“Yes, and no. When I’m the basilisk, I have a different array of senses, which means a different way of seeing the world. It’s hard to explain, especially as I don’t really understand it myself, but many shifters talk to their animals and the animals talk back. The most I get is an occasional word from the basilisk, and it’s always what I’d be thinking anyway.”
“Actually, I think I get it,” Godiva said slowly. “At least, tell me if this sounds even close. My P.I. character argues with me. If she doesn’t like the story I put her in, she gets stubborn, and I sit there at the keyboard staring at a blank screen. Until I give in, and let her take the story in the direction she wants. You can say I’m just playing games with myself—in fact, some have—but I regard her as herself, and I’m just her minion, working up her story as she lives it.”
Rigo said, “That actually sounds a lot like what Alejo and others tell me about themselves and their animals. Here,” he interrupted himself. “Coming up on a connector road. We can either take the 40 out east through New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, and up, or the northerly route. Number one is longer, but number two has more traffic overall.”
“Whatever’s quickest?” Godiva said. “I’ll enjoy the scenery no matter what. It’s all new.”
“Got it,” he said. “North it is. We can make up lost time by getting an early start, and driving later at night. We can catch meals during the worst traffic hours.”
She assented, and from then on she ceased to pay attention to the route, in favor of enjoying the scenery as they talked.
The rest of the day passed in a flash as Rigo finished up the saga of Alejo’s education. With an apologetic glance, he said, “I have to confess, once he was drafted, I did try to find you. I didn’t go myself—I already knew I was no good at tracking anyone down. But I paid an investigator who had a good rep. But he never found you. We figured it might be because he was used to tracking shifters, and you were human. Whatever the reason, you had vanished without a trace.”
“You didn’t think about my changing my name, even though you knew Alejo had been named Cordova when he was born?”
“I assumed you changed your name to your mother’s,” Rigo said. “Made sense. Lamas sure hadn’t done a damn thing for you other than his half of bringing you into the world.”
She understood the question in his gaze by now, and said, “I tried twice with private investigators. Both times a bust—because they were searching for Alejandro Cordova.”
Rigo nodded. “He wanted to sign up at the high school as Tzama, to avoid hassles. And once he turned twenty-one, he made it legal.”
“No quarrel there,” Godiva said. “Tzama. I never knew your last name.”
“I’m sorry I never told you,” Rigo said ruefully. “I never used it once I left home. All I could think of was my pa getting out of jail and turning up on my doorstep roaring drunk, fists swinging. But after I talked to my Grandfather Tzama, I made my peace with my background.”
“Tzama,” she said. “Of course Alejo would want to change his name after he found you. Tzama. I like the sound of it.”
Rigo smiled his real smile, the one that lit his eyes. And from there they traded stories back and forth about their own haphazard educations—Rigo at a small town night school in Kentucky, and Godiva in the hippie world of alternative pretty much everything.
Over dinner, which they ate at another hole-in-the-wall in Thompson Springs, Utah, Godiva got him to talk about the ranch. His face lit up as he admitted that he’d somehow managed to acquire a farrier’s knowledge, even if it was never made official. She got the distinct impression that word spread about his ranch full of rescues, many of whom he was able to find homes for once they were healed. He made no claims for himself, but she mentally counted up all the animals he talked about.
“It sounds like every one of them has a story,” she said as they finished their after-dinner coffee.
“That’s just it, every single one does have a story,” he said with a soft, reminiscent smile as he gazed out at a line of departing clouds half-covering the moon. “Even if they can’t tell it themselves, the story is there in their eyes, in their gait, in the scars, in how they react. I’m no storyteller. I probably wouldn’t do any of them justice if I tried. But I could make damn sure their story took a good turn. Heh. Let’s pay up. Looks like that thunderstorm is passing south of us, so we can get in a few good hours now that we’ve reached the 70.”
He got up, leaving the subject behind, and they were soon on the road. They made it to Grand Junction, Colorado, before deciding to call it quits for the night.
She lay alone in her motel bed, very aware of him in that next room.
For a time she imagined him moving around. Now he was in the shower, and . . . she let herself remember the first time she climbed into that horrible tin shower-tub together back in Hidalgo. The heat between them had banished the weak, lukewarm stream that barely worked for one person. That, the peeling plaster, everything had faded to nonexistence before the strength of desire, and the spiraling heights of glory when they came together.
Would it be that way now? She forcibly shoved the thought away. She was too old, things had changed too much.
But her body did not agree, from the way her blood hummed through her veins, the pulse of warmth deep in her core. That part of her revved its engine just fine, eighty years be damned.
Crash! Lightning branched outside the windows, followed by the exhilarating roar of thunder as a spectacular thunderstorm moved across the Colorado sky.
Was he thinking about her?
“Depends,” she muttered to the rolling thunder, “what he’s thinking.”
Anyway there was the small matter of fifty years of silence that couldn’t be addressed until they got to that post office box.
She ripped her thoughts away from Rigo and thought about the day, realizing that she’d really enjoyed herself in talking over Alejo’s senior year in high school, and his life immediately after. Though she had zero interest in organized sports, she reveled in the stories of Alejo’s high school basketball career. She rejoiced to hear about how good he was at training horses, and building things.
Hearing about the ranch, and not just the animals who came to stay, but broken shifter humans who ended up there, and pitched in to work for room and board. He had an entire staff living there now. In fact, it kind of reminded her of what she was doing, with her houseguests.
Rigo made it all sound so easy. But then, she realized as rain roared overhead, he had been that way when she’d known him. This was the real Rigo. But in her anger she had managed to convert him into something he wasn’t.