“It is difficult to kill a spirit,” she said finally.
“Tell that to the one who owned this body before me.”
“The Gentry killed him?”
El lobo shook his head. “The changing world killed him. He didn’t retreat quickly enough and died when the concrete was poured, when he could no longer breathe clean air and his waterways were poisoned.”
“Yet his body serves you well enough.”
“Anfelsos aren’t troubled by a proximity to man and his cities and I have that of the Gentry in me.”
Bettina nodded. She had heard of such spirits. They grew up from the underbelly of a city where mean-spiritedness was the fashion, unkindness the rule. Cities weren’t evil, by and of themselves, but there was something about their darkest corners, their most hidden byways, that nourished such bitter fruit. Like called to like, which explained ethnic neighborhoods as much as it did creatures such as these wolfish Gentry.
“What was their plan?” she asked her companion.
“I don’t know the details, but it has something to do with an artifact.”
An immense stillness settled inside Bettina. Claro. That explained what she had felt when Ellie brought out that ancient wooden mask in the studio earlier today. She hadn’t sensed evil about it so much as power, an enormous potential. And shadows clung to that power, a pattern of darkness discoloring the wood, like a sudden foul odor on a clean clear spring morning in the desert when you stumbled upon some dead rotting thing lying amidst the wildflowers. A poisoned coyote. A discarded tangle of rattlesnakes, killed for their rattles.
What she’d sensed had been the touch of the Gentry, unrecognized until this moment.
“You know something,” el lobo said. “I can see it on your face.”
She knew next to nothing, but more than he, apparently. The Gentry meant to use Ellie and the mask. They were both potent, but unfocused. Brought together as they had been, what might be created?
“I don’t know enough,” she told him.
“But…”
Shaking his head, he let his voice trail off. Neither spoke for a long moment. Bettina watched the freezing rain as it continued to fall, coating the trees and lawn around Kellygnow with thickening layers of ice.
“Will you help them?” el lobo asked finally. “If not for my sake, then at least for theirs? Will you help your kin?”
“I must think on this,” she said.
He nodded. “I see.”
“I didn’t say I wouldn’t.”
“And didn’t say you would.”
Bettina sighed. “Consider what you’ve been telling me—how it must sound.”
“Are you truly so distrustful of dogs?” he asked.
Dogs, wolves, coyotes…
“Why shouldn’t I be?” she responded.
He shrugged. “Because I can hear them singing in you.”
Before she could reply, he stepped away, deeper into la epoca del mito and she was alone in the place between the worlds, still untouched by the freezing rain that fell so constant around her. Listening to the tree boughs crack and tumble down in the woods around her, she was no longer so enchanted by the weather. El lobo had helped bring about her change of mood, with his dire warnings and parting words.
That was three times in one day, she thought. The dream. The figurines that Adelita had sent. And now this. Los cadejos. Lost for so many years.
“I don’t hear them singing,” she said softly, but no one was there to hear. “I don’t hear them at all anymore.”
Not since Abuela went away.
She would have had a hard time returning to the house, but she stayed in that half-world, the place between, until she was by the kitchen door again. There she stepped fully out of la epoca del mito and immediately the slick ice underfoot had her grabbing for the doorknob before her legs went out from under her and she took a spill. She managed to get back inside without mishap, removing her boots, hanging her coat on a peg by the door. Her hair was still wet from when she’d first gone out and she made an attempt to dry it with a dish towel before going to the bathroom to find one more substantial.
Returning to her room, her gaze came to rest on the little figurines that Adelita had sent her. She fingered the rosary still in the pocket of her vest and remembered that she’d wanted to call Mama this evening. It was too late now. She would do it in the morning. For now she had questions that only one person in Kellygnow might be able to answer.
She walked down a long hall until she reached the door of Nuala’s room. Since there was still light coming out from under the door, she went ahead and knocked on its wooden panels. If Nuala was surprised to see her, it didn’t show in her features. Bettina came straight to the point, asking Nuala if she knew what “Scathmadra” meant.
Nuala offered her a humorless smile. “Is that the name he gave you? Oh, he’s a sly wolf, that one. ‘Scath’ means ‘shadow,’ but it can also mean ‘shelter’ or ‘bashfulness.’ ” She gave Bettina a look that was at once thoughtful and mocking. “So,” she went on. “Has this innocent wild thing managed to set your heart at ease with his honeyed tongue and gentle naming?”
Bettina refused to be baited.
“And madra?” she asked.
“Dog.”
Bettina mulled that over. Shadow-dog. Or shadow of the dog?
“I have no advice for you tonight,” Nuala added. “I see no point, when you won’t listen to it anyway.”
Bettina shrugged. “You’d be surprised,” she said.
“I hope so.”
Bettina wanted to ask more, about the enmity between Nuala and the wolves, what it was that had set them against each other, but she managed to still her curiosity.
“Good night, Nuala,” was all she said. “I hope you sleep well.”
Nuala gave a tired nod. “Dreamless would be a gift.”
“I could make you a tea.”
She watched the older woman hesitate, but then give another nod.
“Thank you,” Nuala said. “That would be kind of you.”
9
Hunter was in a wretched mood by the time he finally reached Miki’s street. He carried a bag of cleaning supplies that he’d bought at a hardware store along the way, and it only seemed to make it harder to maintain his equilibrium on the icy streets. Between the weather, which showed no sign of letting up, and the bad temper of just about everybody that was out in it, there wasn’t any respite. The only good thing was that his side didn’t hurt as much anymore. There were still twinges when he moved too suddenly, or stretched in the wrong way, but otherwise he was almost back to normal. Enough so that he felt up to the unpleasant task of cleaning Miki’s apartment. He wasn’t sure that he’d actually be able to make the place habitable again, or if Miki’d want to live there even if he could, but he wanted to at least give it a shot.
As he got closer to the apartment, he kept an eye out for those tall, dark-haired Gentry, but there was no sign of them. There was no sign of anyone, except for a small figure farther down the block, shoulders hunched against the weather, chin against his or her chest. Other than that, the street was deserted—all the sane people were inside, dry and warm. Hunter decided he was going to give this other lost soul a cheerful hello when they came abreast, a small thumbing of the nose against the general malaise that had gripped the city, but when they both reached Miki’s steps, he realized who it was out on the wet streets with him tonight and his temper flared.