Highway to Hell (22 page)

He rubbed his chin again. “Not in any remarkable way. No more than, say, you girls arriving now.”

Teresa narrowed her eyes at me, looking speculative. I was glad for Justin's redirect. “Where did you say the cowboy was killed?” He slid the map across the bar.

“Lady Acre.” Joe pointed to a stretch of land between Dulcina and the Gulf. “That's it right there.”

Shoulder to shoulder, we studied the map. The livestock attacks were scattered, seeming random all over the county. The only grid squares that were completely free of marks were the ones that encompassed the town of Dulcina. The other clear area was Lady Acre, with its lone X for the sixty-year-old death.

X marks the spot.

“Why is it called Lady Acre?” I asked.

“Because Our Lady appeared there,” Teresa said, matter-of-factly.

I blinked. Not what you expect to hear mentioned so casually. Henry recovered first. “The Virgin Mary appeared in the Velasquez pasture?”

“No, she didn't,” Joe corrected firmly. “Doña Isabel had a dream that the Virgin appeared to her, and said to put a shrine there, so that no other deaths would take place.”

“Hey, Joe!” One of the Old Guys hollered toward the bar. “If you stand there all day, Teresa will never get over here with the coffee.”

With an annoyed huff, Teresa grabbed the pot off the warmer. “Like it would kill you to get off your lazy butt once in a while?”

Joe followed her back to the Old Guys' table. Justin kept an eye on them, and pitched his voice under the cover of the radio in the kitchen and the struggling air conditioner. “Now we know. That's what stopped the killings last time.”

I looked around for Hector, hoping for confirmation, but he had disappeared. Figured. What was his problem with direct answers?

Henry reclaimed his barstool, and leaned in to keep his voice low, too. “You're not seriously suggesting the Blessed Virgin Mary really appeared in a dream, then vanquished this chupacabra thing?”

My image of the mother of Jesus didn't really incorporate the slaying of monsters. You'd think she could delegate that to some middle-management cherubim with flaming swords.

“If Joe was quoting her correctly,” Justin pointed out, “Doña Isabel didn't say that the BVM would stop the attacks, just that they would stop. Classic semantic dodge.”

“So, what's the plan?” Henry asked.

I studied the single X on the map. “Doña Isabel first, but then I think we need to go see this shrine. Maybe I can get a picture of how it ties in.” I traced the contour lines that marked changes in elevation. If you stared at them long enough, they started to look three-dimensional.

“You know, Maggie.” Justin's voice dropped even lower,
so there was no chance of anyone in the bar hearing him. “I didn't bring it up in front of Lisa, but it seems like you've skirted all around the most obvious label for this thing. You said it was Evil, but you haven't named it out loud.”

I sighed. “We've all thought it, though. Well, maybe not Henry, because he's still struggling to catch up.”

“Thanks,” he said. “But I'm not that slow.”

Justin ducked his head to hold my gaze. “If this thing is some kind of demon, the next question is, who summoned it?”

I dropped my eyes, picking at the corner of the map. “I haven't really thought that far.”

He sat back, looking worried. “Just making sure we're all on the same page.”

What he meant was “Just making sure you remember all the other times you trusted people you shouldn't.” When I liked someone, I never wanted to think they were capable of bad things. Summoning demons. Deals with the devil. And the problem was, I liked
all
these people. Except maybe Teresa.

Handing me the folded map, Justin went to settle up our drinks, leaving Henry and me alone. I didn't have to touch him to pick up on his thoughts. I didn't even have to be psychic. He was thinking very loudly.

I turned to face him with a statement, not a question. “You don't really believe in any of this, do you.”

His gaze was level and appraising. “Like you said, I'm still catching up.”

“In other words, you haven't made up your mind yet.”

“About you? Or about the Blessed Virgin appearing in visions?”

“Aren't you kind of obligated to believe in things like that?”

He thought over his answer. “I believe in the
possibility
of such a thing. But I'm undecided about the
reality
of it.”

I hopped off the barstool, grabbing Hector's denim shirt to take with me. “Well, stick around. It's only a matter of time before you find yourself saying the craziest stuff with absolute seriousness.”

