“Too bad you can’t invite her,” Lula says, “so at least you’d have one friend there.”
I sink in the backseat and watch the Brooklyn brownstones pass by. A few blocks later, we get to a row of shops that look so old a really good East River gust could cave them in. At a red light, my mom dabs her lipstick on, then rubs her lips together to smooth it out. The plum color brings out the beautiful gold undertones in her brown skin, the freckles around her cheeks that look like constellations. She closes the visor, caps the lipstick, and hands it to Lula. She copies Ma’s exact lipstick application. Lula’s wild curls are extra scrunched and smell like rose oil. Her skin shines from her homemade coconut milk and brown sugar scrub. I think I still have eye crud in my eyes from this morning.
“Oh, relax,” Lula tells me. “I’m just playing.”
She keeps the visor down, so I can see her resting witch face. She’s mad that I levitated the whole kitchen because she’s always wanted a physical power. She wouldn’t even help me clean up after. Rose nudges my arm and gives me one of her calming, close-lipped smiles. Fine, I’ll play along for Rose.
Mom parallel parks in front of Miss Trix, a rundown shop located on the only undeveloped street of Park Slope. A wind chime made of mismatched shells greets us in the funky-smelling botanica. Normally, buildings have vines crawling on the outside brick. Here, the vines have made their way into the shop, as if they’re eating the store from the inside out.
Mountains of books balance in precarious stacks, because Deos forbid you need the book all the way at the bottom. The windows are caked with dust, and spiders have erected a web metropolis on every available corner. There’s a giant caiman bolted to the ceiling, like it’s swimming in the middle of a swamp. It’s yellow eyes look so alive, even though Lady swears it’s as dead as her first husband.
I turn around and come face-to-face with the pickle wall. Rose picks up a jar of human eyes, each one with a different color iris. A blue one moves around of its own volition.
“I don’t like him,” she whispers, setting the jar back on the shelf.
“What’s not to like?” I ask.
Lady, the storeowner, Alta Bruja of the Greater New York area, and my aunt by marriage, greets us with a smile.
Her dark laugh makes me think of cigarettes being crushed into an ashtray. “Don’t mind the eyes, Rosie. They can’t hurt anyone from in there.”
The fringe on her clothes bounces when she waves. Her black lipstick makes her mouth look like a bruised plum. She stands behind the register, a rickety, black metal thing with large, white buttons for the numbers. It probably survived the Coney Island fire of 1911.
Lady has always been an enigma to the younger generation of brujas. Only the Viejos know her real name. After her second husband died trying to make the journey back to Cuba, she married an aunt on my dad’s side. She became part of our community and teaches the younger brujas everything, from our history to magic realms to cantos. Lula and her Circle have a bet about how old Lady really is. They’ve guessed everything from thirty to ninety-one. When we were little, I had a theory she was a vampire, but Lady likes browning under the sun like Sunday bacon.
“Alejandra, come here.” Lady refuses to call me Alex. She says the Deos don’t take kindly to false names. I just hate the way some people say “Alejandra.” It’s like trying to say it right makes their tongue have a seizure.
I try to blend into the corner of dusty books, but when I don’t move, Lady makes a beeline for me. She grabs my hand and spins me in place. Then she traces the map of lines on the palm of my hand. She grabs my chin, and one of her long, black nails digs into my skin. I try to pull back, but she holds on harder. Her dark eyes widen.
“You have it.” Her deep voice is soft as smoke. “It” makes me think I’ve been diagnosed with some incurable plague. “An encantrix, like Mama Juanita. The highest blessing of the Deos.”
“What?” I shake my head. I can’t be an encantrix.
Lady turns to my mother. “Carmen, did you know?”
“It’s been two generations since one appeared in the family,” Mom says. “I thought the gift was lost. Mama Juanita—she could do everything. Command the elements. Heal the sick. Speak to the dead. She wrote her own cantos. And she made the best sopa de pollo in all of Brooklyn.”
“Didn’t she get struck by lightning?” I ask, moving from denial and on to panic.
