Blessed (4 page)

“Bradley.”

Sure enough, Kieren’s legs and torso lengthened, his chest narrowed, and his goatee disappeared. His brown eyes shone hazel, his complexion lightened, and his dark hair slipped away like a shadow to reveal a blond widow’s peak.

I fought to free myself from his embrace, but Brad was strong. Stronger than I’d realized. Stronger than he used to be?

“Relax, baby.” He threw back his head, flashing his neck. “Have a drink!”

I awoke on the sofa, alone and trembling.

I’d slept so long that, on foot and careful to proceed at a casual, natural speed, I couldn’t hope to make it to Travis’s burial service until noon. I’d considered skipping the whole thing, but regardless of all that had happened, it felt important to pay my respects. Travis had been one of Kieren’s best friends, after all, and a Sanguini’s employee.

Dealing with the cursed baby-squirrel eaters would have to wait.

And of course at some point, I’d have to face the macabre mess waiting back at my house. Uncle D. Or what was left of him. I wasn’t ready for that, either.

I felt weaker outside in the sunshine. Not like I was sick, but more like a human being. Movie myths aside, daylight couldn’t destroy me. I’d seen Brad and my uncle out and about often enough, and Austin was famed for its sunshine.

I’d always taken long strolls in the old neighborhood — listening to the wind chimes and clucking chickens, checking out the new construction, nodding to the statuary of saints. My walks had usually grounded me, given me a leisurely chance to think, away from the bustle of work and high school.

Today felt different. I was agitated. Wary. Every once in a while I’d feel a tingle at the back of my neck and — to no avail — scan the landscape for Brad. I might exist like this for centuries. How long would it be before I stopped looking over my shoulder?

No, it was worse than that. Brad could travel short distances as mist, dust — unseen. I shuddered despite the sunshine. If I started obsessing, I’d be useless.

Along the way, I passed a pink cottage and noticed piñata remains littering the side yard beneath an oak tree. Children lived there. Vulnerable children.

Kieren’s blood had made for a filling meal, but how much control did I have? How long might it be before I prowled this neighborhood on the hunt?

Magnolia Shade was a cozy, slightly overgrown cemetery kept up by the historical society. I hoisted one leg after the other, like scissors, over the white wooden border fence. The Reids must have had a family plot here for generations.

By the time I spotted the grave site, the crowd had begun to break up. I estimated over a couple hundred mourners. From a distance, I recognized most of the sophomore class, plus a handful of Sanguini’s employees.

In my Fat Lorenzo’s T and running pants, I wasn’t dressed for the occasion, and I had no desire to make small talk. So, I hung back, behind a pecan tree, and watched.

A crow settled on a nearby branch as snippets of conversation floated my way.

“. . . so young.”

“. . . closed casket.”

“. . . grab some barbecue?”

A handsome woman in a tailored black dress strode in my general direction and, a beat later, I recognized her as Kieren’s mother, Meara Morales. She looked pensive, preoccupied, at least until I stepped from my hiding place.

“Quincie!” Miz Morales rushed to hug me like I was her own cub. “Are you —?”

“Fine,” I said. “I’m fine. It’s just been . . . an intense few days.”

Her generous eyebrows drew together. “You smell of Kieren and blood.”

Rolling down the gravel road in the Moraleses’ Chevy, I launched into an edited version of last night’s events. I emphasized that Kieren had delayed leaving only because he’d discovered that I might be in danger and that his injuries were on the mend. I made a point of mentioning Miz Morales’s van, still parked in the restaurant lot. But I didn’t say word one about Uncle Davidson or my own undeath.

“So,” she interrupted, “Sanguini’s ‘vampire’ chef
was
a real vampire.”

“You knew?” I had no idea how much Kieren had told his parents.

She turned at the cemetery gate. “Mrs. Levy told me.”

“Our English teacher?”

Navigating through the neighborhood, Miz Morales explained that Mrs. Levy had stopped by the house to say that she’d helped Kieren slay Vice Principal Harding yesterday at school. “She knows about us. She swore, though, not to reveal our secret to anyone.”

