What did her mother think? Her face was unreadable as she watched Professor M. There was a truce here, but no trust.
Baldomero reached toward Ysabel’s face and whispered, “Dear mother—” Cat thought he would close her eyelids, but when he touched them, he pressed gently. Ysabel’s body crackled and shattered like a shell of old paper. The stench of rotting things tripled in the room. All that remained of Cat’s favorite aunt was dark, clotted blood.
Olujimi covered his mouth and Cat’s father grimaced. Neither Zoraida nor Baldomero let their faces change, so Cat did not either.
Zoraida whispered, “Farewell, older sister.”
Ysabel had been the best aunt anyone could have, beautiful and laughing and generous. Cat wanted to mourn her, but she didn’t know how.
Something, maybe a movement, outside the parlor window made her turn. The moon was not up, but she could see into the yard. Two figures crouched in the shadows beneath the trees. Cat sniffed. If not for the garlic upstairs, would she have smelled the people outside? Why had she looked? Had she smelled their guns?
All she knew was she had known to look. She said, “Someone’s outside.” Everyone in the parlor glanced at the window, then at her. Zoraida turned to Professor M. “Who is it?” He shook his head. Zoraida said, “Alexandra Arkan. And her boy?” Professor M shrugged. Cat thought, Ilya’s a monster like Evil Dad? I knew there’s a reason he bothered me. The old me. He bothers the new me, too. But the new me can make him sorry. The new me can make him stop bothering anyone.
Zoraida said, “What is he? Fifteen? And that woman made him a killer?”
Professor M said, “What’ve you made our daughter?”
“We woke her. We didn’t change her. Why do you think I waited so long to know what she is?”
“Pretending to be someone else.”
“A small price for watching my daughter become herself.” Zoraida smiled at Cat, and Cat grinned back
Professor M looked at Baldomero. “Something in the wine.” Baldomero nodded. “It didn’t affect me.”
“What’s in you to wake?” Baldomero looked up at Auntie Fong.
“Call off your dogs.” Auntie Fong shook her head. “You think anyone can tell Alexandra
Arkan what to do?”
“Tell her she may be safe from our will while she’s alert. Ask if she’d like us to test the boy. Would she rather have him shoot his mother or himself?”
Auntie Fong said, “I’m not lowering my gun to call.”
Baldomero shrugged. “As you wish. The boy could shoot his mother and then—”
“I’ll call.” Professor M reached slowly into his pocket, showed them his cell, selected a number, then spoke into the phone. “Xandra, they spotted you. They’ll control Ilya if you don’t leave.” He snapped the cell shut. “I’ll spare you her exact words. They’re going.”
Cat saw the shadowy figures moving away. The two she had seen were joined by three more. How many enemies did her true family have? The five outside got into a dark SUV and drove away.
Baldomero said, “We’ll follow their example.” Zoraida added, “Cat first.” Auntie Fong said, “Last. How else can I trust you?”
“Because I go last.”
“If you wish to sacrifice yourself for her, I’ll indulge you.” Cat said, “No! Mama—” Zoraida smiled at her. “Our only plan is to leave. Cat goes first.” Auntie Fong glanced at Professor M, then nodded.
Baldomero said, “If Zoraida doesn’t follow quickly, be assured, I’ll be back faster than you can gather weapons.”
Zoraida told Cat, “Go, my darling.”
Cat took a last look at the bloody pool that had been Tia Ysabel, then turned and strode from Casa Medianoche. As she went, she wondered how she had seen her father’s family as funny Uncle Olujimi, strong Auntie Fong, and boring Evil Dad. They were beasts. They did not deserve an instant of her thought.
Besides, she was thirsty.
Chapter Six:
An Unexpected Gift
Walking onto the lawn, she saw the neighbors’ cat. She stooped and said, “Here, Boswell. They should keep you indoors. Anything could happen to you.” She held out her hand, wondering what would ease her thirst. A lemonade? A milk shake? A mango lassi? No. What could be better than a mango lassi?
