The following morning, after an expectedly fitful night of sleep at Mrs. Perez’s palatial manse, December was at the Double B Ranch ready to douse some of the tension between her and her child’s father. His words had kept her up all night, and her regrets, too. She was angry about the secrets, but heartbroken over his loss. She couldn’t imagine losing a child. She’d gripped Cruz in what was probably a stranglehold all night, but Cruz hadn’t complained.
She never did.
December cut her gaze toward the big brown pickup truck parked close to a dry stream.
“Go on.” Belle handed a picnic basket down from her perch on her horse and took the reins of December’s borrowed ride in hand with her own. “Go,” Belle goaded. “He should be there. Lola said he’d be around here somewhere.”
“What if he doesn’t want to be bothered?”
Belle shrugged. “Bother him anyway. No point letting him wallow.”
December had wanted to at first. She’d sat on the sofa for a good hour, fuming and swearing and watching dark clouds roll across the sky. She’d thought about how yet another person she’d loved had disappointed her the way her parents had.
But the difference between Tito and her parents was that he had a reason for being the way he was. Her parents had no excuse. She didn’t know which hurt more, only that she was in New Mexico, not Rhode Island, and there was no use worrying about the people who were so far away. Tito was right there.
“I could have listened before I ran my mouth,” she said softly. “I think sometimes I forget that other people have had bad things happen to them, too.”
“Hey. You can’t understand what you haven’t been told, and he’s gotta meet you halfway. I know that’s hard for guys like him who prefer to keep their pasts under wraps, but you can’t let him off the hook.”
“I’ll try not to, but … ”
“Can’t help yourself?” Belle queried.
December shrugged. “I’ve never been able to help myself around him. All he has to do is smile, and I get stupid. I think I needed a smile the night he first visited the bar.”
“The first memory matters a lot, probably.”
“You think maybe you can stick around for a little while in case I need a ride back?”
Belle shook her head, clucked her tongue, and got the horses moving. “Nope.”
“Thanks a lot.”
“You’ll be all right.”
Sighing, December turned toward the truck and stared for a few moments until the shape of the back of Tito’s head pressed against the driver’s window became clear.
She took a tentative step forward, then another.
Sometime during her hours of tossing and turning, December had convinced herself to stay in Maria for one more day. Too much was unresolved, and Cruz hadn’t seemed to mind the change of plans. She was having great fun with her new “elderly” friend, not doing much of anything. Cruz and Mrs. Perez were so similar that they frightened December. They didn’t have to try so hard around each other, and Cruz … didn’t have to talk so much.
December hadn’t told Cruz yet who Lola was to her, but she’d have to soon. She’d have to promise the child they could return for a visit, but in doing so, she’d also be uncovering Tito’s connection to Cruz. December didn’t want to do that just yet—not until he could be near Cruz without that cringe on his face.
She tapped gently on the truck window, and Tito sat up quickly, then turned.
He seemed to let out a breath as he closed his eyes, and then cranked the window down a couple of inches manually. “What are you doing way out here?”
“Not so far by horse. Belle brought me.”
“Why?”
“Because I asked her to.”
“I see.” He leaned rightward and turned the volume on the radio way down, but not so low that she couldn’t hear the strains of accordion.
He was still wearing his uniform, probably having gone straight from work to the wilderness. He’d probably been asleep or something close to it.
She held up the basket for him to see. “I brought lunch. Or, brunch, rather. Mrs. Foye threw some things together. I think that guy Tamatsu was about to raid her fridge again.”
Tito scoffed. “Yeah. Sounds like him. He’s always raiding her fridge. Supernatural types sometimes get crazy hungry ’cause of fast metabolisms, but he’s probably got the biggest appetite I’ve ever seen.”
“Does he not talk? He hasn’t said a single word to me or to anyone else.” But he was obviously tuned in. He watched. Always watched.
Even when he was eating.
“No,” Tito said.
“Why not?”
Tito shrugged. “I don’t know if he’s physically unable to or if he simply chooses not to. Tarik might know, but when you get to be my age, you stop asking questions.”
