Free Year of the Tiger by Heather Heffner Page B

lost in the darkness above.
    “You be careful with that!”
    “Don’t you trust us?” the leader asked, eyes twinkling. “What we do is so easy , remember?”
    The plate came spinning back down, and the leader caught it with a gracefully sweep of his elbow. The ghosts cheered.
    A white arm snaked out from the onlookers and hooked my elbow. Alarmed, I tried to slip free, and only found my arm twisted more painfully behind my back. I was dragged back into the shadows, where Duck Young was waiting.
    “It’s your fault she’s dead,” the skull-like face spat at me. I didn’t know if it was just me, but Duck Young looked like he was showing signs of age. His cheeks had sunk in, and his black hair hung sloppily around his desperate eyes. The failure to retrieve his soul must have been weighing heavily upon him.
    “I entrusted Colleen with an important task, and now you’ve fucked it up, just like an Alvarez!” Duck Young twisted my arm higher, and I wedged my jaws shut so I wouldn’t scream. “Is that all you Alvarezes are good for? Fucking?!”
    “I couldn’t help Colleen!” I gasped out. “I was trapped in the shower!”
    “Stupid girl! You, of all people, allowed yourself to be trapped by water?”
    I shot him a quick glance. So. The vampyres more than suspected my affinity for water. And if Duck Young knew, then Khyber most certainly did. Just the confirmation that this strange phenomenon with water was really happening, that it wasn’t all inside my head, made me feel safer. I wasn’t alone here.
    “Ay!” Duck Young released me to bury his hands in his hair. “Where is it?” he asked in a more reasonable voice.
    “Where’s what?”
    “The butterfly knife.” His eyes were flat, impenetrable night. “You don’t have it.”
    I didn’t speak.
    “Ay!” he cried again. “I would kill you now, but you’re my brothers’ favorite ! For some inconceivable reason I can’t understand… They just want you for your soul, you know. Even if they make you a bride, your nights are numbered.”
    “They aren’t now?” I asked softly, thinking of my sister Marisol’s poor imitation of life.
    “My Prince, what’s happening?” She appeared at his side like a faithful hound, unable to stray far from his side. I couldn’t look at her impressive up-do, that shimmering gold make-up done just for him . She was the reason I hadn’t expected to find anything in the girls’ sleeping chambers.
    Duck Young was still watching me. “Ah. It’s an inconvenience to have family around, isn’t it? They know so many delightful things about you…like your illegitimate status within your family. You are the wedge that drove your mother and father apart. Why, your own brother can’t even stand to look at you. Isn’t it true that when your mother left for Korea, your brother drove you to the airport and told you to get on a plane after her?”
    It suddenly felt insufferably hot, even in the tiny dress. I glared at Marisol, tears stinging my eyes. She’d told him that? That was a memory I’d told myself to forget, because it was so terrible—my seven-year-old self wandering around the airport, crying. I’d told myself that Miguel must have been in one of his “crazy” moods. Why else would he have just left me there? I’d kept searching passing faces for Mami’s. They’d all remained strange and frightening. The cleaning lady had found me locked in a bathroom stall, bawling my eyes out.
    “They’re happy we took you.” Duck Young smiled. “Sure, they will be sad, at first. But as time passes, they’ll guiltily realize that the family ‘problem’ has been solved. And they’re right. You see, I don’t believe, like my brothers do, that you are special. I think you are the weak member of the herd, and we would have been better off with any of the others. Of course, that will be remedied soon.”
    “What do you mean?” I demanded, but predictably, he didn’t answer. With a possessive touch to