Solis cleared his throat and started, “¿Ximena? ¿Qué está—?”
Ximena Solis whipped around with a gasp, bringing her hands to her mouth, and I assumed some of the words she’d used weren’t appropriate around children or police detectives. A cloud of dismay seemed to envelop her. “Rey!” she squeaked, then launched a stream of flustered Spanish accompanied by a flurry of hand waving and gesticulating at the older woman. She broke off suddenly to bound over and wrench one of the children from the older woman’s grasp and push him toward Solis before she turned back to try to rescue another, scolding and pleading by turns, if I guessed the tone correctly.
The older woman picked up the smallest of the two remaining children—a little girl in a slightly grubby striped dress—and plopped her, shoes and all, into the wash sink. A splash of soapy water erupted along with a shriek and a spike of acid-yellow outrage from the girl.
Ximena, tiny red lightning bolts leaping from her, shoved the last free-range kid toward her husband and turned back around, planting her hands on her hips for a moment before throwing them into the air again in exasperation and letting out her own cry of indignation. “¡Mama! ¡No hagas eso!” She tried to reach past the older woman, who, though short, angular, and possibly addled, was apparently no weakling, and shouldered the younger woman away with insouciant ease. The other looked ready to explode.
Solis eased between them and pushed the two women apart. He kept his gaze on the older one, but he was clearly speaking to his wife when he said in carefully clipped syllables, “Ximena. Vuelve a la cocina.”
The moment she had flounced away to remove the other children from the kitchen, Solis reached past the old woman and her belligerent shoulders to pluck the now-wailing little girl out of the sink. For a moment, the sparking energy in both the adults’ auras seemed to hiss and coruscate as if on the teetering edge of flaring into furious white heat that would consume everything near it in a flash fire of destruction.
Solis set the girl on the floor and snatched a bath towel off a stack on the clothes dryer nearby to wrap her in, and the moment’s potential faltered, sending a shiver into the Grey.
The woman let out a screech of her own and turned around to berate Solis, bony little claw fists propped on her hips and her beaky face thrust forward like a furious crow, her energy blowing outward into a harsh, violent tangle of red spikes. Her posture was so much the full-bore version of Ximena’s aborted stance that I knew the woman had to be her mother. She cawed at her son-in-law in a glass-shattering voice, dropping Spanish words I knew nice old ladies didn’t use in polite Colombian company.
Solis whipped a fisted hand up between them, pointing his index finger at her in a warning gesture as his aura flushed a deep, vibrating red. Unlike his mother-in-law’s, his energy seemed to pull inward, intensifying and burning in a tightly controlled band around him. His expression was stern enough to give a charging rhino pause. “Mi casa, mis reglas,” he snapped.
The old lady shut her mouth with a snap, her tangled strands and spikes sucking inward but not really dissipating, and glowered at him before she also spun around and marched out of the room.
“Bruja vieja y vil,” Solis muttered, rolled his eyes, and stooped to pick up the sodden child. The hard red energy around him drained away, leaving a slightly too-bright residue that gave off occasional low sparks and glimmers of white and orange. He turned and saw me and I could tell he’d momentarily forgotten my presence in his house. His sparks died away.
He cleared his throat. “Have a seat in the kitchen. I will take Claudia Elena upstairs but I won’t be gone long.”
I wasn’t sure if that was an apology in advance, a warning, or what. I shrugged. “All right.”
Solis offered a small smile and walked past me. I followed him into the kitchen, where I could just glimpse two children’s faces peering into the room from the hallway beyond until they saw their father coming and disappeared from sight. I took a seat at the oversized work island in the middle, putting the bag full of bell down on the floor beside me. Ximena Solis stood at the stove, her back to me. She was mumbling and working with jerky, angry motions, occasionally tossing her head in dismissive fury. She turned suddenly with the scorched pan in her hand and let out a fearful yelp as she saw me, jumping in shock and barely keeping hold of the pan and its burned, goopy contents. She started to question me in Spanish, then stopped, made an exasperated face while shaking her head, and restarted in English.
“Who the hell are you?” she demanded, tossing the burned pan into the sink with a clatter and a look of disgust. Her English was more heavily accented than Solis’s, but she spoke more casually—as if she were more comfortable with the language than her husband and didn’t give a damn how she sounded.
“I’m Harper Blaine,” I replied. “I’m working with Sergeant Solis for a few days.”
Her eyebrows pinched together as she looked a bit askance at me. “Harper Blaine? Really? You don’t look spooky to me.”
I let out a short laugh. “Is that how your husband describes me—spooky?”
“Espantoso,” she replied, nodding while keeping her eyes locked on mine, as if I might do something untoward at any moment. Then she shrugged. “But no one’s really that scary compared to my mother.”
I pointed in the direction the old woman had disappeared. “Was that her?”
Ximena rolled her eyes. “Oh yes. She is having one of her ‘bad days.’ She decided the children all needed to be scrubbed of their sins and she was going to do it with Tide and a wire brush.” She glanced around the kitchen in sudden anxiety and added, “I don’t know where Oscar Luis went. . . .”
“Is he about ten, has a burned shirtsleeve?”
She nodded. “Yes. Did you see him?”
“He met us in the foyer. Your husband calmed him down and sent him upstairs. He didn’t seem badly burned—just a little red on his arm.”
Ximena looked stricken, her aura going an unattractive green for a moment, and she seemed to buckle at the knees before she caught herself and stiffened her spine with the help of a loud, long inhale. “He stumbled against the stove trying to get away from Mama and he caught his sleeve on fire.”
She must have noticed my raised eyebrows; her face tightened and she shook her head. “It’s not what you think. We don’t abuse our kids. Once in a while Mama just goes crazy in the head and then things always get bad. She’s locked herself in her room now and she won’t come out until morning, probably.”
“Really.”
“Yes!”
“Do you think it’s safe for her to be upstairs with the kids at all?”
Ximena growled under her breath. “She isn’t upstairs. She has the bedroom down here.” She pointed to one of the doors leading off the kitchen. “I’m not stupid enough to let my lunatic mother sleep near my kids. I’m not sure I should let her sleep near the stove or the food, either, but she’s my mama and I can’t put her in a home. Rey is kind enough to let her stay.” She stopped suddenly and looked at the floor.
I glanced over my shoulder, thinking Solis must have returned, but he hadn’t. It was just us girls.
“Don’t you both worry?”
Mrs. Solis sniffed and said, “She’s not like this very often. When she’s all right she’s a lot of help and she loves the kids. But when she’s bad . . .” She glanced back up at me as if my understanding was a prize she coveted.