Shapeshifted es-3

by Cassie Alexander

  I made sure he understood the reasons he needed to keep taking his medicine, as Eduardo translated his questions back to me, and then we let him leave the room.

  “You could have told him all that, couldn’t you?”

  Eduardo gave me a sly grin. “It sounds more official coming from you. Some of them prefer to hear it from a gringa.”

  I snorted and pushed forward. “Hey—” There was a test tube of blood on the counter behind me. I pointed at it. “What’s that for?” It wasn’t labeled. He popped it into a plastic bag and opened the door.

  “You’d have to ask Dr. Tovar.” Eduardo shrugged, shuffling off into the back.

  * * *

  I waited for Dr. Tovar to come by, to ask him about the test tube, but when it hit five fifteen, my urge to go home—and maybe nervousness about the trip, after walking with Olympio—outweighed my curiosity for the day. The part of me that was trying to be rational thought I was overreacting, a little hyper-attuned to the type of thing that mattered in my now very-former life. As far as Santa Muerte went, that elderly woman hadn’t come back. I could find a Three Crosses gang member and ask about their beliefs, but that sounded potentially injurious and I wasn’t likely to get a better answer from them than I already had from Olympio. I’d have to wait and ask Dr. Tovar about the blood tomorrow.

  I couldn’t overlook the irony that I was grasping at anything to give me hope when my mother had already given up. Personally, I blamed her belief in a happy afterlife.

  When I left the clinic, Olympio was gone. But I could hear the whispering sound I’d heard in the morning. I looked both ways before crossing the street and crouching to look into a storm drain.

  “Drop something?” I startled. Dr. Tovar was locking the clinic door. “Or lose a gun? I’m sure there’s half an armory down there, rusting away.” He stood stiffly, his hands in his pockets, wearing his tweed coat on even this hot day.

  “I thought I heard something.”

  His right eyebrow raised in a question. “I don’t hear anything.” He jerked his head toward the station. “Care to walk?”

  While a doctor wasn’t my preferred companion, walking with him wouldn’t hurt. I made sure to stand far enough apart from him that it wouldn’t look like we were together. Even so, ladies returning from the station made clucking sounds as we walked by. I wished there was a way to signal to them that no matter how handsome he was, I was not interested in him, nor would I ever be. At all.

  “So how was your first day?” he asked.

  “Interesting, except for the paperwork.”

  “I’m glad Frank’s wound didn’t make you run away.”

  “Am I going to get hazed every day I’m here? Or is that just your regular clientele?” I asked in a way that I made sure sounded like I was joking.

  He outright laughed, maybe the first time I’d seen him pleased. I wondered what it would be like to be him, at the helm of a perpetually sinking ship, bailing water with all his might. We might have more in common than I’d thought.

  “As regular as the rising sun. Why did you even apply for this job in the first place?” His eyes tried to read me as we walked, even before I could respond.

  “If you’d told me this was going to be an interrogation, I’d have walked on my own,” I said with an obviously fake grin. He snorted and I relaxed some. “Really, I just needed a change. I thought I wanted to take it easy, and the sleep clinic was great for that. But easy gets dull.” No need to tell him about my mom’s time bomb or any legends. “Why do you work down here?” I asked instead.

  “If I don’t, who will?” He shrugged, taking his coat pockets up and down with the gesture.

  “Did you grow up here?”

  “Nearby.”

  “Where do you live?”

  His lips quirked up into a soft smile. “Nearby.”

  “How many stations away?” I asked quickly, before he could evade me.

  “Past the station. I don’t take the train.”

  “Oh.” I kept on course, hoping I was on to something. “Do you live alone?”

  He drew up short and looked at me. “Why?”

  “Because people are looking.” I indicated behind myself with a head gesture. “Either you’re very single and they’re making assumptions, or you’re very married and they’re imagining the worst.”

