“Easy, Cualli,” he said. “I just need to—”
But the dog wouldn’t have any of it. It growled again. It was a mighty big dog, and Domingo didn’t want to end up with a chunk of his leg torn off. He sat at the edge of the bed for about half an hour, trying to muster the courage to knock on the closet door, before giving up and retreating to the kitchen. He set the kettle to boil, made himself tea, and went back to sit in the living room. He was tired and dozed off after a while. He had a dream that he was running. He reached a chain-link fence topped with razor wire, climbed it—or leapt up, he wasn’t sure—his hands holding on to the wire. The long barbs dug into his skin, blood trickling down his palms. The pain, however, did not seem to matter.
He opened his eyes and it was night. Atl was standing on the other side of the room, staring at him. Domingo stood up and palmed around for the light switch.
“How long have you been back?” she asked. He couldn’t see her proper, she was draped in shadows.
“A while. I didn’t know if I should try and wake you. Your dog, it growled at me.”
“Did you speak to him?”
“Yeah. I can’t find the light—”
She walked over, effortlessly touching the switch. She wore the black jacket and jeans, not black, but a dark shade of gray. Monochromatic, like the panels of graphic novels. His yellow jacket provided the one note of color to the room.
Domingo squinted, his eyes adjusting to the brightness, and began searching his clothes. He took out the piece of paper the vampire had handed him and held it up. She took it.
“This is all he gave you?”
“That’s all.”
Atl frowned. Her disappointment was easy to read and Domingo found himself wincing, quickly trying to make things better.
“I can go back,” he offered.
“No, it should do. It should lead somewhere,” she muttered.
“Do you want tea? I made some for myself. I can make you a cup.”
“No.”
Her dog padded into the room and Atl bent down to scratch its ear, the Doberman staring at Domingo with its small black eyes.
“Atl, who are you running away from?”
The way she looked at him, the way she lifted her chin and her eyes narrowed, told him real quick that he shouldn’t have asked.
“Why do you think I’m running?”
“I just know. It’s a— I dunno.”
He thought he ought to mention the dream, but he kept quiet for now. It might only make it worse. She already looked half-spooked.
“I’m not going to tell no one,” he said quietly.
Atl stood up and pushed her hair back behind her ears with both hands. She shook her head. She seemed … kinda offended. He thought she wasn’t going to tell him anything and then she leaned back against the wall, arms crossed.
“I’m trying to get away from some drug dealers.”
“Can’t you call the police?” he asked, sliding his hands in his pockets. He had a pack of bubble gum somewhere.
She laughed. For all her talk of being his elder and apparently so much more mature, it was girlish laughter.
“What do you think they’ll do first? Throw me in a cage because I’m a vampire or because I’m a narco?”
“Like, what, you sell those synthetic pills and shit?”
He thought of the parties he’d attended and the stuff that was up for grabs there. Not much, to be honest. Street kids were more likely to be sniffing glue, paint thinner, and rubber cement than doing blow. But once in a while, he would go to a rave in a rugged warehouse. There, the upper-middle-class kids who spray-painted themselves with glow-in-the-dark paint mixed with the street kids and the poor from the lost cities—the poorest of the poor neighborhoods, where people lived in shacks made of tin and whatever they could find. There, too, sometimes you’d find a rich kid from high up the slopes of Santa Fe. And there Domingo had met guys and girls passing pills with funky names. Crimson Dreams. The Snail. Four Times Three. He’d tried one and didn’t like it. It had dulled him too much and had made his head spongy. Domingo didn’t have much more than his wits, so in his view, he couldn’t be messing with them. Even if he thought he could, he didn’t have the cash for it.
Try as he might, though, he just couldn’t picture Atl at a rave, carrying a plastic baggie full of pills, selling them and counting the money before putting it in the change purse at her waist. It seemed way too … ordinary for her.
“I don’t sell anything.”
“I don’t get it.”
“My family is in the drug trade. They run—well, they ran—a tidy operation for years and years up North, supplying drugs for the vampire and human markets. Very lucrative. Then a few years back other groups started moving into our area. It’s gotten … rough.”