Lady waves her hand in the air, dispelling my worries. No big deal. It’s only lightning.
“How do you know that’s what I am? I just made a few things float.” I also made a snake of smoke come out of a boy’s throat… I also killed Miluna. I made my father leave us. That’s not a blessing. That’s a curse.
“You’re a late bloomer, mi’jita,” my mom says.
“Our magic isn’t as strong as it was when we were free to practice.” Lady crosses her arms over her chest, and her long, fringe shawl dances around her. “Nowadays, some brujas are lucky if they can make a pencil float, even with years of practice. Some can only see the future in two-minute intervals. Some can only heal shallow cuts. The gifts of the Deos get weaker with each generation. That’s why you are so very curious. What you did—what your mama told me—that’s physical. That takes power. Only an encantrix has that kind of power. You might be a great one.”
A feather falls from somewhere and brushes my skin. I take a step back, knocking against an armoire. The knob digs into my spine. I try to turn around to hold the structure steady, but a small, bleached skull falls off and smashes on the ground.
“Encantrix or not, you’d better clean that up,” Lady says. She points to the black velvet curtain that leads to the back of the store. Lula scoffs and tries on a prex made of sparkling crystals, and Rose mutters something to the mounted head of a jackalope. My mom goes over the list of things we need for my ceremony with Lady.
I rush to the back, where she keeps the cleaning supplies. There’s a door painted dark purple. At eye level is an etching of a golden sun and silver moon for La Mama and El Papa. The sun is crowned by the sideways crescent of the moon. It’s the same moon I wear as a necklace, a gift from my father. I trace the painted symbols on the door. Directly below the sun is a gnarly-looking tree with thin, stringy leaves.
“Encantrix.” I sound the word out.
The seashell wind chime snaps me out of my thoughts. I grab a broom and dustpan and head back out to clean up the mess I made. Some of the bone dust gets up in my nose and makes me sneeze.
“Gross,” I mutter, dumping the contents in the garbage can near the register.
“Gross yourself,” he says.
A guy, possibly around Lula’s age but trying to look older, stands on the other side of the counter. He’s got brilliant diamond stud earrings and a fresh, buzzed haircut like the boys around the block. I find myself staring. His hands are covered in tattoos, like he dipped his arms in solid ink up to his wrists. From there, the ink continues in swirling lines, like jellyfish tendrils drifting on the sea of his light-brown skin.
Thick, dark lashes fringe his eyes, which can’t decide between green and blue. When he sees me, he smiles, revealing a tiny dimple, like a comma at the edge of his mouth. He licks the cold off his full lips. Touches his necklace. Blue beads like a long rosary. A prex.
My face burns when I realize this is the same guy we almost ran over the other day.
He grabs a few things on the way to the counter. I should probably go to my mother, but I don’t want to deal with Deathday things. So I stay put and try to ignore the guy’s presence, even though he seems to take up the whole room with the way he walks right up to me. He sets a red votive candle, some dove feathers, and a jar of tongues on the counter. The tongues swim in the murky, green liquid like they’re mocking me. I flick the bell at the register to let Lady know she’s got a customer.
“I’ll be right there,” Lady sh
outs from the front of the shop.
I put the broom and dustpan in the back. When I return, he’s still standing there. Again, he smiles when he looks at me.
“What?” I ask. I wonder if he’s aware of how his stare makes me want to turn around and run.
“You look familiar.”
“I just have that kind of face.”
“No, you don’t,” he says, smirking. “I remember you. Red Civic. Riding with that pretty boy that wore too much cologne.”
“Sorry about that.”
“You weren’t the one driving.” He crosses his arms over his chest, making his muscles more pronounced. It makes his tattoo appear like it’s moving. The ends of the inky tendrils stop at the finest points.
“My eyes are up here,” he says, making a V with his middle and index finger and points them at his eyes.
I’ve never seen a boy with such bipolar eyes, let alone a permanent wrinkle between his brows, like he spends more time frowning than anything else. I ring Lady’s bell a few more times.
