“Don’t mention it,” she said.
The air buzzed with tension, and their gazes lingered on each other for a little too long before Amador flattened her hair, tidying any wisps that had escaped, and left. Admittedly, it was odd to see Nix helping Amador, let alone Amador actually thanking her.
When Amador was gone, Nix let out a deep breath, like she’d been holding it.
“You okay?” I asked.
“Why do you keep asking me that?” She tidied up the infirmary, setting bottles and herbs back into their shelves and drawers. “You’re the one we should all be worried about!”
I tried to laugh at the misery of it all, but it sounded weak.
“I think that’s the first time I’ve ever seen you and Amador not biting each other’s heads off,” Nix said.
“I know. It’s a new feeling, for sure. We might be on the same team now.”
The tips of Nix’s ears were pink. She passed me, and I caught a whiff of mint.
“That would be lovely,” she said.
19
There wasaknock on my door the next morning, and I opened it to find Amador standing there with a stack of books that was nearly as tall as she was.
Nix, who had been helping me tidy up my mess of a room from last night’s transformation, chimed in from behind me, “Need any help?”
“Yes, please,” Amador said. I didn’t think I’d ever heard her say the wordpleasebefore in all the time I’d known her.
Amador and Nix spread out all the books on my bedroom floor, arranging them into piles based on subject. Amador only briefly glanced at the manacles I’d used last night, still lying on my bed.
I had started to change before sunset last night. I had tried to stay in my own mind, but it was one of the most difficult things I’d ever done. It was as if some magical power was constantly dragging me down into inky blackness. Even if I paced my room, did jumping jacks and yoga, read horror books, it wasn’t enough. I’d blink and find myself on the floor, with no recollection of ever lying down.
Once, I woke up standing at the window, my hand already onthe latch. It was terrifying. It was like I’d interrupted myself, like I wasn’t in control of my own body, and the harder I fought it, the more it wanted to take over. Nix had barely managed to get the manacles on me in time.
From the safety of the bathroom, Nix had said she heard me talking to myself, laughing, too. I didn’t remember doing anything like that. The rules were changing; the manananggal wasn’t coming out just with the setting sun anymore. My time being human was growing shorter as the date of the full moon drew closer.
“What is all this?” I asked Amador, staring at the books.
“Helping you, duh,” she said, like it was a stupid question. “This one here is about folklore and mythology.” Amador pointed to one pile that consisted mostly of illustrated stories. Nix picked up the top book and flipped through it. “This one is history, and this one is a random stack I thought might be helpful.”
“Where’d you find them?” I asked.
“The library. Where else?”
“I never took you for the studious type.”
“Amador is full of surprises,” Nix said, and then she went pale. “Not that I would know.”
Amador pretended like she hadn’t said anything and helped herself to the breakfast that had been brought up for us. I glanced at both of them, sensing that there was something they weren’t telling me, but I kept my thoughts to myself.
While we ate, the three of us scoured every book Amador had brought. It helped that Amador had grown up in Biringan, so she had heard all the stories of the manananggal before, but she was lacking knowledge about myths from our world. It was so normalseeing monsters in movies and reading about them in books, it was basically common knowledge.
“So, explain to me what a vampire is again,” Amador said. “How are they created?”
“Becoming a vampire can happen a few different ways,” Nix said. “Sometimes they’re bitten and ‘infected’ in a sense, other times they’re killed and then resurrected, and sometimes they’re not turned but born that way.”
“A manananggal isn’t so different, I guess,” Amador said. “They walk around like anyone else during the day, but at night, they hunt for their victims. Some of them don’t even realize what they’re doing. It’s like they have two different minds in one body.”
“That’s what it feels like,” I said. “And I only have until the full moon to figure out a way to stop turning into a manananggal.”
