My first instinct was to ask,
The real world crept in slowly, like eventually it always does. Now that we weren’t moving I wasn’t very comfortable, and I didn’t think his truck had a towel, but there was no way I was pulling away from him. Not this time.
“You do realize one of us has to move first,” I said after a while, when I was pretty sure I couldn’t feel my leg.
“Never.” He pressed his face down against my shoulder and chest and I ignored everything else to wind my arms around him and hold him tight.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
“I’m so glad you didn’t come over last night, Edie—you would have been trapped by that storm.” My mother stood in the doorway of her home, looking frail. “Summer storms are the worst.”
“Yeah, they are,” I agreed, and she smiled at me.
“Are you staying for dinner?”
“No. I just wanted to drop by and say hi.” Asher was waiting in his truck around the corner for me—I’d asked him to detour on my way home, and he’d obliged. “I’m actually running errands, but we can reschedule for later on in the week, any night’s fine.”
“Tomorrow night okay? Unless you have a hot date, that is,” she teased.
I made a face. For once I actually might, but I knew Asher would understand. Besides, my mom went to bed pretty early. “Tomorrow night’s fine.”
Her face wrinkled, and she squinted with a little worry. “Can I invite Jake?”
“Of course. You don’t have to ask, Mom. I’ll even bring something he likes to eat this time.”
My brother’s weight lifted, she smiled even more widely at me. “Thanks, Edie. I like it when we feel like a family.”
“Me too.” I leaned in and hugged her close. “Hey—hang on, Mom.” I pulled back a little and leaned out the doorway to wave down the street to Asher, gesturing for him to get out of his car and come down the street, and I gave my mom a silly grin. “I have someone for you to meet.”
I went back downtown with a bouquet of flowers to get my car the next day, surprised to find it intact. What, no one wanted to see what treasures were hiding in a Chevy? I opened the door, and heard someone shout my name.
“Edie!” It was Olympio, again on his bike. “I was waiting for you! I figured you’d come yesterday.”
“Sorry. I was busy.” I hadn’t left Asher’s bed for one blissful day. Even just sleeping beside him was nice. But today was back to being a grown-up, and dealing with things.
“Who’re the flowers for?”
“For Ti. I don’t think they’re going to find a body.” And if they did, they wouldn’t know whose it was. I’d try to find out where his wife was buried and put them together if I could, but I didn’t have enough to go on about his past. I’d borrowed Asher’s laptop this morning to try, but no luck. Besides, as my mother was fond of telling me, bodies were just our mortal shells. If there was any fairness in the world, Ti was already with his wife wherever they’d wanted to be. Now that I was with Asher, I was more inclined to believe things could be fair. Maybe.
“You want me to go with you?” Olympio offered.
“You got a lock for that bike?”
Olympio tsked at me. “Nobody’s going to steal it.”
“Because you’re the world’s greatest
“Exactly.” He leaned it against my car, and together we went back down to the ditch’s side.
The weather had gotten better immediately after our battle, and all the drainage had done its job. Now there were only long shallow puddles and muddy debris to prove it’d ever rained. We reached the bottom and walked up to the three metal mouths. The sun was coming up behind them, so the retaining wall cast shadows, and the tunnels—I didn’t think anyone could talk me into going into a tunnel ever again.
“Do you want to say anything?” Olympio asked when we’d reached the shadow’s edge.
“Not really.” I didn’t want to pray, and I didn’t know what to say. Ti’d been a good man for almost a century. It didn’t matter that his heart wasn’t beating for half of it. I walked forward, leaving Olympio behind. I reached the middle entrance and threw the flowers inside it. I heard them land with a splash, and knew they’d be there until the next rain. “I’ll always think of you when I see storms,” I said softly.
“How sweet,” a voice in the tunnel echoed back.
I jumped, but Olympio must have taken my movement for grief; he didn’t rush in. Which was good, because I didn’t want him seeing what I knew I’d see next. He’d already seen enough strange.
“Ahhhh,” the Shadows hissed in an imitation of sympathy. “We didn’t mean to startle you.”
“Why’re you here?” I wanted to tell them to get out—they didn’t deserve to be anywhere near Ti.
“Because. We entered into a pact. You did find Santa Muerte after all,” their voices murmured, interspersed with dripping sounds. “She is not ours, but we are bound by technicalities. So we talk now, as we said we would.”
“What do you want?” There was no way they’d be talking to me if they didn’t want something from me. I knew how they played the game.
“There’s been a little accident on Y4. We could use you there again. In exchange for helping your mother, of course.”
Forty-eight hours ago I would have jumped at that chance.
But the events of the past two weeks had changed me. I stared into the blackness of the tunnels where the Shadows lurked, only now willing to offer their aid. As much as I still wanted to save my mom the easy way— probably the only way, whispered the darkest part of my heart—my mother wouldn’t want her life to come at the cost of mine.
Which is what it would be, if I went back to Y4 under the Shadows’ yoke.
I’d come so close to death this time. Next time—would I make it? It all came pressing down on me. I’d had to weigh so many options and choose between lives since I’d arrived here. How much longer could I press my luck before it ran out?
I was close to a normal life here, with my job and Asher, and I knew it. As close as someone like me would ever come. And that was what my mother really wanted for me.
I chose me.
“We’ll see,” I told the darkness inside the tunnel mouth.
“We’ll see?” they mimicked back. “We’ll see?” Their multivoice raised harshly, and then ended in a laugh. “We’ll see, indeed.”
I stepped away from the tunnel entrance. With Ti’s body gone, there was nothing for me down here now.
Olympio still waited politely, just out of the Shadows’ reach. “Everything go okay?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ll say an
“Thanks. I’d appreciate that.” I smiled down at him. “You’re awesome, Olympio.”
He patted himself like it was no big deal. “I know.”
CHAPTER FIFTY
And so now things are normal. Ish. As normal as I’ve ever had them before. Shadows don’t talk to me, I
