José Ortiz's Arc

Chapter 4 of 6

Zack reached the porch just as the last light bled out of the trees. Alana opened the door before he knocked. She pulled him into a hug that smelled like dried sage and coffee. "What's wrong, sugah?" she said. He stepped inside and stood on the mat with his hands in his pockets. He told her about the inn on the bluff. He told her about the man behind the desk. Same jaw. Same voice. Same small pause before a sentence. He said the name José and then he said the name Lavitz and watched her face. Alana crossed her arms. "Honey. Two hundred years is a long time to carry a face in your head." She said grief did strange things. She said he had been thinking about Lavitz for weeks. She said the mind filled gaps. Zack shook his head once. "It's him. Or it's his face on someone else. I'm not guessing." He said it the way he said the year of a war. Flat. Done. Alana studied him for a long moment. She sat down at her kitchen table and pushed a chipped bowl toward the center. "Fine," she said. "Then we test it. I need blood from the innkeeper. Fresh. A few drops in a vial or on a handkerchief. And I need something from Lavitz. Hair, bone, a tooth. Anything the body left behind." Zack said he had a lock of hair in a tin at home. She nodded. "Then get the blood first. Hair keeps. A living man moves." Zack pulled his coat off the hook. Alana caught his sleeve at the door. "Zack. You take it clean. You don't bite him. You don't scare him. You cut a finger on a glass if you have to, but you keep your word." He looked at her hand on his sleeve, then at her face. "I know what I promised." She let go. "I know you do. I'm saying it anyway." He stepped out into the wet dark and started back toward the coast road. The inn was an a 10 minute walk if he used vampire speed. He had a plan by the second mile. He would take a room. He would ask for a tea. He would drop the cup and find a way to get José to cut himself on the shards, and he would catch it in a handkerchief, and he would leave before the man behind the desk looked at him too long again. The tin with the hair could wait until after. Blood first. Then the truth, whichever shape it came in.