She still didn’t know his age, but seeing as how the last time she’d gotten anywhere near the subject there’d been a major fallout, she was afraid to ask again. She did want to know, though, and she wanted to know if Cruz would live to see that age, too.
She raked hair out of her eyes and pulled in a bracing breath. “You’re not … curious about things?” she asked.
He shrugged again, and grunted. “Keeping up with everyone’s story is hard. Easier to conserve words.”
“Oh.” She rocked back on her heels and looked into the distance, toward the ranch. From where they were, she could just barely make out a couple of silos, the big red barn, and the corrugated metal building that housed the Foye brothers’ woodworking business.
Cruz was there with Lola, somewhere. Lola had thought that the ranch was the safest place for Cruz to hang out during the day. Apparently, there were spells cast around the property that made intruders uncomfortable enough not to stay. Most people in the area had supposedly learned to stay clear of the Double B if they intended anything devious.
“Want me to drive you back?” he asked.
“No. I mean, I’m not in a hurry, because I—” She sputtered her lips and lifted the basket again. “Do you want this?”
He kept his gaze on her face and not the container she held up. His expression was so flat, she wasn’t sure he’d even heard her.
“Tito?”
He looked away. “Not really hungry.”
“Already ate?”
“Nah. Bring it on in, anyway. You might as well come inside. There’s shade in here.”
On the off chance he’d change his mind, she hurried around to the other side. If he’d hesitated just a little more, she might have lost her courage. One of them needed to be aggressive, and she wondered if perhaps she’d been expecting too much from the wrong person. There was no reason she couldn’t take initiative, even if he couldn’t yet. She still had questions she needed answers to. About him, about their daughter. About what she thought had been “them” but had turned out to only be a fling.
She climbed up as he tucked the beach towel he used as seat cover into the seams.
“Sorry,” he said. “Vinyl’s all cracked and messed up. Don’t want the edges to poke ya.”
She pushed the basket toward the middle of the seat and shut the door. “How long have you had this truck?”
He scoffed. “Damn. Pretty much since it rolled off the assembly line. Thirty years, maybe? First and only owner.”
“Wow.”
He had a truck older than her. He’d bought a truck before she was even born, and he was sitting there looking like any other guy that ran in her circle. He didn’t look like the old man he was supposed to be.
He gave the dashboard a little pat and chuckled. “Yeah, me and this truck have been through a lot. Them damn Foyes keep telling me I need to go ahead and trade it in before it leaves me stranded somewhere, but I’m too loyal, I think. Can’t just throw things away because they get a little old and worn out. Put some elbow grease into them, and they’ll hang in there as long as you need them to. Everything’s so throwaway lately.”
“Including people.”
“Dee.”
“Sorry.” She put up her hands, and sighed before slouching a little lower down the seat. “The scold just slipped out. I’ve never had the greatest filter, but you know that.”
“Yeah, I remember that about you. You didn’t used to be so mean to me, though.”
“I’m the one being mean? Seriously?” She looked at the ranch again, anywhere but at him. If he were smiling, she might have to slap him. Being the bigger person had to come with some exceptions. “You just left.”
“What?”
“That last time you were in Tucson. You left the same way you did all the other times and I thought you’d be back, but you disappeared. That … hurt, Tito.”
“You think that would have been my first choice?”
She shrugged. “You succeeded in hurting me, and you didn’t get in touch.”
“I thought that was best.”
“For who?”
“You.”
She scoffed. “Did you just not think I was worth the trouble of telling this stuff to? If that’s your opinion, that’s fine, but I need to know. I need to … ”
Know she wasn’t worthless to someone.
She pulled in another deep breath and let it out. “If things had been different—”
“Would I have left you? Dee, I wouldn’t have left you that first night, much less the fifth or sixth.”
She looked up at him then because she needed to see what his face was doing, because he was very good with words and she wasn’t so good at gauging magnitude.
He wasn’t wearing any expression at all, and that wasn’t like him. Or at least, not like the Tito she’d thought she’d known.
