Kayla shook her head. Carlos' eyes narrowed, and he raised one hand. "You will talk to me, girl! You'll—"
"Carlos, stop it!" Roberta caught Carlos' raised hand, held it tightly in her own. He glared at her; to Kayla's surprise, Roberta glared right back at him. "She came back, right? That's all that matters. She is here now."
"But she's—"
"Carlos, you've dropped your towel," Roberta observed tartly, and Kayla quickly averted her eyes. "Go put on some clothes."
With a last fierce look at Kayla, Carlos stalked away, slamming the bedroom door shut behind him.
"And you, Ramie!" Roberta turned on him. "What were you doing with this girl in your room?"
"Roberta, I didn't do anything!" Ramon protested.
Yeah, that's the pity, Kayla thought. If he hadn't yelled so loudly . . .
"You didn't do anything because you didn't have enough time to do anything!" Roberta countered.
"'Berta, that's not—" Everything blurred around Kayla, dizziness suddenly overwhelming her. She leaned against the wall, shaking her head.
Roberta said something terse in Spanish to Ramon, then to Kayla, "Girl, you're pale as a ghost. Come, I'll make you some hot chocolate, you'll feel better."
"Just a second . . . I'm not feeling so great . . ." Everything was spinning too fast. She closed her eyes and swallowed, wishing it would all just go away. She heard the sound of the bedroom door opening; Carlos and Ramon's voices, speaking in quiet Spanish.
"Where has she been for the last week?" Ramon asked in English.
"I want to know how she got into your room," Roberta said, "when I know she didn't come through the front door. How did she get up to the third floor and get inside without opening a window? The window's still locked, Ramie, from the inside."
The dizziness cleared, slowly. Kayla straightened to meet Carlos' level gaze.
"She's a bruja, she can do many things," Carlos said, looking at her with expressionless dark eyes. "And now we have her back."
Kayla sat next to the living room window, sipping from a steaming mug of spicy hot chocolate, listening to Ramon and Carlos arguing in Spanish across the room. Roberta sat near to her, watching her intently.
"Why did you come back?" the Hispanic girl asked suddenly.
Kayla looked down at her mug, not answering.
"I don't understand it. I know you don't like Carlos . . ."
That's the understatement of the century, Kayla thought.
" . . . and you never wanted to be here at all. So why did you come back?"
I wish I knew. I must've wanted to come back here, or the Unseelie Queen would've sent me somewhere else. And what happens now?
"It's settled," Carlos said, standing up. "Ramie will take you to the apartment. You'll be safe there, safer than here. We'll need to keep some homeboys there to protect you all the time."
"Listen . . ." Kayla began, then faltered, seeing the look in Carlos' eyes. She marshaled all the courage she had—which isn't much, she thought. "Carlos, can we . . . can we talk about this? I don't . . . I don't want to be a prisoner, locked up somewhere. I want to go home. Please. That's all I want."
Carlos stood silently, looking at her with unreadable dark eyes.
Ramon broke the awkward silence. "You don't know what's happened in the last week, querida. The bastardos have been coming around here all the time. None of us can go out alone. It's very dangerous. I think Carlos is right, you should go to the safest place we know. There are many lives depending on you."
But I don't want these people depending on me! she thought. I just want to be what I was before, just plain, ordinary Kayla, no one special, no one that anyone cares about.
"You're going to live in the apartment," Carlos said in a tone that allowed no argument. "And Ramon will stay with you. He can watch over you. And Fernando will be there too," Carlos added, as Ramon grinned at Kayla. "Just to watch over Ramon!
"But first we'll stop at the hospital, where you will heal our people. It's too dangerous to leave them there; the policía won't let us guard them. There's no one to make sure that the bastards don't come after them. And there's no way we can leave them guns to defend themselves with. We'll go there and you'll heal Luis so he can leave the hospital, then take you to a safe place."<T>
"But—"
"No more arguing," Carlos said, cutting off Kayla's words. "That is what we're going to do."
* * *
In the bedroom, Kayla stuffed her other pair of jeans into the plastic shopping bag, throwing in some socks after it.
God, why did I come back here? I'm never going to get free of Carlos, ever. . . .