Jacaranda (The Clockwork Century 6)

“None of us are decent.” The padre breathed, “Certainly none of us here, in this hotel, during this storm. We’re all of us terrible, if this is what we’ve come to.” He did not finish his dire thoughts out loud, but when he caught the Ranger’s eye, he wondered if the old man hadn’t heard him anyway.

The Ranger and the padre left the nun to whatever task she had in mind, with regards to the dead woman hanging from the ceiling in the 2-room suite. Sister Eileen had insisted, and though it seemed pointless to them both, they tacitly agreed that it’d be likewise pointless to argue with her. She’d made a decision. She didn’t want their help. She’d join them later.

She’d made it all quite clear.

“Very well,” Korman had told her. “We’ll track down the ladies who work here, and start with them.”

Juan Rios said, “We could begin with Violetta. I expect she’s still at the desk.”

“A captive audience. Perfect.”

Indeed she was there, reading a cheaply printed paperback story about an explorer in the Northwest. She set it aside to speak with them; when she closed it and turned it over, the padre saw a man in a gasmask on the cover.

“Did you find Sarah?”

“We found her,” the padre said quickly. “But I’m afraid she won’t be joining us. You may need to work a second shift, or find your sister. Sarah isn’t well.”

Violetta sighed, because his careful wording hadn’t fooled her. “You mean the hotel’s taken her, too?”

The Ranger cleared his throat, and Juan Rios surrendered. “Yes, señorita. I’m very sorry, but that’s the truth.”

“I’m…surprised, a little. I thought Sarah would be the last. The Jacaranda needs her. Or it needed her. Or…or I thought it did.” She shook her head and crossed herself, then leaned forward on the counter as if she needed it for support. “Sarah’s been here the longest. She knew the most. She really seemed to understand the hotel, and what it needed. But if she’s gone…it surely means the end is very near. If even Sarah is taken, what hope is there for the rest of us?”

Her eyes filled up with tears, and the despair on her face made the padre’s heart hurt. It was a familiar grief, and he wondered if it would be his own hell—to bear witness and offer comfort to every doomed girl who served as the Jacaranda’s gatekeeper.

What else was he there for? What else could he do?

He took her hand. It was cool to the touch, and faintly damp. Her pulse fluttered at the edge of her wrist. “Tell me, why are you still here? You and your family, I mean? Constance Fields suggested that you were caught here, just like her—and like the other guests, perhaps. If we can learn why people come to this place, why they stay, we may solve the mystery yet.”

“So what if we do?” she asked. She took her hand away from his, and swiped at her eyes with the back of her sleeve. “Solve it, understand it…it does not matter. It will devour us all, or else the storm will take us.” She bobbed her head toward the doors, which shook and hummed against the gusts outside.

“No,” the Ranger argued. “No, we aren’t going to talk like that. There’s time yet, before the storm hits us good—and time before we’re all dead, from one thing or another. Now answer the good padre’s question, if you please.”

“But I don’t know. Not for certain…”

“Then give me your best guess,” Juan Rios pushed. “Tell me why you think you’ve come here, and maybe you’re right, maybe you’re wrong. But it will be a place to start.”

The younger Alvarez daughter glanced anxiously toward the Ranger, who did his best to look encouraging, but there was only so much his eyebrows could accomplish alone. So he told her, “If there’s been some crime committed, by you or your mother, or your sister…I want you to know: I don’t care about it. That’s not why I’m here. Right now, at this hotel, I’m no officer of the law and I’m on no mission from Austin; I only want to stop whatever darkness is eating the heart of this place. Same as the padre here, and the little nun in Sarah’s room.”

In Spanish, Juan Rios told her, “Besides, you said it does not matter. If you’re right, then what harm does it do to tell us? Unburden yourself. Confess what you will, and you’ll see no punishment for it…except whatever we may all find here, at the hands of the storm or at the gates of heaven.”

Violetta looked over her shoulder at the hotel’s office, then beyond and behind the two men who so gently interrogated her. Seeing no one, she crossed herself again and leaned in close, her eyes red as pennies.

So softly he barely heard her, she replied in her first tongue.

“You mustn’t tell my mother, you must promise me that. You can’t let her know that I told you.” When the padre nodded solemnly in return, she said, “We are here because of this: My mother kept her mother in our house, though Grandmother’s mind was weak, and she was very difficult. She was easily confused and prone to wandering. She fought us sometimes, when she could not remember who we were, or why we wanted her to eat. She tried to run away from us, but my mother always went after her. She always brought her home, even if she swore at us and struck us with her fists.

“My mother had promised, you see—back when Grandmother was still aware of herself, and when she was first afraid that her mind would leave her. She made my mother promise to keep her safe, when she could not keep herself safe anymore.

“So my mother, my sister and I…we kept her safe for three years, until the night she screamed at my mother and hit her with a pan. My mother screamed back, and told her to go—if that’s what she wanted to do. So Grandmother went. My sister and I followed after her, but it was dark and Grandmother threw rocks at us. So we gave up and went home.”

She lowered her voice even more, until there was scarcely any sound at all—just the soft rush of breath pushed past her lips. “The next day, they found her in the tide. She’d gone to the ocean and drowned. Mother told the police she’d wandered away in the night, when we were all asleep. But we were not asleep,” she concluded in the very faintest of whispers. If the padre hadn’t been watching her lips so closely, he wouldn’t have understood her.

He patted her shoulder and asked, “Have you confessed this to your priest?”

“Yes. But it does not feel any different to me. I told God what we did, and I told Him that I am sorry, and that I wish I could have that night back—to do the right thing, this time. Please forgive me, Father, but I do not think that God is listening anymore…not to me. Because when the hotel creaks and moans at night, and the shadows slip back and forth when I’m alone…when the men and women die, one by one or two by two, going to hell like animals into the ark…when I wonder why we remain at the Jacaranda, and try to imagine leaving…I think of my grandmother, throwing rocks in the dark.”

Her throat finally closed, and her tears fell, and she would say no more.