Tigers, Not Daughters - Samantha Mabry Page 0,61

When Rosa looked into her sister’s eyes, she saw a hunger there. Or like a dis-ease, a wildness. Maybe that wildness had passed to Iridian from the hyena. Iridian squeezed Rosa’s arm harder, and Rosa’s urge to tug a piece of Iridian’s hair got stronger.

Everything was connected.

Rosa was on the bus on the way back to San Fernando. It wasn’t the first time she’d been to church twice on the same Sunday, but there was a new kind of urgency to this trip. She supposed she could have tried to find Walter’s mom for a ride—Walter was probably still at church, working—but she wanted to be alone before talking to Father Mendoza.

Sunday buses were usually empty, and Rosa’s bus was no exception. It was just her, a woman in a uniform—a knee-length pink dress and tan-colored tights that made her seem like she worked in a diner—and the driver. Traffic was light, and the bus was only a couple of stops away from the church when the driver slammed on his brakes. Rosa flew—forehead first—into the seat in front of her. Dazed, she checked for blood, but there was no cut, just a tender spot that would for sure form a goose egg. The woman in the pink dress, though, was moaning from the floor. She’d been thrown completely out of her seat and was in a crumpled heap, bleeding from the mouth. There was a long run in her tights, all the way up her shin.

The driver got to the woman before Rosa could. He was trying to open a first aid kit and speak into his radio at the same time. He was saying something about an animal running out into the street, and how he’d had to come to a sudden stop to avoid hitting it.

“It looked sort of like a dog,” he said. “Or like a real skinny wolf.”

Rosa bolted out the side doors of the bus, first checking under the wheels and then looking frantically up and down the street. She thought she saw something—a flicker of a shadow low to the ground—on the other side of a parked car, and she ran toward it. There was nothing there, but then that same flicker caught her eye, this time as if it had just rounded the corner of a building up ahead. It was leading her closer and closer to the church.

This was perfect. This was just what she’d been hoping for.

Like last time, there was a line of people waiting to see Father Mendoza, but Rosa shoved ahead of all of them.

“I have another question,” Rosa said, standing across from the priest’s desk.

Father Mendoza’s dry-kindling eyes were, as usual, patient and kind. His stark white office wasn’t the type of room that Rosa expected would change much from day to day, but she hadn’t expected it to be exactly the same as before. There were the same simple cross, the same simple ticking clock, and also the same line of ants marching in the same curve up the wall behind where the priest sat.

“Is it possible,” she began, still slightly out of breath, “for the spirit of a person to enter another creature?”

“You’re talking about possession?” Father Mendoza asked. “Like when a demon enters a person’s body?”

“Not a demon, no. I’m wondering if the spirit of a person can enter the body of an animal.” Rosa paused to look to the ants on the white wall. “Or an insect.”

“Is that what you think has happened with Ana?” Father Mendoza asked.

“Yes,” Rosa replied. “Maybe, yes. There were fireflies and a bird that fell. And the hyena. It escaped from the zoo on the anniversary of the day my sister died. It killed a squirrel on our front lawn.” There was a little pinch in Rosa’s heart, and she pushed the palm of her hand against her chest. “I think . . . it may be close by.”

Father Mendoza was quiet for a moment. Then he asked, “You think your sister is controlling these things?”

“Yes,” Rosa replied. “Does this mean something?”

For a long time, Father Mendoza said nothing. He had to have known there was still a line of people waiting outside