The mulcher started up with a screeching roar, blades battering my only remaining connection to those I’d once counted as allies in the paranormal realm. Now, like Olivia said, I could live my dreams-or at least what remained of my life-my way. So I left the mulcher running, ensuring that if found, Warren would know exactly what I thought of his treatment of me. Then I nodded and left the nursery the way I came, through the back gate, under the cover of night.
But flanked by Shadows.
11
The supernatural community at large could move around in ways mortals couldn’t, but we just took a cab. Yet when Tripp directed the driver to an address on Main, I couldn’t hide my surprise.
“El Sombrero? Seriously?”
He shrugged, indicating it wasn’t his first choice. Of course, he’d spent the last eighteen years living in an environment about as comfortable as a deep fryer. A momand-pop shop with tonsil-dissolving salsa was probably well behind his vote for Ben & Jerry’s. However, Milo and Fletcher were already debating the merits of a verde relleno versus a red enchilada, while the cab driver-also a fan-put in his vote for the menudo. I just wondered what a handful of rogue agents were doing at the oldest Mexican restaurant in town.
We hopped out on Main Street, and I stared at the neon green and red sign. El Sombrero Café was a hole-in-thewall if ever there was one, in the best possible sense of the word. It’d been in the same location since the fifties, and the interior was as dated as the exterior, both adding to its charm.
“You sure it’s open?”
“Well there’s open,” Tripp replied, as I gave the door a fruitless tug, “and then there’s open.” He pulled on the steel handle, and the entrance swung fluid and wide.
“Show-off.”
“You should see me two-step.”
The Big Hat was definitely closed. Every surface wiped down and reset for the next day’s crowd, the kitchen quiet and dark, the scent of rice and beans faint as a memory. Yet a sole man sat in the room’s center, as if stranded there. Posters of matadors and raging bulls surrounded him, and giant hats were pegged indiscriminately to each of the four walls. Tripp motioned me forward with a jerk of his head, though he remained behind with Fletcher and Milo, making like the mafia of old. It helped me feel at home as I wove my way to the center table.
“José. Mescal por mi amiga. ” The man lifted only his voice, the rest of him utterly still and fixed on me, as if he was a lizard I’d surprised in Red Rock Canyon. Or, I thought as I sat, a rattler. “Unless you’re a margarita girl?”
I was. Rocks and salt, but when in little Baja…“Tequila is fine.”
José, obviously the owner, brought the bottle. I studied his fingertips as he filled my shot glass, and he smiled- either missing the direction of my gaze or pretending to-and replied in soft Spanish at my nod of thanks. I waited until he’d disappeared to wince at the fat pink worm floating along the bottle’s bottom.
Glancing back at Carlos, I lifted my brow, an invitation to explain why a mortal would be serving a rogue. His lips were a soft heart beneath a thin, Errol Flynn mustache, and he licked them before giving me another answer entirely.
“My name is Carlos Fernandez. I became a rogue at age fifteen by entering the city of neon with my mother, an agent of Light in La Ciudad de Mexico until the Shadows overtook it in the nineties.”
I remembered, though obviously not in the same way Carlos did. World events and paranormal activity were invariably intertwined. Victory by the agents of Light or Shadow made its mark on the mortal population, though all the humans knew was that in ’ninety-four the peso had plummeted, sending the country into despair. The chasm between the haves and have-nots widened like the grandest of canyons, and things had only worsened since then. I’d be surprised to hear if there was even one agent of Light left in any major Mexican city.
Carlos spun his shot glass in his hand, making no move to drink as he watched me from across the table. His dark hair was cropped close, but you could still see a bit of a Caesarean curl. His eyes were light brown, the simple tabletop tea light catching deeper flecks of color like grains trapped in amber. Though darker, with long sable lashes, his gaze put me in mind of Hunter. The same patience lurked there.
Or maybe it was the same calculating spark.
“My father, determined to fight the enemies of Light to the last, sent us ahead without him. He was forced out a year later, finally leaving that dangerous place to travel to us, and this safe one.” Another slow slide of his tongue over his bottom lip, like he was trying to seduce me, before he blinked. “He lost his life in the weedy meadows after which this city is named. Almost immediately.”
I froze, unsure what to say. I sensed a drama involving me, but like a person wrongly accused, wasn’t yet sure how. Carlos, still reclined, pulled a card from his shirt front pocket as he spoke and slid it toward me. I leaned forward, frowning as I recognized the small square format. It was a trading card so old the stock paper was thinned and frayed at the edges, and worn so finely in one spot I could almost see the grain of the paper.
The black and white photo showed a man wearing tight jeans and an unstructured blazer winging open to reveal a mesh tank top as he leaped through air. Very eighties. His conduit was some sort of mallet, and his name, troop number, and city were scrawled in Spanish across the card’s bottom. His vital stats were on the back, similar to a ballplayer’s, and identical to the cards featuring superheroes sold in comic book shops all over the world. Gently, I handed the card back.
Carlos took it between two fingers and tucked it back in his pocket. It was probably the last of his father’s trading cards in existence.
I glanced back up into his face, noting the resemblance now, especially those darkly expressive eyes. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
He inclined his head, and lifted his shot glass from the table, allowing the edge to kiss his lips. I echoed the movement as he said, “Your mother had him killed the day after he arrived.”
I sputtered homemade tequila over the glossy tabletop. Wiping my mouth with the back of my hand, I bent my head and cleared my throat of its burn before letting out a huge sigh.
“I guess here’s where I say I’m sorry, and while I have no control over my mother’s actions now, never mind back then, I’m sure none of that matters. You’ve clearly been planning your vengeance for a long time. I expect you’ll kill me in the same way she murdered your father. You latinos have deep poetic leanings.”
“We do?”
“Yeah. Ever the closet romantics.” I shrugged. “So what will it be? Decapitation? Pull out my guts? Boring ol’ slice of the arteries?”
His amusement vanished and I was sorry I’d asked. The reminder of his father’s death was obviously still painful, and it only occurred to me belatedly that it might be better not to know how I was going to die. “He was ambushed while seeking sanctuary in the Strip-front cathedral.”
“The Guardian Angel?” I’d heard it’d once served as a place for rogues to connect with one another, but that was long before I’d come along. Warren had made sure of that.
“That’s right.” Carlos drummed his fingers on the tabletop. “She could have warned him not to enter, but she didn’t. Two agents of Light chased him out. They ambushed him in the brush surrounding the springs. Let his blood run where the natural streams once had.”
I swallowed hard. He made the Light sound as brutal as Shadows.
Carlos pursed his lips as he stared through his glass of amber liquid. “He was impossibly fast, my father. They’d never have caught him if he’d known Las Vegas like you…or me.”