I’ve got to get the groceries,” Julio said, brushing past him.
He paused in the doorway of the apartment and hugged his mother, held her tight. After a moment she unfroze, brought her arms up, and hugged him back. She smelled so good, apple shampoo and some cooking smells and a certain spice of her own. And there was something in the shape of a hug he had never noticed before, some kind of complicated equation the insider knew that flitted through his mind and was gone before he could grasp it. He wanted to hold his mother and have her hold him for an hour or two, but she shifted and he let her go. “Julio?” she murmured, looking up into his eyes, questions in the shape of her mouth.
“Hey. Youngster,” Mr. Marino said. “Come back here and show us what you were doing!”
“Things might melt.” Julio pushed past his mother, dashed down the hall, and clattered down the stairs, hoping the neighbors would be gone by the time he got back.—What did you do, anyway? And who are you?—
—Who am I?—the voice asked itself while Julio lifted armloads of groceries out of the back of his mother’s blue Pacer.—Not who I was,—it decided.—What’s this smell?—Julio set one of the bags of groceries down and grabbed a grapefruit out of it. He sniffed the grapefruit.—It’s—He found himself biting the rind. Then he yelled at its bitter taste, and the sour juices that squirted out afterward.
“Stop that!”
—It smelled so good,—said the voice in mournful tones.
“Stop doing things without asking first!”
“Julio?” His mother put her hand on his shoulder. “Who are you talking to? Are you all right?”
“No,” he said, while the voice said,—Her hand is so warm and soft. Ahhh.—“Something happened to me today and I’m all mixed up now.”
“Want to talk about it?”
Alone among the four who visited the haunted house after school most days, Julio had actually talked to his mother about ghosts and magic. She worried about him, and about Susan. He didn’t know if his mother believed the things he said, but she didn’t challenge or deny them. She was glad to know, she said, and she could tell that whatever they were doing, it eased things for Susan, and it didn’t seem to be hurting Julio. So it was okay with her.
“I think I’d like that,” he said, unsure. If only he knew who the voice was, whether it had plans, what it wanted.
“Let’s take these things upstairs. I did buy ice cream for the 7-Up punch. Gotta get that into the freezer.” She lifted a bag, and he grabbed the rest of them, so she slammed the car door shut.
Mrs. Hawkins still stood in their apartment, her arms crossed over her chest. She frowned as they came in. “I want some answers.”
“Georgia, really, we need to put supper together. Can’t we talk about this later?” Julio’s mother said.
“I know how slippery you are, Juanita. If I drop this now, I’ll never find out what’s going on.”
“What a thing to say.”
“How many times have we had this conversation? Quit being evasive. Talk to me now, Juanita,”
“How can I? I don’t know what’s going on myself. Go home, Georgia. You’re probably better off not knowing anyway, don’t you think?”
Mrs. Hawkins frowned some more, then muttered and humphed her way out of the apartment.
—Neighbors? Are neighbors good?—
—Sometimes,—Julio thought. Most of the people who lived in their building were retired. Mrs. Hawkins used to watch him after school before his mother got home. She had given Julio his first piano lessons. Mr. Marino had let Julio play with his cats and borrow his books, had taught him chess and poker. Other people in the building had helped him, taught him, given him Popsicles in the summer, hot chocolate in the winter, jobs: grocery shopping for them, payment for caring for houseplants and cats when they traveled; he liked almost all of them and felt lucky to be living in the midst of them. Except none of them liked noise.
He followed his mother into the kitchen. They unloaded grocery bags and put things away.
“What can you tell me?” asked his mother.
“Today I got kidnapped,” Julio said.
“What?” She turned toward him, dark eyes wide.
“Look,” he said. He tapped his chest. “I’m okay. But this witch guy came to school and kidnapped me, all right?”
“Is this a joke?”
“No.”
She stared at him some more. She touched his face, his shoulder. “All right,” she said. “Then what?”
“He took me up in the mountains to some house. There was another witch up there. The man started asking me about my friends. I wouldn’t answer, and he cast an evil spell on me.”
She searched his face. She set down the bag of oranges and the loaf of bread she had just pulled out of a bag. She took Julio’s hands in hers, led him to the dining table, settled him in one chair and herself in another, facing her. “Tell me.”
“He threw me out of my body, Mom. Threw me out and put someone else in.”
She squeezed his hands and leaned toward him. “Such a thing,” she said. “Ay, mijo. Such a thing.”
He looked away from her for a moment. “I went to hell, I think.”—Was that hell?—he thought.
—Perhaps. It was home. All I knew before I came here.—
“You saw that place? Are you all right?”
“Do you know the place I’m talking about, Mama?”
“There’s more than one place you could call that. I’ve never been to any of them, but I’ve heard about them. I studied to be a bruja, a curandera, when I was a little girl, Julio. Did I tell you that? Maybe not. It was the nigromancia that drove me away from it.”
Julio straightened and stared at her.