  He almost rolled his eyes. “I live alone. You?” he asked in a tone that made it sound like he was only asking to be polite. But in my experience men didn’t ask questions like that if they didn’t want to hear the answers.

  “I have a needy Siamese,” I told him. I tried to sound a little cute. Not that I was interested, but I could be flirtatious when the opportunity presented itself. “Did you report that guy from yesterday?”

  He snorted, the beginning of a laugh. “I see how you are—try to get me to lower my guard with personal questions, and then in for the attack.”

  I shrugged and gave him half a grin. “There’s only one of me. It’s transparent when I’m the good cop and the bad cop.”

  He eyed me and turned serious, shaking his head softly as if to say there were a lot of things I didn’t understand. “You’d probably find a lot of bullets inside that storm drain too,” he finally said, which still wasn’t a direct answer.

  “Why?”

  “Because reporting things to the police won’t change anything. Not down here. You haven’t seen one yet. Nor will you. We’re off their maps, unless there’s been too many bodies to ignore. But,” he said, leaning his head forward, looking directly at me, “you seem willing to be very lax with rules.”

  “Heh.” I hadn’t exactly been reaching for the phone yesterday. I felt a little sheepish—he had a point. “The place where I used to work, it didn’t always pay to ask questions.”

  “And yet here you are, interrogating me,” he said. He gestured me forward, and we began walking again.

  “You haven’t even gotten me started yet, really.” We had just half a block left. Now was my chance for the most important question—we were too close to the train station for him to abandon me. “Eduardo drew some blood on my last patient, but you didn’t order lab work. Did he make a mistake? Do I need to talk to him about that tomorrow?” I asked as casually as I could, trying to make myself sound managerial.

  He shrugged and shook his head, too fast. “Don’t. I’ll say something to him.”

  “He did tell me to ask you, when I asked him about it,” I pressed.

  “We see a lot of patients each day. Mistakes happen. We should be lucky if they’re all so benign.”

  I regretted his choice of words. It was too easy to slide in my mind from things that were benign to things that weren’t, currently growing inside my mom.

  “I will talk to him,” Dr. Tovar assured me after seeing the look on my face.

  “It’s not that—” I began to explain, but saw my train coming down the line. I knew I hadn’t seen a refrigerator full of blood-draw mistakes—but I wasn’t sure they were worth throwing down with my day-old boss over just yet. For his part, he looked like he wanted to ask me what was wrong, but I could see him restraining himself. Maybe I wasn’t the only one worried about crossing lines. Behind me, I heard the air brakes start. “Sounds like I should go—” I waved and started trotting backward.

  My leaving decided him. He went back to being a doctor again, surely as closing a door. He stood a little straighter and nodded at me. “Have a safe trip home, Nurse Spence.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  I took the train all the way to my parents’ house. Not the same train—they lived in the nicer part of town, off a different line—but it only took about thirty minutes. I got off at their stop, and it would still be a walk to their place, then—

  I looked down. I was wearing the same outfit I’d worn at the clinic. When I’d been seeing patients. Frank, in particular. I may be immune to everything this side of TB, but my immunocompromised mother was not. There were germs all over my clothes. Shit.
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br />   I stood at the station—probably the safest in the city, as my folks lived in a gentrified zone—and called her.

  “Edie—are you coming by?”

  “Tomorrow.” I told her who I’d seen today, and where I was. She was disappointed, but also amused.

  “Weren’t you just working at the sleep place?”

  “It got boring.”

  She laughed. God, I loved to hear her laugh. “Well, I’m sure you’re doing the Lord’s work, wherever you are.”

  Yeah, about that. Actually, Mom, I’m there because I’m trying to find a sympathetic supernatural creature to save your ass. Too late to argue now. Plus, I loved her. “Can we do dinner again tomorrow? Don’t cook. I’ll bring food in.”

  “That sounds lovely. We’ll expect you tomorrow night.”

  “Give me till seven thirty so I can go home and take a shower first.”