“I just didn’t want you to get hurt,” he said. “That’s what it came down to. There are too many stories of ladies like you getting killed for daring to make yourselves equals.” He rolled his eyes and stared out the windshield. “The rules … they’re so fucking stupid.”
“But your mother was with a human. Am I understanding that right?”
He nodded. Grunted. “I think the only reason none of the gods tried to punish him was because Ma dealt with him first. He betrayed her.”
“How?”
“Nearly got her captured by some humans.” He slipped down lower and gave the sides of the steering wheel a squeeze. “I don’t have her kind of magic, Dee. I don’t have her power. You understand what I’m telling you?”
“No.”
He nodded. “Maybe saying it aloud will be cathartic. I can’t stop people from trying to hurt you when I’m not around, and that’s why I left you. I wanted to go break things off before you got attached in the way our partners do. If you’d gotten too attached, you wouldn’t have been able to be with anyone else unless I died.”
“I imagine that would be a very long time from now.”
He turned his hands over. “Guys like me could easily live a couple thousand years. More, if they’re not bothered.”
“Oh.”
She’d fade away, and he’d endure. That sounded to her more like a tragedy than a love story. Without having consumed even a single pepper, she suddenly felt heartburn surge. She put her palm over her sternum and rubbed.
“I’m sorry I had to be a dick,” he said.
“Hmm,” she said, still rubbing. She wasn’t sure if she were ready to accept his apology yet. Six years was a long time to pine over someone she’d thought was “The One.” That hurt wasn’t going to go away with a five-minute chat.
“So,” he said lightly and turned the radio volume up a few ticks. “What have you been doing?”
“What?”
“Mind if I ask you some things since we’re sitting here? This ranch is one of the two safest places in the county—Ma’s place being the other. She’s got strong protective magic around her house. She wouldn’t have taken you there otherwise.”
She’d recalled Mrs. Perez saying something about that to Glenda the previous night, but December’s head had been such a mess that she was processing so many things on a substantial delay. “Ask what you want.”
“What have you been doing since the last time I saw you? Haven’t talked to you.”
“You sure haven’t.” But you could have. Her eye twitched. “That’s the conversation you really want to have right now?”
“I’m curious.”
“You don’t want to talk about your cousin?”
“I’ll take care of him. Don’t worry about him.”
“Don’t tell me not to worry about stuff. If you’re planning something, I want to know what.”
He turned his hands over and shrugged. “No definite plans right now.”
“But you’ve been talking about him with people?”
“Yeah. That’s the way things work in the glaring. The folks who have the ability to assist are thinking of solutions.”
“Obviously, those people know more than I do. I don’t understand everything that’s going on, but I worry Cruz will figure out things around here aren’t quite normal before she’s old enough to understand why. Hell, I’m not even sure I understand why. Maybe I’m not old enough, either.”
“You’re old enough, Dee.”
“So tell me things. This cousin of yours, where does he live? Do you have the same kind of magic? Did I hear right that he and his crew were in Tucson?”
“It’s better if you don’t know all that stuff. It’s just gonna stress you out. Too much information to take in all at once.”
“But that’s not for you to decide. You need to tell me these things so I know what I’m up against in keeping my daughter safe.”
“Ma will make sure she’s safe.”
“That’s not her job.”
“I doubt she’d agree. She doesn’t respond well to being threatened or to her cats being threatened. She’d scorch the earth when that happens, so what do you think she’d do if anyone tried to hurt Cruz? If anyone can keep Cruz out of harm’s way, Ma would be best.”
“She’s a stranger. Cruz doesn’t know her well enough yet to be with her nonstop.”
“Stop worrying about proprieties. You assume Cruz thinks like normal people, but she’s not a normal person.”
“Is she going to grow up the same way other little girls do?”
“I don’t see why not. I aged like humans do until I was around twenty-five or so. Slowed significantly after that. As to whether or not she’ll be an immortal? I don’t know. Ma might know, or we might just have to wait and see.”
The answer was far from satisfactory, but she nodded reflexively anyway. “I just want her to fit in and to be a normal little girl.”
“Dee, nothing you do will ever make her normal if she isn’t already. Trust me.” He settled a little lower in his seat. “I tried to be normal once.”
