Page 89 of Dead Beat

“It was forbidden. The women we aided were to be protected. But we were not to partner them. We were not to fall in love.”

“And did you?” Alex asked. “Did you fall in love?”

Huilca sighed. He returned his cup to the tray. “Love wasn’t something Mira and I talked about. We were kids. We liked each other.”

“Enough to break a taboo?”

“I didn’t realize Mira came from magic. She didn’t have a speck of it in her.”

Alex’s wince was small, but Darlington caught it. Mira, with her crystals and her hope, who believed so powerfully in the unseen, in a kind fate, in everything happening for a reason, would have loved to have magic seen in her.

“Do you have other kids?” Alex asked. “Uncorrupted ones?”

Reluctantly, Huilca said, “A son.”

Dawes was studying him with narrow eyes. “From another priest bloodline. A safe one.”

“I never thought there would be a problem with Mira, until…”

“Until you met Estrea,” Alex finished.

He actually shivered. “That woman had power.”

“So you left,” she said.

“I had to.”

“It never occurred to you that she might be pregnant.”

“Of course it did. But I couldn’t risk knowing.”

“Why?” Alex asked, and the mask slid, the armor giving way to the child she’d been, alone in a world that didn’t believe in ghosts, with a gift no one around her understood.

Now Huilca looked down at his feet.

“Forgive me, Alejandra—”

“Alex.”

“You must understand. Any child we had would be considered an abomination, a threat to the very fabric of the world. I had a duty,” he said. When he looked up, his dark eyes were full of regret. “I have a duty.”

Before Darlington could react, Huilca was on his feet. A knife flashed in his hands.

31

She should have seen it coming. Strangers didn’t show up at your door bearing blessings. They didn’t arrive in the night with gifts and apologies. Fathers didn’t materialize from the shadows to say, I’m so sorry. Please forgive me.

The knife—bright, slightly curved, a wedge of moonlight in his hand. The pain—sudden but not unexpected, never unexpected. Because what else was there but pain, the steady beat of suffering, one moment to the next?

She was not a child.

She was not stupid.

She knew better.

And yet.

Some part of her had hoped. I didn’t know, he would say. If I had known, I would have returned. But now that I’m here, I’ll make things right. You have family, he would tell her. A half brother, aunts and uncles, a whole parade of cousins. Let me take you to meet them. Let me take you home. Alex had played the same games as other children. She’d pretended to be a princess, a superhero, the daughter of a rock star. But the secret dream lay at the end of a dirt road, a house by a lake, barbecues in the summer, music on a tinny speaker, fireflies, a cooler full of Coca-Cola. Alex. Galaxy. They would welcome her. They would understand what she was. They would point to another girl with dark hair, or an old man, or an auntie. They would laugh and say, Oh yes, we all see the dead, but they don’t bother us here, not when we’re together.