Miz Morales was talking about her Wolf heritage and, by extension, that of Kieren and his baby sister, Meghan.

The existence of shifters had been widely dismissed as legend until the mid-1800s, when a Maine senator shifted into a werebear at President James Buchanan’s inaugural ball. The poor Bear was promptly shot dead, setting the standard for the majority of human-shifter interactions that followed. Consequently, many werepeople, as they preferred to be called (regardless of the fact that the term “man-people” didn’t make literal sense) and hybrids chose to pass as human beings.

Miz Morales braked at Congress and Academy. “By now, the medical examiner has confirmed that the vice principal was undead. And certainly an attack by a vampire in wolf form could explain Mr. Bianchi’s murder every bit as well as — if not better than — an attack by a werewolf.”

Vaggio Bianchi had been our original chef, the world’s biggest Sinatra fan, a hit with the older ladies, and my honorary grandparent. It was his murder that Bradley and friends had timed to occur in Sanguini’s kitchen right before Kieren had arrived at the scene. The facts against Kieren were circumstantial, but if the cops ran his DNA and found Wolf, the truth wouldn’t matter. Equal rights, equal justice . . . those concepts weren’t generally applied to werepeople, not in the human-controlled world, anyway.

Even before the murder, the Moraleses had already decided that Kieren would leave home to join a Wolf pack at age eighteen. But the investigation had moved up that timeline. Though the police had only questioned him, it had quickly become clear that Kieren’s lingering in Austin wasn’t worth risking his being arrested and outed as a hybrid.

I glanced over at Miz Morales. “If the cops are thinking vampire . . .”

She parallel parked on my dead-end street. “It helps, of course, but Vaggio wasn’t simply drained. Vampires typically kill to drink, and APD hasn’t been able to pinpoint a motive for such an elaborate setup or anything to link the vice principal to —”

“What about me?” I asked. “I go to Waterloo High, Vice Principal Harding worked there, and I own Sanguini’s.”

“I’m sure the police have already considered that.” Miz Morales ran a hand through her thick hair. “As have I.”

Something in the way she said it hinted that Meara suspected me of she-wasn’t-sure-what. Or at least that she hadn’t ruled out she-wasn’t-sure-what.

I couldn’t blame her. She had been best friends with Mama since before I was born, had always treated me like family. But nobody — however unwittingly — had been in thicker with the evil vampires than me.

Shifters might be immune to demonic infection, but humans certainly weren’t.

As I gazed out the passenger-side window at my cheerful-looking green-and-purple house, my jaw clenched at the memory of last night’s events. I’d walked in on Ruby in Uncle D’s second-floor bedroom only moments after she’d staked him through the back.

The werecat was some kind of spy or assassin or both, working undercover against the undead. She’d been pretending to be my uncle’s girlfriend.

Ruby had taken one look at my newly red eyes and extended fangs and sprang at me — claws out. I’d had no choice but to shoot her in self-defense.

Fortunately, it had looked like only a flesh wound, and as a shifter, she’d heal quickly. Wherever she’d gone.

Gone. Ruby was gone. But Uncle D’s body was still upstairs.

Suddenly, it clicked. “I know the motive in Vaggio’s murder,” I announced, “and I can prove a direct connection between him and at least one confirmable vampire.” Opening the car door, I added, “I can clear Kieren’s name!”

“My God!” Miz Morales made the sign of the cross. “That’s your uncle!”

I winced at the sight of Uncle Davidson — the medically verifiable vampire who’d managed the restaurant where Chef Vaggio Bianchi had been murdered — sprawled facedown and naked on his bed, his bottom half mostly covered by brown-and-gold linens.

His neck had been broken and bloodied. His heart had been staked.

“They killed Vaggio,” I explained, “to bolster Sanguini’s mystique, to frame Kieren, and most of all, so Brad could take Vaggio’s place as Sanguini’s chef.”

“But why Kieren?” Miz Morales asked. “Why did he matter to them?”

