Olympio laughed and pointed. I turned around, and Hector was walking up from behind me. “Ahhh, there you are, Nurse Spence. Eager to start off the day?”
“Something like that,” I said, and walked in with him.
He was wearing a dark green button-down workshirt and jeans. It felt strange to be walking beside him without his tweed coat on. A few other people at the market offered him condolences about the clinic; others shot dark looks at me. I found myself looking for excuses to talk to him, ones that weren’t related to vampires.
“So what was that tithe thing yesterday about?”
Hector sighed. “You don’t give up, do you?”
“I’ve been told it’s part of my charm.”
“By who?” he asked, with a rueful smile.
“People,” I deflected. “Possibly crazy people. But—about the tithe—”
“Okay, okay.” He waved his hands to stop me. “You’ve worn me down. The Three Crosses are building a new church in a warehouse two miles down.”
“I take it Maldonado isn’t a Catholic?”
Hector shook his head. “No. He believes in Santa Muerte. Which I normally find hard to condemn—if people find comfort in her, I won’t take that away from them. Lord knows we get little enough comfort down here. If faith helps, and they feel the real church isn’t helping, I don’t care where they find it from. It’s better than drugs or booze. But I do mind the extortion.”
“What, it’s not really a tithe?” I said, feigning disbelief.
Hector snorted. “When your priest is also a gang leader, it’s usually a bad sign. Maldonado is not what he seems.” Hector slowed and I slowed with him.
“How well do you know him?” I asked.
“What makes you think I know him?” Hector stopped entirely and looked at me.
“The love notes on the clinic walls. Unless he does that to everybody…” I let my implications fade. There was the deal with the cross tattoos and the vampire tattoos, of course, but it went beyond that. That, plus Hector’s face right now—it all came into focus for me. “He seems like the kind of person who does what he wants, takes what he wants. If he wanted you dead, you’d be dead already.” I paused to think. “So instead he must want something from you. Which implies that you have a relationship.”
The look on Hector’s face said I’d hit a raw nerve. I decided to go for broke, minus vampires. “Hector, what happens on the seventeenth?”
His expression, already clouded, became more so, and he hung his head. “I’m sorry, Edie. I don’t want to talk about it.” He started walking again, and was quiet on our way in.
At least for once he didn’t try to tell me I was crazy. And I noticed he didn’t deny a thing.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The volunteers who’d arrived before me had already gotten started on the next wall. It was taking several coats of paint to cover up the vibrant artwork, and while I knew we needed to cover them up on principle alone, not to mention for gang-affiliation reasons, it did seem a shame to ruin them all.
Then I remembered the sliced-up table in the first patient receiving room, which sobered me. It was a clear warning that anyone who worked here, or wanted to come here as a patient, could be sliced up like that too.
Hector had brought us face masks to wear, and a fan, which we’d set up in the corner for all the good it’d do. We left the front door open, and as we worked, applying coat after coat, other people trickled in to help.
Even with the work to do, I was getting sleepy. I hoped Jorgen visiting wouldn’t become a nightly affair. It was weird on a lot of levels. Where was Dren? I held the brush the wrong way, pressed too hard against the wall, and it slipped out of my hand. Like a fool, I tried to catch it as it fell, and wound up making a bigger mess.
Catrina danced away from the paint spatter and tsked at me. “I don’t know why he stands up for you. You’re a drain on all our time.”
I had had to ask one of the medical assistants—usually Eduardo, because he was nicer to me—to come in and translate a lot for me this past week. I retrieved my brush and turned toward her to apologize, but she went on.
“You couldn’t even stay in last night and rest up for this—even though you slept in two hours longer than anyone else. No, you had to go out and party, and now you’re useless here. Can’t even put paint on a wall.”
She turned back to her spot before I could contradict her. Her hand flowed up the wall expertly, and I could see the strange tattoo on the ring-finger knuckle of her right hand as she brought the brush back down.
“He … stands up for me?” I said aloud, more to myself than her.
“Rationalizes you, more like.” She whirled on me, her voice low. Her short dark hair held a snowfall of white paint. “Don’t you be getting any ideas—” she warned, punctuating herself with the brush.
