I looked up and realized for the first time that the demon had struck him. He had three bloody gashes across his face, the uppermost a mere centimeter from his lower lashes. I took the washcloth from him and dabbed at the cuts.
“Did you kill him?” I asked.
“No. He won’t be running marathons anytime soon, but we need to get out of here.”
* * *
Reyes accompanied me home in silence, probably unsure what to think of me. I wasn’t sure what to think of me either, so we didn’t really have a lot to think about. He saw me up the stairs and to my door, but I didn’t let him help me in. I was tired of suddenly being an invalid, unable to walk and chew gum at the same time.
I opened my door and stepped inside. “Can I put something on that?” I asked, indicating the cuts on his left cheek. He dabbed them with the hem of his T-shirt, sopping up the small rivulets of blood that had escaped. They were already healing, but antibiotic ointment wouldn’t hurt.
He ignored me and looked around my apartment. “Call your boy,” he said, his tone coarse.
“What boy?” I asked, suddenly very tired. “I don’t have a boy.” At least I didn’t think I had a boy. I couldn’t remember ever being in labor, and I was fairly certain that wasn’t something a girl could easily forget.
“That kid that always hangs around. Call him.”
“Angel?” I asked, and as soon as I thought it, in he popped.
He looked around in surprise, spotted me, then glared from underneath his bandanna. “Are you for real going to keep doing that?”
“Hey, it wasn’t even me this time.” I pointed to Reyes, and Angel’s bravado dwindled.
He took a step back as Reyes took a step forward.
“Stay here,” Reyes said to him in a tone that brooked no argument.
But he was talking to Angel Garza. The kid had never met an argument he didn’t like. He bit down and squared his shoulders. “You stay here, pendejo.”
Reyes was on him before I saw him move. He had Angel by the collar of his dirty T-shirt, his face inches from his own. “Do you have any idea what I can do to you?”
Angel’s eyes widened before he caught himself. “I know you can go back to hell.”
I struggled to get in between them, pushing at Reyes’s hold.
After a moment, Reyes released him and offered him an apologetic gaze. “Stay here for her,” he said, softening his tone.
With a shrug, Angel straightened his shirt and said, “For her.”
That seemed to satisfy him. He snapped his fingers like calling a dog, and Artemis appeared. She jumped on him, her huge paws leveraging her weight against his chest as her stubby tail wagged in delight. He rubbed behind her ears and nuzzled her neck.
“You stay here,” he said into her ear, “and don’t let her get into any trouble. Got it?”
When he raised his brows in question, she barked in affirmation, and I suddenly felt very outnumbered.
I frowned at her. “Traitor.”
She barked again, completely unmoved by my accusation, and jumped to play with Angel, easily tackling him to the ground. Angel laughed and tried to get her in a chokehold. It was odd how her jaw could open to accommodate the girth of his throat. His gurgling screams of agony seemed to make her happy, and that was good enough for me.
“I just need to make sure they didn’t follow us here,” he said.
“You should really let me take a look at your wounds.”
“The last time you looked at my wounds, you almost passed out.”
“That was a long time ago.”
“Two months. Give or take.”
“Fine,” I said, sending him off with a wave. “Go do your cool manly things while I stay home under the ever-watchful eye of a gurgling thirteen-year-old gangbanger.”
There was something so wrong with that picture.
* * *
I awoke to the cool sensation of a hundred-pound departed Rottweiler sprawled over me as though I were a human mattress. I wasn’t really alarmed by the fact that her right paw covered my face almost completely, cutting off my flow of oxygen, or the fact that my legs had gone numb as her shoulder was wedged into my hip bone, but more by the fact that as her head hung over my ribs, she was snoring. Really? Even in death? Snoring just seemed superfluous for some reason.
I had so much to think about—demons, my heritage, my apparent long-term commitment as the grim reaper, a contract I did not remember signing—but nothing beyond the thought of coffee penetrated my cranium. And oxygen. And the fact that I had to pee like a champion racehorse. There was an odd pressure on my bladder that went by the name of Artemis.
I moved a gigantic paw off my face and wiggled out from under the Rottweiler with herculean effort. When I landed on the floor, her head hung off the side of the bed, but she had yet to wake up. I couldn’t help it. I leaned in to nuzzle her whiskers. Her lip twitched and formed a snarl every time I kissed her nose. She would have made a great Elvis impersonator.
I managed to get to my feet and make it to the bathroom. After a quick pit stop and a rendezvous with Mr. Coffee, I sneaked to the living room window, careful not to disturb Angel or Aunt Lil as they lay crashed on varying articles of furniture. It still amazed me that the departed slept. Especially with all the hammering going on next door.
Even through the noise of construction, I’d heard a truck pull up. It was too early for a delivery truck to be at Dad’s bar, so my curiosity got the better of me. Maybe it was my new neighbors, though that would be silly, as their apartment was still being renovated. My digs could use some renovating. I’d have to talk to Mr. Z later. Convince him new countertops would add to the value of the whole building.