The Temptation of Demetrio Vigil (38 page)

33. Buddy, black Chihuahua, RTL, car crash

34. Maria Ochoa, female 16, RTL,
car crash

With a chill, I read them both again. Buddy and I
had the same code.

In a panic, I flipped through the book until I came
to Nutmeg’s entry, and I read it.

1. Nutmeg, chow dog, RTL, auto.
   

With goose bumps crawling on my arms, and legs, and
up my back, and along my spine, I flipped through the book to the
very last page, and read the entry he’d just put down.

399. Kelsey Epstein, female 17, RTL, murdered

The initials were familiar to me somehow. I thought,
and thought, and remembered that his favorite book had been A Tale
of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens, a book in which a man thought to
be a criminal, Dr. Manette, is returned to life, for a second
chance.

Returned to Life.

RTL.

“Oh, my, no, no,” I whispered. “Kelsey. Kelsey! Come
here. Please come here.”

“What is it? What’s going on?” She unfroze and
stumbled over to me.

“That’s why,” I said, looking at Kelsey in complete
and utter astonishment.

“Why what?”

“He
had
to kill Logan, because I was
dead,” I told her, my voice barely rising above a
whisper.

“You’re not making any sense. Hello? I’m the one who
got killed. Not you.”

“Not today, not here, not now.
I
died
in that
crash on Highway 14, Kelsey.”

We stared at each other as the truth sunk in.

“He never said, it but it’s here. Demetrio saved my
life that first day. And Buddy’s. That’s why he had to kill Logan
today, because he can’t bring the same soul back twice. If Logan
had killed me, it would have been forever.”

She knelt next to me and hugged me. “He sacrificed
himself for you,” she said. “I told you he was a good guy.”

“Yeah,” I said. “You did.”

There, in the rain, next to Logan’s corpse, I let
out a bloodcurdling cry, as the reality hit me - Demetrio was gone,
and he wasn’t coming back. Unable to betray his brother, even as
Hilario plotted his doom, he’d sent his own soul to The Very Bad
place, so that I might live.

True to Hilario’s plan, Demetrio, the good brother,
had been tempted, and trapped, by me, and now he was gone.

♦

It was the second week of January, and my
mother stood on the stage, in the large performance hall at
Coronado Prep, along with Headmaster Green, Yazzie and other
teachers, and two officials from the state police. I stood on the
stage as well. So did Kelsey. We all wore our finest clothes, and
smiled nicely for the cameras. After all, it was a press
conference.

“We are all just terribly aggrieved,” said my mother
into the microphone, tidy and perfect in her red pantsuit, her hair
salon-coiffed earlier that day, “to have to share this news with
the good people of the city of Albuquerque. We grieve for the
Torero family, and extend to them our deepest condolences in the
death of their only son. The killer is still at large, but we
believe it to have been another member of the same far-reaching
Satanic cult to which young Logan Torero himself so tragically
belonged.”

Yes, that was the official story. Logan had secretly
been part of a Satanic cult. As such, he’d kidnapped me and Kelsey
at the dance, to do horrible and unsavory things to us. Kelsey’s
dress was covered with blood because he and other boys had
sacrificed animals on top of her (we gave ourselves extra credit
for thinking that one up) and he had been in the process of cutting
my throat when one of his own apparently grew a conscience and used
his own crossbow to shoot him from across a field.

“These two young girls,” droned my
mother, “including my own beautiful and talented daughter, Maria
Luisa, were beyond brave in the face of this terrible incident. As
a mother, I feel wonderful knowing that all of the hard lessons
I’ve taught her about morality, family, God and safety, all came
together in her moment of need to help her escape from what might
otherwise have been a most terrible fate.”

The crowd broke into applause here, and Kelsey used
the opportunity to fake-sneeze the word “perjurer” in my general
direction. I cracked a grin, but did not laugh out loud.

“That something of this evil nature could have taken
root at a place as wonderful as Coronado Preparatory Academy is
sobering, indeed,” my mother continued. “As a lawmaker, I take this
to mean that none of our children are ever truly safe, until we
hold our schools and elected officials to the fire and demand that
there be better oversight and education for children about these
dark forces among us.”

More applause.

“I want to commend the Coronado Preparatory
Administration for already implementing sensitivity training for
faculty and students around Satanic and cult issues, so that should
something like this take sprout again amongst us, we will all be
able to recognize it for what it is, and weed it out. What’s more,
as a city councilwoman, and as the mother of one of the victims, I
am going to make sure that this same training is available to every
school in our great city, free of charge, so that no family will
have to go through what my family has gone through.”

Again, deafening applause.

“And now, if you don’t mind, I’d
like to ask my daughter to step forward, to receive a special gift
from me and all of the city councilors, on behalf of the mayor,
congratulating her on her quick thinking and survival smarts. Maria
Luisa, please come up. You, too Kelsey.”

