Shapeshifted (Edie Spence 3)

“You were saying?” the daughter prompted me.

I turned to face the mother and focused my attention on her. “You have to take the medicine. Your daughter loves you; she doesn’t want to be without you. You can’t blame her for wanting you to live, can you?”

The older woman’s face crumpled a bit at this, but then she recovered and gave a dramatic sigh. “For your sake, I suppose I can pretend that the shots work. ”

“Good. ” The daughter shook her head and rushed her mother off the table, happy to take any victory she could. She ushered her mother out of the room, then leaned back to roll her eyes in commiseration with me. Aren’t stubborn old people crazy? her look said. I nodded, yes, yes, they were.

* * *

I went outside for lunch and found Olympio there. I pulled out the extra sandwich I’d made him, and today he sniffed at it.

“No thanks, I already ate. ”

“Fair enough. ” I opened up mine and wolfed it down. “Your grandfather cure anyone lately? Practioner-to-practioner?”

Olympio grunted. “Of course. He cures everyone he touches. ”

“An older lady? Diabetes? Recently, from the sounds of it?”

His eyes narrowed. “Why?”

“You have to tell him not to say things like that, Olympio. What if that lady had gone home, not taken her medicine, and died?”

Olympio turned and began walking away from me. “Who’s to say he didn’t heal her? She’s not dead if she came down here, right?”

“That’s hardly an excuse, Olympio. And even if your grandfather doesn’t know that, you do. ” I caught up to him, waiting for him to look back. No matter what bizarre claims Olympio made, he had to know his grandfather was telling lies.

Olympio inhaled like he was going to explain things to me, then turned and punched the wall behind him lightly. “Just leave me alone, okay?”

“Okay. ” I stood there as he faced away from me. I wished I hadn’t pissed him off. I didn’t want his grandfather hurting anyone, but there’d probably been a more sensitive way to convey it, one I hadn’t explored in my flustered-from-this-morning mind. I sat down on the ground and sighed. He didn’t walk farther away.

I waited what might be an acceptable period of time—and then longer than that, just to be sure—before asking him, “Do you know anything about Reina de la Noche?”

He was still facing away from me. “Why?”

“I saw a woman selling their shirts get hassled this morning, by the Three Crosses crew. ”

Olympio snorted, inhaling deeply, to spit out a wad of phlegm. “That’s just like them. Scared. ”

“Which ones?”

“The Three Crosses. Beating up ladies. It’s like them. ”

He was finally warming up to me—or the topic—again. “What are the Rulers like?”

“Rulers?”

“You know. The Reinas. ”

Olympio rolled his eyes. “Reina de la Noche—it means ‘Queens of the Night. ’”

“Oh. ” Well, that put a lot of things in perspective. Including vampire bite T-shirts and tattoos. I wondered who the Queen was. The only person I currently knew who could lay claim to that title happened to actually be a vampire. Anna, the vampire who’d gotten me shunned. “Olympio, can you do me a favor?”

“What?”

I fished two twenty-dollar bills out of my purse and held the money out. “Can you go buy me a small silver cross?”

“Why? You don’t seem religious. ”

“I could be. ”

“But you’re not. ”

I couldn’t lie. “No, I’m not. It’s for a friend. Look, you can keep the change, can you get me one, or not?”

Olympio eyed me for any signs of trickery. Finding none, he went back to his version of a businessman, suave and smug. “No guarantees that there’ll be anyone with those down there today. I keep a twenty just for seeing, okay? Because I could be missing people to send my grandfather’s way here. ”

“Okay. That’s fair. ”

He prepared to set off, then turned back. “You have to do me a favor in return, though. ”

I blinked. This was new. “Sure, what?”

He gave me a wry look. “Stop pretending that you know Spanish. It’s embarrassing. ”

CHAPTER TWELVE