The Hellion Read online

  “This was nice, for a change,” said Carly. “You should go to the library with me sometime when I go do my homework. You said in the bookstore you liked cookbooks and mystery novels. And you and me can, like, look at stuff on the internet? I can make you a Facebook account and all kinds of stuff. Did you know that Gabriela Herrera is on there? Didn’t you go to school with her?”

  “Sounds very familiar, yes. I think so.”

  “She said she went to school with you back when you lived in Houston. I think it was maybe late middle school? High school?” Carly and her mother walked through the entranceway toward the curb, the parking lot gaping black before them. Wasn’t hot enough yet to make the asphalt feel soft like cold peanut butter, but give it a few weeks.

  Parked in a handicap slot some eight hundred feet away, in front of the J. C. Penney back entrance, was an olive-green motorcycle.

  “Oh yes! I remember her! She was going out with Joseph Mireles. Does she have pictures on this Facebook?”

  “Yeah?” Carly said in that uh-doyyy, of course way. “She’s tiny and cute and, like, she wears these big black eyeglasses that make her look nerdy.”

  “I might go to the library with you, then.”

  “Mind if I come too?” asked Santiago behind them.

  All of the blood in Carly’s face and hands ran into her feet, and a match-head flared in her heart. Her entire body felt like she’d been splashed with ice water. Marina twitched in shock and did an ungainly about-face, stumbling down from the curb onto the crosswalk.

  “Been meaning to catch up on my reading.” Carly’s father stood up from where he’d been sitting on a marble bench, out of the way. Santiago Valenzuela was tall and broad like a pit fighter gone to seed, with a Lorenzo Lamas mullet that grayed in racing-stripe arcs over his ears. The sleeves of his chambray shirt were fold-rolled to his armpits to display the riot of tattoos on his arms. He ground his cigarette out on the bench and flicked it into the wood chips. “What brought you to the mall, my lovely ladies?” he asked, his eyes lurking behind a pair of black tactical sunglasses. Santiago gave his wife a peck on the temple and put his arms around their necks, walking between them in his easy, bowlegged cowboy stride.

  On top of the work-shirt was an unseasonably warm leather vest. Tab patches over his heart said LOS CAMBIANTES and ROAD CAPTAIN, and they encircled the stylized face of a wolf. The same feral wolf-face occupied his back, a silvery-blue patch the size of a dinner plate. Carly tried to think of something to tell her father, but she took too long and Marina came up with something first. “I wanted to come and price swimsuits, Santi. It’s summer, honey, time to think about swimming!”

  Glancing at his daughter, Santiago took off his glasses and his eyes bounced off the ground at her feet as if he were visualizing her in a bikini. He chuckled darkly, shaking his head, that ain’t happening, and opened the Blazer door for his wife.

  As Marina sat down, Carly recognized a subtle fear on her mother’s face. Dad was being nice. Friendly, even. Not that this in itself was cause for alarm—they wouldn’t be a family if Santiago were violent a hundred percent of the time. But in this situation, having caught them being scarce and telling obvious lies, Carly expected anger, swearing, exaggerated gestures like slamming the car door … but he closed it easily, softly, and stood there with his hands on the windowsill, looking in at Marina. It was unsettling. “I’m here instead of work because I got laid off today,” he said, and paused—for emphasis, for drama, to test their reactions? His eyes were hard and bright, but his voice was grim velvet and his mouth was set in a crooked, regretful slash. “Almost a hundred of us, for the next two or three weeks.”

  “Toyota laid you off?” asked Marina. “Que chingados pasa con esta gente? They can’t do that. They can’t. Who do they think they are?”

  “It happens.” Santiago shrugged. “Slow sales? Recalls? Who gives a shit?” He leaned over, looking at his daughter in the passenger seat. “Guessin’ you two already ate dinner. You smell like Chinese.” He smiled. “Reckon I’ll dig up something at the house. Sure we’ve got something I can nuke.” Never mind the fact he had money. Could have marched right into that food court and gotten his own damn dinner. Carly hated this wounded-bird act. Woe is me, you are so unfair to me, I do so much for you. Story was always the same. He reached in and gently plucked the smoothie out of his wife’s hand, sucking at the straw. “Mmm, piña colada. You got good taste, baby—but that’s why I married you, ain’t it?”