“Once my master taught me to see the shadows, I saw them everywhere,” she said. “I didn’t want to live like that, so I turned away from it. I have been thinking that perhaps you are looking at these things. You have to make your own choices about them.” She pressed his hands and released them. “So you have been to hell. Are you all right, mijo?”
“I don’t know. I went to the place of nightmares, but I escaped with help from my friends. Then when I got back into my body, the other person who was in it left in a hurry. I think parts of him are still here.”
She sat back and crossed herself. Her eyes narrowed. “He made you bite a grapefruit,” she said.
“He played the music they were talking about.”
“The music. He is the one who hugged me, yes?”
Julio nodded.
She straightened. For a long time she stared at the ceiling and tapped her lips with her index finger. She swallowed twice. Her hands closed into fists. At last she said, “Can I talk t
o him?” Cement edged her voice.
Julio bit his lower lip.—Will you talk to her?—
—Of course.—
“Go ahead,” Julio said to them both.
“You, inside my son. What’s your name?”
“I can’t tell you my name. That would be foolish.” His voice sounded the same as Julio’s, though his vocabulary and accent were a little different. How was Julio’s mother going to know this stranger was real?
“Make one up,” she said.
“Tabasco.”
Juanita laughed, startled.
—Where’d you get that?—Julio thought.
He glanced at the counter, saw the bottle of Tabasco sauce, part of the groceries they hadn’t put away yet.
—You can read?—Julio asked his insider.
He got a mental image of the stranger settling into his mind as though it were a comfortable recliner.—Lots of good stuff I can use in here,—it said.—Skills. Memories. Information.—
—Use for what?—This was the crux of the problem.
—Whatever we want to do next,—Tabasco thought.
—We, huh?—Julio wondered how he could trust this stranger.
“What do you want with my son?” asked Julio’s mother.
“I just want to stay here instead of going back,” said the insider. “I don’t want to live in hell any more than Julio did.”
“Does this mean you never actually left me? I thought Nathan drove you out,” Julio said.
A moment’s silence drifted by. “I don’t know,” Tabasco said. “I did feel myself being scooped out and pushed away. Banished. I lost you. As soon as you got here, though, I woke up again. But I’m not my whole self. Much of me is missing. I’m less than I was: less angry, less mean, less hungry, less strong.” He felt his left forearm with his right hand, then checked out his right shoulder, touched his face. “I’m shaped like you. I know I am. I’m not myself, but I’m not entirely you either.”
“That stuff you made me do before. The water knife. The green fire. The music.”
Tabasco waited. “What about it?” he asked at last.
“How could you do that stuff?”
“How could you not?”
“What things are those, mijo?” Juanita asked.
Julio held up his hand, stared at it. He crooked his index finger, remembering the blade that came from it to slice magical bonds, green fire that flared from it to heal a cut on Tasha’s hand.—Can you do that stuff whenever you want to?—he thought.
—Sure. You want me to now?—
—I don’t know.—
—Hey. Watch this.—Julio watched as both his hands rose. He rubbed his thumbs across the tips of his fingers, and colored flames whooshed up, green, orange, blue, red, yellow, cool flickering light flaring almost to the ceiling.
“Stop!” cried Juanita.
Julio rubbed his palms across each other, and the flames vanished. “Didn’t hurt anything,” said Tabasco. “Just for pretty.”
“You some kind of diablo? Demonio?”
“Maybe.”
“What you going to do to my boy? You going to hurt him?”
“Hurt him? Hurt my home?” Tabasco settled deeper into Julio’s skin, muscles, organs, veins, arteries, down to the marrow of his bones. He melted into the folds of Julio’s brain. “Of course not. I will do everything I can to keep us safe.”
“You better not hurt my son in any way,” said Juanita. “You do anything that hurts my boy and I will call back everything I know about your kind and how to control them. I will know what to do to you. Do you understand?”
—Can she do anything to us?—
—She never lies. Unless she’s teasing. She’s not teasing now,—Julio thought. He could not figure out where his allegiance lay. With his mother, who wanted to protect him? He wanted to be safe. With this new half person inside him, who offered strange powers and wonders such as he had longed for? He couldn’t side with Tabasco against his mother; could he side with his mother against Tabasco? He hoped he would never have to.—Do you mean harm to anyone?—
—Do I?—Julio felt Tabasco’s thoughts kindle until the flames in them burned white-hot.—Oh, yes. He who called and controlled me. Oh yes. I would harm him if I could.—
“Julio!”
Julio blinked. He smelled burning wood, and saw that the kitchen table smoked where his hands lay on it. He snatched his hands away and looked at smoking black handprints against the white paint, scared down into the wood. “Sorry.” He stared at his palms. They looked normal.
“Who’s apologizing?” asked his mother.
“It’s me, Julio. I wondered if he wanted to hurt anybody, and he said, yeah, the guy who controlled him. Same guy who tossed me out of my body. Not you or me. Got him kind of worked up.”
