“You have everything. A mom that busts her ass for you. All the gifts of the Deos at your disposal. Look at all the people here for you.”
“They’re here for my mother.”
“They’re here for you. You have a legacy. They’re family. You think your life is so tough—you don’t know what tough is. If you knew what I’ve been through, you’d never sleep again.”
I hop off the chair. My magic sparks between my fingers. “You’re right. I don’t know you. So do us both a favor and leave. You don’t want to stick around for what comes next, trust me.”
I hear him jump. Hear his footsteps walk around me and toward the door leading to the backyard. He shoves his hands in his pockets, turning around to look at me. “I guess you’re not a fan of tough love.”
“Not a fan of any love if it’s coming from you.”
Part of me wants to take it back. Out of everyone here, he’s the only one who noticed me leave. I want to tell him to come back, but he’s already gone. When Nova shuts the door, I look up at the light he left. It dims slowly, like a concentrated sunset meant just for me.
“There you are!” my mom says, running into the kitchen. She holds my face with her hands. She kisses my forehead. I take a deep breath, but I can’t stop myself from shaking. “It’s time.”
10
When the bruja meets her dead,
she will welcome them.
She will open her heart
and know her true potential.
—The Deathday, Book of Cantos
It starts in the dark.
My closest living relatives—my mother, Lula, Rose, Aunt Jeanette, and, from my dad’s side, cousin Teresa and Maria—sit in a circle with me at the center. My feet fall asleep in seconds. Sweat clings to my lashes, blurring my vision with every blink. Somewhere in the dark is Old Samuel, tapping the drum skins, matching the rhythm of Lady’s song.
Lady lights the stone bowl between us. She thanks the Deos for blessing me with such power. She’s singing about the moon and sun and the balance of the earth. Then, the names of my ancestors are listed one by one and called forth to meet me.
The lights go out, but a different brightness fills the rooms. Soft, red, and warm. My heart booms—a terrible, bloody thing inside of me. My first instinct is to run. Lula widens her eyes at me, a quiet order to stop fidgeting. So I concentrate on the rattle of shells, on the tsssss of tongues against teeth. On the wisps of smoke rising to the ceiling. On the parakeet batting its wings in my hands.
“Carmen,” Lady says my mother’s name. “The death mask.”
My mother dips her fingers in a bowl of white clay. She covers my face with it, blows on it to help it dry quickly. Her breath is sweet like rose punch. Then comes the coal. She traces the black of bone around my eyes, down my nose, my lips, my cheeks. We wear the face of the dead so the waking spirits feel at home.
Lady takes my hand and slices it down the center. I gasp and pull away. She grabs it back, and I force myself to stay still. For my counter-canto to work, I need my blood too. I look away and squeeze my fist. Warm wetness trickles into the fire. The fire burns acid green, which is strange. I see the confusion on Lady’s face. She and my mother look at each other. Is it my canto? Every Deathday I’ve been to, the fire burns white once the blood is spilt. I fear I’m caught when there’s a firecracker pop, and the green flame becomes true white. Relief washes over my mother’s face.
Then, they arrive.
The temperature drops, announcing the presence of the spirits. The brujos and brujas of my family are hidden in the shadows beyond the circle. I can hear them singing along to Lady’s song, louder and louder, voices rattling like thunder.
Mama Juanita once said there are many kinds of dead. Once you die, you can choose the way in which your spirit returns. Most opt for their younger selves. Others as they were when they died, no matter how gory. Others go straight onto their next lives. Some get stuck in a terrible in-between.
Even in death there is possibility, I think. If my father is dead, will he step forward?
The spirits show themselves. They dance and walk around me, cocking eyebrows at the small bird in my hands. I see my grandmothers and grandfathers, aunts and uncles, and others that have been dead for hundreds of years. One woman is as dark as night. A white wrap covers her head, and a cigar is clenched between her strong, white teeth. My heart squeezes painfully. Mama Juanita.
In my life, they’re old, fading photographs, but now they’re here and they’re waiting for me, judging me, expecting me to be fulfill this legacy.
I grab the parakeet tighter. It bites and struggles to get free. It’s stronger than I thought.
“Alejandra Mortiz,” Lady says. Her face is more severe than usual, all rough lines and angles. “What do you offer the spirits of your dead in exchange for their blessing?”
“Blood of the guide,” I whisper.
“We accept,” they respond in a chorus.
I take the knife from Lady. The handle is ivory. The steel glistens with anointed oils. Press it to the yellow feathers of the parakeet’s chest. I’m searching for two faces. Aunt Rosaria. She should be here. She’s been haunting me all these years, so where is she when it matters the most?
“Alejandra,” Lady says. “The dead don’t like to be kept waiting.”