He got up, too, and went to meet Justin by the door. I followed more slowly, hoping to spot Hector again and try for some straight answers. I was doomed to frustration this morning. I could only hope that my visit with Doña Isabel would go better.

I wondered if she'd really had a divine vision. She seemed devout enough. I certainly would never rate that. At least, I hoped I never would. From what I could tell, whenever an archangel or a burning bush turns up, it's generally not to say, Hey, go out and have a happy and uncomplicated life.

J
ustin slammed the door of the rental car and stared up at the Big House, taking in the arches of the balcony, the red tile roof, and the lookout tower with its dragonfly weather vane.

“So, this is the Velasquez manor?”

“Yeah.” My skin was sticky and hot, and I'd done nothing but climb out of the car. I'd gotten used to the breeze from the Gulf, but today the air was muggy and still.

Henry pried himself out of the backseat of the Escort. Since neither of the guys was old enough to rent a car from a major company, they'd had to find what they could, and the subcompact wasn't really built for a person of Henry's height.

Justin nodded toward the porch, where a woman stood like a sentry on a drawbridge. “Is that Doña Isabel?”

“No,” I said. The figure was small and plump, her shoes sensible. “That's the housekeeper.”

“She looks like she's expecting us,” said Henry. “Lisa's boyfriend must have called ahead.”

“I didn't tell him we were coming.” Just the opposite, in fact. I didn't want him to know.

Justin waved me in front of him. “Ladies first.”

Connie watched the three of us approach, her expression forbidding, with no shift to recognition as I neared her. “Hi, Connie. I don't know if you remember me, but—”

“Doña Isabel said you might come.” Her gaze flicked over the guys in dismissal.

She gave no indication whether I was actually welcome. “Can I see her?”

The tightening of her mouth wasn't promising. “She said to say that she was in the chapel, and you may find her there, if God means for her to be found.”

“Okay.” I guess that was the closest thing to an invitation we were going to get. “Thanks, Connie.”

“Don't thank me. There are strange happenings here, and I don't like it.” She looked up at the sky as if it had personally offended her, then went inside and closed the door, leaving the three of us standing on the drive.

I looked up at the cloudless gray-blue sky, wondering what she saw. Justin shifted his weight, crunching on the gravel. “Apparently she's expecting you, Maggie.”

Henry's expression was skeptical. “It's a logical guess, if she's heard any of the past week's events.”

“True,” Justin said, accepting his friend's cynicism as easily as he did my psychitude. “Which way to the chapel?”

“Good question.” A quick scan of the front garden showed a flagstone path leading around the corner, and it seemed as sensible a place to start as any. “This way.”

I wound through the tropical plantings of the formal garden to where the fauna became more ruggedly indigenous, full of lantana and hearty daisies. The path split and, with almost no hesitation, I took the way that led toward the water. A tall palm tree rose above a cluster of shrub oak and mesquite, the fronds like a star over a stable. Or in this case, the Velasquez family chapel.

It looked like the Big House—red tile roof, white stucco, and arched entry—like a tiny offshoot of a parent plant. The door stood open in invitation.

I turned to Justin, and Henry behind him. “Maybe you two should let me talk to her alone. She's really prickly, and she's not expecting you.”

“Are you sure?” Justin asked.

“Yeah.” I had a pretty strong feeling about it. He must have picked up on that, and let me go without further question.

Stepping into the chapel, I had to pause for my eyes to adjust to the cool shadow. The only light slanted through two stained-glass windows on either side of the altar. They illuminated a straight figure on a prayer kneeler, her dark hair covered with a lace scarf, her face lifted to the cross above.

The stone floor was worn but very clean, and the marble altar seemed to glow softly in the rosy light from the windows. There were no pews, just two rows of wooden folding chairs.

I let my footsteps announce me. Doña Isabel kept me waiting another minute, then crossed herself and moved to rise. Her hands grasped the front of the kneeler, the part where you put your prayer book—or in my case, my elbows— and I saw her knuckles whiten as she levered herself up.

Without thinking, I offered her my hand. She disdained my assistance, and once she stood, moved to one of the rows of folding chairs. Taking a seat, she looked at me expectantly. “Well?”