Boswell snarled, leaped backwards, then spun about and fled back to his house. As Cat heard the pet door close, Baldomero came down the steps of Casa Medianoche. “Sorry, Princess. No cats for Catalina unless you’re fast.”
“They always liked me.” Did Boswell’s reaction bother her? She had planned to have dozens of pets when she was an adult in her own home.
“Dogs will fear you at first, but they’re good company for us. They’ll warn you if someone comes while you sleep.”
Cat shrugged. Pets were part of Old Cat’s concerns. “I’m thirsty.”
“Don’t worry. We have something waiting for you.” She looked at his bloody clothing. “I hate my father’s family.” Zoraida walked out of the house. “I have the brightest daughter.” Cat hugged her, thinking Best mother ever, and said, “What about
Tia Ysabel?” Baldomero straddled his bike. “We’ll do what we always do when they kill one of us. We’ll never forget her.” He started the bike with a roar. “And we’ll make sure they never do, either.”
Zoraida kissed Cat on both cheeks. “Ride with him, my fierce one.”
“But how’ll you—” Zoraida smiled and became a black wolf. “The cool!” Cat said, then looked at Baldomero. “Who was the white one? The one who saved me from the Arkan’s van?” He grinned. “Guilty as charged.”
“Can I be a wolf, too?”
“Soon,” he answered as they watched the black wolf lope down De
Anza Street. “Wait till you run with us beneath the full moon. Then you’ll know it’s worth any price to be what we are.”
“What’s that?”
“The children of the night. The gray neighbors. The fair folk. The quiet ones. We are what we are. Their names for us don’t matter.” Did the black wolf run faster than real wolves could? As her mother disappeared around a corner, Cat asked, “Why do you have a bike?”
“Enjoy all things, my princess.” He raised a black helmet and held it toward her. “Do I have to?”
“Honor Ysabel’s last lesson. We aren’t immortal. Wise bikers say you should spend as much money on your helmet as you think your head is worth. Yours, I assure you, is worth at least the price of that helmet to me, and should be to you, as well.”
“Oh.” Cat let him lower the helmet over her head and fasten the strap. It smelled like him, something like mesquite smoke.
“Now,” he said, “hang on tight.”
Hugging his cool, lean body was easy. They sped across the yard, down the driveway, and onto the street. Cat shouted, “You don’t have the headlight on!”
“No one will notice.”
“But if the police see us—”
“They won’t notice seeing us.”
“Really?”
“I’ll never lie to you, Catalina. Really.” She hugged him tighter. Only her father and his family had lied to her. They roared through downtown. The streets were nearly empty. She saw a few groups of people in nightclubbing clothes, a couple of police cars, a few homeless people. Though the motorcycle roared as they shot through red lights and sped past cars, no one looked at them.
Cat checked their reflection in store front windows. They weren’t invisible. They simply weren’t noticeable.
She said, “Can I do everything you can?”
“Eventually,” he shouted. “Maybe more!”
“Ex!” He slowed near the Tucson Museum of Art. The neighborhood had been expensive once and was becoming expensive again as old homes were being restored. He parked behind a large Victorian house painted in red with gold and purple trim. A sign identified it as the Gold Mountain Bed & Breakfast.
She caught a whiff of something she knew. Before she could recognize it, B
aldomero opened the back door of the B&B. “Coming?”
She nodded and hurried after him.
The house had wallpaper with intricate patterns, oak wainscoting, glass door handles, brass fixtures, lampshades with tassels, and Persian rugs covering most of its gleaming wood floors. Cat smiled, then frowned.
Baldomero said, “Something wrong?”
“Evil Dad calls this Hollywood Whorehouse.”
“You don’t like Hollywood Whorehouse?”
“I don’t like remembering Evil Dad.”
“None of us like remembering our lives before.” A hint of sadness in his voice stopped her from asking “before what?” She knew: before becoming night people. It was strange to think of the de la Sombras having histories. She said, “Tia Ysabel always looked the same at my birthday! But I never thought it was odd.”
He nodded. “She did the don’t-notice thing.”
“We do it without thinking. So humans will ignore small things that should seem odd about us.”
“Hypnotism.”