“Nothing will make her normal … ” December closed her eyes and rubbed them, her shoulders shaking with the manic laugh that erupted from her lungs. “Oh lord, that sounds like something my uncle once said to my mother before she and my father threw my sister out.”
She felt Tito shift his weight on the bench. “What?”
“My aunt’s husband. He’s the reason Alicia and I left.”
“You never told me that.”
“I never had a chance to tell you much of anything. We were … ” She set her teeth into her bottom lip and pondered language, as if precision were such an important thing at that juncture. “We were preoccupied.”
“You’re distracting that way.”
“So it’s my fault we spent more time horizontal and under the covers than upright and talking?”
“Nah, I’m pretty sure I bear the blame in some of that.”
“All of it. You came on to me.”
“I did?”
“Seriously? You really can’t remember? Are you so openly flirtatious with every waitress who crosses your path that they all start to blur?”
“No.” He turned the stereo down a little more. “Nothing about you is forgettable.”
“You had a hell of a way of showing it.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t know what else to say. I thought I was doing the right thing, keeping you from getting attached.”
“And not the other way around, right?”
“I’m not talking about reciprocity. I’m talking about magic. Who wouldn’t get attached to you? You’re pretty and you’re fun. Thoughtful and easy to be around. Plus, I never had to ask you twice for a refill.”
He joked, but there’d been a reason for her attention. “I could never stay away from you,” she said. “Didn’t matter how many people were at the bar. You were like a porch light, and I was like a moth.” She twirled her thumbs around each other and nibbled at a bit of dry skin on her bottom lip. The words were a little pathetic, but she felt lighter for having spoken them.
“I can count on one hand the number of women I’ve been with since you, Dee, and none of those were for longer than a night.”
“Nah.” Her scoff was barely loud enough to register. She didn’t have the fortitude for volume anymore. “That’s bull.”
“Why is that so hard to believe?”
“It just is. You’re this … this guy who’s, I don’t even know. Hundreds of years old, and who has probably been with more women than he can remember the names of. I don’t buy that there hasn’t been a lot of someones, and I’m okay if there has been.”
The lie was sour in her mouth, but she smiled anyway, and pushed the picnic basket a little closer to him—anything to change the focus of the conversation.
“You should eat.”
“I don’t want to eat.”
“Okay. Well. The food is there if you change your mind, so … ” She crossed her arms over her chest and tapped her toes against the metal floor.
Her brain wasn’t working the way she wanted. She was usually so much better at carrying on a conversation, even one about the most trifling things. Her uncle had once told her no one would ever want her, because she would never stop talking long enough to let anyone tell her.
Her parents had asked her to talk less after that.
She pinched the bridge of her nose and tapped the toe of her boots faster.
“I have this uncle,” she said, dropping her hand. “My sister doesn’t like to mention him by name, like he’s Voldemort or Bloody Mary or something. He’s a miserable human being.”
“I’m afraid of where this story is going.”
She shrugged. “Gotta tell you some things about me, right? Even if they’re not pretty.”
He straightened up and put his back against the door, his dark stare pinning her in query. He’d always been good at looking like he cared, and that’d been more than she got from most people. “I guess that’s fair, given some of the things I’ve told you so far.”
“There are so many stories I could tell about him,” she said, “but I’m just talking in generalities right now. He’s the reason my sister had to leave home so young, and I followed her because I didn’t think with the way things were going, I would be treated any better.”
“What happened? Did he to—”
“No.” She shook her head hard. “No, he never touched either of us. His venom was all in his words. He’s charismatic in that toxic kind of way a lot of sociopaths are, and we always seemed like we were the only ones suspicious of him. He had everyone else fooled. Still does, I think.”
“What did he say to her?”