  She said, “See you then, dear,” and hung up.

  Still feeling foolish, I swiped my card to get back up to the train.

  * * *

  By the time I stopped off for takeout and took the train back, it was almost eight o’clock. I set the food down as soon as I got home and shooed Minnie off when she got too close. I didn’t think I needed to take a shower before dinner—I was starving, my PB&J had been a while ago—but a change of clothes and washing any exposed skin would be nice.

  I was running a washcloth over my arms and feeling silly for not just showering already when the doorbell rang.

  It was eight o’clock at night. And to say I didn’t typically have visitors would be an understatement. No one knew where I lived now, except for my family. Goddammit, if it was Jake … well. Maybe it would be good for us to talk about Mom.

  I set the washcloth down and came out to look through the peephole.

  “Hey, Edie,” said a familiar voice as I looked through. He must have heard me lean against the door.

  Ti. My zombie boyfriend from last fall.

  All the stomach acid that had drenched my stomach at the thought of my brother visiting shifted slightly, continuing to rise. I could ignore him, like he’d ignored me for going on seven months now. Being forgotten had hurt.

  “Edie,” he said from behind the door, his voice dropping.

  “Can’t help but think of the last time we met like this,” I said quietly, from my side of the door. We’d been going to a trial then, and he’d been wearing half of someone else—a part of their face, and their arm.

  “I’m all me this time, though.”

  I opened the door up just a crack and whispered, “Where have you been?” I kept my face hidden by the door.

  “Around. You were kind of hard to find, once you moved.”

  “And no one told you I was being shunned?”

  “Do you think I care what any vampire says?”

  This apartment unit, unlike my last one, was on the second floor. My porch light made him cast a shadow on the wall beside my door. His skin wasn’t much lighter than his shadow, a dark even black, though his eyes were the color of amber hidden from the sun. The last time I’d seen him, he’d been recovering from injuries received as a fireman inside a burning house, and his skin hadn’t healed back all the way. Now he was whole, the rippling scars were gone, and his hair had grown back, tightly clipped against his scalp.

  He put his hand on the partially open door. “Can we talk?”

  I looked up at him, at the face I’d kissed once, even when it hadn’t been all his. He’d risked his life for me. He was still that same man. I nodded.

  “Indoors?” he asked gently, not teasing in the least.

  I took a step backward and let him in.

  * * *

  He took a look at the silver cross hanging on my wall. “I’d ask if you were religious now, but I think I know the answer to that.”

  “You never know who’s going to visit,” I said, well aware that neither crosses nor silver worked on zombies.

  There was an awkward silence. I waited for him to fill it. I figured he was here for a reason, and I didn’t want to give him any outs.

  He walked into my living room and looked around. “I can’t tell. Is this a step up or down?”

  “It’s a lateral move.” What does one normally do when one sees exes whom one perhaps wants to stay on congenial terms with, but only for five minutes or so? I walked over to my kitchen. “Tea? Coffee?”

  He smiled softly. “I’m fine.”

  Of course he was. Zombies didn’t need to eat or drink, except for show, and to regrow—and besides, he’d gotten to do the leaving, not the being left behind. Of course he was fine.

  “Edie, I didn’t mean to—”

  “Yeah. No one ever means to.” I walked past him and sat down on the far end of my couch. He sat opposite me.

  “This is a nicer couch than your last one.”

  “It is. So why’re you here?” I was actually more interested in where he’d gone, and why he’d left, but the answers to those questions were more likely to piss me off.

  “I wanted to check in on you. The last time I saw you, you were in pretty dire straits.”

  “You mean when you left me.”

  “At a hospital. Your hospital.”

  I crossed my arms again, this time over my stomach. The last time Ti’d seen me, I’d been stabbed by vampires and was bleeding at a prodigious rate.

  “I was wounded too, Edie. I had to go … and heal.” We both knew what that meant for him. Killing people. Eating them. Not nice people, but still. “I didn’t leave town, though, until I knew you were going to be okay. I asked around.”

