Page 23 of The Salt-Black Tree
Lady, you havenoidea.Nat’s eyes prickled; she forced the sudden tears sternly back into their home as if she was eighteen again and Mom had just informed her a graduation gown and class ring were too expensive, plus they wouldn’t be worn more than once anyway. “They say… I mean, the horse said…” Trying to explain, even to someone who knew about this shit, was almost impossible. “He said Maria wants to…”
“Yes.” The goddess sobered again, her luxurious pink-glossed mouth drawing down at the corners. A hard hot light now shone in her dark eyes, and her tanned hands curled into fists before she shook them out with quick flickering grace. Her striped skirt fluttered, and the green-and-white suite was suddenly full of drybaking heat, scorching as a magical desert broken only by a single ever-blooming cherry tree with a listing stone well caught in its imperfect shade. “What she planned is disgusting, and I told her so. I’m glad it didn’t work.”
Let’s not celebrate too early.“I… I just…” Everything she had ever wanted to say balled up in Nat’s throat. Her mouth worked for a moment, and when the other woman stepped closer, she froze.
Marisol’s arms wrapped around her; the goddess’s skirt brushed Nat’s jeans. She was warm and soft, and smelled like fresh air, baking bread, and dry hay with an undertone of musk. “Oh, sweetheart,” she murmured into Nat’s rumpled hair. “Take a deep breath. It’s going to be okay.”
I wish I could believe that.Nat closed her eyes, swallowing hard. The heat-haze around the other woman was pleasant—who, after all, didn’t like summer? And apparently she’d known Maria Drozdova. It didn’t do any harm to relax for a single moment, to let her guard down just a tiny bit before snapping it back up.
Because she didn’t really know what this divinity wanted, after all.
So she breathed in that pleasant, forgiving warmth, and tried her best not to sob like a baby. She succeeded, too.
Mostly.
SAY HELLO, BABY
It was certainly better than traveling with Dmitri.
For one thing, Marisol didn’t smoke or sneer. She didn’t eye Nat’s backpack like it was a tasty snack just waiting to be devoured, and she didn’t make snotty little comments either. Instead, she slipped her arm through Nat’s and ushered her through the Elysium’s lobby—blowing a candy-gleaming pink kiss to Mr. Priest, who nodded with a wide, pleased smile—and out the revolving door, ushering her “little sister” into a tiny red sports convertible with the top down.
Los Angeles was full of palm trees nodding conspiratorially and traffic parting before the crimson convertible’s purring hood like the Red Sea in front of a holy man on a mission. Even the light was different here, but whether the thick gold was natural or just a function of being in a divinity’s proximity, Nat couldn’t tell.
Not that it mattered, at this point.
Plenty of the palms were wrapped in Christmas lights and plastic Nativity sets crouched in many a yard, whether overwatered green or burned straw-yellow. It was after Thanksgiving, yet people out here were strolling in shorts and tank tops; cars clogged every available bit of pavement and the city couldn’t decide what it wanted to be. Like New York, each block was a world of its own—residential, commercial, industrial alternatingwith dizzying speed as Marisol gunned the engine and the little deuce coupe swept through on a warm hay-scented breeze.
Nat could almost-see how the world leapt to obey Marisol’s bidding, traffic bunching up or cringing aside as the red car zoomed through. No talking was possible with the wind combing their hair, but somehow neither Marisol’s knee-length mane nor Nat’s tumbled waves gained any knots from the hurricane. The slipstream-sound was like riding her childhood bike again, freedom and glory with every pump of the pedals, and when Summer flicked the radio on a driving rock beat throbbed through the speed-roar but didn’t resolve into any recognizable lyrics or tune.
It waswonderful, and Nat hoped she could travel like this some more.
Summer’s house was on stilts over the rocky fringe of a goldensand beach, and Nat gasped at the Pacific’s heaving blue glitter. There was a deep gray smudge-storm on the horizon, but the angular pile of supermodern glass walls and warm hardwood floors basked in a column of sunshine. The garden was full of spiny succulents amid basking rocks, and though the nearest neighbors had decorated for the holidays, Marisol’s domicile was blessedly free of any wintry reminder.