“The old word is glamour. Turn it up a little, and humans will like you without knowing why. Turn it up more, and they’ll obey you, even if they hate you.” He opened the front door and looked out at the tree- lined street.
Cat smelled the night. Even near downtown, under the tang of automobile exhaust and gas furnaces and street tar, she knew the desert scents of plants and earth and animals. She liked them better than this house. The B&B stank of perfumes and air freshener and deodorant and humans.
“Is Mama late?”
Baldomero shook his head. “Wolves run about thirty miles an hour. Give her a minute or two.”
She wouldn’t mind if her mother took all night. Cat liked being alone with her cousin. “Do we get old?”
“Physically? If we want.”
“Good. Looking like a fourteen-year-old for more than a year would suck.”
He smiled. “You look fine.”
“I want to look twenty-one. I could go anywhere.” He laughed. “Why rush? You’ve got all the time you want now to be anything you wish.” She smiled up at him. “And do anything I want?” He grinned. Galaxies of possibility swirled in his golden eyes. She leaned toward him and thought, Kissing cousins. It’s okay. He frowned. “Cat? You all right?” She nodded quickly and stepped back. Whatever she might be, whatever she might feel, she was a child to him. Would he laugh if she tried to kiss him? No. He was too nice. He would pity her. Nothing could be worse than his pity.
How much of a kid was she, compared to him? He had started giving her costumes when she was one. If he’d been seventeen then, he was thirty-one now. In seven years, she would be twenty-one, and he would be thirty-eight. He wouldn’t think she was too young then.
“Baldomero? How old are you?”
“Age doesn’t matter. Only the spirit does.” Maybe she should kiss him. “That’s what I think.” He nodded. “Except in romance. People who seek younger lovers are pathetic or exploitive or both. You have to pity anyone who falls for them.”
“Oh,” she said softly, thinking, Great, even as a night person, I’m pathetic. She made herself laugh. “Yeah, kids like that are the sad. So you’d want to be with someone born in—?
“1732?” He laughed. “Hardly! Give me someone fun, and she can be seventeen or seven hundred. Got anyone in mind?”
“If I think of someone, I’ll let you know.” She thought, In two years, three hundred and sixty-four days, and twenty-three hours.
The faint sound of padded feet running on asphalt came from the street. Almost as soon as Cat looked, Zoraida was walking up to the B&B. As she entered, she said, “Where are the servants?”
Baldomero shrugged and closed the door behind her. Zoraida called, “We’ve returned! We thirst!” Cat heard doors flung open upstairs, then footsteps racing down carpeted steps. An Asian man and woman came in slippers, pajamas, and robes. The woman was pretty. Cat glanced from her to Baldomero, but he was ignoring the humans as he slumped into a chair. She understood. The humans made her uncomfortable. They seemed embarrassingly desperate for approval.
She said, “You glamoured them?”
He nodded. “In the most thorough way.” He unzipped his jacket. His white shirt looked new. Cat squinted. So did his jacket. She glanced at Zoraida. They both wore the same clothes they had earlier, his gray leather, her black silk, but the clothes seemed new. What else could nighters do?
Baldomero announced, “The usual for my sister and me.” He looked at Cat. “Water for Catalina.”
“Of course,” said the man. “At once,” said the woman. Cat said, “Water?” Zoraida said, “There’s something special for you later, my fury.”
Baldomero nodded. “It’s your first night.” His pronunciation made her hear capital letters: First Night.
Well, it was her first night as a night person. Why shouldn’t there be something special to go with it? “What?”
“Nothing that can harm you.” he said. “Don’t worry.”
“We survived it.” Zoraida patted the sofa beside her. “First indulge us, then indulge yourself.”
Cat dropped onto the cushion between her mother and cousin and said, “I love my family. My real family.”
Zoraida hugged her. “And your real family loves you.”
“True,” Baldomero said. “As much as life itself.”
“More,” said Zoraida. “My fury, you must have questions.” Cat felt as if her mother had offered to tell her what her Christmas presents would be. She should say she would wait to be surprised. That’s what Tarika would do.
