Page 2 of Blood Revealed

“Good. Good…” His soft lips press a kiss to the pulsating artery in my neck and I shudder. No one has told me what’s going on here and when I think I have an idea Carlos Escalante pats my bottom to get me up off his lap. “I like seeing the sweet American girls when I come to visit, and you are one of the sweetest,” he says. “Now be a good girl and go home.”

“Um… okay,” I answer, and I notice his raised eyebrow so I quickly add on, “el maestro.”

He smiles again, nodding, and that’s it. I’m dismissed.

That was weird.

Now on to bigger fish to fry, namely, my baby sister is seventeen today and I have to do something for her. My eyes need to adjust when I walk outside the clubhouse; they keep the lights so damn low in there. But it gives me a good excuse to check my purse for cash. When I unzip my wallet, it’s so empty that imaginary moths fly out, like in those old cartoons.

I hoof it to the closest ATM to withdraw the last fifty dollars that I have to my name. I wish I could do more for my sister, but with my minimum wage job at The Pork Pit, once she and I split the bills for the month, there’s not much left over.

Brinley loves to cook. It might sound cheap and lame, but I walk over to the grocery store closest to our crappy little apartment and purchase baking supplies—flour, sugar, baking powder, that kind of stuff—as well as canned fruit, chocolate chips, nuts, a new mixing bowl, and a rubber bowl scraper/spatula in one.

Lastly, I pick up a package of cupcakes because I can’t afford anything more now. It’s the thought that counts anyway. With my bags in each hand, I walk the four blocks back to our place and up the flight of stairs.

When I open the door, I’m greeted with the most divine smells. Once again, my sister took a toothpick, two olives, and a can of beans and made us a miraculous spread of deliciousness.

“Brin, it’s your birthday. You shouldn’t be cooking,” I say, bending in to give her a peck on the cheek.

“What? I like to cook and I was home. It’s fine—anyway, what’d Dad want?”

“First.” I hold out the grocery bags to her. ”Happy birthday.”

She smiles big and broad, and as always, beautiful. “You didn’t have to do this,” she says, taking the bags from me and looking inside them as she walks them over to the counter. Her “ooh” and “ahh” are more than enough thanks.

“Girl, you only turn seventeen once.”

“Unless you’re old lady Mahoney,” she points out, and we both throw our heads back laughing like chittering chipmunks. “She’s been seventeen for what? Fifty years?”

“At least.” I wipe a tear from my eye. Old lady Mahoney, the wrinkled old woman who lives downstairs from us, she has to gum her food and has more hair on her chin than on her head,andshe uses a scooter to answer her door. But she decided years ago that she loved being seventeen and has no intension of aging. Every year on her birthday, she turns seventeen again.

While Brin opens cupboards to put her birthday gifts away, I open the package of cupcakes, then pull open the junk drawer to rummage around for candles and a lighter. Neither of us smoke, but Dad does, so we have one, it’s just a matter of finding it.

Okay, so it’s cheesy, but when Brinley turns back around, I have her cupcake on a plate with a single candle lit in the center. “Make a wish, Brin,” I say, handing the plate over.

“Sissy.” She sort of sniffles the word out along with some tears.

“To the best year ever.”

She nods. “To the best year ever.” Then Brinley closes her eyes to make her wish, sucks in a small breath, and blows the candle out.

We gorge ourselves on a snack dinner while watching aHow I Met Your Mothermarathon until Brinley passes out. I get up to put the dishes in the sink and put away any food we didn’t finish when my phone buzzes on the counter. It’s a number I don’t recognize, but one of those trilling feelings runs up the back of my neck, like I need to answer this particular call, so instead of letting it go to voicemail, which is my normal response to an unrecognized number, I hit the greenanswerbutton.

“Hello?” I say softly into the receiver so as to not wake Brinley.

“Hannah, baby?” The voice on the other end asks back and I swear my heart stops. I haven’t heard that voice since I was nine. It sounds older, like the person attached to the voice has lived hard, but it’s a voice I’ll never forget to my last breath on this Earth.

“Mom?” Not my biological mom, but Cassandra. Brinley’s mom. “How—what?” I stutter, unable to form a coherent thought.

“Baby, I don’t have much time. You have to get out—now. They’re coming for you.”

“Who?” I ask, still not following.

“He sold you toel maestro,” she whispers. That’s a name I recognize. “You’re his.”

“What?” I ask. “Soldme? Who?”

“Your sonofabitch da—” Her words get cut off by shouting in Spanish and I hear a thud. She screams. Her screams and the thuds turn liquidy. “Go.” The word is gurgled and hardly audible.

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