  Marina smiled, a humoring, humorless smile, almost demure. “You can come swimming with us.” He handed the cup back to her. Styrofoam rasped as Marina slid it into the cup holder. “Look at this layoff as a vacation, yeah? You deserve one. You work so hard.”

  He stared at Marina’s face until he finally looked down at his feet and back up at her. “Yeah. I reckon.” He reached in and pulled her into a kiss on the mouth, a long, full kiss that released with a satisfying smack. “I’ll see you at the house,” he said, and clapped the windowsill once before he walked away, which to Carly was code for Go straight home and I’ll be watching to make sure you get there.

  She waited for the throaty tiger-snarl of Santiago’s motorcycle to burst into the afternoon air to ask her mother, “Why didn’t we just keep driving?” but the radio was too loud (Taylor Swift exhorting them to shake it off, shake it off) and Marina didn’t hear her, or maybe she just didn’t want to.

  Nestled against Carly’s left foot was her purse. Rattling softly against the tube of ChapStick inside was a can of pepper spray.

  Track 3

  As she opened the door, the diner’s air conditioner chilled the sweat running down Robin’s back. Health Department certificate by the door boasted a score of 96. Jukebox was crankin’ out the hits: Johnny Cash, Shania Twain, Blondie, Rolling Stones. Right then, Bob Seger sang “Turn the Page,” and for some reason it made her think of musty tweed seat covers and cold dawns under a rust-orange streetlight. You walk into a restaurant, strung out from the road. How could anything bad happen in a clean restaurant with dirty music?

  Accoutrements and pictures were nailed to wood paneling: framed photos of sportsmen (tee-ball teams in orange uniforms, a golfer holding a trophy over his head), pieces of antique farm equipment, hand-painted advertisements for local businesses. The center of the diner was a counter lined with stools where men sat quietly grinding up dinner—truckers, mostly, in chambray shirts and jeans, the backs of their necks like cooked hams.

  Staring at the truckers’ broad backs, she considered, When you’re a teenager, you wonder if people like you. When you’re an adult, you wonder if you like people.

  “Think that’s them,” said Kenway.

  Three people quietly browsed menus in the corner. A dark, handsome Indian guy with coiffed hair and a trim beard. Gendreau, who’d had his hair cut short in a choppy shock of platinum blond; he looked less like a Slytherin alumni and more like David Bowie’s Thin White Duke. The other occupant of the table was an Asian woman graying around the temples.

  Gendreau waved. “Hello, Miss Martine.”

  His smile was light, but his brilliant eyes seemed tired. The curandero wasn’t wearing his Willy Wonka frock coat in the Texas heat, but a simple dress shirt and a pinstripe vest and trousers, both in raincloud colors. His silk tie was done up in some kind of elaborate knot. The scar across his throat was a puckered pink crescent.

  The Indian man wore a T-shirt and jeans; the Asian woman was dressed in a white tank top, a droop of chintzy necklaces and bracelets, and a long skirt. Made her look like a beatnik schoolteacher.

  A strange feeling came over Robin when she caught a knowing glint in the woman’s eye. She seemed familiar, like someone she’d known in middle school.

  Where do I know you?

  “Didn’t know you were going to be bringing your pet bear,” said the handsome Indian, pointing his chin at Kenway. British accent, a sleek and cozy guv, luv, and bruv brogue that made Robin think of dark cobblestone streets,
the BBC, the London Underground. “Asha Navathe,” he said, shaking her hand. He indicated the older Asian woman. “This is Rook.”

  “Asha Navathe to you, too,” said Kenway, shaking his hand.

  “That’s—” Navathe blinked, confused, and then he shook it off and smiled. “Nice to meet you, mate.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” said Rook. “I am an Origo.”

  “The folks that handle artifacts?” asked Robin, recalling the conversation she’d had with Leon Parkin and Heinrich Hammer in the kitchen of her childhood home.

  “Yes,” said Rook. “Sort of a cross between a museum curator and an armorer.”

  “She’s our Q.” Navathe reached over to pound her heartily on the back. “Well, one of them, at least. She’s sort of middle management. Strong enough for an away team, but pH-balanced for administrative paperwork.”