“Deathday shopping?” he says, smirking. “You look excited.”
“How’d you know?” I ask, matching his sarcasm.
“Overheard your mom. I’m Nova, in case you were wondering.”
“I wasn’t.” The pads of my hands itch. It’s like the magic I’ve tried to push back so long has gotten a little bit of freedom and now it wants more. It coils inside me at the base of my belly and spreads. I take a deep, calming breath and push it back. “Shouldn’t you be out jaywalking?”
He laughs, then leans close to me, so I can see the dip between his brows is not a frown mark but a thin scar. And it’s not just there. He’s got three more matching nicks, one on each cheek and the last on his chin, like the cardinal points of a compass.
“Most girls get pumped for their Deathday.”
“Yeah, you know what a bruja wants.”
“Not really. I just guess until I get it right.” His smile falters, but not for long. “It’s okay to be scared. You just have to do your part and welcome your dead. It’s tradition.”
“It’s not fair,” I say. I don’t know why I say it. It just came out. He’s a stranger. But sometimes it’s easier to confide in strangers than the people who love us. “It feels like I don’t have a choice in my life.”
“You could always not do it.”
I can’t really tell if he’s joking, but I can’t deny the little spark of hope that fills my heart. Every bruja and brujo I know has had their Deathday.
“How?” I hope I don’t sound too eager.
He shrugs. “I’m sure you’re not the first witch in history to fear her own strength. Sorry to break it to you, brujita.” Little bruja.
“Didn’t you hear? I’m superspecial. I’m an encantrix.” Why did I admit to that? A second ago I wanted to deny it.
His eyes brighten with surprise, then appraisal. “Good for you.”
“I’m not sure ‘good’ is what I was going for.”
“Well, you only get one Deathday.”
“Except the actual day we die.”
He chuckles, and it makes his face look softer. “That’s a little morbid, even for me.”
I rest my hands on the cool glass. He leans closer to me. His eyes are bluer now. Smoke from the sage bundle burning in the corner descends around us. “I think it’s sweet that you’re nervous.”
“That doesn’t answer my question. How?”
“Well, I usually charge for my wisdom.” He raps his knuckles on the countertop.
I doubt he’s the kind of person who would give me a straight answer. I think he likes to hear himself be charming and clever. Then again, I don’t really know what kind of person he is at all. But I can’t exactly ask my mother or sisters or my best friend, so a stranger is going to have to do.
“Look,” he says, “if there are cantos for raising the dead and making it rain, then there should be something for stopping your Deathday. That is what you’re talking about, right? I mean, I wouldn’t do it because you don’t know what the recoil might be or the effects it could have. You shouldn’t do it because you don’t seem like you know the first thing about performing a canto and might set your house on fire. No offense.”
“How is that not offensive?” I’m filled with the urge to turn him into a slug. Then I lose my spark when I realize he’s right. I wouldn’t even know where to begin.
What do I want? To stop my Deathday? That’s only half the problem. I’d still have this magic inside me. Magic killed my aunt Rosaria and Mama Juanita. My magic killed Miluna and set my father running. I could’ve hurt Rishi the other day. It destroys. I wonder…
“I’m saying. Just ’cause you can doesn’t mean that you should.”
“You don’t know my reasons.”
He grins slyly. “I don’t have to. If you want to compare the monsters in our closets, I’d win by a landslide. Besides, I don’t care what you do. I just figured I’d give you a little warning.”
“Why?”
His blue-green eyes flick from my lips to my clavicle. “I’m a nice guy.”
I snicker. “Okay. Where would you start?”
Nova looks over his shoulder where Lady and my mother are comparing the benefits of different bushels of sage. My sisters are in a corner giggling probably because this is the longest I’ve voluntarily talked to a boy my own age.
Nova leans in closer to me. I look at the in-between colors of his eyes—they’re like the shades of Caribbean seas—and hate that someone so cocky is so pretty.
