Blood Secret by Kathryn Lasky Read Free Book Online

another three steps. Her head bumped softly against a low-hanging lightbulb, but she had no desire to turn it on. Her eyes were sorting things out. She caught her breath as a humpback shape rose in the amber mist of dust and air. But then she almost laughed when she realized it was a bicycle upside-down and askew, sprawled across the top of an ancient bathtub, also upside-down with its claw feet pawing the air. A mouse ran fearlessly across the dirt floor as if it knew exactly what it was doing and where it wasgoing. And near where it had disappeared, Jerry’s eyes, now completely accustomed to the dark, spotted a spiderweb. Its filaments looked like sheer gold in the amber light, and a large beetle was snagged and bound in silk in its middle. She stared at the web, transfixed, and wondered where the spider was.
    Jerry looked for the sewing machine but not very hard. She was reluctant to poke around too much. It was late besides, and Constanza wouldn’t appreciate rattles coming from the cellar at this time of night. But she liked it down here. She liked thinking that this had once been a cliff or the side of a mountain or maybe the bottom of a canyon. She liked the notion that things could shift here—land, shapes, the light itself, and the air. She heard steps overhead in the kitchen. The front door slammed. Surely it couldn’t be time for her aunt to start the fires. The moon was up when she had come down, but now a ribbon of pale golden light slipped through a small, high cellar window carved out of the top of one wall.
    Jerry climbed the stairs and walked into the kitchen to pour herself a glass of juice. The sun was up. The fires were going. When she looked out thewindow, she saw a tail of dust whirling up from the road. A car was coming. She watched as Constanza took a pinch of dough from a bowl on a plank. She walked over to the oven she had just raked and threw it in. Jerry watched her curiously.
    The car, a battered old station wagon, pulled into the drive. The door opened and an enormous woman in an old-fashioned nun’s habit got out. Her wimple lifted in the early morning breeze and her habit billowed out even more. The Sangre de Cristo Mountains behind her were dwarfed. She was, thought Jerry, a mountain range unto herself. “Sister Evangelina here!” She waved jauntily to Jerry, who stood in the doorway of the kitchen. “Here for the host.” He won’t argue with you, Jerry thought, and grimaced inwardly at her own irreverence. She didn’t mean it, of course. This was when it was good not to talk. Suppose something like that had slipped out? “You must be Jerry. Heard all about you from Padre, and of course your aunt.”
    Constanza was now walking over. “You two meet?”
    “After a fashion.” Sister Evangelina held out her hand to shake. Jerry took it. It was large and tanned and rough. She remembered the calluses of Father Hernandez’s hands.
    “Come on in for some coffee,” Constanza said.
    “Coffee and…” Sister Evangelina’s voice swooped up.
    “Coffee and pastries or whatever I got in there.”
    “There’s a reason I’m this size.” She winked. “But it’s really not gluttony.”
    “It better not be a sin if you’re eating my baked goods,” Constanza said.
    “And if it is, we got a lot of sinners in Albuquerque.”
    Constanza turned to Jerry. “You’re up early this morning for a no-school day.” Jerry nodded and tried to smile. Constanza glanced at her quickly, and in that split second Jerry knew that her aunt knew she had been in the cellar. They sat at the kitchen table. Constanza brought out a basket of blue-corn muffins and a plate of tartlets similar to the ones she had made earlier in the week.
    “You eating these? Or you give them up for Lent?” Constanza began to slide the plate away.
    Jerry started as a plump, dark hand darted out and slapped Constanza’s. “Stop right there, gal.” Jerry’s eyes slid toward her aunt.
    “Well, if you didn’t give up