And so it was that as the crowd rose to its feet,
and my classmates joined forces with the local media and political
elites to celebrate the lives Kelsey and I both had only because of
the bravery and self-sacrificing of Demetrio Vigil, my best friend
and I stepped forward to accept the key to the City, silently, on
his behalf. Only Yazzie knew that we had agreed to dedicate it to
him, and I caught sight of her wiping away a tear as I walked to
the side of the stage to pose for photographs. Being alive seemed a
strange thing to celebrate, but from where I stood now, most things
most of my fellow humans did seemed strange.

Later that day, Yazzie drove me and Kelsey to
Golden, to help us drape the chain with the Key to the City of
Albuquerque upon the descanso belonging to Demetrio Vigil. As she
drove, I told her about the book he’d left behind. Yazzie listened
with growing interest, and asked if I had it with me. I did, of
course, because I always carried it with me now. It was all I had
left of him, and I couldn’t bear to part with it.

When she parked at the descanso, before we got out,
Yazzie flipped through the book.

“I have heard of these, but never seen one,” she
said. “It’s remarkable that he found the strength to materialize it
upon his parting.”

“He took the crossbow, too.”

“You girls do realize that by doing so, Demetrio
saved you both from possible prosecution in Logan’s murder?”

“Yes,” we said in unison. We had discussed it many
times.

Yazzie flipped through the pages, shaking her head
in amazement, smiling sadly. She cried as she flipped, and when her
tear hit the page along the margin, an amazing thing happened: pale
blue words appeared, shimmering on the parchment.

Beautiful work,
they said, or
Perfect
timing.

“Cry some more,” Kelsey told her, and Yazzie, almost
as good an actress as she was an artist, created more tears,
dropping them in the margins of the pages. They illuminated what
appeared to be communications for Demetrio, about each of the
rescues. Some were encouraging, others were advice on how to do it
better next time.

“Who’s writing that?” I asked, chilled and
excited.

“I believe The Maker of All Things,” said Yazzie,
softly and reverently. “It is as though the book were a direct
method of communicating with The Maker.”

“With God,” said Kelsey. “God writes uplifting
greeting card slogans in magic books. That’s hard to believe.”

“Something like that,” I said, echoing Demetrio’s
own terminology with a smile.

“Why do you think he left it for us?” asked
Kelsey.

“I think, Maria, that Demetrio
left this as a way for you to perhaps appeal to The Maker on his
behalf.”

As she said the words, they felt exactly right. “I
know that’s what it is,” I said. “I feel it.”

She handed me the book.

“What do I do?”

“Write in it, on a blank page.”

“But what do I write?”

“Whatever’s in here,” she said, touching her heart.
“We’ll take the key while you do this. You should do it in
private.”

They left me alone in the Jeep with the book, and I
flipped to the first empty page. Then, using the quill pen, I began
to write.

I don’t know if you can hear me,
or see this, but I write to you today to ask that you have mercy on
the soul of Demetrio Antonio de los Santos Vigil, who died in this
spot and who I came to know and love. He saved my life. He was
found to be a kindred to me, a Close Kindred, and we believe we are
Kindred Primaries. He did kill a man, but it was done in defense of
my life, which he had already saved once. He sacrificed his soul
for mine, and I would hope that you might look kindly upon that
sort of thing. He doesn’t deserve to be in The Very Bad Place, and
I very much would appreciate it if you could see about getting him
out of these and letting him come back to finish his good deeds,
which I know for a fact he really enjoyed. Thank you very much,
sincerely, Maria Luisa Ochoa.

I sat with the page, and began myself to cry. I let
the tears fall upon the margins of the page, and watched, in
astonishment, as a reply appeared, almost as quickly as I’d written
the plea.

“God may be subtle, but he isn’t
plain mean.” Albert Einstein

I read the words twice, and then jumped out of the
car and ran over the Kelsey and Yazzie. “What do you think this
means?” I asked, showing it to them.

“I think it means you need to learn to write
shorter,” said Kelsey. “Jeez. Give a girl a magic notebook and she
doodles all over it.”

“No, not
mine,
dork. The answer.”

They read the words, and Yazzie smiled. Kelsey
shrugged.

“It means he’s coming back,” said Yazzie,
dreamily.

“It does?” I asked, my heart skipping a beat. “Are
you sure?”

“Yes, child,” she said, bringing
me into an embrace. “Ours is a loving, sympathetic creator, not a
vindictive one. And maybe this time, you’ll read the stories I give
you, so no one gets hurt.”

“Not likely,” joked Kelsey, pouting a little as
though she felt left out.

“Come here, Kelsey Epstein,” said Yazzie, opening
our hug to include her. “You girls are so crazy.”

“Yeah. So I’ve been told,” I said, and we
laughed.