Shapeshifted

as if where we touched we completed a circuit. “Come back to me.”

The door to the room opened up, and Luz flew in from the hallway outside. Her teeth were out, and she raced in the way full vampires can: from not there to in your face in half a second.

“You liar!” she shouted at the top of her lungs as she lunged for me.

Ti ripped his arm free from my grasp and punched her. She flew across the room and landed against the wall.

She stared down at her concave chest, where Ti’s violence and her prior speed had caved it in. Snap by sickening snap, she reknitted before our eyes.

“Don’t ever hurt Edie,” Ti said, and then sagged forward. I caught him.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Luz stood as soon as she could and jerked her chin at Ti. “What is that thing?”

“He is a zombie.” I helped set him to standing again. I stood on the side of him opposite from Luz. Even though she was injured, she was still pissed and fast. “What happened tonight? Why are you here?”

“I went there and found nothing!”

“You didn’t wait for Hector or me?”

“Catrina told me—and I have waited long enough!” She pounded her fist into the wall behind her. It shook.

I didn’t want to ask if Adriana was dead. If she was, it was something that’d be written on my conscience until the day I died. “What did you find there?”

“The whole place was emptied out. I could smell the blood—I could smell that she’d been there. But she and everyone else, and everything, were gone.” Luz sounded mystified with herself. “I don’t know how they were keeping me from seeing it before … when she disappeared, that was the first place I checked. I know I checked it. Repeatedly. I know I did.” She sounded more like she was trying to convince herself than us.

People remembering actions they’d never done had a feel of familiarity. Either the Shadows were here, mucking things up—unlikely, seeing as it was in their best interests that I somehow complete my quest—or it was House Grey, as Dren had suspected, loaning or teaching Maldonado their powers. They wanted Santa Muerte for themselves, even though they wouldn’t get their own hands dirty to do it—just help out Three Crosses and Maldonado.

Ti was still leaning on me when Hector arrived with Catrina. Olympio helped his grandfather to stand. Ti turned toward the old man. “Is it broken? Am I fixed?”

The curandero spoke, and Olympio translated. “Fixed for now. No guarantees, though. Once you’ve been touched by a bruja, he can always find a door.” He looked at me and said something else, but Olympio didn’t translate it. The curandero laughed aloud, triumphant, holding the smashed remains of the last black egg. The snakes—or whatever it was that they’d been—were gone. I looked at my ankles and they were covered in red welts, oozing serous fluids. I’d worry about that later.

“Luz—are you okay?” Luz was touching herself like she couldn’t believe what had just happened. Either Luz’d never seen herself heal as a vampire before, or she was used to beating on people a lot more fragile than a zombie.

Catrina and Hector arrived. “What happened?” Catrina asked.

“I went there, and she was gone.” Luz glared at me. “If you’d come to me sooner, last night—”

“Then you’d have been killed. He’s more powerful than you think,” Hector said, surveying the room. His gaze landed on me, still holding Ti, and looked displeased. “We came as soon as we could.”

“Thanks.” I turned toward Ti. “Are you better?”

“I’m not homicidal anymore. Better might take a while.” He pushed himself up. “What’s the vampire’s deal?”

“Ti—now that you’re fixed, what do you remember?”

“How does this help?” Luz demanded.

I ignored her. “Ti—there was a girl incarcerated with you. The one I told you about. Do you remember any more now than you did earlier today?” Incarcerated sounded better than jailed. They’d both been prisoners, in a sense. Unwilling.

Ti’s brow furrowed as he tried to retrieve information that House Grey magic had shoved aside. “Just the bones. So many bones.” He looked down at his hands as if they still might be covered in gore. “Rooms that there was no daylight in, and bones. That’s all I see when I think of her.”

“I went to that room. She was gone,” Luz said.

“Ti—rooms?” I gently prodded.

He nodded. “There was … more than one. Only one girl, though.” His eyes fixed on mine. “What kind of monster was I that I helped keep her there?”

What kind of guard would be more fearsome and invulnerable than a leashed zombie? I took his hands in mine. “It wasn’t you, Ti. You weren’t yourself.”

“I swore no one would ever control me again, once my old master died—that I’d never be how I used to be. Used. Again.” He slowly shook his head. “I can’t believe it happened to me. That I came here to offer myself over to him—”

“Only because you wanted to be healed. How were you to know?” It was hard to see him in so much pain. He wouldn’t be the first person to fixate on a goal so much that he lied to himself about its outcome. If anyone about knew that, it was me.

“If there was more than one room, where’s the second one?” Hector asked. I looked back at him—at Asher—and he wouldn’t meet my eyes.

“Their new church. The one I was doing construction on during the day. It’s behind the main altar there.”

“That’s where they’ve taken her?” Luz stood, pushing Catrina aside, but Hector blocked the door.

“We go together, Reina. You cannot do this alone,” Hector said as she prepared to shove past him. There was irony in the situation. If only Luz had bitten Adriana, Luz would know exactly where she was now—vampires could find anyone they’d ever bitten before. But because she’d followed Anna’s instructions to the letter, she was blind. And healing my mother was that much farther away from me, still.

Luz deflated. “I’ve searched there too, and missed her before.”

Olympio’s grandfather said something, and Olympio translated him. “Because they would not let you see. But someone who has had the bridle taken off their mind will not so willingly put it on again.”

“She has a bridle, but I have a door?” Ti asked ruefully.

Olympio held up his hands and shrugged. “It’s magic. Do you expect it to make sense?”

Ti looked around the room. “I’m going with you all. I know the layout of his new church. And I want revenge.”

Luz’s lips lifted in a feral grin. “Then you’re on our side.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

Hector drove us. It seemed for the best. He knew where we were going, and that way I could sit in middle of the backseat in case I needed to stop Ti from going crazy again, in theory. Hector was silent, and I wondered if he had anything in his glove box that’d stop a zombie. Luz sat in the front seat, and Catrina sat beside me. Outside, it started to rain, hard, and I wondered if Maldonado was somehow behind the storm.

“How was she? Last night, when you saw her?” Catrina asked me.