She scoffed. “Really?”
She sat next to him, running her nails along his arm. He thought that one day, when he had the chance, he’d have to find the painting of the girl who looked like Atl, the one he’d seen in a catalogue. Madonna of something. He’d show it to her.
“Are the vampires in Brazil like you?” he asked.
“No, it’s mainly Obayifo there, they came from Africa in the seventeenth century. They glow in the dark.”
“No way. You’re making that up.”
“What’s so strange about that? There’s fish and mushrooms that glow in the dark,” she said.
“Fish and mushrooms are not the same as vampires,” he said.
“I have wings. Isn’t that stranger?” she asked, a hint of mockery on that clever tongue of hers. But also a hint of warmth there too.
“Which I still haven’t seen,” he reminded her.
“Suddenly you are an unbeliever?” Atl asked, leaning down to look at him.
“Kiss me again and I’ll believe you.”
She grabbed his hand and planted a kiss on his palm. The gesture was endearing; it filled him with delight. “How come vampires are so different?” he asked her.
“We are all supposed to have a common ancestor and diverged in the distant past, with the Necros probably being the youngest subspecies. However, if you listened to my mother’s stories, she said we were created by Huitzilopochtli and when we die, we become stars.”
She spread the fingers of her good hand, tracing a line in the air, above her head, as if marking a constellation. She smiled for a moment, but then her expression grew serious and she dropped her hand, pressing it against her mouth. Just as quickly she smiled again, her voice sounding a bit strained, but aiming for levity.
“The first thing we’ll do when we get to Brazil is visit a tailor and buy you a suit. A nice gray pinstripe will do,” she told him.
“I’m not a suit guy.”
“You’ll look handsome.”
“Let me guess. You have a thing for guys in suits. I bet you lied about not having a boyfriend and you’ve had a dozen, in pinstripe suits,” he said, winking at her, matching her cheery tone. He wanted her to be happy. He didn’t want shadows or fear or anything to taint this moment.
“You’ve found me out.”
“I’ll keep your secret, hope to die,” he said, pressing a hand against his chest.
She turned her head and watched him, her mouth curving into a grin. Something new there, sweetness dancing at the corners of her lips, a detail he couldn’t have known existed before.
“I’ll show you a real secret,” she whispered.
Atl sat up and turned around. He watched in amazement as wings started sprouting from her back, unfolding, forming. Bone and tissue and feathers opened like a fan. They weren’t small wings, no little white, fluffy Cupid wings. The wings were massive, and seeing them like that he realized why she’d never shown them to him before: they would have been impossible to hide under her clothes. Feathers of a shimmering black that was almost blue also sprouted along her spine, ending at her tailbone.
“Wow,” he said.
“Definitely not a butterfly,” she said, looking at him over her shoulder.
He wondered how she did it. He was going to launch into a dozen questions, one after the other.
Atl wrapped her arms around him and then her wings also wrapped around him. He figured he’d ask some other time. Right that second his breath had caught in his chest, burning fast, and he couldn’t have uttered a single word even if he wanted to.
*
Atl lay on the bed. Her wings had disappeared, folded back into her flesh. He caressed her back and was struck with sharp, quick images of the desert, a turtle, dead bodies. More dead bodies. A young woman, dragged into the darkness.
He withdrew his hand, as if he’d been shocked by an electrical socket. He remembered what the old man said, that he’d kill for her soon enough.
God, he hoped not.
God, it didn’t matter.
After a couple of minutes, gently, he pressed himself against her body, nestled against the curve of her back, and closed his eyes.
CHAPTER
35
They were sitting together in the kitchen, Domingo’s hand resting on her knee. He was eating a sandwich, she was drinking tea. Domingo looked at her and gave her a smile and a peck on the cheek. Atl thought that if anyone should walk in, they might think this was a regular, happy couple. Bernardino did walk in, throwing them a guarded look. He was carrying a black case.
“I’m coming to check on you,” he said. “To see how the flesh is healing today.”
He walked out without another word. Atl followed him. Domingo stood up, as if intending to go with them, but she motioned for him to sit down.