“Listen, Ladybird,” he says, “the ceremony happens whether you want it to or not. But if you reject your blessing, it’ll have an effect on your power. The whole point is that the ceremony makes your power stronger but easier to contain.”
“If I wanted a lesson on spells, I’d talk to Lady.”
He makes a face. “Spells are for—”
“Witches, I know the drill.”
Nova laughs and raises his hands. “Fine. Every Book of Cantos has something to block negative forces. My grandmother uses them on her bakery, so she doesn’t get bad reviews. You can probably use the same to block the blessing of your ancestors. But you’d be foolish to try. You don’t know what could happen.”
“What if—” I bite my tongue. Nervous sweat accumulates between my shoulder blades. “What if I wanted to get rid of it?”
“I already told you it’s too late to stop the party without getting your moms pissed.”
“No,” I whisper. “Get rid of the magic.”
“Oh. Damn.” Nova stares at me. I hate that it makes me feel exposed, judged even. I can practically feel his thoughts racing. Would he tell Lady? Perhaps I’m not special in feeling this way, like I’m in a body that doesn’t fit quite right, but saying the words aloud makes me realize that, maybe, I can change my fate.
Nova raises an eyebrow and shakes his head. A fat vein in his throat jerks when he tenses. I decide I don’t care what he thinks of me. He doesn’t exactly look like a saint.
He rings the bell on the counter and says, “Then I don’t think I’m the person who can help you.”
Finally, Lady makes her way to us with my mom. I get shooed away from the register.
“What are you planning, Trouble?” Lady asks Nova.
For a moment, I’m afraid he’s going to rat me out. Nova winks at me and that dimple appears, like we weren’t just discussing a bruja’s greatest family betrayal. I go stand beside my mother. She looks at Nova, trying to place him. Surely all the brujos and brujas in the tristate area know each other. She tells me all the time that there are so few of us left and our connections matter.
“Look at that face,” she whispers to me, like we’re schoolgirls.
“Ma.”
Nova smiles—no sarcastic laugh, no mocking twitch of the lips. Just a
smile. His dark hair is shaved short, so all you focus on are his cheekbones and lips and lashes.
I take the list from my mom’s hand. Everything is crossed out except for one: blood of the guide. I shut my eyes and think of Lula’s Deathday. We strung white fairy lights in the yard and spent all night hot-gluing sparkles on her midnight-blue dress. I glued my fingers so many times that they were raw and bloody. I probably bled as much for her Deathday as the sacrificial dove. If I think on it, I can see Lula’s slender hands holding the dove, red dots smattered all over her perfectly calm face.
Lady punches numbers into the register. “Love canto? Finally met one you couldn’t charm with your pretty green eyes.”
In this light, they’re more blue than green. But I don’t tell her that.
“Nah, Lady,” he says. “Ain’t never had no trouble with love.”
“That’s a double negative,” I say.
Lady’s grave laugh fills the store. Then she says, “Twenty-five dollars.”
“You raised the price on liar tongues? What the hell, Lady?”
He takes out crumpled-up bills from his pocket and smooths them out like each dead president just insulted his mother.
Lady shrugs. “You think rent here’s getting any cheaper? You want to do your love canto or don’t you?”
“It’s not a love canto!” He pushes the money toward her, a sudden jerk going through his body. He glances at me, then gives me his back. Beneath the close crop of his hair is a crescent moon tattoo, El Papa’s symbol, right behind his ear.
“Just put the rest on my bill,” my mom says.
“Five bucks,” Lady tells my mother, shoving his candle and tongues and feathers into a black plastic bag. “What do you say, Nova?”
Nova looks to the floor for one, two, three, before facing my mother and saying a somber, “Thank you, Ms…”
“Carmen,” she says.
“Nova Santiago.”
“You’re a bleeding heart,” I tell my mom.
My mom is always the lady who gives a dollar to the young, homeless kids on the street. She always says, “If it were you, I’d want someone to help you too.” This is different. So he’s not doing a love canto. He could be doing a canto to make someone lose their voice. Who needs liar tongue for any kind of good magic?
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