  “As long as I’m not a redshirt.”

  Navathe smiled. “You’ll always be my Spock.”

  Shaking her head, Robin said, “If this conversation gets any geekier, I might have to cut bait and run.” She looked around, tried to see if she could pick out any tinfoil-hatters, conspiracy theorists, or other wack jobs that might be listening to their conversation.

  “There’s no one here to hear,” said Gendreau. “You probably wonder why we chose to meet you here. That’s why. Totally random. No chance of being overheard by an unsavory third party.”

  “I figured you were … I don’t know, trying to make me feel at ease by meeting in public,” said Robin, “but in a place with minimum collateral casualties. A small, rural, out-of-the-way Podunk to mitigate damage in case I were to … Dia-blow.” She smirked at her own pun.

  “You think we don’t trust you?” asked Rook. “Or are you afraid there’s a legitimate reason for that?”

  “No, I—” Even though her teeth were well taken care of, Robin thoughtfully rubbed her face, subconsciously trying to conceal her mouth. The anxiety there in this well-lighted restaurant, surrounded by strangers, was all too real. Made her feel like a Little Girl surrounded by Adults.

  Incredibly frustrating. Alone, she was totally confident and in control of herself; she could talk to the millions of people on the other side of her camera without anxiety. But if you put her in a roomful of people, a roomful of eyes and faces, an invisible hand tightened around her throat. This was why she’d never been to any of those conventions they hold for YouTube creators, like VidCon. She dearly loved her viewers, but if she had to face a crowd of real people, she would probably curl up in a ball. Kind of thing that develops when you grow up living in the woods with no friends and then spend several years in a psych ward.

  She thought back to the Top Dollar Gentlemen’s Club and wondered how she’d ever gotten through it.

  Anger. That was how. Anger.

  Well, that and liquor.

  I can make you do anything, said Heinrich’s voice from the well of her memory. All I gotta do is piss you off.

  “She hasn’t had any incidents since Blackfield,” said Gendreau. A ring on his left hand shimmered in the sinking sunlight, a square-cut ruby set in a Celtic knot of silver.

  “You’ve said as much.” Rook’s stiff affect softened. “Look, I think we’re getting off on the wrong foot here.” Her hands were on the table, holding each other lightly, nonconfrontationally. “You probably think we’re some kind of shadowy, elitist cabal, don’t you?”

  A waitress appeared from nowhere and took their drink orders. Robin eyed each of their faces in turn as they spoke to her. She felt like a cornered, feral animal, and hoped it didn’t show on her face. “I honestly don’t know what to think,” Robin said. “Don’t know much about you. Ain’t much on the internet about the Dogs of Odysseus.”

  “As it should be,” said Navathe.

  “We’re not the Illuminati,” said Rook. “After the old guard was pushed out of the order—the right-wing fogies that still believed in Crowley’s ways, the robe-wearers, the pyramid-heads, the bloodletters, the real Skull and Bones types—we’re all that’s left.”

  Navathe injected, “We’re basically like a bunch of old college pals. A pack of pub mates that just happen to know how to do magic. We’re the underdogs, really. There are Illuminati types out there—”

  “The old men that Frank ran out of the Order in the sixties and seventies went out to join other groups and companies, and found their own,” said Gendreau. The waitress returned with their drinks, handing him a water with three lemon wedges. “Those are the real cabals. They’re why I wanted you to keep quiet about what you were doing and discontinue your YouTube channel.”

  After she left with their dinner orders, Navathe leaned in. “Some of those shady crews actually want to recruit you.”

  “Recruit me?” asked Robin.

  “A cambion is top dollar in occult circles. You’re the first known cambion since old times. If magic was football, there’d be scouts lining up around the block to sign you up for big-league teams.”

  “But I don’t even know how to do that again. To … make myself demon again. I don’t even think it was me that did it the first time.”

  “We know that,” said Navathe.

  Robin relaxed. “So, you’re not afraid of me, then?”

  The magicians glanced at each other. “No,” responded Navathe. “We’re not afraid of you.” He grinned and cupped Gendreau’s shoulder with a hand. “Papa G here has been quite persuasive as to your erstwhile harmlessness.”

