Father Aguirre’s packs contained camping gear, as it turned out. After they’d wolfed down their bacon and eggs—Copper received two burnt eggs and sighed deeply when the rest were cooked without incident—the priest unrolled sleeping bags in the back of the truck.
“Are we sleeping?” asked Selena, who was tired but so keyed up that she couldn’t imagine falling asleep.
“No,” said Father Aguirre. “But if we succeed, we’ll be so tired when we get back here that we’ll be glad we don’t have to unroll them, and if we fail, it won’t much matter either way.”
Selena’s heart sank. “Do you think we’re going to, erm, fail? I mean, what do you think our odds are?”
“I haven’t the least idea,” said the priest. “Anything I’ve done like this in the past has been with ... let us say, other individuals of a spiritual persuasion. It may be extremely easy or far beyond my powers. I truly cannot say.”
“The odds are fifty-fifty,” Grandma Billy said. “Either we win or we don’t.”
“That is not how odds work,” Selena said.
“You ever won any money gambling?”
“No?” Selena’s mother had been so antigambling that she was half convinced that if she put a coin in a slot machine, she would immediately become a compulsive gambler.
“Well, I have, so I say that’s how the odds work,” said Grandma Billy and despite everything, Selena found herself feeling irrationally comforted.
Father Aguirre poured water into canteens while Grandma Billy strolled off into the brush to “take care of some personal business.” Hefilled a dish for Copper and offered a canteen to Selena. “Drink now,” he said, “and I’ll fill it up again.”
Having already learned how quickly the desert could dry a person out, Selena drank until she felt like she was going to slosh. She handed it back, and asked, “But what are we going todo, exactly?”
Her voice sounded plaintive in her own ears.I’m sure he’s heard much worse in confession,she told herself firmly.
“Well,” the priest said, refilling the canteen, “we are going to find Snake-Eater’s home ground, and I will try to bind him to it. And then, while he is there and we are there, we will call upon those spirits who might be kindly inclined toward us to ... ah ... enforce a restraining order, as it were.”
“And they’ll do that?”
Father Aguirre shrugged. “We’ll find out.”
Selena stared down at the canteen as water dripped over her fingers. “Grandma Billy said your mother was a god,” she blurted, then winced.
“I prefer to think of her as a spirit,” said the priest, unruffled. “Otherwise I would have to be a demigod and even the Jesuits would have a hard time with that. But yes, she is a spirit. She took human form as it suited her and loved a human man and gave him a son, but she was always a wild thing.”
When Selena looked up, there was an odd smile on his face. “I grew up in a trailer well south of here,” he said. “My father was a day laborer. My aunts actually raised me. My father came when he could get away and my mother came when she remembered to be human.”
“And you became a priest,” said Selena, trying to imagine Father Aguirre as a young boy and not entirely succeeding.
“Aunt Consuela felt the best way to counter any devil in my blood was to send me to a very Catholic school.” He grinned abruptly. “And unlike what you hear about many Catholic schools, the nuns there were exceedingly kind and saw that I was very timid and liked to read, so they gave me as many books as I wished and the Sister Librarian—her name was really Sister Theresa Francis—would talk about them all with me.She was an absolute treasure. I learned later on that the money had run out for my schooling in my second year, but she went to the diocese and told them that it would be a sin against God to turn me away for lack of money. When I wanted to go to seminary, she helped me get every scholarship I could.”
“She sounds wonderful,” Selena said.
Father Aguirre nodded. “She was. When she passed away, God rest her soul, the line of mourners wrapped around the block. She helped more people than I suspect she knew. If beatification was left up to me ...” He coughed. “Sister Theresa was one of the few people who knew about my ... ah ... parentage.”
“And she believed you?” asked Selena, amazed. “When you told her?”
“She didn’t have much choice.” He paused, looking as if he were about to commit a severe social faux pas and not sure how to go about it. “I suppose I should show you, so it’s not a shock later.”
“Oh, this’ll be a treat,” said Grandma Billy, returning.
“What will be?” asked Selena, by now completely at sea.
Father Aguirre sighed. “Half a moment,” he said, loosening his collar. He went around the far side of the truck and began undressing. Selena watched in absolute astonishment as he laid his clothes neatly in the bed of the truck, underwear last. “Please don’t be alarmed,” he said. His skin was very white in the dimness.
Then he bent down and vanished from sight. A moment later, something large came around the back of the truck.
Somethingverylarge. Also very bristly.
