Shapeshifted (Edie Spence 3)

“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, M

om. ” 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?”