Page 111 of For Love and Blood and Fury

Candela stood and crashed her bottle against Avani’s. Zuri didn’t have time to clear the unshed tears in her eyes before she stood and clinked her beer against theirs. “Let’s fucking go.”

Chapter Fifty-Nine

Pumpkin spice lattein hand even if September was as hot as the height of summer, Marisol pulled out of the drive-thru. She’d run all of her errands, but she found herself driving west and away from the penthouse.

She didn’t have a plan, or at least she didn’t think she did until she was skirting the airport access road and taking back streets to her old neighborhood. A neighborhood in transition, she realized. The houses that hadn’t been demolished and turned into soulless boxes were small and mismatched and still wearing security bars on the windows. It hadn’t been a dangerous area, but all the old-school inhabitants had installed them just the same.

Maybe it was the fear of the unknown that made the Cuban immigrant community decide that small forts were in order. As she drove by her old elementary school, Marisol decided that she’d have probably felt the same. Now that she was in a new world, so foreign to everything she’d known, she understood feeling vulnerable. Feeling overexposed.

The moment she turned down her grandmother’s street, she hit the brakes. From two blocks away, a tall, white complex towered over its neighbors. She reversed into someone’sdriveway and turned around. She didn’t want a close-up of the building sitting on the graveyard of her childhood memories.

Unsure what she wanted, she turned back toward the elementary school. Back to the small park tucked under massive shade trees.

She parked her car and found a bench under the widest Banyan facing the park. To her surprise, the jungle gym was still there, though now it was colorful rather than a wooden splinter factory.

Watching the kids too small to be in school run around, Marisol thought about how many times she and her grandmother had walked to the park in the afternoons. How many times her grandmother had sat at a bench and let her play until she’d worn herself out.

She closed her eyes and let the breeze cool her skin. It was only when she realized she’d been wrestling with the urge to cry that she acknowledged what she was doing. That she realized she was searching for a connection to her grandmother. Not just the woman in her memories that Zuri offered to let her relive, but the woman she’d be now. There was almost nothing she wouldn’t give to talk to her.

Pressing her pendant to her chest through her T-shirt, she tried to imagine how a conversation with her might go. Tried to guess what she would think of Elena and Zuri.

Unable to stop the tug on her lips, she nearly laughed at the thought of Elena sitting at their kitchen table. There was such a power to her, she couldn’t see her doing something so mundane.

What would her grandma say to a vampire? Marisol tried to strip away what she’d want her reaction to be, but she couldn’t picture anything other than acceptance. Well, acceptance and curiosity. Her grandma would probably ask her a thousand questions about what things had really been like in the past.

Would Elena indulge her? Marisol’s heart answered with a resounding yes.

Despite how guarded Elena was, how slow to open, the more Elena showed her, the more Marisol liked what she hid with extravagance and bravado. In her adult life, no one had ever made her feel as protected as Elena did. It was almost too much sometimes, but Marisol was understanding more and more just how much she’d lost. How many loves had dissolved into the sands of time and slipped right through her clenched fingers.

And Zuri… Marisol chuckled to herself. She could see her in that kitchen, no problem. See her whispering with her grandmother. See them sharing secrets over simmering pots and handwritten notebooks.

It might have taken a minute for her grandmother to get used to the idea of Marisol having two partners rather than one, but her grandmother was such alive and let liveperson. Once she saw how happy Marisol was, that she was more fulfilled than she could ever imagine, she’d understand.

Swallowing the growing lump in her throat, Marisol acknowledged that she’d love her grandmother’s insight into her new relationship. But it wasn’t what she was desperate for. It wasn’t the conversation she’d give anything to have.

Eyes opened, she tried to stop wanting impossible things. To stop wishing that she could talk to the only person who might help her understand who she was and where she belonged. The person who might help her learn how to access her power at will.

Marisol couldn’t be using more than a sliver of her gift, she was sure. What could she do if she grew her skills?

A rush of possibility made her heart race. If she could control her power, develop it, she might stave off death and injury forever. She and Zuri wouldn’t have to age if she could continuously regenerate new cells. They wouldn’t have to turn tostay with Elena. She wouldn’t have to feel loss ever again. None of them would.

Trapped in her own uselessness, Marisol wanted to scream. She told herself that maybe her grandmother wasn’t an Aglion. That she had no idea what was going on and couldn’t help anyway, but she knew it was a lie. She knew in her bones that the gift had come from her.

Instead of ruining her afternoon, Marisol let the unproductive thoughts go. There was nothing she could do to bring her grandmother back. Nothing to do but keep practicing with Zuri and have patience with her incredibly slow progress.

She stayed on the bench and remembered what it had been like to run and swing and climb without a care in the world. The thrill of flying kites so high on windy days that she lost sight of them in the sun.

“It’s such a nice day, isn’t it?” a blonde woman in her fifties said when she sat down next to her, even though there was an empty bench on the other side of the Banyan’s sprawling trunk.

“There’s a breeze under here at least,” Marisol agreed, but stopped short of commenting on the humidity.

“Are any of those little ones yours?” The woman’s smile was soft but anxiety dripped from her wide hazel eyes.

“No,” she replied with a friendly smile.

Everything about the woman’s body language felt wrong. Scanning the park, Marisol looked for signs of someone watching her. There was a tension in the woman’s muscles, like she was holding her breath and her words, but willing Marisol to read something in her eyes. Eyes that were bloodshot and surrounded by dark circles like she hadn’t slept in months.

Marisol recalled her training on victims of human trafficking. There was no doubt in her mind that this woman was afraid. She could have sat anywhere, but had chosen this bench. Maybe she wanted to ask for help.

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