“I knew your mother. But if she’s gone then she’s gone, and so are my ties to your clan.” Elisa spoke crisply, the tone the one a strict schoolmistress might employ with the children.
“There are people looking for me. They’ll kill me if they find me,” Atl said, spelling it out, because maybe it needed to be spelled in very large, very crimson letters.
“That’s very sad, but there’s nothing I can do.”
Elisa pushed her chair back, as if she were about to rise. Atl spoke quickly, knowing she was losing the woman’s interest.
“You can falsify documents. Passports, ID papers. Stuff that could get me to South America. I have money,” she said, grabbing the envelope she was carrying in her jacket and dumping it on her desk. The woman looked at it as though she’d just skinned a live animal in front of her. Cualli, sensing turmoil, raised his head, alert.
“I haven’t done that in years. I run a clean business now. Clean life.”
“Really,” Atl said flatly.
Atl fixed her eyes on Elisa’s hands. Her nails were painted pink. It wasn’t a cheap manicure, she’d spent money on it. But it was starting to chip away. She saw the tiny spots with missing flecks of paint. One spot, two spots, three. Millimeters.
Atl raised her eyes and stared at Elisa. “I’m running out of time.”
Elisa stood up with her back to them, looking out the window. She wasn’t giving in, not yet, but she was wavering. Atl licked her lips. They felt chapped.
“I can’t stay here much longer. Mexico is too dangerous.”
“What are you doing here, anyway?” Elisa muttered.
“I didn’t have anywhere else to go. I thought you and Bernardino might help me.”
“You have money. You can probably fly abroad.” Elisa made a motion with her right hand, pointing up.
“Yeah, and the airport has too much security and too many scanners. I’d be dead before I get to my seat. It has to be by ground.”
“Then I don’t understand why you simply didn’t try to cross the northern border. It would have been easier to take your chances with the coyotes, no?”
Yeah, like Atl hadn’t thought about that.
“The Necros dominate the North, so that’s a no go. They don’t own Guatemala. Not yet. There will be checkpoints, but with the right papers I can make it down into South America. It’s easier this way.”
“Nothing is easier,” Elisa said. “It’s just another way to get killed.”
“Well, I can’t exactly head back north right now so the only option is south. You used to be a runner for my mother. Surely you can make one more run.”
“Have a good journey. You can walk yourselves out, I trust?”
She ought to have more respect for me, Atl thought. For my family. Though there was precious little left of her family to respect.
Elisa placed her manicured hands on the desk, lacing them together. She returned Atl’s stare.
“My mother was your protector,” Atl said in a low voice. “She pulled you out of the gutter. She housed you, fed you, clothed you. If things were the other way around, if it were your daughter asking her for help, she would offer assistance.”
“I paid my debt to your mother. I paid it in blood and I don’t owe you anything. Why don’t you go bother Bernardino? Maybe he can do something.”
Atl scrutinized the woman’s face. She analyzed the stern line of her mouth, the gray of her hair. Elisa said the words but she didn’t mean them. Elisa was pretending, and Atl knew the deck was stacked in her favor, that she need only find the right words.
“I’ve come for your help. My mother would have … well, if she were alive, she might have come to you herself,” Atl said. “I didn’t know where else to go and she told me that you were the only person she trusted in the whole world. She absolutely trusted you.”
That was not exactly what Atl’s mother had said. No. She’d said that Elisa was like all other humans: a weak fool, predictable and simple. A useful fool, at times. And that if things should worsen Atl would do good to find her because she was not crafty enough to betray anyone and sufficiently nostalgic to remember her years as a vampire’s assistant fondly.
Elisa was leaning forward. Her mouth opening a little, almost as if she was hesitating to ask a question.
Atl lowered her gaze, focusing on her hands.
“She said you were like a sister to her. That’s why I came.” Atl listened to the tick of a clock upon the wall, waiting patiently. Elisa shifted in her seat and sighed. She had her.
“What you ask is not achieved quickly,” Elisa said. “Fake passports, fake ID papers … And the car, of course. I suppose I’ll have to drive you across. It might take me a few days. I can’t produce this stuff out of thin air.”
“I can manage to survive for a few days.”
“I said it might,” Elisa cautioned her. “I’m not sure if I’ll be able to do it. Security gets tighter each day. No one wants more vampires in their territory anymore. Most governments consider you a plague, you know? Have you heard how they’re dealing with your lot in the U.K.? They’ve now got a police force dedicated to handling your kind.”