Shapeshifted Read online

Page 13

  “You were saying?” the daughter prompted me.

  I turned to face the mother and focused my attention on her. “You have to take the medicine. Your daughter loves you; she doesn’t want to be without you. You can’t blame her for wanting you to live, can you?”

  The older woman’s face crumpled a bit at this, but then she recovered and gave a dramatic sigh. “For your sake, I suppose I can pretend that the shots work. ”

  “Good. ” The daughter shook her head and rushed her mother off the table, happy to take any victory she could. She ushered her mother out of the room, then leaned back to roll her eyes in commiseration with me. Aren’t stubborn old people crazy? her look said. I nodded, yes, yes, they were.

  * * *

  I went outside for lunch and found Olympio there. I pulled out the extra sandwich I’d made him, and today he sniffed at it.

  “No thanks, I already ate. ”

  “Fair enough. ” I opened up mine and wolfed it down. “Your grandfather cure anyone lately? Practioner-to-practioner?”

  Olympio grunted. “Of course. He cures everyone he touches. ”

  “An older lady? Diabetes? Recently, from the sounds of it?”

  His eyes narrowed. “Why?”

  “You have to tell him not to say things like that, Olympio. What if that lady had gone home, not taken her medicine, and died?”

  Olympio turned and began walking away from me. “Who’s to say he didn’t heal her? She’s not dead if she came down here, right?”

  “That’s hardly an excuse, Olympio. And even if your grandfather doesn’t know that, you do. ” I caught up to him, waiting for him to look back. No matter what bizarre claims Olympio made, he had to know his grandfather was telling lies.

  Olympio inhaled like he was going to explain things to me, then turned and punched the wall behind him lightly. “Just leave me alone, okay?”

  “Okay. ” I stood there as he faced away from me. I wished I hadn’t pissed him off. I didn’t want his grandfather hurting anyone, but there’d probably been a more sensitive way to convey it, one I hadn’t explored in my flustered-from-this-morning mind. I sat down on the ground and sighed. He didn’t walk farther away.

  I waited what might be an acceptable period of time—and then longer than that, just to be sure—before asking him, “Do you know anything about Reina de la Noche?”

  He was still facing away from me. “Why?”

  “I saw a woman selling their shirts get hassled this morning, by the Three Crosses crew. ”

  Olympio snorted, inhaling deeply, to spit out a wad of phlegm. “That’s just like them. Scared. ”

  “Which ones?”

  “The Three Crosses. Beating up ladies. It’s like them. ”

  He was finally warming up to me—or the topic—again. “What are the Rulers like?”

  “Rulers?”

  “You know. The Reinas. ”

  Olympio rolled his eyes. “Reina de la Noche—it means ‘Queens of the Night. ’”

  “Oh. ” Well, that put a lot of things in perspective. Including vampire bite T-shirts and tattoos. I wondered who the Queen was. The only person I currently knew who could lay claim to that title happened to actually be a vampire. Anna, the vampire who’d gotten me shunned. “Olympio, can you do me a favor?”

  “What?”

  I fished two twenty-dollar bills out of my purse and held the money out. “Can you go buy me a small silver cross?”

  “Why? You don’t seem religious. ”

  “I could be. ”

  “But you’re not. ”

  I couldn’t lie. “No, I’m not. It’s for a friend. Look, you can keep the change, can you get me one, or not?”

  Olympio eyed me for any signs of trickery. Finding none, he went back to his version of a businessman, suave and smug. “No guarantees that there’ll be anyone with those down there today. I keep a twenty just for seeing, okay? Because I could be missing people to send my grandfather’s way here. ”

  “Okay. That’s fair. ”

  He prepared to set off, then turned back. “You have to do me a favor in return, though. ”

  I blinked. This was new. “Sure, what?”

  He gave me a wry look. “Stop pretending that you know Spanish. It’s embarrassing. ”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  I saw myself out the door at five on the dot. While waiting for Tovar, I found Olympio. The storm drain moaned quietly behind him.

  “Did you get it?” I asked him. He handed it out on his palm, a small silver cross, no bigger than my thumbnail.

  “Had to look for it. So you don’t get any change. ”

  “That’s okay. ” It didn’t have a chain attached, and I didn’t even know if it was actually silver, though it was shiny.

  Olympio tsked at me. “Your susto is getting even worse,” he informed me. “If you don’t get a limpieza soon—”

  “I still have that extra sandwich,” I cut him off.