I’d been afraid she’d ask. “Brad viewed him as a rival. For . . . my affections.”

While Miz Morales punched 911 into her cell, I retreated from the bloody scene, taking refuge in my own bedroom. It felt familiar, but not. Like everything else today.

I glanced at the long-stem red calla lilies in the crystal vase on my dresser — a gift from Brad — and then bent to pluck the gauzy, white sleeveless nightgown from my Oriental rug. This was what he had dressed me in on the night I’d died.

Without thinking, I ripped it in two and then ripped it again.

By the time Meara had finished her call, I’d thrown the scraps away.

Minutes later, Detectives Zaleski and Wertheimer arrived.

Zaleski towered — at six foot five, six foot six? — and was built like Sasquatch. At one in the afternoon, he already had a five-o’clock shadow. Wertheimer was slight, with an upturned nose, and he stood an inch shorter than me. I’d have bet money that Zaleski was a Bear and Wertheimer some kind of omnivore shifter (maybe a Possum, like Clyde). I suspected they already knew that Kieren was both innocent and a Wolf.

All I had to do was fill in the blanks, leaving out a few minor details (like the fact that the bad guys had killed me). Over Meara’s protest, I admitted to having shot Ruby on the theory that the police would’ve figured it out anyway.

Zaleski said he believed that I was acting in self-defense, though Wertheimer did confiscate my grandfather’s gun and take a sample of Ruby’s blood from Uncle D’s room.

I wasn’t worried about being charged with anything. Even if they thought it had been attempted murder, there was no recorded history of anyone ever being convicted for a crime against a wereperson, and we all knew it.

I also mentioned that Ruby and my uncle had bragged last night about killing the officers who’d been originally assigned to investigate Vaggio’s murder.

I’m not sure it was all by the book (possibly, as shifters, the detectives had their own way of working within a system that sometimes discriminated against people like them). Their demeanor did become more formal after the small army of uniformed officers showed up. But in any case, everything had changed. Kieren had not only escaped being officially charged in Vaggio’s murder; now he was cleared of suspicion for good.

As a TV news van turned onto my street, Miz Morales put the sedan into gear.

“Did you call Kieren?” I asked from the seat beside her. Meara had stepped outside with her cell phone while I’d been talking to the police. “Do you know when he’ll be back?”

“Quincie,” she began, “I’m sorry, but no.”

“But —”

“Regardless of the investigation, Kieren agreed to leave for the Wolf pack.”

“I know, but —”

“He can’t manage his shift, so he can’t live in the human world — period.”

In my excitement, I’d almost forgotten. Full Wolves like Miz Morales could shift at will to Wolf form and back. No drama, no trauma, no carnage.

From what I understood, it was harder for them
not
to shift when the moon was full, but moonlight was by no means required.

Meara’s half-human son, Kieren, on the other hand, couldn’t even make it halfway or control himself — his teeth and claws — once a shift began. He was a danger to himself, to everyone. As much as he’d wanted to, Kieren had never mastered his inner beast.

“But now he doesn’t have to go right away. He could wait until he turns eighteen, like you’d planned. Or until after graduation.”

“Quincie, it’s done.” Her voice left no room for argument.

I argued anyway. “What if the Wolf pack helps him? If he can finally fully —”

“Don’t get your hopes up,” Miz Morales warned, hitting her turn signal. “Hybrids . . .” She pursed her lips. “They’re rare for a reason. Most werepeople are too responsible to bring bi-species kids into the world.”

Whatever that was about. I turned my face away from Miz Morales’s watchful gaze. If I got too upset, my eyes might turn red. My fangs might come down. I couldn’t chance revealing myself. Undead or not, I had lives to save, a restaurant to run.

“How long will it be before I can go back home?” I asked, changing the subject.

“What do you mean, go back home? You’re only seventeen.”

I wasn’t sure what Miz Morales was getting at. I didn’t have any parents or grandparents. Uncle Davidson had been Daddy’s only sibling, and Mama had been an only child. “If you think I’m going into foster care —”