Page 85 of Blood from the Marrow
“No.” Clara’s voice was so weak and her pain so intense.
Why wasn’t she healing herself? The moment Zuri thought it, Clara’s mind seemed to answer. Clara didn’t believe she deserved a moment of relief. Could anyone really think they deserved this? Zuri remembered something else. Pain medication tossed in the toilet and flushed with trembling hands.
“It’ll only take a second to get the?—”
“No,” Clara said more firmly. “I don’t want to go inside.”
The nurse hesitated. When she started speaking about postpartum hormones, Clara turned her out. She hauled herself up with a fingertip grip on the edge of the window.
And there she was. Zuri felt the connection like lightning striking her chest. Love, enormous and permeating, reconfigured every thought in Clara’s mind. Clara looked at a tiny sleeping Marisol and cemented her decision.
With her soul tearing in two, she let out a sob from a place so deep in her heart that it dropped her to the wheelchair again. When Clara cried, it was the animalistic mourn of unmitigated agony. It was the cruelty of complete devotion.
Around Clara there were only blurs of motion. She held her empty belly, chest burning, and ached for the child that had been part of her. For the child she’d never know. Mouth dry and eyes swollen, Clara asked the nurse for a notepad. With trembling fingers she wrote down Marisol’s grandmother’s name and phone number. And then Clara was taking off a necklace. The Aglion pendent Marisol had gotten from her grandmother. Her tears stained the ink and Zuri couldn’t take another breath in her wracked body.
Back in Narine’s kitchen, Zuri gasped as her consciousness snapped back into her own body. Her tattoo throbbed with residual magic that felt too big for her skin to contain. The intensity of Clara’s memory clung to her. Her mouth tasted of her own salty grief.
She blinked, trying to clear the emotional fog, and caught sight of Marisol. Hands pressed over her mouth, she obviously didn’t know what to do with Zuri and Clara’s crying.
Then Zuri looked at the withered husk that was left of Clara. Without a word, she lunged forward and embraced her with her entire body.
“I’m so sorry,” Zuri whispered.
When Clara hugged her back, it was like she was clinging to driftwood in the open ocean. Zuri held her like she might rewrite history. Like she could change the story for either of them. Like she might correct the original sin of Clara’s leaving if she just willed it hard enough.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Unsure what to think,Marisol left her bedroom in a daze. She’d tried to listen to Zuri’s recounting of what she’d seen in Clara’s memories, but Zuri couldn’t speak without starting to cry. She left her with Elena, who was just as ill-equipped to handle a usually unshakable Zuri, and set out to find Clara for answers.
As she strode through the house, Marisol couldn’t stop seeing Zuri and Clara. Holding hands, they’d both started crying almost immediately. It had begun with a steady stream and devolved into shaking shoulders and gasping for breath—just as much from Zuri as from Clara.
Like it triggered some kind of hard-wired, pack animal response a few rungs further down the evolutionary chain, she and Elena had cried too. It was like trying to stop a contagious yawn or a stampede out of a building after someone yelled fire. It was an instinctual shared grief, but Marisol had no idea how to feel about it. And the way Zuri had embraced Clara… What had Zuri seen that changed her mind so fast? Whatever it was, it had caused a knot to form in Marisol’s throat and all she wanted to do was unravel it.
With the moon hidden behind clouds, the night was dark when Marisol stepped out the sliding glass door to the backyard.The desperate groups had created their own spaces on Narine’s property. Witches claimed the pool during the day and vampires took over the outdoor patio at night. The Aglion always had a small bonfire roaring at the center of their encampment like they were still living in a caravan.
The late-November night bordered on cold and Marisol regretted not having worn more than a T-shirt and leggings while the wind slapped her in the face. Wrapping her arms around herself, she walked toward the fire and the handful of people sitting in mismatched lawn chairs around it. They could have easily taken any of Narine’s furniture, but they’d chosen their tattered things as if to make a point.
Judith stood on the front porch of the middle house with her arms crossed. Marisol never saw her wearing any expression other than vigilance. She wasn’t even sure the woman slept. She was always watching, always ready.
The prospect of never resting, of always waiting for an attack… Marisol couldn’t imagine it. They’d been dealing with Sayah’s specter for a little over a month and Marisol was already exhausted. She considered Clara’s choices with fresh eyes, even as she struggled to let go of decades of resentment.
Unsure what to say when she approached, Marisol held her breath and started for Judith. Watching Marisol with open suspicion, Judith looked like she was debating spreading her massive wings as a sign of protection. She looked like Librada fighting for Elena. Like Zuri leaping in front of an oncoming vampire to save Sofia.
Marisol tried to swallow the stubborn lump in her throat. She only managed to choke on her own saliva. Sputtering, her skin burned hotter than the freaking bonfire.
Judith stared at Marisol like she was a total moron.God.
“I’m looking for Clara,” Marisol managed after clearing her stupid airway.
“Why?” Judith thundered like a boom before a lightning strike.
Marisol opened her mouth but she couldn’t get any words to come out. Should she explain Zuri’s gift first? How was she going to give Judith the right context for what had happened earlier when she barely understood it herself? Zuri and Elena would say that it was none of Judith’s business what she wanted with Clara, but Marisol couldn’t bring herself to say that either. Judith knew Clara better than Marisol ever would. She was as protective of her as Marisol was of her own.
“Marisol,” a man’s soft voice called from behind her.
She turned to see Dutch standing in an open doorway. With a warm smile, he beckoned her over.
Marisol looked back at Judith. The Amazonian statue didn’t move. Didn’t object. Unsure why she wanted the woman to like her, Marisol gave her the awkward flat-line smile reserved for strangers at the grocery store and turned.
