Shapeshifted

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, Mom.” 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?”

My mom had asked me that at every job I’d ever had as a nurse, ever. “Gah.” I rolled my eyes for comic effect, and grinned at her. “Okay. Yeah. He is.”

My mother chuckled in triumph. “Tell me about him.”

“Okay.”

We hung out until she faded, talking about small things under Peter’s watchful eye. When she wanted to take a nap again, I left. Peter even gave me a hug. I tried to be genuine when I gave him one back.

By the end of my return trip home it was raining in earnest. I ran from the station to my door, and once I got inside I started to gear up. I put on my belt with a silver buckle, and a silver cuff that Asher’d given me for Christmas what felt like a lifetime ago. I took the silver cross down off my wall again and plunked it in my bag. I wasn’t sure how to get to the Reina’s. I pulled out my phone and prepared to text Asher.

There was a knock at my door. Maybe he’d saved me the hassle of a text, heh. I walked up to my front door and looked through the peephole outside.

As soon as I saw who was there, I began latching all the lock chains I’d installed.

“Edie!” Ti protested, from the far side, hearing me work. The Ti of last night hadn’t been able to speak to me, right?

“Ti—where were you last night?” I asked through the closed door. Though the better question to ask might have been who he’d been.

“Edie, come on. Let me in.” He hit the door, and it made me jump.

“Why’re you here?” I yelled through the door.

“I found your badge. In my pocket.” There was a long pause. “Why was it there?”

“Just stay on that side of the doorway, okay?”

Silver wasn’t any good against zombies. Nothing was, except for guns and knives, and I couldn’t imagine hacking Ti up. Plus the most dangerous thing I had in my house was a steak knife.

I opened the door slowly and peered through the chains. He loomed on the other side.

“Do me a favor and try to look harmless, could you?” I asked him. He deflated, taking a step back. “Thanks.”

“Edie, what’s going on here?” Honest confusion played on his face.

I stepped forward and peered out and up at him. “You really don’t know?”

“No. And I don’t like feeling like that.”

“You’re not going to like what I have to tell you then.” I looked to the side, where my neighbor’s front door was closed. “Last night, I saw you with a butcher knife. You’d been cutting bones out of Dren. For a while now, it seems. A month or so.”

Ti blinked. I waited for him to tell me I was lying. If he did, then I’d slam the door in his face. My hands tensed, waiting.

“Go on.”

“I was rescuing him. From where he was trapped. Being tortured. By you, as it turns out. And then you were going to come after us, and somehow you changed your mind. I think you remembered me. You could have hurt me but you didn’t—so maybe you knew who I was. Even if you can’t remember it happening now.”

Ti ran his fingers through his short hair. “Why would I hurt you? And why would I torture Dren?”

“You really don’t remember anything?”