Shapeshifted (25 page)

“It’s going to be difficult,” Olympio narrated to me. “He’s made of magic—it’ll be hard to pull the
malo
magic out of him while leaving him whole. How do you know him?”

“He’s an old friend.”

“You and your friends,” Olympio said.

At least Ti was still for the procedure. He hadn’t moved an inch since the
curandero
had begun. I was getting tired of standing and went to lean back against the wall. Ti’s amber eyes tracked me. Angry, accusing, scared? They were impossible to read, and then they closed, as slack as the rest of him. I hoped Asher was okay.

When the
curandero
had finished hitting him with herbs, he lit them on fire and set them in a metal pan.
When’s the last time the fire marshal visited?
I wondered darkly. Then the
curandero
pulled out a white egg.

I was surprised to see it wasn’t already black. I assumed that part of the procedure was sleight of hand—still might be, I realized. I kept an eye on the egg while the
curandero
waved it over Ti’s body, praying even more loudly, as if he could shout Maldonado’s influence away.

I nudged Olympio. “What’s the point of this?”

“Same as when he did it to you. My grandfather’s pulling the bad energy out of him and putting it into the egg.”

“Poor egg,” I said.

“Better it than us. The energy has to go somewhere.”

Between the candle smoke in the room and the endless chanting, I started feeling claustrophobic. But I didn’t want to disrupt the ceremony. Gah, did I really believe in magic now? Was I one of those people? I always wanted to punch those people at the hospital, when they’d brought their crystals into their sick friends’ rooms and hung Tibetan prayer banners from the walls.

It wasn’t even the paraphernalia so much as the type of people who enthusiastically believed in it, and tried to convert you to their tantric chanting ways. When you’re performing actual science, those people get irritating fast. And I didn’t want to get started on the patients who believed crazy things, like water was poisonous, and mosquitoes were recording their conversations. Some people’s brains were porous due to stupidity, damage, or drugs, and once bad ideas got in there, they were impossible to shake out again.

But there
was
magic in the world. The vampires and were-things and shapeshifters, I could blow off as alternative life-forms. But whatever held Ti together was truly magic—hell, he’d been alive since the Civil War.

Magic, and a strange hope he could be happy someday, even if he had to wait until he got to heaven. Ti was strangely like my mom. I snorted and smiled at him, and his eyes opened.

The
curandero
splashed what must have been pure alcohol on the herbs in the pie tin at Ti’s feet, and lit it into flame with a cheap plastic lighter. It would figure that there was no smoke alarm in this room, and that Ti used to be a firefighter.

“You okay?” I whispered to him, hoping he could read my lips. He didn’t respond. The
curandero
’s prayers went quiet and intense, then loud again, repetitively, as if his words were ocean surf. He lunged in and pressed the egg against Ti’s forehead.

At first I thought it was smoke from the fire he’d already illegally lit—the blackness swirling around the white eggshell. Then the egg changed color like it was being dipped in weak dye, turning a gray so faint I could hardly see it, then progressively becoming darker, until the shell was night black.

Olympio raced around me into the back room, then returned with another egg. He ran up to exchange this one with his grandfather while carefully setting the black one into the charred pie pan. I could swear it started rocking from side to side.

It was really black. I sat on my haunches against the wall, trying to figure out how the
curandero
had done that.

The second egg changed colors now. Olympio produced a third fresh egg and set down the second, which began to spin. The
curandero
’s hand with the new egg in it began to shake.

Ti leaned forward, pressing the
curandero
back.

“No. Ti—” I ran forward, so if Ti raised his hands I could put myself in harm’s way. Olympio’s grandfather hadn’t asked for this.

The black eggs in the pie tin cracked and things slithered out of them, pouring over the edges of the shallow metal pan. Like snakes made of smoke, endless numbers of them writhed out of the broken shells, trying to crawl toward Ti’s legs. I tried to kick them out of the way. It burned where they touched me, and they bit me like tiny vipers, striking again and again with small black fangs. The
curandero
stayed still, the final egg trapped between Ti’s forehead and his palm. Ti blinked, coming to eerie life.

“Ti,” I whispered.

My legs were on fire—I could feel their bites through my shoes down to my foot bones. I didn’t know if the snakes were poisonous. I knew this couldn’t be good for me, but I couldn’t leave Ti.

He leaned forward and lifted up one leg like he was going to walk off the foil cross.

“Ti, don’t.”

I got as close to him as I could. His lifted foot dropped, touching down on the carpeting outside the cross.

“Ti—you remember me. I know you do. It’s why you didn’t hurt me the other night.” I reached out for him, and electricity snapped between us like winter static. I grabbed his wrist and it thrummed, quivering like one of those carnival games where they say they’ll test your love power.

And that’s sort of what this was, wasn’t it? Even if we were through. There had been something there between us, once upon a time. It was gone now, but not erased. I’d never let go.

“I know you remember me.”

His other arm swung wide, sweeping the
curandero
to the ground, crutches and all. Olympio’s grandfather kept praying, even as he landed on the floor, the blackening egg he held smashed. I took his place, centering myself in front of Ti. I couldn’t give up on him, not when him being here was my fault.

“I know you can hear me, Ti. You’re in there somewhere.” His amber eyes were staring down at me. I reached up to touch his chin with my free hand, like the last time he’d touched me. There was electricity there too, as if where we touched we completed a circuit. “Come back to me.”

The door to the room opened up, and Luz flew in from the hallway outside. Her teeth were out, and she raced in the way full vampires can: from
not there
to
in your face
in half a second.

“You liar!” she shouted at the top of her lungs as she lunged for me.

Ti ripped his arm free from my grasp and punched her. She flew across the room and landed against the wall.

She stared down at her concave chest, where Ti’s violence and her prior speed had caved it in. Snap by sickening snap, she reknitted before our eyes.

“Don’t ever hurt Edie,” Ti said, and then sagged forward. I caught him.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Luz stood as soon as she could and jerked her chin at Ti. “What is that thing?”

“
He
is a zombie.” I helped set him to standing again. I stood on the side of him opposite from Luz. Even though she was injured, she was still pissed and fast. “What happened tonight? Why are you here?”

“I went there and found nothing!”

“You didn’t wait for Hector or me?”

“Catrina told me—and I have waited long enough!” She pounded her fist into the wall behind her. It shook.

I didn’t want to ask if Adriana was dead. If she was, it was something that’d be written on my conscience until the day I died. “What did you find there?”

“The whole place was emptied out. I could smell the blood—I could smell that she’d been there. But she and everyone else, and everything, were gone.” Luz sounded mystified with herself. “I don’t know how they were keeping me from seeing it before … when she disappeared, that was the first place I checked. I know I checked it. Repeatedly. I know I did.” She sounded more like she was trying to convince herself than us.

People remembering actions they’d never done had a feel of familiarity. Either the Shadows were here, mucking things up—unlikely, seeing as it was in their best interests that I somehow complete my quest—or it was House Grey, as Dren had suspected, loaning or teaching Maldonado their powers. They wanted Santa Muerte for themselves, even though they wouldn’t get their own hands dirty to do it—just help out Three Crosses and Maldonado.

Ti was still leaning on me when Hector arrived with Catrina. Olympio helped his grandfather to stand. Ti turned toward the old man. “Is it broken? Am I fixed?”

The
curandero
spoke, and Olympio translated. “Fixed for now. No guarantees, though. Once you’ve been touched by a
bruja,
he can always find a door.” He looked at me and said something else, but Olympio didn’t translate it. The
curandero
laughed aloud, triumphant, holding the smashed remains of the last black egg. The snakes—or whatever it was that they’d been—were gone. I looked at my ankles and they were covered in red welts, oozing serous fluids. I’d worry about that later.

“Luz—are you okay?” Luz was touching herself like she couldn’t believe what had just happened. Either Luz’d never seen herself heal as a vampire before, or she was used to beating on people a lot more fragile than a zombie.

Catrina and Hector arrived. “What happened?” Catrina asked.

“I went there, and she was gone.” Luz glared at me. “If you’d come to me sooner, last night—”

“Then you’d have been killed. He’s more powerful than you think,” Hector said, surveying the room. His gaze landed on me, still holding Ti, and looked displeased. “We came as soon as we could.”