Juanita’s eyes kindled with black fire. “I’d like to get my hands on that man myself.”
For a moment she and Tabasco exchanged fiery stares, in perfect accord. Juanita turned away first. She studied her burnt kitchen table. “It’s pretty,” she said. “Can you do that all around the edge?”
Julio frowned and consulted his insider, “Oh. sure. No problem. Would it be practical, though? I could just paint over it.” He ran his fingers over the charred spots. They did dip down a little, and they weren’t smooth.
“Make the pattern and then we can shellac over it. Hey, Tabasco, maybe you could go into furniture design. Let’s do some yard sales on Saturday, Julio. See what we can pick up for cheap. Refinish things and sell them to a gallery, maybe.”
“Okay.” Julio smiled and leaned on his hands on the table. Now that he was paying attention, he felt the heat kindle in his hands and eat down into the wood. He could even taste the char, pleasant, smoke-flavored. He moved along the table, curling his hands, sometimes spreading the fingers, experimenting, at least until the smoke alarm went off.
At its startling, ear-piercing squawk, Tabasco clapped his hot hands to his ears. For an instant Julio felt searing pain on the sides of his head, and he smelled burning hair. Then something in him shifted, and the pain vanished.
“Stupid thing.” Juanita got up on a chair, pulled the cover off the smoke alarm, and took the battery out of it. The squawking stopped.
—If we’re going to be what we are, we need some protection,—Tabasco thought. Green flame flared over all of Julio’s exposed skin, tickled inside his shirt, pants, and socks.
“What are you doing?” Juanita asked.
Julio’s hand rose. Flame green as pine needles streamed from his hand and enveloped her. At first she cried aloud. Then she looked down at her flickering arms through the film of flame on her face, and said, “Oh! It doesn’t hurt. What is it?”
“Protection. So I won’t burn you by mistake,” said Tabasco. “Fire is my element, and it acts wilder here than it did where I came from. This world is much more fragile.” He sketched some signs with Julio’s first two fingers, and the flame flickered out. He touched his ear, felt the singed ends of hair, which left smudges on his fingertips. “There’s so much I don’t know yet.”
“Tell me when you have a plan like that,” said Juanita. “Before you actually do it. Okay? I need a chance to say no.”
“All right,” said Tabasco. Julio said: “Impulse control isn’t his strong suit.”
“Por dios,” muttered Juanita. “Please make teaching him that a priority, mijo.”
“I’ll try,” Julio said. “Da me un beso,” Tabasco said.
Juanita gave him a quick kiss, then looked puzzled. Tabasco touched the spot on his cheek and smiled at her.
Julio fried grilled cheese sandwiches while Juanita made a salad from romaine lettuce, green peppers, shredded cheese, diced tomatoes, red onion, and sunflower seeds.
—What are these smells?—Tabasco leaned close to the frying pan, sniffing at the golden fried bread and melting cheddar cheese.
—Cut that out. It’s dinner. You’ll get a chance to taste it soon enough.—
&nb
sp; —I want it now.—He reached into the hot pan and broke off a piece of sandwich.
“Yow!” Julio yelled in reflex, shaking his hand before he realized he didn’t feel any pain. “Huh?”
—Give me.—Tabasco shoved the corner of sandwich into their mouth and chewed.—Oh! Wonderful!—
For a moment Julio was staggered by the everyday tastes of melted cheese and toasted bread, the pleasant heat and texture of it, the satisfying feel of chewed food sliding down his throat. His whole body went alert with delight.
“Now what?” asked Juanita.
Tabasco grabbed the rest of the sandwich out of the pan. “Stop it,” Julio said. “Put that back.”
“Want more.”
“Put it down. Quit grabbing!”
“I’m starving.”
“Julio?”
Julio stood with the sandwich in his hand and listened to his stomach grumble. How long had that yawning pit in his middle been signaling to him? “Mom, I’m sorry,” he said, and ate the rest of the sandwich. “I’m sorry,” he repeated between bites. Every bite tasted as wonderful as the first. He could tell Tabasco was already contemplating what else to cat.
His mother watched him.
“I’m sorry,” Julio said a final time after he had licked his fingers. “He doesn’t listen very well, and I was so hungry all of a sudden.” He slid the second sandwich, already built and waiting, into the pan.—Don’t you dare touch this one,—he thought.—It’s for Mom.—
“Terrible manners, Juanita said.
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“And you reached into a hot frying pan. Let me see your hand.”
Julio held out his hand, and his mother looked at it, then turned it over and examined the back. She glanced at him, her eyebrows lowered into a frown.
“‘I guess that green fire made it so I don’t burn.”
“Did that work on me too?” She held a hand out toward the pan, edged her finger closer and closer and finally touched the edge. She waited a moment, then lifted her finger and looked at its untouched tip. “Fabulous,” she said.
“I need more food.” said Tabasco, one hand on his stomach.
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