“You knew I was coming. Surely you have some idea why.”

“I am not a mind reader, Magdalena Quinn.”

I took a seat beside her. “Zeke wouldn't be happy to know I'm here. He says that you don't know anything about what's happening on the ranch, but I think you and I both know he's wrong.”

She narrowed her eyes. “You are a very presumptuous girl, to march into my chapel and tell me my own business. Do you think anything happens on this land that I do not realize? I knew the moment you and your friend arrived. I knew about your blundering attempts to test the protections here. Do not presume to tell me what I
should
know.”

Great. I gazed at the patient Madonna behind the impatient matriarch, and struggled for a little of that calm.

“In that case, you
do
know about the … um …” I couldn't bring myself to say the name in front of her.

Doña Isabel waved a dismissive hand. “I know the ridiculous legend that Teresa tells everyone in her bar.
El chupacabra.
She watches too much television.”

“Right. Except there really is something here.”

“Impossible.” She had deflector shields like the Death
Star, but she couldn't completely control the false note in her voice.

“How is it impossible?” I sat forward, the wooden chair creaking underneath me. “Hasn't this happened before? Didn't you do something then?”

She turned to face the front of the church, giving me her profile. “That is precisely why I know it is impossible now. That door is closed.”

I thought about my dream, about the things trying to push from their spirit world to this one of flesh and matter. The idea of a door made sense—maybe not one with a lintel and threshold, but some way of crossing from one state of being to another.

“How did you close it before?”

Her voice took the cadence of rote recitation. “I had a vision of the Blessed Virgin Mary, who told me that if I erected a shrine to her, then the livestock killings would stop.”

I make it a policy to never knock anybody's miracles. The only thing I know more about than the average person is how little we humans really know about the Big Picture. So in theory, I didn't automatically dismiss the idea that the BVM put the kibosh on the chupacabra monster the last time it had wiggled its way into existence on our physical plane.

Except for two things: The explanation
felt
too easy, and it didn't seem to mesh with any of my experiences so far. And also, I could tell Doña Isabel was lying.

I didn't want to call her on the falsehood directly, so I poked at the other hole in her story. “That's all? You just put up a statue, and the demon was vanquished?”

Was that a tiny flinch at the word
demon?
An instant later
her mouth pursed primly. “I did nothing. I was merely the instrument of God's saving hand.”

“If that's true”—I thought supplicant, respectful thoughts, in case she was also the instrument of God's smiting hand— “then maybe you could allow that I'm here to help you.”

She looked at me in cold disapproval. “You and your sorcery.”

I didn't bother to deny that I was the sorcerer. Not only did it not matter, it would be a technicality. Not to mention hypocritical. “Look, Doña Isabel, we're on the same side, no matter what the particulars might be.”

She rose and walked back to her prie-dieu before the altar. “Scripture says, Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.”

“Please.” I didn't mean to scoff, but that was how it came out. “The Bible also says, Let him without sin cast the first stone.”

Her back was to me, but I saw her shoulders stiffen. I got such a clear flash of her emotions—a muddled tangle of guilt and frustration and honest despair—that I was struck by a revelation of my own. Doña Isabel thought of herself as a witch. More to the point, she thought of herself as a sinner.

“Doña Isabel.” I knelt next to her, not in a religious fervor, but so that I could see her expression. “Whatever happened back then, keeping it a secret isn't going to help matters now.”

Her gaze lifted heavenward, but I think it was more of an eye roll than a prayer. “Impertinent child. You are not my confessor.”

“I wish I was,” I snapped, losing my temper, “because
then you would listen to me when I say that your guilt is not helping anyone. If this is the same thing that you dealt with fifty years ago—”

“It isn't.” She looped a rosary around her fingers and folded her hands.

“How do you know?” Was that even possible? Could lightning strike the same place twice? “Give me a clue, Doña Isabel, please.”

She lifted her sculpted, stubborn jaw and fixed her eyes on the altar. “God's work does not come undone.”

“What? Like, what God has joined together, let no man put asunder? If that were true, there would be no divorce….” The look she shot me was eloquent. Okay, maybe that wasn't the best argument to use on a woman who still heard Mass in Latin.