I exhaled loudly. “I’m trying hard to fit in. Honest.”
She puckered her face in disappointment. “Try harder,” she said, then turned back toward her piece of wall.
At noon, I was going over the last cross for the first time when Hector came in with food and beer. People congregated in groups, like they knew one another, because they all did. Feeling awkward, I took my burrito and slunk outside.
Olympio sat on the steps, eating chips and holding a to-go cup from the place that we’d gotten lunch. “Hector hook you up?” I asked him.
“Yeah. You all done?” he asked, looking back.
“Almost.” I sat down beside him. “You could have come inside to help too, you know.”
“I can’t go inside. It’d diminish my don.”
“What is that, even?”
“It’s my gift, as a curandero.” He gestured grandly out at the street in front of us.
“Well, then, of course.” I looked back at the wall outside. The paint didn’t cover as well out here as it had inside. It’d need another two coats for sure. “We’ll probably be back to normal on Monday. Whatever normal is.”
Olympio cocked his head at me. “I wasn’t kidding about the ghost. You sound down, mija.”
“What’s it to you, mijo?” I asked back.
His eyebrows rose.
“That’s right. I know three words of Spanish. The other two are curse words, though.”
Olympio grinned, showing me a mouth full of chips. “I could teach you more.”
“Curse words?” I laughed out loud, and he did too. It felt good.
“More Spanish. Not curse words,” he amended.
“Sure,” I said and nodded. “It’d be useful.”
“There’d be a small fee, of course.”
“Of course.” I took a big bite of my burrito and chewed it.
“Can you tell me about the vampires now?”
I sighed with regret. I should have watched myself better. “They’re sort of like the ones you see on TV. Or read about in books. You’ll probably never meet one. The end.”
Olympio screwed up his face. “You have to tell me more than that. How many are there? Where did you meet them? Did they bite you?”
I twisted my lips sideways. “There’s a bunch of them. More than you’d care to think about. I met them where I used to work, at my old hospital.”
“They were there for the blood?” Olympio guessed.
“Something like that.” I folded the wrapper back over the end of my burrito, my appetite gone. “I got fired, and now I don’t know where they are anymore.”
“But you’re looking for them now. Why?”
“I didn’t promise to tell you that,” I said, setting the burrito down. I wished I’d brought out my Coke. “Your turn. Are the Reina de la Noche really run by a queen?”
His eyes widened, and he got a silly grin. “Oh, yeah. But here’s the thing—no one’s ever seen her.”
“Really?”
“Seen her and lived. Even her own people don’t know what she looks like. She’s like a ghost.” He squinted at me. “Or a vampire? The teeth and the blood of the Reinas—is that what you think?”
I shrugged mysteriously, trying to act like I knew more than I did, while still desperate to hear him go on. “You tell me.”
“Whoa. Whoa.” He set his cup down. “Then all the stories would be real. They say she killed all of the Port Boyz gang in one night—that’s how the Reinas got their territory.”
That did sound like a vampire, if, and only if, it were real. I could see the stories he’d heard through his mind.
“They said she ripped their heads off. I didn’t believe it—how could a girl rip off anyone’s head? But—”
I waved my hands for him to slow down. “People make up stuff all the time. And it’s always been cool to have other people scared of you. Right?”
He closed his mouth, trapping all his previously outlandish stories inside, and nodded. “Yeah. Right.”
We were quiet then, eating. The sun was beating down, and everything was still. People were walking in and out of a small store a few corners down, and behind us was a low hum of conversations I couldn’t understand, but right now it seemed like it was just the two of us sitting outside, Olympio, me, and a few brave ants.
And whatever was moaning across the street from us in the storm drain.
“You cannot tell me that you don’t hear that,” I told Olympio.
“What?”
The day was completely still. The only other sounds were from people inside the clinic.
“That,” I said, pointing to where it sounded like it came from, the drain. “Maybe it’s my ghost. Or the Queen.” I gave him a look.
Olympio seemed like he was trying to listen. He leaned forward, tilting his head. “Nothing.” I heard the moan again.
“Oh, come on. What good are your curandero powers if you can’t hear that?” I said, but the moaning had stopped, and Olympio shook his head.