“I don’t know if there was just one thing, or if circumstances came to a head, but he was always trying to get people to separate us. He tried to pit my sister and me against each other. He kept trying to tell everyone that I was too dependent on her, which didn’t make a lot of sense, you know? Alicia was bossy, sure, in that big sister way that most are, but she never tried to run my life or get in my way. When she left, I went after her because I didn’t want to stay if she wasn’t there. I didn’t think anyone else would understand how uncomfortable that man made us. I stayed awake a lot of nights wondering what exactly he got out of being that way. For a while, I thought he was just a dick. He’d make comparisons between me and my sister and his daughter, and really talk her up at the expense of putting us down. My parents started to buy into what he was saying. Suddenly, we weren’t good enough, and they kept reminding us of that.”
“You said he was your uncle?”
She nodded. “Through marriage. My Aunt Dottie’s husband. They got married when I was around five, I guess. Anyway, my sister took custody of me when she turned eighteen, and my parents didn’t contest the filing. They’d stopped caring about us, and that was obvious.”
“That doesn’t sound right. That doesn’t sound like something normal people would do.”
“Tito, I don’t want pity. I just wanted you to know that about me—why there’s no family except Alicia and my brother-in-law and their kids. That’s all Cruz has had until now. She’s never met my parents and, as much as I still miss them, I don’t think I’ll ever take her home. That’s why I had to come here. I had no one else.” She risked a look up, expecting him to be wearing his former look of stage fright, but instead, there was a deep furrow in his brow and his lips were pressed into a tight line. “I made you mad?”
“I’m not mad at you. It’s just that a guy like me knows too much about a lot of things, and when you tell me about people like that, I can’t help but to question if they’re human at all.”
“Don’t waste your brain cells on my family drama. I try not to anymore.”
“But you said everything was fine before he showed up.”
“As far as I can remember. I mean, I was young. My sister would have better recollection. Maybe I had my head in the sand on a lot of things.”
“Yeah, well, I think things would be fine again if you got him to go away.”
“Just that simple, huh?”
“I’m serious, Dee. If I can get close enough, I might be able to tell if something’s wrong with him.”
“You mean like possessed?” She hated wishing that were the case, but his suggestion would make her feel better than if she believed her uncle was simply a bad person. Him being possessed wouldn’t explain her parents’ behavior, though.
She slumped. She felt like the sun had come out briefly only to be captured in a big, dark sack.
“We could be dealing with any number of things,” Tito said. “If I can’t tell, maybe someone like Steven or Tarik could.”
“As much as I’d love to be able to pump my fist in victory over this, since Cruz was born, I’ve had to become a realist. Thank you for being concerned, but you really don’t need to go out of your way to investigate him. My family lives in Rhode Island.”
“How the hell did you get to Arizona?”
“Following my brother-in-law from one military base to the next. When he came out of the service, he picked Arizona just because it seemed nice and he hadn’t lived there, I guess.”
“You ever think about going home?”
“Yes, all the time!” She sighed in the wistful way of cartoon fairy tale princesses and certain pastel talking ponies. “I miss the place. I still miss my family, exclusive of the uncle and his brat, of course.” She’d said the last part of the sentence in a mutter. “I’d like Cruz to know her roots, but maybe a reunion’s just not in the cards.”
“She should know them. I bet I can fix things.”
“I wish you could, but like I said—”
“Hey, at least let me look. Or Ma. It won’t take her much effort to pop there and back.”
“Assuming you can peel her away from Cruz.”
He grunted and rubbed the shadow of a beard on his jaw. He didn’t used to shave so closely, but had probably started the habit with the new job. She liked the shave. She wasn’t sure about the rest of his new look, though. The Tito in her imagination in the past almost-six years took up more space.
“Could send Tarik,” he said. “He might give you a hard time because he hates to waste the energy teleporting, but he’s the kind of guy who’d make you a deal.”
She shuddered at the thought. “I’m afraid of any sort of deal that guy would offer. He’s kind of scary.”
“Nah, he’s harmless.”
“If he’s so harmless, why is he a fallen angel and not an angel-angel?”
“Not my—”
She put up her hands. “Right, right. Not your business, huh?”
He shrugged and tossed her a smile that made her look away, because she couldn’t think when he did that. “You guessed it. You could always ask him. He might tell a pretty girl his secret.”