  “You could have asked me.”

  He rubbed his knees with his dark hands. “I should have. But—you know what I am, Edie. What I do. I should have never been with you.”

  “Didn’t I get a vote in that?” I asked, my voice small.

  He slowly shook his head. “No.”

  “Ti—”

  “I tried to tell you. I don’t know why I thought it could be different with you.”

  “Maybe it could have been, if you’d just given things a chance.” I didn’t want to hope that things could change now, did I? I was still mad at him for leaving me, right?

  “When we were in the back of that limo together, when you were bleeding out, and I was falling apart—you smelled like death.” He paused, and I could tell whatever he was going to say next would pain him. “And it smelled good.”

  I started shaking my head. “You never would have, Ti, never ever—”

  He cut me off without meeting my eyes. “No. And yet, I can’t deny what I am. What I’ll always be.”

  “I don’t judge you, Ti—”

  “You did once. And you should.” He shrugged softly. “It’s the right of the living to judge the dead.”

  I bit my lips to keep quiet. Anything I said now would be the wrong thing. And yet— “Why’re you here now, Ti?” If he was back for me, I wanted to hear it. I didn’t know what I’d say at that point, but I wanted to hear him say the words. And if he wasn’t back for me, well, I wanted to know that too.

  “I was out of town for a while. And when I came back, I wanted to check on you.”

  “I’m not the reason you came back, though, am I.” It wasn’t even a question. If he’d wanted to come back for me, he would have done it already.

  “No. There’s a magician here who says he can give me back the rest of my soul.”

  It wasn’t me. It was never me. Ti’d been looking for the rest of his soul ever since he’d been freed as a zombie. He had half of it—enough to keep him him—but whoever had changed him had the other half, and had used it to control him. Getting or growing a whole soul was the only way he could really die. Not just be-dismembered-die, but really die and go to heaven, where he thought he would see all his old friends. His dead wife.

  I crossed my arms again.

  “I don’t know if he really can, but he’s working on it. He has power like I’ve never seen—no, I don’t see
it, I feel it. He can do magic, Edie. Like my old master. The real thing.”

  “What’re you trading him?”

  Ti’s lips split into a rueful grin. “Money. Lots of it. But I don’t need it, like I am. And if it doesn’t work, I can always get more.”

  I guessed employability wasn’t a big concern when you were immortal and didn’t always need to eat. I shook my head. “Why are you here here, Ti? Not in the metaphysical sense—why are you in my living room?”

  He wouldn’t meet my gaze. “I wanted to make sure you were all right.”

  “You didn’t need to talk to me to find that out.”

  “Heh.” He ran a hand through his short hair. “I guess I thought I owed you answers.”

  “You could say that. Seven months ago—you totally could have said that.”

  “I feel really bad for the way things happened, Edie.” He shook his head. “I’m sorry. I mean it. Not that I can pretend to know if that even helps.”

  It was the only apology I would get from him. Take it or leave it. I stared at my far wall, where a spider emerged from the corner, ran up, and, as if blinded by the lamplight, dove back into a crevice in the hardwood floor again. “I guess I should say that I’m glad for you.”

  “It’s what I want. What I’ve always wanted. I just didn’t mean to hurt you along the way. I feel really bad about that.”

  “You feel really bad about it?” I asked, my voice rising. “Yeah. I’m sure you do.”

  Ti tilted his head. He was still handsome, no denying. Strong, responsible. I’d felt safe when I was with him. There’d been a crazy moment in time when I thought that maybe I’d loved him. I’d spent the past seven months shoving that part of me down.

  “I’m glad you’re okay,” I said. “I’m pissed that you didn’t let me know sooner. And I’m sad that I was stupid, back then.”

  He looked wounded, but he recovered too quickly for me to know precisely which part of my statement had hurt him. “What’s this about you being shunned?”