Pulling into the garage under the house’s pilings plunged them into sudden gloom, and Nat flinched before her eyes adjusted. The little red car stopped with a jolt, the engine’s throaty roar cut cleanly as if chopped with a razor knife, and Marisol’s laughter was just as sweet and husky as it had been at the Elysium.
“It’s nice to drive with you,” she said, reaching into the tiny space behind Nat’s seat for a fringed leather purse she definitely hadn’t been carrying before. “We’re going to have so much fun. I hope you visit after you’re done with your tour; I have so much to show you. There’s this place in San Fran where the oysters aretodiefor. Oh, and we’ll have to do Rodeo Drive too. And go swimming—there’s a bay tucked away in Malibu I’ve simply got to show you. We’ll have to go up to Carmel when the weather’s bad and have hot chocolate at my little shack there. And Tijuana too—you wouldn’t believe some of the stuff they’ve got, there’s this one place where the tequila is practically like silk. And Chinatown! We’ve got to do Chinatown, or what’s left of it.”
What, all at once?Nat peered at the other half of the garage. A canvas-shrouded shape, much bigger than Marisol’s sporty cherry-colored number, sat in the dimness; otherwise, the cavernous space was bare. A row of cabinets stood along the back, dusty with disuse; Summer didn’t seem like a garage sort of person.
Leo would have loved all the space, and put up a pegboard for tools. The thought of him was a pinch under her breastbone; Nat reached for the door handle, almost dreamily.
“Oh yeah.” Marisol rose from the driver’s seat in a fluid wave, her hair a long black undulating flow. She was impossibly graceful; Nat felt like a gawky schoolkid by comparison. “You feel it, don’t you? I’m pretty sure Baby will be happy you’re back.”
“Baby?” Nat managed to get out of the low-slung vehicle without tripping or bonking herself on anything. She could barely look away from the canvas shape; its edges rustled.
“Yep. My little gift to Maria when she arrived on these shores, an upgrade to the cat-sled. But I told her, if you’re going to dothat disgusting thing,give me Baby back. You don’t deserve her.” Marisol’s wedges clip-clopped on smooth concrete as she skirted the convertible’s rear, her dress and the purse’s fringe swinging merrily. “But since you’re here—oh, I’m so happy, Nat. You have no idea.” Those whisper-thin, musical golden bracelets twinkled as she gathered up dusty canvas, giving it a twitch, and with one swift movement, she yanked the covering entirely free. It lifted like it had a life of its own, and Nat exhaled sharply.
It was a blue car. Not just any car, though. It was a blue ’68 Mustang coupe, or so close it made no difference. Its hood ornament was a silver cat stretched out in full gallop, and its sleek curves shone through a screen of rust and pitted paint. The tires sagged, the rims were bent, and the windshield, not to mention the windows, held a milky cataract glaze. Its bumpers sagged, the chrome cloudy, and all in all, it was a sorry sight.
That’s Mom’s car. Oh, my God.Nat’s jaw dropped for the second time that day, and she found herself moving like a sleepwalker, step by slow step, closer to the poor, rundown wreck. “Mom always talked about this car.” She sounded like a little girl, breathy with wonder.
Leo would have loved tinkering with this machine. Was it like Dmitri’s black, shine-growling chariot?
“I’ll bet she did.” Marisol busied herself with folding the canvas; it shrunk in her slim brown hands. “Go ahead. Say hello, see what happens.”
Nat couldn’t have stopped if she tried. Her hands tingled almost painfully; she stepped reverently close and flattened them both on the driver’s side of the hood. “Hi,” she said softly, aware of the ridiculousness of talking to a busted-down hunk of metal that probably hadn’t moved for years. “I’ve heard a lot about… oh. Oh,wow.”
Her palms sealed themselves to pitted paint. The blue car shuddered, metal squeaking, and a tremor ran down Nat’s neck, jolting through her arms before passing into heavy machinery, paint, glass, and bodywork. There was no sense of draining, merely a deepening of that endless, utterrightness.