  “Whatever. ” He crossed his arms high on his chest and looked away from me.

  Stubborn, and mad at me. I had to respect him. I looked down at the sandwich. It wasn’t attractive anymore. I hadn’t been paying attention to my lunch bag on the train and it’d been squashed thin. I didn’t want to take it home, and I wouldn’t bring it back to eat it tomorrow.

  I stood up, crossed the street, and chucked it into the storm drain. Maybe I’d plugged the hole, because the distant howling stopped.

  The rest of the staff left—Catrina glaring at me—and then, last, Dr. Tovar came out. “How nice of you to wait for me. ”

  “Well, you know. ” I shrugged. “I wouldn’t want to accidentally get involved in local politics while I was unsupervised. ”

  Olympio, who was ignoring us both, chose then to look over his shoulder and roll his eyes at me.

  I had the silver cross in my palm. I doubted Dr. Tovar was a daytimer—a daytimer would never do anything as selfless as work at a downtrodden public health clinic—but there was the blood, and the tattoos, and too much else unexplained. I’d been thinking about it all afternoon, and this was the least-worst idea I’d had so far. I just wished I had had a chain to put the cross on; that’d make hiding what I was about to do easier.

  “Dr. Tovar—” I began, as a warning, and then reached out to grab his nearest hand in both of mine, pressing the cross flush against his warm brown skin.

  He looked down at our touching hands and his eyebrows rose in bemusement. “Are you trying to have your way with me?”

  I studied him for any reaction, any hint of a sign—and got none. I sighed, and let go carelessly, and the silver cross dropped to the ground. He knelt and picked it up for inspection with a frown. “Really. This? Again?”

  “How do you know?” I asked him.

  He held up the cross and twirled it between thumb and forefinger like it was a freshly plucked daisy. “Crosses and silver, everyone knows. I do watch TV. ” He shook his head while watching me closely. “You really thought I was a vampire?”

  “No. You’re standing in daylight. I thought you might be working for one. ”

  Olympio fully turned back at this, eyes wide, and began watching our conversation, head swiveling like he was following a tennis match.

  “Because of some blood?” Tovar’s expression grew darker, and his voice rose. “You jumped straight to vampires? You’re a nurse, you’re supposed to be scientific, aren’t you? If I’d wanted someone who believed in things like that, I’d just hire Olympio. ”

  “Hey!” Olympio protested.

  “You can’t deny that it’s weird,” I went on, taking a step closer. “There’s so many coincidences. The bite tattoos, the cross tattoos, the blood—”

  His hand caught mine, and I stopped talking. “And you can’t deny that you’re obsessed with it,” he said.

  “Maybe,” I admitted, and I didn’t yank my hand away. He pulled my hand up and s
lapped the cross back into my open palm.

  “I don’t know what you believe, Edie, but we’re not trapped in The X-Files here. ” He looked from the cross to me and back again. His eyes softened with pity for me. “Whatever you think you’re seeing, whatever ghosts you’re chasing from your past, you need to forget about them. You need to move on. ”

  It’s not as simple as that. If I move on, my mom will die was what I wanted to scream at him with all the breath in my chest. But what came out was a spiteful, “Okay. Fine. ”

  He let go of my hand and took a step back, still watching me. “I need to go now. I have some personal business to attend to this evening. But I’m sure Olympio here can take you to the station and see you off safely. ”

  My hand was wrapped so tight around the cross in my palm it was poking me. I shoved it in my pocket and took a huge breath of air, like I was surfacing from a deep pond. “Sure. I’m fine. ” I don’t need you, or your pity, anyway.

  “Okay then. ” He nodded, like we’d decided something together, and turned to go.

  * * *

  Olympio waited until Dr. Tovar had outpaced us for half a block before running ahead of me and turning back. “You really believe in vampires?”

  I sighed and ignored him. Of course it would lead to this. The cross was in my pocket now. If only all of me could fit so neatly into another place, hidden from here.

  “Is the Donkey Lady real?” he asked as a follow-up.

  “Who’s that?”

  “She’s a lady with a donkey head—if you’re under the train station bridge at night, she’ll come out and get you. ”

  I concentrated on this instead of my current set of problems. “Why’s she got a donkey head? And where does she find hay to eat?”

  “She doesn’t eat hay—she eats little kids who believe in her. Which is why I don’t. I mean, I didn’t, but—” Realization dawned on him like the sun over a smooth ocean, full and bright. “Should I be? Is she real? Oh, if she’s real—”