Agave Kiss

he had a gray vinyl bag in hand. After drawing on some latex gloves, he went to work efficiently, making me wonder how much of his history as an arms dealer I knew. I mean, it was a dangerous profession; and to earn enough to afford retirement, he must’ve been good at it. He made sufficient money restoring cars to support his family, but I suspected the Ortizes had hidden resources.

I felt a little better once the body was hidden from view. It didn’t change the reality—and maybe the human host had been a shallow, venal human being—but it didn’t lessen my sorrow. It was possible the guy just made a few really bad calls and didn’t deserve to go out like that. But given the choice between a physical fight that could’ve hurt my baby or signing away his or her future? No. I’d make the same play again, even knowing how it shook out.

Afterward, Chuch used the extension cords I’d wrapped around the demon’s wrists to tie up the tarp. Then he dragged the package over near the door and washed up in the bathroom. Shaky, I sat down at the kitchen table, buried my head in my hands. I only roused when he set a gentle hand on my shoulder, sans gloves.

“Hey, you outsmarted that cabron. Did what you had to do. I promise you, there’s nothing Eva wouldn’t do to keep Cami safe. And that goes for me too.”

“Thanks.” Because I couldn’t let myself fall apart, I said, “I don’t have much around here, but I could make you a sandwich. Some tea?”

“Both sound good. Can I get the tea iced?”

“I can steep a cup, and then pour it over some cubes for you.”

“Sounds fine. I was actually about to sit down to dinner when you called.” He sounded sheepish, like he wasn’t allowed to have a life outside of my dramas.

That bothered me. I was tired of drawing my friends away from their own business, tired of being the needy one who couldn’t go a day without stumbling into trouble. “Gods, I’m sorry. I’ll be out of your hair soon.”

One way or another. Six more days of this. If I haven’t gotten Chance back, then it’s time to call it. The awful truth hit me like an anvil. That might be my future, trying to be everything to a kid for the next twenty years. How the hell did my mom do it? She had six years of help, true, but watching the man she adored sacrifice himself for the child they both loved—for me—I didn’t know how she’d done it. Any of it. Deep down I hoped that since I’d freed her power from Maury in Kilmer that her spirit was likewise free; and I’d liberated my father from Sheol, so maybe they were together now, somewhere. I’d keep that hope close because I needed the promise of happy endings now more than ever. I needed to believe.

This time, Chuch didn’t contradict me. He wasn’t rude enough to say, Dios mio, get your shit in order and go home already, but I felt keenly that I had taken advantage of them. The debt might never be adequately repaid. Silently, I put together ham and cheese sandwiches with a side of chips and pickle, a new and cliched craving. At least I didn’t want them dipped in ice cream yet. We ate without addressing my most pressing questions: When the hell were we burying the body . . . and where?

“Thanks for dinner,” Chuch said, once we finished.

“It’s not much. If I’d known I was hosting a dinner party, I’d have had the fancy meatballs in spicy grape jelly.” It was a lame joke, but he smiled, probably appreciating how hard it was for me to pretend I was calm.

“No worries, prima.”

By this time, it was full dark. Time to go.

“Stay,” I told Butch, who whined at me.

At Chuch’s request, I took the bottom, though I suspected he was doing most of the lifting. Chuch backed down the steps and we had the dead demon in the trunk before I saw a curtain twitch. This wasn’t the kind of neighborhood where people stared out their windows in search of trouble. Around here, most were just trying to make ends meet and keep their own problems at bay.

I climbed in the car, belted in. My body functioned on automatic, as I had come so far past shock that I didn’t know what to call it. Chuch cut me a sympathetic look as he backed the car onto the street, but when he spoke, it wasn’t about the mission at all. “You still have the Pinto, I see. I should’ve sold you a POS before.”

“Yep. It’s like the cheap sunglasses you never lose.”

He laughed, angling our route toward the desolate country out near the border. He didn’t volunteer information. In his line of work, that was smart, but it also worked my already frazzled nerves. His driving was competent, confident, right at the speed limit. Chuch obeyed all traffic laws to the letter; no way he was giving a cop the chance to pull us over. The he was a demon, trying to steal my unborn child defense would probably only qualify me for an insanity plea.

We had been on the road for ten minutes when I couldn’t take it anymore. “You know a place, I guess?”

“Don’t ask me any questions or I’ll have to blindfold you.” Though Chuch was one of my closest friends, I wasn’t 100 percent sure he was joking until he laughed and added, “Relax, peke. You’re wound so tight, it can’t be good for the baby.”

“Wouldn’t you be in my shoes?”

“Well, since I’d be a woman, pregnant, and trying to get my lost man back, si. Even one of those things would pose a huge problem for me.” Chuch’s grin widened, making it impossible for me not to share his amusement.

The laughter boiled out of me until I felt near hysterical, but it was such a welcome change from hovering on the verge of tears that I didn’t try to stop it, even when it came in noisy, giggly spurts. Chuch just kept driving. Eva had really trained him well; he was equipped to deal with any emergency a woman could have.

Eventually we got off the highway, but drove away from the rock formation where I’d found Kel. Once, Chuch checked the coordinates in his GPS, made another turn. Then he said, “We’re almost there.”

“There” turned out to be a rocky stretch of nowhere, kind of the point, I supposed. Once more, I helped move the body. Not something I ever thought I’d do. I felt guilty that this guy’s family would never know what happened to him, but most likely he was lost to them by the time he ended up as a Luren host. Drugs, maybe, or a permissive lifestyle took the blame, and his family had already written him off.

I’d tell myself that anyway.

Chuch got the shovel.

“Can I help—” I started to ask, but he cut me off with a curt gesture.

“I’ll take care of it. Get back in the car, please.”

I’d never heard quite that tone from him before. Gone was the laughing, gentle man who adored his family. This was the guy who took care of business, who could smuggle any weapon you wanted and not get caught. In response, I slid back into my seat, quietly closed my door, and watched the proceedings in the side mirror.

He dug a shallow trench, unwound the tarp, then rolled the body into the furrow. With quick capable rakes of the shovel, he smoothed sandy soil over the top and then he tossed a number of rocks to cover the signs of recent digging, not that I expected anyone to stumble across the grave site. To my surprise, he put all the supplies back in the trunk.

As he got in, he read my look. “I’ll sterilize everything and put it away. Since there’s no connection between me and the vic, the stuff’s safer in my garage.”

That made sense. If he left the tarp here and somebody found the body, there might be trace evidence left behind. Since neither of us had handled the corpse with our bare skin, there shouldn’t be anything left to find. I’d bet there were all kinds of people buried out here in shallow graves.

“Thank you. It’s not enough, but—”

“You’d come if I needed you, right?”

“Of course.” So far, I was the troublesome friend, however, and the uneven balance bothered me. My friendship had cost the Ortizes so much while giving back relatively little.

Chuch went on, “And you promised to look after Cami, if somebody ever comes gunning for me.”

“That’s not gonna happen,” I whispered.

Even if it did, he had a huge extended family. I suspected he and Eva had chosen Chance and me for the honor of godparents just to prevent infighting between their massive respective clans. But if the worst came to pass, yeah, I’d take Cami. Get her out of the country and keep her safe, no matter what. Just like I would for the peanut growing in my belly.