Free The Day of the Dead by Karen Chance Page A

blue
suit and pale grey tie, at an airport shop at JFK. He’d needed a
disguise, and the suit, along with a leather briefcase and a quick
session with a pocket knife in front of a men’s room mirror, had
changed him from a laid-back college student with a ponytail to a
thirty-something businessman in a hurry.
    He’d eluded his pursuers, but with no
money he’d been forced to use a highly illegal suggestion on the
clerk. Since then, he’d lost track of how many times he’d done
something similar, using his abilities to fog the minds of airline
employees, customs agents and the taxi driver who had conveyed him
a hundred miles to this tiny village clinging to the side of a
mountain.
    Every incident had been a serious
infraction of the law, but what did that matter? If any of his kind
caught up with him, he was dead anyway. He just wished he’d thought
to find something else to wear after landing in Guadalajara. There
weren’t a lot of locals in $1200 suits.
    Tomas couldn’t see the
outfit that helped him stand out like a sore thumb, because an
altar to the souls of the dead had been placed in front of the
mirror. Hand carved wooden skeletons in a variety of poses sat
haphazardly on the multi-tiered edifice, each representing one of
the bartender’s family members who was gone but not forgotten. One
hairless skull seemed to grin at him, its tiny hand wrapped around
an even tinier bottle of Dos Equis – presumably the man’s favourite
drink. A regular-sized bottle stood nearby, a special treat for the
spirit that would come to visit this night. It was El Dia de la Muertos , the
Day of the Dead.
    A particularly fitting time, Tomas
thought, for a vampire to return home.
    At least resentment of the city
slicker gave the men something to talk about other than their fear.
They didn’t relax, being too busy shooting suspicious glances his
way, but most of them let go of their weapons. Which is why
everyone jumped when a shot exploded against the cracked plaster
ceiling.
    It was the girl, standing in the
middle of the cantina, gun in hand, ignoring the dozen barrels
suddenly focused on her head. ‘My. Brother,’ she repeated, pointing
the gun at the bartender, who had lost his forced joviality. ‘Where
is he?’
    ‘ Put your weapon
down, senorita .
You have no enemies here,’ he said, eyeing her with understandable
concern. ‘And I told you already. No one has seen him.’
    ‘ His car is parked by the
cemetery. The rental papers have his name on them. And the front
seat has his handprint – in blood.’
    She threw the papers on the bar, but
neither they nor her speech seemed to impress the bartender.
‘Perhaps, but as I told you, this is a small town. If he had been
here, someone would know.’
    The glasses on the shelf behind him
suddenly exploded, one by one, like a line of firecrackers. The gun
remained in the girl’s hand, but she hadn’t used it. Tomas slowly
set his drink back down.
    ‘ Someone here does know.
And that someone had better tell me. Now.’ Her eyes took in the
bar, where most of the men’s weapons were still pointed at her.
That fact didn’t seem to worry her nearly as much as it should
have.
    ‘ I saw a stranger.’ The
voice piped up from a table near the door, and a short, stocky man,
dressed in the local farmer’s uniform of faded jeans, cotton work
shirt and straw hat, stood up. ‘He was taking photographs of the
ceremony, out by the graves.’
    ‘ He’s a reporter,’ the girl
agreed. ‘He was doing a story on...something...but said he’d meet
me here.’
    ‘ I told him to go away,’
the man said. ‘This is a day for the dead and their families. We
didn’t want him there.’
    ‘ But he didn’t leave. His
car is still there!’
    The man shrugged and sat back down.
‘He said he was going to photograph the church, and I saw him
walking towards town. That’s all I know.’
    ‘ The church is the white
building I saw driving in?’
    ‘ Yes.’ The bartender spoke
before the