Page 31 of Watch Me Turn
DRINK ME
The oversized cargo shorts slip down my hips, and I yank them back up as I pace the narrow strip of floor between Paloma's desk and a precariously stacked tower of grimoires. The walls press in. The air tastes like copal smoke, but the dryness in my throat is from something else entirely.
"This bad news," I say, and my voice cracks on the last word. Forty-three years undead, and I sound like a little kid caught in a lie. "How bad are we talking?"
"What do you know about the men who hired you?" she probes, leaning in conspiratorially.
"Just that they're assholes."
"Ha, that's the understatement of the century. Those motherfuckers run this whole damn city and think they can do whatever the hell they want."
"I already know that," I grumble.
Her face is exasperated. "Are you sure? Because I don't think you would have taken a job with them if you knew how unbelievably dangerous they were."
I roll my eyes. "Oh, come on, P. They're just garden-variety vampire mafioso types. A little criminal thuggery but no big deal.Totally normal in my world. Newsflash: vampires are shady. I hate to be the one to tell you this, but I'm shady as fuck too."
Her brows knot together. "I'm not talking about dealing a little coke and getting into bar fights. I'm talking about organized crime. I'm talking about kidnapping your enemies and torturing them for fun. Having the whole sheriff's department in your back pocket and disappearing anyone that crosses you without consequences. These people are manipulative to the bone, and they kill for sport." She waggles her finger at me. "We're way past shady. We're deep in the darkness."
A cold feeling prickles across my shoulders. Maybe La Madre was right after all. "I'm guessing that's an appetizer. What's the next dish in the bad news buffet?"
Paloma's up on her feet and rifling through the pile of books tottering dangerously close to the edge of a rickety wooden shelf. "Sit down, Sophia. This room is far too small for us to both pace around." I drop down into the chair with a huff, but she ignores me. "What have your Malditas told you?"
I clear my throat to make space for the lie. "They had no good answers, so I need to figure this out by myself."
"Ha," she snorts as she grabs another stack of books and slams them on the desk between us. "Typical. You're so damn terca, I swear to God."
She's right. I am a stubborn old goat, and it always bites me in the ass. It's easy to forget that I'm older than Paloma sometimes, and not just because I'm frozen in my twenties and she's aging like fine wine, but because she's wiser and more grounded than I'll ever be, vampire powers be damned.
I slump lower in my chair, the oversized tie-dye shirt bunching around my shoulders as she scolds me gently.
"But being a vampire doesn't mean you don't need help every now and then. Especially with stuff like this." She taps one of the books, her expression softening just a fraction.
"It's not just about saving my skin, P," I say as I pick up one of the books and run my thumb along the buttery leather spine. "I care about Angel. I don't want him to die."
She reaches for my hand and gives it a squeeze. "I know. I can tell."
"He's just a beautiful broken thing, and Goddess help me, all I want to do is fix him."
Paloma scoffs. "Spoken like a damn cliché."
"So, what's all this?" I ask, waving the book at her.
"This," she says, pointing a sharp black nail to a passage near the bottom of an open page, "is from a bruja in Guadalajara. 1700s she documented a similar case—a turning that never fully took and killed the victim."
"What happened?"
"From what I can tell, a turning with all the steps followed is pretty much always bound to succeed. If a human is drained, branded, and drinks from a vampire, they will transform within ten days, but if there's some kind of spiritual blocker administered early enough, it's harder for it to...take. Like a vaccine that stops the magic from taking root."
"A blocker? Like a talisman? A ritual? A crystal? What?"
Paloma flips through another book—this one modern, printed, with sticky notes jutting from its pages like neon feathers. "An herb."
She slides the book across the table, and my eyes land on the intricate botanical sketch.
"Sangre Negada?" I say as I squint at the minuscule lettering. "Never heard of it."
She shakes her head. "You wouldn't have. It's rare. Extremely rare. It's a little red flower that grows on the graves of saints and is only harvested every three years. Once you pick it, dry it, and bless it properly, it transforms into a shield that's used to ward off the darkest magic. I consider myself an amateur botanist, butI'd never even touched the stuff until recently." She drops her voice. "Really recently."
