Spiders in the Grove (In the Company of Killers #7)(3)

“No,” I answer right away. “We’re both here together, but once we leave this room, we’re on different paths.”

Naeva sits with her knees pressed together, her legs drawn beneath her, inches from me; I see her face just barely in the windowless room, and I wonder how I can see her at all with only the tiny light underneath the door. She looks so frail sitting there, like a little egg…like Huevito. I’ve been trying to tell myself since we left that I can’t stray from my plan to help her, that she’s strong enough to handle it on her own, but…who the hell am I kidding?

My hands bound, I raise myself from the wall and peer through the darkness at her. “Listen to me, Naeva,” I say with determination. “When—not if—we get separated, I want you to know that I won’t leave you here; no matter what my plans are, I’ll get you out of here. OK?”

Naeva smiles, and then nods. “I never thought you would leave me here anyway,” she says. “Not that I was counting on it, or taking advantage, but I just knew.” She scoots over to sit closer, our shoulders touching. “And I’ll do the same for you.”

Unfortunately, I knew that about her, too. And that’s what worries me the most. I don’t want her risking herself for me, but I know she will anyway. We may not have ever really known each other, we may have only spoken a few words to one another before she came to me the night we left, but because we were both slaves to the same people, our bond as sisters is as strong as a bond between two women who’ve known each other their whole lives.

No matter our individual plans, Naeva and I are in this together, so it’s probably better we start acting like it.

“Tell me about Leo,” I offer.

She raises her head from my shoulder; her eyes are radiant, eager, filled with…what I wish mine were filled with when I talk about Victor.

“What do you want to know?”

I glance around the dark, dank, room. “Everything,” I say. “What else do we have to do to pass the time?”

Naeva sits up fully next to me, using the wall to balance her. I adjust, making myself more comfortable for what I know will be a long story.

And it certainly turns out to be. Naeva talks throughout the night, hours and hours, through hunger and thirst, and my painful need to pee. But the story helps me forget all of that stuff, and my heart breaks for her and bursts for her and does things I didn’t know it could do for another person. And after her story is over as night becomes day, I finally understand her. And I understand myself. I understand why I’m so envious of her relationship with Leo Moreno: because theirs was a love built on trust, and because I hate myself for lying to Victor since I’ve known him.

“Our love was born of breath and bone,” she says longingly of Leo. “That’s what he told me once: ‘God breathed life back into my bones when I met you’, he’d said.” She looks away from me, perhaps trying to hide the tears glistening in the corners of her eyes.

“Your turn,” she says then, changing the subject. “Tell me how you met my brother.”

I start to pass on the chance—talking about how I met Victor is the last thing I want right now—until I hear voices and footsteps coming down the hallway, the first I’ve heard since before 1:00 a.m., and we turn immediately to watch the door.

“They’re going to come in this time,” I whisper, staring at the light underneath the door as it moves. I turn swiftly to look at Naeva. “Remember what I said—I won’t leave you.”

Naeva nods; she’s afraid this time, I can see it, although faint, in her eyes. Be strong, Huevito. Be strong.





Izabel


A ring of keys jangles, and then the door to our prison opens; yellow light spills into the room, revealing the unevenness of the dirt floor, the holes and ridges rising up and down like little brown-capped waves; remnants of girls who had been here before us trying to dig their way out.

A woman walks in; Mexican, with long, bleach-blonde hair pulled into a thick braid behind her, and lipstick as red as that flashy shit Nora usually wears. There’s a scowl on her face, and a worn leather strap in her hand.

“Get up,” she says in perfect English.

Feigning fear and intimidation, Naeva and I lean forward onto our knees and try to get up on our own, but it’s difficult with our hands and legs bound, and the floor riddled with cavernous holes.

The woman jerks her head toward a man standing behind her. “Get them up,” she orders in perfect Spanish, and he moves in right away and comes toward us.

“Cut the ropes on their ankles,” she instructs, and then she looks right at me, switching back to English again. “What’s your name?”

I look up the rest of the way as the rope is cut from my ankles. “Lydia,” I answer.

“And yours?” she asks Naeva.

Naeva doesn’t raise her eyes. “Uma,” she says, a tremor in her voice that not even I can figure out if it’s real or not.

The woman grabs Naeva’s chin, turns her head to one side and then the other. She does the same to me, her eyes sweeping over the scar across my throat. She looks back and forth between us, contemplating.

“This one,” she tells the man about Naeva, “I’ll take with me to see the governess.” She looks at me now. “This one is damaged; she’ll never be sold. Kill her.”