Page 59 of Saint of the Shadows

She twisted her face, confused. “How do I look at you?”

“Like I’m worth a damn. Like maybe there’s more to me than the job. Like,” Tobias rolled his eyes and continued, “I don’t know, like I’m a good man or something.”

Still puzzled, she asked, “You aren’t a good man?”

“My life’s trajectory would suggest otherwise. Since I met you, though, you have this way of seeing me, and I started believing things.” He wiped his hand over his face and scratched his stubble. “I prayed for you.”

“Prayed for me?” Marisol scoffed. Sure, Mom and Abuelita prayed all the time, papering over problems with superstitious words. But for Tobias to go off-brand and say something sincere? She wasn’t sure if she was worthy of such a sentiment.

He recited, “Dear God, shit on me all you want but not on her.”

She chortled, heartened by Tobias’s lack of finesse. That definitely wasn’t a prayer you’d learn during catechism. “Thanks.” She walked, continuing toward the bus stop, but his large hand on her shoulder stopped her.

“God, she deserves a good life. She deserves a good man. One who will take care of her, who will never break his promises. Who’ll be there for her.”

The words were too maudlin. Marisol warned him away from them with a sharp, “Tobias.”

He removed his hand and shoved both of them into his pockets, looking at the ground. “I know it’s not me. It shouldn’t be me. But when the world’s best woman looks at me like I’m...”

Marisol searched his face, trying to make sense of him.

He continued, “What I’m trying to say is—”

Then it dawned on her. When she looked at him before, she found glimpses of what she thought was his alter ego. The look? It was Marisol searching for the Patron Saint, and Tobias was on the verge of cutting his heart open. She braced for the impact like a car crash. “Maybe you shouldn’t—”

“No. What I’m trying to say is we’ve only had our moments, kid, and I could live off those moments for the rest of my life.” Tobias lifted his eyes. His irises shimmered, fluctuating between brown and blue in the light. “It’s enough.”

Words of advice echoed through her head. Tell him the truth. Tell him he wasn’t the one you looked for. However, after losing his gun and his badge, Marisol couldn’t bring herself to cause him to lose his idea of her. “Enough.”

From a small turn of his mouth, the creases around his eyes flared like sun rays. “I did think I’d never see you again.” He walked to the driver’s side and leaned his arms against the roof. “What’s with the industrial rat trap?”

“Have you ever had to cover for animal control?”

“A few times back in the day. Why?”

She opened the passenger seat and lowered herself inside his car. “I’d sit down if I were you.” He hustled inside and shut the door. “With the SPD trawling the river for Izzy and the brutal attacks on the gangs, it’d be accurate to say Shadowhaven’s getting a little freakier than usual.”

Tobias nodded.

“It started the night he killed her. Listen.” Marisol played Annie’s message.

“What does that have to do with the Bloodsucker?”

The attack seemed distant this time, like it happened to someone else on some true crime documentary. Her memories were just the cold hard facts of the case: Before the Bloodsucker and his gang attacked Dr. An Jung Park, she fought them off, the narrator would read over ominous synthesizer music. First with her gun and then with what a doctor knows best, a syringe. Marisol sniffled away the emerging prickles of grief as she thought of Annie—her Annie who only abused the ends of pencils—fighting until the end. “The serum?” she said, “She injected him with that stuff.”

Tobias grimaced like he had already exploded a few brain cells trying to understand the most believable part of Marisol’s week.

“You’ve worked with our friend for a few years because you know the goings-on in this city need something a little extra. If we find and trap this mouse, we could get ahead of the game and face theBloodsucker prepared.” There was an even smaller voice telling her that understanding Annie’s mouse meant figuring out Vincent’s immortality problem, but that voice needed to shut the hell up because he deserved his tortured existence. Or maybe he didn’t. Even exes deserved a little dignity.

Tobias tapped the steering wheel and started the car. “Let’s catch ourselves a rat.”

20

Zombie Rats And Revelations

Marisol jiggled the spare key in the lock of Annie’s apartment door. She nudged it open with her shoulder. Tobias trailed close behind, holding her garbage bag.

Annie’s apartment seemed stuck in time. Except for the sunlight through the blinds, it was the same as the night she half carried a drunken Annie inside. A stack of magazines needed to be recycled; a cup of partially evaporated coffee begged to be taken to the sink. Marisol moved to smooth over the crease in Annie’s unmade bed. Her hand paused over the sheet. It still felt like Annie lived here, like any moment she’d walk through the door and all Marisol’s grief would be fixed.

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