But Tarika was part of Old Cat’s life. Why should New Cat care what a human would do? “How soon can I become a wolf?”
“When you’ve learned what a wolf is.”
“Meaning?”
“Some things are easier to show.”
“When can I try?”
Zoraida glanced at Baldomero, said, “In a few days,” and he nodded. “Can I turn into anything else?”
“Anything you truly know, you can become.”
“Anything?”
“Anything living that weighs more than three pounds and less than your human weight. The science of what we are is fascinating.”
“To your mother, anyway,” Baldomero said. Cat said, “Why three pounds?”
“Because even we have limits,” he said. Zoraida added, “Perhaps because a human brain weighs about three pounds. The spinal cord adds a little over an ounce. Do you know about stem cells?”
“My first night surprise is a science quiz?”
Zoraida smiled. “In human embryos, stem cells have two properties, self-renewal and unlimited potency. Self-renewal means they can replace themselves and grow. Unlimited potency means they can become any kind of cell the body needs. Those properties weaken as humans age. But they grow stronger in us.”
Baldomero said, “Or it’s magic.”
“Which only means it’s science we don’t understand yet.”
Baldomero nodded. “Or it’s magic.” Cat said, “So nighters are mutants?”
“Perhaps,” Zoraida said. “No one knows.”
“Or—” Baldomero began. “It’s magic,” Cat said with him, and they laughed together. She thought of her day and looked at her mother. “How much does a raven weigh?”
“An average one? Two and a half pounds.”
“Oh.” Zoraida smiled. “But once you know something, you don’t have to imitate it exactly. If a raven’s not near you, who notices if it’s a little larger than average?”
“You followed me to Ms Arkan’s!”
“I often stayed up to see you to school. Sometimes I woke early to check on you.”
“Then why are we called night people?”
“As humans, we can’t bear the sun. As animals, we can.”
“So why not stay animals? Isn’t it fun?”
“Very! But as animals, we rely more on instinct and less on thought
—” Baldomero said, “Ah!” a
nd Cat looked up. The servants came from the kitchen with three crystal juice glasses on a tray. Both servants had large Band-Aids on their left wrists. Cat wanted to ask how they had been identically clumsy, but the smell of the drinks took her attention.
Two glasses held a deep red liquid. The third held water. The dark liquid smelled like strength and delight. She wanted to snatch both glasses and snarl at anyone who tried to stop her.
As Zoraida and Baldomero drank, tipping their glasses back until they were empty, Cat thought, It’s not tomato juice. It’s something night people love. Would strawberry juice look and smell like that? She said, “Is this like an initiation? I get bread and water while you get the good stuff?”
Baldomero set his glass on the tray. “You’ll have the very best when you’re done with your questions.”
“Okay. Done with questions.” He laughed. “Learn all you can, my princess. Preparation matters.” Zoraida handed her glass to the woman and said, “It’d be nice to have more.” The woman’s eyes went wide in fear, then narrowed. She said softly,
“Of course, Ma’am.” Baldomero said, “Don’t exhaust them.” Zoraida stuck out her lower lip. “I haven’t indulged myself in fourteen years.” She glanced at Cat. “Which I chose gladly. But now”
“Patience, Aunt. Tomorrow, we’ll drink to remember Ysabel, and you may have all you wish, and more.” Baldomero glanced at the woman. “That’s enough.” A grateful smile flickered across the servant’s face. She backed away quickly and stopped with the man by the wall. Baldomero told them, “You may retire. Don’t be troubled by anything you hear tonight.” As they bowed and went upstairs, Baldomero smiled at Cat. “More questions?” She nodded. “The Medianoches killed Tia Ysabel. Shouldn’t we tell the police?” Zoraida and Baldomero stared at her. Cat added, “There’s blood in the parlor. The police don’t need a body, not if we say we weren’t doing anything when they attacked.” Zoraida looked at Baldomero. “What did you tell her?”
“That we’re night people. I didn’t get to what that means.” Cat said, “They’d believe us if you did the wolf trick. Then they could arrest the Medianoches for murder, and we could give magic shows in Las Vegas. We could be famous!”
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