Shapeshifted (27 page)

“Your turn.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah. You can’t stay out here like you are now.” I pressed a smile on, as if the events of tonight had never happened. As if I hadn’t had my hands covered in other people’s blood.

“Okay.” He nodded and stepped around me. A few seconds later I heard the water running. I went into the kitchen and made myself coffee. There was a knock at my door.

“You have got to be kidding me.” I set my coffee down and walked over to the peephole, barefoot. Asher stood outside, looking bedraggled. I started unlatching the locks.

“Hec-tor.” I stuttered while saying the right name. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah. Are you?” His eyes were scanning me, as if to make sure I was still whole. Knowing who he was inside, and who he might be after the seventeenth—I wanted to say more, but the seventeenth was only two days away. Technically, it started at midnight tomorrow night. I shouldn’t want to fall on my sword again, like I had with Ti. “Are you sure you’re okay?” he went on, worried by my silence. “I couldn’t ask you back there, but if anything happened to you—”

“I’m fine. Honest.” I nodded quickly to make him believe.

There’d been familiarity between us before, a willingness to touch each other without fear. I wanted that back, no matter who he looked like now. Screw being afraid of getting hurt.

He stepped in, and I didn’t move—I wanted him to step into me.

“Edie?” Ti asked from the hallway, emerging with a towel wrapped around his waist—and several flesh wounds visible on his chest.

“Ti—” I looked back at him and gestured toward Asher, who was perilously close. “This—Asher’s here—” I explained lamely, then swallowed. Ti didn’t know Hector was Asher yet.

“It’s okay.” Asher looked from Ti to me, and stepped back outside again. “I was just coming for my keys.”

I shook my head. I didn’t want to shout out that it wasn’t like that, but I could see his assumptions on his face. “Asher—”

“Asher?” Ti began. I could see the beginning of a change on Asher’s face, as if his other form was being summoned by his name.

“You’ll keep her safe, won’t you?” Asher asked of Ti, taking a step farther back on my stoop, into shadows.

“Asher, don’t go.”

“Don’t apologize, Edie. In a few days—” He held his hand out, not for me to see anything, but because I would know what he meant. On the seventeeth his hands would be fully Hector’s … or no one’s at all. “Keep the car. I’ll take the train.” He turned and went down my stairs.

*   *   *

Maybe I should have run after him. Or maybe he was right. I was exhausted by too much too fast tonight.

“That was Asher?” Ti asked me. “How long has he been pretending to be the doc?”

“Seven months or so.” I stood in my doorway, looking out, willing Asher to return.

“I didn’t mean to startle him, Edie.”

“No, it’s okay. You were just trying to keep an eye on me is all. And I’m still keeping an eye on you.” I tried to sound as light as I had earlier and failed. There wasn’t enough coffee in the world to help me fake it.

“It’s been a long night. You should get to bed.”

“Yeah. I should.”

“I’ve wrung out my clothes. I’ll leave them in your shower to air-dry overnight.”

“I’ll get you sheets for the couch.” I came back with them. He was still wearing just a towel.

“Edie—I’m sorry.” He jerked his chin at the doorway where Asher had been.

I held up my hand and passed the sheets over. “I don’t think I can take any more apologies tonight.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

It was noon when I woke up. The rain had stopped, but it was still gray out, thick clouds with the promise of more to come. I stumbled into my living room, where Ti was lying on my couch. He nodded when I came in.

“Did you have a good night?” I asked him.

“I remember all of it. It’s a start.” He was on top of the sheets and had his clothes on, though they looked worse for the wear. He still had the faint smell of rot. “I need to go now. I thought you should know. I wanted to stay to tell you.” He swung his feet down so he was sitting. “I think we’re going to be fighting again tonight, and I don’t want to be at half speed.”

I read between the lines. He was telling me he was going to go out to feed. If he and I had stayed together, how many times over would we have had that conversation in code? Would I be okay with it? Was I okay with it now? “Thanks for letting me know.”

He stood and started walking toward me for the door at my back. “I didn’t want to just leave this time, you know?”

I nodded and hugged myself with my arms. Better late than never. “Thanks, Ti. I appreciate that.”