But don’t they have nothing but time?
I search for his face, but I don’t see him, and I don’t know if I’m relieved or not that my father’s ghost isn’t here.
“The guide,” Lady says harshly.
I hold the parakeet up to my lips, kiss the soft feathers as it chirps a cry I want to return but can’t. If I don’t complete the canto now, then my life will be full of death and demons forever.
“It’s okay, Alejandra,” Mom says, seeing me stall. Her eyes are still bruised from yesterday’s attack. I hope she can understand one day that I’m doing this so we can all be safe. “You can do it.”
“Go on,” Lula says.
There’s chattering from the audience and the dead. I squeeze the knife tighter. I can feel the parakeet’s heart racing under my thumb. I will never get a chance to do it again.
With trembling hands, I plunge the knife into the bird. It stops trying to fly. There’s a smattering of applause. My mother lets go of a long sigh, as if all of our worries are now over.
But my canto isn’t complete. I gave my blood and the sacrifice. Now, I retrieve the raven feather from its hiding place. My hands shake, and sweat drips down my face. Someone gasps, but I can’t see who. I throw the feather into the flames. The dead stumble back in a great gust as the red light is replaced by shadow. White smoke billows all around us. I hear my name shouted from all over the room. The house trembles, as if a thousand fists and feet are beating at the walls.
“Alejandra!” my mother screams. “What are you doing?”
The smoke surrounds me and only me. Wind funnels into the house, bringing rain and lightning. But I sit still. I grab the bowl of coal. The feather chars and curls, then turns to ash.
“Lady de la Muerte,” I shout. I grab fistfuls of ash and salt and draw a circle around myself, breaking my connection with the others. “Accept my offering. Protect me from my living. Protect me from my dead.”
Windows shatter, doors fly open, the floorboards warp beneath me.
I cry out as my heart feels like it’s twisting out of my chest.
Something is wrong. This wasn’t part of the recoil.
“What have you done?” my mother asks me.
I don’t have time to reply. Screams twist like cyclones in the room. A force hits me in the gut, and I fly backward. I push myself up as the floor beneath me rips apart. My feet dangle over the edge, and I see spinning black and stars, like the seam of space and time is coming undone.
“It’s you.” That voice again. The one th
at possessed Rose. It’s coming from the portal. “I’ve found you.”
Black tree roots shoot out and wrap around my neck, lifting me into the air and toward the vortex, where a creature is waiting. I see infinite, dark eyes hiding beneath a helmet made of bone. Lady de la Muerte? It can’t be.
Then I hit the ground. My mother stands in front of me with a machete in her hand. Lady raises her hand and, with a blast of her power, sends me flying across the living room. My head spins. My throat burns where the roots crushed my throat. I try to push myself up, but my shoulder feels dislocated. My family blocks my path to the vortex. Dozens of roots slither out, like the heads of a hydra reaching for me. Instead, the roots snap around my family, living and dead.
“Mom!” I shout.
My mother screams as the black roots wrap around her waist and drag her into the vortex.
“Alex!” I hear Lula cry out for me.
There’s a final boom, followed by total darkness and the end of the storm. My ears ring in the dead silence. I stumble in the dark, my hands bloody and stinging as I crawl through shattered glass.
I’m afraid to see, but I force my burning eyes open.
They’re gone. Everyone is just gone.
In their place are dozens and dozens of scorched feathers. Every window is shattered. Every candle is extinguished. My mom always said, “When the Deos answer your call, they snuff out the lights.”
11
Deos, take my offering.
Return my pain al olvido.
Return, return, return.
—Canto del Regreso, Book of Cantos
“What did you do?” Nova’s voice startles me.
I stare at his dirt-caked boots making their way toward me. He’s still in that blue shirt.
I made them go away… I can’t say it out loud. I touch the outline of feathers burned into the wooden floor, then the singed parakeet feathers that flutter around me.
I grab my face with my bloody hands. Tree branches tap at broken windowpanes, like long, thin fingers calling for my attention. My insides ache. My magic is slipping. Air swirls and thickens around me until everything is drenched in rain, washing the blood away, revealing stinging cuts all over my bare arms and legs.
I remember that I’m not alone. Nova is here. Nova will know what to do. I need them back.
Nova kneels down beside me and takes my hand in his. I hold on to him and pull him toward me. Fear splinters the green sea in his eyes. He wants to flee. He looks at the open door. He breaks my hold, but I’m on my feet in a heartbeat. I pin him against the wall. His heart races beneath my palms.
“Alex, stop it. Let go.”
My name sounds foreign coming from him. Alex. Alejandra. Who am I if I’ve lost them forever?
“You have to help me!” