“Thirty-three. Assuming I can remember that.” We made a left-hand turn onto the highway. “What Dren said back there—was it really Ti?”

“Yeah. And speaking of forgetting—” I blew air through half-parted lips. “I don’t know what he was. He didn’t know me, and he wasn’t acting like him.”

“How long has he been like that?”

“I don’t know. He came over to see me the other night, and he was normal then.” His grip tensed slightly—if I hadn’t been holding his hand I might not have felt it. Or maybe I was reading too much into things; maybe it was just another gear change.

“What happened to him?”

“He said he was in town because someone here could cure him and give him back the other half of his soul so he could finally die. A great magician,” I said more slowly, adding two and two. “Shit.”

“Yeah.” Asher merged into the fast lane of the highway, and then we didn’t have anything to say at all.

* * *

He pulled into the parking lot of my new place, and I tried to pull my hand back casually. He caught it. “Wait.”

“Okay.” I turned to face him. My brain was still having a hard time merging Asher’s personality with Hector’s body. Was this the first time this had happened, us in a car together, or the fortieth? He swallowed before speaking to me.

“It’s just really good to see you again is all, Edie. I’ve been wanting to tell you that for a while.”

“It’s good to see you too, Asher,” I said, because it was. “No matter who you look like.” I leaned back against the closed car door. “I’m going to call the clinic and leave Catrina a message to call me—and when she does, I’ll tell her everything.”

“That’s fair. Don’t tell her about me, though—or this. And call me Hector. It’s easier on me.”

“When I talk to Catrina this morning—doesn’t Luz deserve to know what she’s up against?”

“Luz already knows Maldonado’s a shapeshifter. It’s how they captured Adriana in the first place, I think. He went as someone she knew—Catrina, Luz, or me. Who knows. And the Three Crosses wouldn’t be freaked out by him showing off his powers. They already know he’s magical.”

“Don’t you think she would have searched his current home first?”

“You saw how weak Maldonado made Dren … maybe she couldn’t get close enough to see?”

Which brought up a good point. “If Maldonado is so strong he scares vampires, and he’s trying to control the saint of death, how can we succeed?”

Asher shrugged. “You’re not asking me anything I haven’t already asked myself. There’s a chance I could get in with him, but there’s no guarantees.”

I tried to think out different scenarios, pushing players around on a chessboard inside my mind. “Luz might get killed if she goes in alone. Us going with her isn’t much better, but there’s a chance.”

“I could get us in the door, get his guard down—maybe,” Asher offered.

I nodded. It wasn’t much of a plan, but it was better than Luz running in to replace Dren on Maldonado’s cutting board.

“Just get her to wait for the rest of us, once she finds out. Tell Catrina it’s vital to keep Luz at the Reina’s fortress after sundown tonight until we get there. Tell her you’re bringing Jorgen if you have to. I’ll act surprised when she tells me at work, and then agree to go along with it, and that way we can both encourage Luz to accept our help.”

Encouraging and convincing vampires. Wow. I didn’t know if either of those things was possible. “I feel so much better now that there’s only a fifty–fifty chance she’ll go off and get killed during a rampage.”

Asher snorted. “Me too.” He glanced over my shoulder at the apartments behind me. “I still have to get to work. See you at sundown?”

I smiled softly at him. “I wouldn’t dream of being anywhere else.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

I called the clinic and left a message for Catrina—I hoped by the time she called back I’d still have some tact. It’d been a long night and I was going down.

I got a call shortly after eight A.M. “Well? What?”

I’d been dozing on my couch. It took me a second to remember who it was on the other end of the line.

“Was she there? What did you find?” Catrina’s voice rose, taking my silence for bad news.

“She’s there. She’s alive.”

Catrina whooped on the far end of the line. “Where is she? Is she okay? Did you get her out?”

“Go into a closet, will you?” I told her, and I heard doors open and slam in her path. “Okay. You need to promise me something before I say anything else.”

“Anything. What?”

“I couldn’t get her out, Catrina. She was caged. But she’s alive—she saw me. I told her I’d be coming back.”

“You? Pffft. Reina will have her back tonight!”

“No no no. That’s what you have to promise me. Maldonado’s a bruja—he’s more powerful than you think he is. I only made it out alive because I had Jorgen with me. If you send Reina in there alone, there’s a chance she’ll die, and then where would we be?”

“But we’re going in—we’re getting her.”

“We are. I just want you to tell her to wait for us. So she’s not alone.” I could feel her weighing my advice against her urge for expediency. At least she couldn’t tell Luz anything until it was dark. “Please, Catrina. I don’t want to see Luz get hurt.”

“All right. I’ll tell her that. I can’t make promises, though.”

“Not many people can, where vampires are concerned.” I inhaled and exhaled. All my chores for the night were finally through. “I’ll meet you at Reina’s at sundown, okay? And then we can set off together. I’ll bring the Hound.” It was a white lie, but maybe another reason to get Catrina to make Luz wait—she’d already seen it gobble one man alive.

“Okay,” Catrina said, and hung up on me.

* * *

After the night and morning I’d had, I thought I’d be too wired to sleep, but no—the second I was out of my shower, I fell into my bed. I set my alarm for three, and I woke up in almost the same position I’d landed in. I’d slept like the dead.

I got up and walked to the train station. The humidity was worse, and there were thunderclouds overhead. It was fitting it would rain.

I arrived at my mom’s house before the first fat drops. I crouched under the overhang above my parents’ front door, and I almost fell in when Peter opened it.

“You look a sight,” he said.

“Is she up?”

He nodded and let me in.

I walked into what had once been my home. Pictures—some of me—hung on the walls. My mom had framed a drawing I’d made of a fall leaf in the fifth grade. There was a picture of all of us, me, Mom, Jake, minus Peter, plus bio-dad, at the Grand Canyon, when I was like four.

I didn’t remember that trip anymore—if I ever had, four’s pretty young—but I remembered the picture of it. The picture was the real memory. Where would it go if it wasn’t here—at my mom’s? Put into a box? Only exist in my head?

This world was so far removed from where I’d been earlier today. Nothing here was cement. Nothing here had ever been covered in bones or blood.

I felt the friction that I’d had frequently when I was beginning as a nurse, trying to hold two worlds inside my head. The world that I’d known my entire life—the one with nice couches you could sit in, watching the daily news as it happened to other people, distant on TV—and the world where drunk people tried to hit you, where people turned orange once their livers blew out and then shit themselves until they died.

It was a little like being a prisoner. Once you’d seen the inside, the outside was never really the same again.

“Edie!” My mom spotted me as I walked into the living room.

“Hey, Mom.” I smiled at her, bending down for a hug, stepping through the tunnel from my current life, violent and strange, into this, the recollection of my past. Two-dimensional pictures. Painted leaves. Carefully labeled jars of vacation sand.

My mother smiled at me. “How was your day?” she said, and she patted the couch beside her.

“Good,” I lied, and sat down.

* * *

I spent the afternoon chatting with my mom. She seemed smaller now, even smaller than at our dinner earlier this week. I remembered that Greek myth about Tithonus, who lived forever but was always aging, who eventually shrunk down to the size of a cricket. My mother wasn’t there yet, but she would be, if the cancer didn’t get her first.

“You know, Edie, I’ve been thinking about your childhood. I’m sorry it was hard on you…” She kept talking, but my mind went blank. Oh, God. This conversation? I’d heard people have it at work. I’d lurked in rooms while it was happening, or had been sitting right outside their doors, but I’d never had it myself. Half confession, half absolution. The ordering of affairs.

“I don’t really want to rehash the past,” I blurted out, louder than I meant to. She blinked. “You’ve been a great mom. I’m a pretty awesome kid.”

“But—”

I shook my head. “Shut up.”

It wasn’t that she couldn’t die if we didn’t have that talk … but having it was one more step on the path of inevitability. Accepting what was happening. No turning back. I didn’t care what growths were raging in her right now, I still hadn’t given up.

Even if she had.

She shook her head, gave me a smile, and patted my hand with hers, all bone-thin and skin translucent-white. “Tell me about your new job. Is the doctor there handsome?”