“Edie—” he began, drawing up his face to one side like he was going to say something else.

I leaned back and quickly opened up the door. “You should really be going. I have to visit my mom soon. I’ll see you tonight.” I didn’t want to let him in, not even a little bit.

He sighed.

“Okay.” He nodded at me and walked out. I watched him go until the rain began again and hid him from me.

*   *   *

Once Ti was gone I folded into my couch. Was Asher at work today or not? I sent him a text message, one I probably should have sent last night. “That wasn’t what it seemed,” and “Again, tonight? Reina’s?”

Tonight was likely the last night we could save Adriana. It was officially the seventeenth at midnight tonight. And if we didn’t find Adriana, then I wouldn’t have any leverage over Luz, and Santa Muerte would belong to Maldonado, costing me the only thing I could trade to the Shadows for my mom. Tonight was the night. Wherever we went tonight, whatever we did—I wasn’t going to stay behind again.

I got up, went into the bathroom, brushed out my hair, and put on clothes. And then I made the hardest phone call of my life.

She picked up on the third ring. “Hey, Mom.”

“Hi, honey!” She sounded happy to hear from me. “What’s up?”

“Nothing much. I just wanted to tell you that I love you.”

“Awwww, that’s sweet of you. I love you too, dear. Are you coming by tonight?”

“No. We’ve got a meeting scheduled after work.” If I went by now, and I was scared, she’d root me out. Mothers had a kind of magic too. “But I’ll come by tomorrow afternoon, if that’s okay.”

“Sure. I’ve got a doctor’s appointment at three—come over before then, or after six?”

“Can do.”

“I always love hearing from you.”

“Thanks, Mom. I love you.”

“I love you too,” she said again, and I hung up. If she knew what I was doing for her, if she understood everything that was involved, she’d tell me to stop it, that she wasn’t worth it.

She’d be wrong.

*   *   *

My next phone call was going to be to County—I still had their main information line in my phone. But I didn’t know Catrina’s last name, and she might not be able to speak right now besides. I put on all my silver again, grabbed my purse, and ran out to my car in the rain.

The information desk wasn’t much help when I got there, without a last name. But County was a big facility—even though I hit one dead end, it wasn’t hard to leave and loop back in through another unguarded door. I had a suspicion where she’d be at, and it was late enough that some of my old co-workers might remember me as an occasional float nurse there. Through a combination of persistence and luck, I found her in medical ICU. I waved, and she waved back, and it was good enough for her nurse to let me in.

“What’s happening tonight?” she asked slowly as soon as I was close enough to hear her.

“Nothing you’re going to be a part of. How do you feel?” I read the numbers on her monitor. Everything looked fine.

“They found the bullet. It took them a while.” She was pressed flat against the bed like someone who was on the good drugs. I knew if I started fondling IV bags I’d draw her nurse’s ire—but her pupils were wide and her movements slow. Even if she wasn’t on a narcotic drip, she’d been getting them frequently—and understandably, if they’d been fishing inside her guts for a ricocheted round. “What’s going on?”

“You didn’t miss anything else last night. I just wanted to check on you was all. Do you need me to tell your family that you’re here?”

Her dilated eyes slowly fixed on me. “Family? What family? Adriana’s all I have.”

“I’m sorry.” I glanced up at the clock. I probably had an hour, provided I wouldn’t get in the way here. I pulled up a chair. “I can’t believe you got shot.”

Her lips pulled into a low grin. “Me either. Should have been you.” I’d found the small hole in Hector’s door on my way out to my own car. The bullet had gone through the door, through the passenger-side chair, and straight into Catrina.

“Yeah, I know.” I looked around the room—it’d been a while since I’d floated to medical ICU, and a while since I was last here, period. “They treating you right?”

“I don’t hurt much, as long as I don’t move.” She stared off into space. I wondered how long I should stay, if she was tired. Her eyes closed, and I made to stand. The sound of the chair scraping back startled her awake again. “I keep fading off. Sorry.”

“It’s okay. I’ll go now. I’ll come back tomorrow and let you know.”

She didn’t respond, but her eyes closed again. Chances were she wouldn’t even remember my being here. I turned around and took a step toward the door.

