Cassie Alexander - Shapeshifted

The old woman was standing in front of me, her eyes burning, trying to make me understand something that I couldn’t see. I shook my head like the janitor had shaken his head at me earlier, to see her playing in the gutters, while he shoved around all that water that wouldn’t drain away.

Because the gutters were blocked. The same gutters I’d found Grandmother playing in, where she in turn had found bones—and not unlike the ditch where I’d found her in the first place, hidden underground. In a dark place, not unlike hell.

“Olympio.” My eyes took a second to focus on the boy again. “I need you to explain to me how to get to that ditch by Tecato Town.”

“Oh, no—” Olympio began shaking his head violently.

“I need to get over there.”

The old woman started clapping her hands in glee, like a psychotic cymbal monkey.

“If you’re going there, then I want to go with you,” Olympio said.

“No way.”

“You don’t know where you’re going. It could flood—”

“All the more reason that you can’t come.”

“No—I have to!”

I looked to his grandfather and pleaded with my expression for the man to talk some sense into his grandson.

“El siente la llamada, debe contestar,” the curandero intoned.

“See? My grandfather agrees. He says it’s my calling to go with you,” Olympio interrupted as his grandfather went on, and Olympio made a face. “Ugh. Really?”

The curandero nodded, and Olympio looked up at me. “He says you have to take us both.”

I blinked. How were we going to get someone with crutches down the steep cement side of the ditch to the bottom? Much less inside the tunnels afterward?

Olympio read my mind. “Not him. Her.” He made a face at Grandmother.

That was almost worse. “To a flash-flood zone, underground, while it’s raining out?” I looked from one to the other of them and waited for someone else here to be sensible, because it wasn’t going to be me.

“It’s the only way. I was meant to go. So was she,” Olympio said.

“You’re sure about this?” I asked Olympio’s grandfather, and he nodded. I let out a sigh. “I guess you can’t fight prophecy.”

To my dismay, no one had stolen my car while I’d been at the curandero ’s. Then I’d at least have been able to leave the hospital-gown-wearing grandmother behind. Olympio, though—the thought of predestined adventure had him clinging to me like a barnacle. Before we left he’d gotten two flashlights from his neighbor for our trip. Now he sat in the passenger seat and played with my radio in between giving me directions. When he realized I didn’t have any Spanish presets, he started slowly twisting the dial. I didn’t enjoy listening to him hop from station to station like he was cracking a safe, but it was a good way for him to kill time. Listening to him made me not stop and think how insane this was. Taking them with me, destiny or not, was like going to war in a clown car.

“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me you had a car,” Olympio said.

“I wasn’t keeping it from you. It just never came up. Why? Where did you want to go?”

“I couldn’t go anywhere, until I was called.” Olympio found a station he liked and finally sat back. “I’ve been waiting for my whole life to find my calling. Now, though … who knows? I have to see where the calling takes me.”

“I thought you’d been seeing things your whole life?”

“Yeah. So? So’s Catrina. You never know if you’ll really be called.” He nodded along with the song.

“And you can’t tell it yourself?” I asked, wondering for a dark moment if Olympio’s grandfather had taken out a large life insurance policy on him.

“No. It comes to you in dreams. Or another curandero can see it. Like I see things on other people.” He pointed for me to go right.

“Speaking of, how’s my gaping chest wound?”

“Your black flower?” he asked, and then squinted at me. “It’s smaller. Almost gone.”

I made a thoughtful sound. “You’re just being nice to me in case we die, aren’t you?”

He grinned. “I’m not going to die.”

I stopped at a dented stop sign. “God. If I’m going to die, don’t tell me.” I looked back in the rearview mirror as I made another right-hand turn. “What about her?”

“She’s just a cloud. Can’t make a thing out about her. I’ve seen people like her before, though. It just means she’s undecided.”

“About what?” I couldn’t imagine the old woman having big decisions to make. It was clear she didn’t have a house, a lover, or a 401(k).

“No clue. And I don’t think she’d tell me if I asked her. Park here.”

“Great. Just great.” I pulled alongside the entrance to an alley. “Is this the kind of place where I might as well leave them my keys?”

Olympio looked around my car in dismay. “It’s not like you have anything in here worth stealing.”

“True. All right. All aboard that’s going aboard.”

“What’s that mean?” Olympio asked.

I jerked my thumb out the window. “Time to get off the train.”

It was almost sundown. I made them wait while I texted Asher quickly. I should have texted him earlier, but I think I knew he would try to leave me behind again—along with the Three Musketeers that I’d become.

At the edge of Tecato Town. Think Maldonado’s bone room is underneath. Have guide. Better to tell him that than get into specifics. I eyed Olympio again. “You’re sure about this?” The old lady could suit herself, but Olympio … I wished I could make him stay behind somehow. I hadn’t gotten a choice about a lot of things as a kid—but nobody had told me I was destined for greatness either. Olympio worked harder and deserved a fairer life.

He nodded brusquely. “I’m sure.”

“Okay then. Where to?”

“Through here,” Olympio said, and led the way.

We threaded through the tarps the tecatos had strung up to keep out the rain. The air here was thick with the smoke of wet fires. Skinny men huddled around them, blowing on them to keep them lit, with socks strung overhead. The old woman kept up surprisingly well.

We reached the edge of the wide cement ditch, half a football field across, filled with a muddy stream. We were closer to the metal mouths this time than we’d been before. I could see them down there, and hear water pouring through them and on into the dark.

“You ready?” Olympio asked me.

“I was born ready,” I said, teasing, trying to sound like an action hero. Olympio snorted, and then we started down the steep cement bank.

I didn’t have time to watch the old woman; I was too busy concentrating on my own feet. The sides were slicker now after last night’s rainfall, making the entire thing feel like we really were going into a mouth.

I reached the bottom with a splash at the same time Olympio did. I wished I’d known when I’d left my house this afternoon to wear rain boots, though the water felt good on my smoke-snake sores. God only knew what I was going to contract tonight. I heard a splash behind me, and the old woman was standing there. I was glad she hadn’t tumbled down.

“Which one?” I yelled. The sound of the water running over the corrugated metal was loud.

“I don’t know! What does your intuition tell you?” Olympio shouted back.

My intuition said it wished that it was dry. I stared, looking from one tunnel entrance to the next, wondering if Olympio was right, if I’d be able to feel the right one.

I was just like those people at the hospital with their stupid crystals.