Page 32 of Blood from the Marrow
“Jai alai,” Librada said with an expression that might have been pleasant surprise if she weren’t so stoic. “A game of my youth.”
Marisol vaguely remembered the TV commercials from when she was a kid. She was back in her grandmother’s living room, Spanish TV blaring and guys in helmets flinging a small ball around a racquetball court using long, curved baskets. The memory made the bile rise in her throat. Made her feel too much like the little girl who dreamt about a mother who showed up thirty-two years too late.
As they rolled toward what used to be the dilapidated building’s entrance, Marisol wrestled down the urge to run from the cold panic slithering through her chest. Elena needed her help. Librada had already surveyed Clara’s hideout and madesure it wasn’t a vampire trap. She’d be fine. She needed to be fine.
When the SUV stopped, Marisol forced herself to open the car door. As soon as she stepped out onto the dusty gravel, Librada was at her side. Meeting during the day hadn’t been their first choice, but Clara’s insistence on it made them confident she wasn’t in league with Sayah. It’s not like the sun only weakened Elena’s crew.
The sensation of a thousand pairs of unseen eyes on them made Marisol hold her breath while they walked toward the rusted metal doors. At her side, Librada’s shoulders were tighter than usual. Her spine was rigid and body primed like a finger on a trigger.
Scraping the crumbling cement floor, the door opened with a sickening creak before they reached it. Marisol gritted her back teeth when Clara stepped out alone.
“You came,” she said, hazel eyes dripping with emotion Marisol didn’t want to see.
“I guess unreliability isn’t hereditary,” Marisol snapped more harshly than she intended.
Clara’s wounded eyes shifted to Librada like there was something honorable in her silence. After introducing them so Clara didn’t mistake Librada for Elena, Marisol jammed her useless hands into the pockets of her linen shorts.
“The others are weary of outsiders,” Clara said by way of apology for keeping them in the meager shade of the broken awning over the entrance. “We don’t usually stay anywhere this long,” she added like she had a pathological need to fill the silence.
Marisol’s chest ached, but she didn’t give in to the urge to make Clara more comfortable. She reminded herself that the woman drowning in self-pity had also abandoned her before herbelly button was dry. Marisol thought of her grandmother and felt sympathy for her instead.
“We live on the road.” Clara shifted her weight between her sneakered feet, exhaustion bleeding into the new lines around her sleep-starved eyes. “It’s never safe for us to stay in one place.” She smoothed her blonde-gray hair she kept in a ponytail. “We’re also not used to visitors.”
Never safe? Never still? What the hell is the point of staying alive if not… living?
“Who hunts you?” Librada asked from beneath the hood keeping her entire face hidden.
Clara looked like it took all of her self-control not to run from the vampire. Marisol dug her blunt fingernails into her palm. She hated the fear streaking Clara’s worried face. Hated even more how much she wanted to dispel it.
“We’ve never known,” she admitted with her gaze on the ground. “It’s why we can never stop running.”
“Then how do you know there’s anyone chasing?” Marisol asked, too tired to add any bite to the question.
“Every other decade someone forgets why we live like this.” She curled her arms around her own slight frame like she desperately needed a hug. “They try to set down roots.”
Marisol debated pretending she didn’t know the woman. Imagined comforting her like she would a stranger, but she couldn’t get herself to move.
“It always ends the same way,” Clara explained, eyes on the ground.
“Haven’t you ever tried to figure it out? So that maybe you can do something about it?” Marisol couldn’t fathom living on the literal run her entire life. In the darkest recesses of her mind, a sliver of light. A crack in her anger.
For the briefest moment, she imagined having grown up with her mother. Running. Always running. No chance at a normal life. Would she have ever gotten to know her grandmother?
Her stomach flashed with queasy, cold understanding before she steeled herself again. Understanding didn’t mean forgiveness. She couldn’t forget the pain Clara’s disappearance had caused her grandmother. She’d always tried to hide it from Marisol, but her grandmother lived half-holding her breath. Always waiting. Never knowing if her only child was alive or dead.
“How many of you are there?” Librada asked.
Clara drew her thin, pale brows together and fixed her attention on Marisol. “If you join us, we will be forty.”
Reflexively, Marisol staggered backward like Clara might snatch her the way Baylor’s goons had outside the witch market. Lib’s hand on her back stopped her.
“I’m not here to go with you.” Marisol hated the unexpected tremble in her voice. “I’m here to ask you to join us.” She swallowed hard. “Well, to join Elena’s vampires for?—”
A sharp inhale from behind them made Marisol spin around. A woman—tall, broad-shouldered, and built like a cement wall—stomped toward them. “You brought her here to recruit us for vampires?”
Clara stepped out from the shade, putting herself between the massive woman and Marisol even though Librada had stepped in front of her first. “Judith?—”
“No.” The woman charged for the front door, blowing past the three of them, and swung it open. “Everyone needs to hear this.” She whistled a melody into the cavernous space. “You’ve already exposed us enough.”