“Edie?”

I turned around knowing she might not say another word. People on good drugs were sometimes like that. “Yeah?”

She fought to open her eyes again. “She left me there last night, Edie. She didn’t stay.”

“What?” I turned around and crossed the room to stand at her bedside. She was too wasted to lie.

“Reina set me on a chair in the waiting room, bleeding. She left the second after you did.”

“Are you sure?” Bleeding could cause unconsciousness. And unconsciousness felt a lot like time travel when it was happening. “She had to leave before the dawn.”

“No. I could see the windows—it was dark outside. She just left me behind.”

“That’s not like her.”

“I know.” Catrina’s dark gaze wandered around the room, until it finally landed on me. “I just needed to tell someone. It wasn’t … kind of her.”

I took Catrina’s hand into both my own. “You’re right.”

Information shared, she relaxed again, and soon she began to snore. I stopped by the nurses’ station on the way out and gave them my phone number just in case, and told them I was a family friend. And in the elevator on my way out, despite the fact there were other passengers in it, I knocked on the wall with one hand.

“Hey—Shadows. You’ve got to protect her. Make sure she’s okay.”

They didn’t respond, and as we reached the first floor, all the other passengers avoided looking at me.

CHAPTER FORTY

In my car again, with hours left to kill before sundown, I wasn’t sure what to do or where to go. It wasn’t too late for me to drop in on my mother, but … no. If I went there, she might sense something was wrong and start to worry. Surely the story of last night and tonight was written on my face. Without thinking, I followed the train on street roads, heading farther downtown.

While it wasn’t raining now, last night and this morning had filled in the potholes with water, making their depth hard to judge. My little Chevy swayed from side to side as cement rubble caught alternating tires. The market was closed, due to the weather, I assumed, and I drove down to the Divisadero clinic proper.

Maldonado’s blue sign had been ripped off the door, and a new one put in its place:
CLOSED.

Of course the clinic was closed. With Hector barely himself, and Catrina gone, there’d be no one left to run the ship. The real question was, would it open again? I drove on.

The distances were shorter, now that I wasn’t on foot, and landmarks were easier to find during the day. The rain seemed to have washed everyone away with it—that, or the gunfight last night, made everyone else but me wise enough not to go out.

I canvassed streets until I found the one we’d been on the night before. I recognized the fence Hector had parked his car next to. The rain had washed away all of that boy’s blood. I should have looked at County for him too.

I slowly cruised up the street to where the new Three Crosses church had been. In the day, without the rain, it was much less menacing than the lightning-freeze-frame picture I’d had of it last night. The gates were torn off their hinges—that was all Luz there—and had been reconstructed using woven locked chains. Police tape fluttered, torn down from the places it had been tied, and a lone janitor was shoving water around with a street broom inside.

I stopped the car. The janitor looked up at me nervously; then, seeing only a girl inside the car, shook his head and got back to shoving water around. I eased off the brake and stepped on the gas—and there was a thump from the front of my car. I hit the brakes again and leapt out to see what I’d hit.

The elderly woman I’d saved from the storm drain was huddled in front of my car. “What the—I cannot believe you!”

“¡No te creo!”

“Did I hit you? Are you okay?” She was still wearing County Hospital gowns, soaked to the bone.

“¿Estás tan ciego qué no puedes ver?”
she complained.

“Lady, I still can’t understand you. What the hell are you doing out here?”

The woman put her hands on her hips, and I took her meaning.

“Okay. Maybe if I can’t understand you, I shouldn’t keep asking you questions. But sheesh.” I looked around. “Where did you come from? I’d swear to God you weren’t here just a second ago.”

She squatted back down and played her hands in the water streaming down the gutter from higher ground.

“No no no, you can’t do that. You’ll catch a cold.”

She angrily hit the water, and splashed it at me.

“Hey! Come on—that’s not right.”

She shoved her hands back into the water—there was another storm drain down the street. Some of the water the janitor was brooming out of the Three Crosses compound had made it up to here, a waterfall over the sidewalk’s edge. Looking like some sort of creepy elderly otter, she fished out a handful of rubble and showed it to me.