“Thanks.” I turned toward Ti. “Are you better?”

“I’m not homicidal anymore. Better might take a while.” He pushed himself up. “What’s the vampire’s deal?”

“Ti—now that you’re fixed, what do you remember?”

“How does this help?” Luz demanded.

I ignored her. “Ti—there was a girl incarcerated with you. The one I told you about. Do you remember any more now than you did earlier today?”
Incarcerated
sounded better than
jailed.
They’d both been prisoners, in a sense. Unwilling.

Ti’s brow furrowed as he tried to retrieve information that House Grey magic had shoved aside. “Just the bones. So many bones.” He looked down at his hands as if they still might be covered in gore. “Rooms that there was no daylight in, and bones. That’s all I see when I think of her.”

“I went to that room. She was gone,” Luz said.

“Ti—rooms?” I gently prodded.

He nodded. “There was … more than one. Only one girl, though.” His eyes fixed on mine. “What kind of monster was I that I helped keep her there?”

What kind of guard would be more fearsome and invulnerable than a leashed zombie? I took his hands in mine. “It wasn’t you, Ti. You weren’t yourself.”

“I swore no one would ever control me again, once my old master died—that I’d never be how I used to be. Used. Again.” He slowly shook his head. “I can’t believe it happened to me. That I came here to offer myself over to him—”

“Only because you wanted to be healed. How were you to know?” It was hard to see him in so much pain. He wouldn’t be the first person to fixate on a goal so much that he lied to himself about its outcome. If anyone about knew that, it was me.

“If there was more than one room, where’s the second one?” Hector asked. I looked back at him—at Asher—and he wouldn’t meet my eyes.

“Their new church. The one I was doing construction on during the day. It’s behind the main altar there.”

“That’s where they’ve taken her?” Luz stood, pushing Catrina aside, but Hector blocked the door.

“We go together, Reina. You cannot do this alone,” Hector said as she prepared to shove past him. There was irony in the situation. If only Luz had bitten Adriana, Luz would know exactly where she was now—vampires could find anyone they’d ever bitten before. But because she’d followed Anna’s instructions to the letter, she was blind. And healing my mother was that much farther away from me, still.

Luz deflated. “I’ve searched there too, and missed her before.”

Olympio’s grandfather said something, and Olympio translated him. “Because they would not let you see. But someone who has had the bridle taken off their mind will not so willingly put it on again.”

“She has a bridle, but I have a door?” Ti asked ruefully.

Olympio held up his hands and shrugged. “It’s magic. Do you expect it to make sense?”

Ti looked around the room. “I’m going with you all. I know the layout of his new church. And I want revenge.”

Luz’s lips lifted in a feral grin. “Then you’re on our side.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

Hector drove us. It seemed for the best. He knew where we were going, and that way I could sit in middle of the backseat in case I needed to stop Ti from going crazy again, in theory. Hector was silent, and I wondered if he had anything in his glove box that’d stop a zombie. Luz sat in the front seat, and Catrina sat beside me. Outside, it started to rain, hard, and I wondered if Maldonado was somehow behind the storm.

“How was she? Last night, when you saw her?” Catrina asked me.

I didn’t want to lie, but I was afraid Luz would throw herself out of the car and race ahead without us if I told the truth. I wondered if Hector had had the sense to child-lock his car. “She was starved, but still alive. And covered with tattoos of bones.”

Catrina pulled her head back at this. “Why?”

“She couldn’t say. I don’t speak Spanish.”

Catrina’s hands found each other in her lap, and she touched the tattoo on her right ring finger. “I wonder if—”

“Don’t,” Luz advised from the front of the car.

“What?” I asked.

Catrina finally held her hand up for me to see. The tattoo there was hard to make out with only streetlamps outside the car for light. “When we were eighteen—we went out and got them done. So we’d be sisters forever. To the bone.” It was a stylized drawing of a finger bone, tattooed on her first knuckle, like the funny bone from an Operation game, only fatter. “Maybe that was why,” Catrina went on.