Jacaranda by Cherie Priest Read Free Book Online

There was a new chapel, much closer to Texas—but much farther from the capital—in a place called El Huizache. It was a place to start over, a new life bought with a promise: never again .
    Juan Miguel Quintero Rios did not make his promise to the priest. He promised higher than that, as high as he could reach: Alone at night, he knelt before the icon of Mary, lit his candles, crossed himself, and he vowed, “Never again. I will never touch the guns again.”
    He kept them all the same, wrapped in his brother’s shirt. Everything a reminder, everything a debt to be paid. Too heavy to carry, too important to leave behind.
    The gleam of the handsome six-shooters never dulled, and their delicate whorled designs never grew faint from repeated handling; and when the newly reborn “Juan Rios” arrived to shepherd the men and women of El Huizache, he put the guns inside the altar—atop the relic box.
    Within that box rested a tooth and a bone that might have come from a knuckle. Regardless of its precise origin, both pieces had once belonged to a saint named “Macarius” according to the note the new padre was given.
    He debated the wisdom of stashing the guns with the relic.
    On the one hand, it felt like sacrilege—those guns had threatened, harmed, and even murdered. On the other, they were holy after a fashion. Every day that passed, every hour, every second he left them where they were and did not draw them, did not turn them in his hands, did not run his fingers over the inlaid handles or the rich designs…they were his promise to the Mother.
    He chose to believe that She understood.
    ***
    Two years passed.
    And then Eduardo returned.
     
    He returned quietly the first time—strolling into the chapel at midday, on a Thursday, when no one was present except for Juan Rios and the lone altar boy who swept the floors and scraped wax off the windowsills. The padre flashed the child a warning look, and he left without finishing.
    The two men faced one another in the center aisle, with the cross and the Mother watching them both.
    Eduardo stood with his feet apart, hands on his hips. Almost the pose of a man about to draw, but not quite. His hair was longer but his clothes were no cleaner, no better mended. He did not look very different, except for a dark tattoo that snaked out from his collar, and up along his neck.
    “What the hell is this?” he asked, waving one hand at the pews, the candles, the padre.
    “Things change.”
    “People don’t,” he countered, eyeing the chapel and all its modest accouterments. “What game is this? What plan? Are you learning about a new treasure, buried someplace beyond the town?”
    “If there’s any such treasure, I’m unaware of it.”
    “It’s a shithole, this place.”
    “It’s my home now.”
    Eduardo lowered his eyebrows, and narrowed his gaze. “I don’t believe that. I don’t believe any of this. You look ridiculous in that frock. Mother of God, what would Roberto say?”
    “Not much. Him or Luiz, either. And if you’re going to swear, you could at least do it outside.” The padre turned his back. He pretended to tend the candles. He was careful to keep his eyes off the altar.
    “There must be something of value here.”
    Juan Rios did not like the tone, or the implication. He’d used it before himself, and he knew it for the threat it was. “There is much of value here. Treasure in Heaven, or a map to take you there.” He waved toward the cross, the Mother. “Otherwise, as you said yourself: There’s little to recommend the place. No money here, just farmers and cooks, serving girls and the caballeros who come and go with the season. If it’s treasure you want, you’ll find more of it almost anywhere else.”
    “Then why are you still here?”
    “I told you,” he sighed, and turned around again.
    Eduardo’s hand was on his gun, not brandishing it, but resting there—an old stance, an easy pose that Juan Rios remembered very well. He remembered