  Gendreau paused. “I don’t think that word means—”

  Navathe pinched the curandero’s cheek. “You’re so cute when you correct my grammar.”

  “I’m … I’m glad to hear that.” Robin relaxed so much she slumped down in the seat. She could have cried. “I’ve been worried ever since. I’m the one that’s afraid, then.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Rook.

  “You weren’t there when my demon father, Andras, changed me into that wire-sculpture demon thing, the same thing that he was. He corrupted me. I saw myself in a mirror. It was fuckin’ scary.”

  “I’m partial to fucking terrifying, myself,” Gendreau noted, but then something on Robin’s face made him quail. “Oh, I’m so sorry.”

  “I have nightmares about it.”

  “She wakes up covered in sweat and goes into the bathroom for hours,” said Kenway. “Stares at herself in the mirror. Won’t let me touch her for a week afterward. Sometimes, she can’t sleep. Stays up for days at a time. Those days, we don’t do much traveling, and if we do, I do all the driving.”

  “I know it’s still there. Still inside me, forever. Like herpes.”

  Disgust passed across Navathe’s face. Robin studied her hands, the right hand with its scars and veins and wrinkles, and the unblemished left hand that looked ten years younger. The hand the witch Theresa bit off last Halloween, the hand that Robin inadvertently grew back with the power of transfiguration she absorbed from Theresa. The fingernails grew faster on that hand, as if the nail beds were more fertile, but the nails were soft and brittle and sharp, like a baby’s. She’d cut her face and the insides of her nostrils numerous times with those toddler razors. Woken up with scratches on her cheek. She had to keep them bitten down. They were painted, but she’d chewed them until only the quicks were black. “I may not look demon anymore,” she said, looking up, “ever since I pulled my mother out of that nag shi dryad tree and evidently earned my humanity back, but I can still absorb powers from witches and relics.”

  “Even after burning the reborn Ereshkigal?” asked Navathe.

  Rook shook her head. “All heart-roads lead back to the death-goddess. All those teratomas are a piece of her, a seed of reincarnation. So, if the magic still works, she’s still alive … somewhere there in the After. Or Before. Or whatever the hell you want to call it. All you did was slam the door in her face.”

  “Ghost soup,” said Navathe.

  “The huh?”

  “Phantom fondue. Spook bisque. The p
rimordial supernatural minestrone from whence we all came, and to whence we all eventually go back.”

  “Anyway,” said Robin, “if you aren’t afraid of me or what I’m capable of, and you didn’t want to see how long my horns are, why did you want to meet me in person? We could have just as easily had this conversation over email or Facebook or something.”

  Navathe smiled. “We didn’t want to see how Satanic you are, love. Just the opposite. We wanted to see what kind of a person you are. Off-camera, you know.”

  “She’s a damn good person,” said Kenway. “An amazing human being, and an outstanding friend. I could have told you that.”

  “Well,” grinned Gendreau, “you’re a bit biased.”

  “Human being.” Rook reached over and clasped Robin’s fingers in gentle solidarity. Tattooed on the back of the woman’s hand was the algiz, the rune that protected them against baser forms of magic like the spell that made minions of the cats of Blackfield. Looked like a Y with an extra arm in the middle, and almost seemed to trace the blue veins under her skin. “That’s what we wanted to see. We didn’t want to see how much demon is in you—we wanted to see how much human is in you. Could have done without the secrecy and tall tales from G here, but it’s good to see mad old Heinrich didn’t rub off on you.”

  Oh, he definitely rubbed off on me.

  Gendreau dipped his head, his eyes flicking to the table in guilt. “Yes, well, I … I wanted to stave off this confrontation for as long as possible, because I didn’t know what you were all going to do once she was in arms’ reach.”

  “You know us better than that,” said Rook. “It’s not that you didn’t trust us; it’s that you didn’t trust your grandfather, isn’t it?”

  The curandero nodded. “Yes, I suppose that’s it.”

  Navathe told Robin, “Francis Gendreau is the one that threw Heinrich out of the Dogs. He’s the most vocal of everybody about demons, being a demonologist himself, and he’s been the most opposed to contacting you since we learned what Heinrich did to you and your mother.”