She braided and unbraided a few wisps of her hair, pondering the pitfalls of negotiating with such a creature. “I think I value my life too much. He might want to make me an unbreakable deal just for him to answer the question, and personally, I’d like not to commit to any schemes that may take years off my life. I’ve got a kid I need to raise.”
“You don’t have to raise her alone.”
December thought that he sounded like he was volunteering, and that was what she’d wanted, but she was overwhelmed by all the other stuff that came with him. He wasn’t just her child’s father. He was some kind of cat shifter demigod, and a sheriff’s deputy, and he had a crazy cousin, and apparently lots of other supernatural stalkers who liked to kill people.
Tito wasn’t normal.
But neither is Cruz.
Her lips parted, but before he could get any words out, he said, “Never mind. I guess that was uncalled for.”
“No, I just … ” Though she scoured her brain for the words, nothing was right, and she’d learned when to shut up. “Can you drive me back?” she asked quietly.
“Yeah.”
He didn’t make any motions to do so, though, at least not as far as she could see in her periphery.
She had to look.
He was giving her that same handsomely neutral expression he’d worn the first time he’d stepped into the bar—just before he’d smiled at her.
The smile didn’t follow, though. Apparently, she didn’t merit being flirted with anymore.
“Are you going to start the truck?” she asked.
“I will.”
“When?”
“When you’re done asking questions. That’s why you came out here, right?”
“I thought I was done.”
“You sure?”
She did the princess pony sigh again, and then straightened up and squinted at him. “Why do you look thinner than you did fifteen minutes ago?”
“Do I?” he asked flatly.
She would have sworn her brain was playing tricks on her, but given the circumstances of the past couple of days, she knew better than to doubt her eyes.
With one little twitch of his cheek, he morphed back to his previous constitution.
“You just … That’s not … ”
He turned his hands over in concession.
“Do I even know you?”
“Of course you do.”
“I don’t think I do. I don’t even think I know what you really look like.”
“This is me, Dee.”
“But you just … inflated. For all I know, you’re some grotesque monster with fish eyes, talons for feet, and tentacles for arms.”
He rubbed his chin again and grunted. “Nah, this is me, more or less. Might have been an Aztec god who came close to that, though.”
“That’s not funny.”
“I was only joking a little. Really, I try to be consistent. Keeping a shape that’s not true is harder when I’m as tired as I am.”
She drummed her fingers atop the picnic basket lid and chewed the inside of her cheek momentarily. “So, you could look like you did when I first met you.”
“What, fluffy?”
“I always thought your size suited you.”
“Think so? Man, it was just part of a disguise. I started wearing the extra weight because, surprisingly, fat people can be almost invisible in general public. If they’re dressed a certain way, nobody stares too long or pays too much attention to them. People mostly left me alone when I was that way, and didn’t look into my background too much. That’s what people like me tend to prefer. I guess I got to the point where I was so used to wearing that shape that holding onto that form was like breathing or blinking. Felt natural.”
“And then you had to change for the job.”
“Yeah. It’s harder for me to maintain these in-between sizes because I haven’t had practice with them.”
“So, you’re going to revert.”
“Eventually. I just can’t do it all at once. Folks would be suspicious of how I lost the weight so fast.”
“Is that why you’re not eating?”
“Nah. Sometimes, I just don’t have to. Ma doesn’t have to eat much at all, but she’s in a much better mood when she indulges.”
“That’s so weird. Cruz always wants to eat.”
“Sounds like me at five. She’ll be hungry until she stops growing, probably, and then we’ll see.”
We. She stopped drumming. “We” was a hell of a lot better than the lonely “You.”
“Yeah,” she said. “I guess we will.”
He turned the key in the ignition and then gestured to her seatbelt. “Hey. Put that on. I want to show you someplace.”
“But—”
“Don’t worry, I’ll have you back before Cruz knows you’re gone. We’re not going too far.”
“Oh.” She clicked the seatbelt into the catch and held the ragged strap away from her exposed collarbone. The material was rough enough to cut open a tin can, but even if it scraped her, she’d probably happily endure. He was actually taking her someplace. In the past, they hadn’t explored much farther than her bed.
“Okay,” she said cheerfully. “Show me.”