A Fierce and Subtle Poison - Samantha Mabry Page 0,42

sitting near the Fords’ doorstep. The fact that its colors were still fresh and vivid and it gave off an acrid scent told me it had been recently torn from its stem.

Was this some kind of a threat? Had Dr. Ford found out about my recent tumbles into his house and was letting me know—again—to stay away from things that were, as he’d put it, a “bit of an irritant”?

Like I cared.

I used one of the pillowcases to take the leaf from the book and place it on my nightstand. Then, finally surrendering to the reality that this would be a sleepless night, I headed out into the drizzle. I’d eventually head to Festival de San Juan. But first, I had to stop and see a saint.

Fourteen

AFTER SAINT PIUS died in Rome during the second century, his hair and nails grew to great lengths and his corpse was sealed in wax. Then for whatever reason, Saint Pius’s mummified, wax-covered corpse took a trip across the Atlantic Ocean and ended up in a glass casket in middle of the San Juan Cathedral.

There are lots of saints there; their freaky wood and plaster likenesses watch over the space and care for the prayers that live as long as the little red candles stayed lit.

But Saint Pius isn’t made of wood or plaster. His weird, shrunken body is actually there—along with his ghost, if the stories are true. His leatherlike skin and brittle bones are perfectly preserved, along with the light brown hair that falls over his shoulders. When I was a kid, I would tiptoe up to his glass coffin and stare, waiting for his fingers to twitch. They never did. His permanent immobility gave me the creeps way more than if he were to suddenly sit up and turn his head to look at me.

I’d lit three of those little red candles—one for Sara, one for Marisol, and one for Celia—and had taken a seat in one of the pews within view of the saint—just an eyelid twitch would do—when I heard the clicking of footsteps coming down the aisle. Whoever it was scooted down the row directly behind mine, and sat down. The wood squealed. A Bible was lifted out of the compartment on the back of my pew. I could hear its pages swish as they were flipped.

Then, there was my name, spoken in a raspy whisper: “Lucas.”

I turned and came face to face with Detective Mara Lopez. As always, her black hair was pulled away from her face and slicked down.

“You remember me, don’t you?” She smiled with her thin, red-stained lips and then opened the flap of her dark trench coat in order to flash her badge. “From last summer? We spoke again the night you found Marisol Reyes, though I don’t blame you if you don’t remember that last encounter. You were pretty shaken up.”

Shaken up. That was putting it mildly.

“I remember.” I tried to keep my voice low but was still on the receiving end of a sharp look from an old lady kneeling in one of the pews in front of me.

The detective leaned forward and rested one of her hands on my shoulder. The crimson color on her fingernails almost exactly matched her lips.

“What are you doing here?” She nodded in the direction of the prayer candles. “Paying your respects?”

“I missed Marisol’s funeral.”

“Yes, I noticed that.”

Something hung between us in the silence that followed, like static in the otherwise stale church air. Why would she notice that I missed Marisol’s funeral? Why would she care?

“Is there something I can help you with?” I shifted in my seat. “I have to be somewhere in a little while.”

“Ah, yes.” She clucked her tongue and nodded. “The festival, right?”

With her hand still on my shoulder, she leaned in closer as if to tell me a secret. Her clothes gave off the slightly sour smell of cheap fabric having been worn too long and too often.

“I just need a moment . . . ” She held up her other hand and pinched the air with her pointer finger and thumb, “. . . un momento—of your time. We can just walk down to the plaza together, if you don’t mind?” Her eyes darted over to a flower-draped statue of Saint Mary. “This place has too many sets of ears, if you know what I mean.”

She stood and began to make her way down the pew and toward the aisle. I let out a long, loud exhale and