Blood Waters 1 : The Boy From The Sea Read Online Free

them.
     
    Mila gathered the eggs and brought them back to the kitchen. Tomas stood up when he saw her, and reached for the basket with a little bow. Mila was still too sleepy to protest. She followed him to the kitchen, and began pulling down the bowls and the whisks and taking out the cutting boards and things to make eggs and tortillas and orange juice.
     
    "Can I help?" Tomas asked.
     
    "I guess you can crack the eggs," Mila said, fishing out some tomatoes from the dish they sat in. "I'll make the salsa." She began chopping the tomatoes and onions, pointing him at the bowl.
     
    Tomas stood behind the bowl and cracked an egg. They both jumped back when a chick came flying out, cheeping its protest.
     
    "Maybe it was an old egg," Mila said after a moment. The chick was scrabbling around the bowl, trying to find some kind of footing on the smooth surface. Mila tilted it back into the basket and carried it to the henhouse, wondering how the egg had managed to escape her notice yesterday. She let it scurry to the feeding trough, where the other chickens had congregated. If the other birds didn't kill it, then maybe they would have another chicken one of these days.
     
    An anguished cry broke the morning calm. It came from Tomas, and Mila ran back to the kitchen, hoping that he hadn't hurt himself or cut off his finger with a knife. She could hear Gloria's voice sneering in her head, Men don't belong in the kitchen.
     
    "What is it?" Mila asked as she barreled through the doorway. Tomas was sitting on the floor, his face wrenched into a combination of horror as he pointed at the bowl on the counter. Mila couldn't see into the bowl, but she didn't have to-the soft cheeping noises the baby chicks made said it all.
     
    "What did you do?" Mila demanded, even as she knew it made no sense to blame him. But then she realized that there was no way ten eggs would have escaped her notice yesterday. The flock numbered only fifteen birds, and if they had been old eggs, it would have meant that ten eggs had escaped her notice for three weeks. She knew she wasn't that inattentive.
     
    "I don't know," Tomas said. "I don't know."
     
    Footsteps outside the kitchen door approached. Mila felt a surge of panic running through her. There was only one other person who would be awake at this hour; and Gloria would not be pleased at the fact that ten perfectly good eggs had spontaneously hatched when there were guests who would be expecting breakfast. Mila shoved the cheeping bowl under a towel and stepped in front of Tomas, her heart racing. Please, God, let her be in a good mood, Mila pleaded.
     
    "What is going on here?" Gloria demanded as she came in. "First I hear someone tearing up the courtyard and- What's that?"
     
    Mila felt the need to come up with a semi-plausible lie, only there was no good lie that would explain how ten newly-hatched chicks ended up in the mixing bowl. Gloria scowled at her, and then at Tomas. "What's going on here?" she demanded an instant before she saw the birds. "What is that? Are you planning on cooking baby chickens for our guests-""No, Mama," Mila said, hurriedly. "I just-"
     
    "A neighbor dropped them at the edge of the jungle early this morning," Tomas said. "I felt bad for them, so I picked them up."
     
    Mila's mind blanked. Tomas had told the lie so smoothly that, for a moment, even she believed it. She could actually picture him in her mind leaning over and scooping up the chicks into the bowl, and bringing them to the kitchen because he didn't know how to open the chicken run.
     
    Gloria weighed what he said-true, or false? Mila fought the urge to take Tomas's hand. It would give them away. And indeed, it was "them" and not just Tomas, because with those two sentences he'd cast his lot with Gloria alongside hers. "Very well," Gloria sighed. "Were there any eggs this morning, Mila?"
     
    Mila shook her head, no, pointing to the empty egg basket. "They must be having an off day," she said. It did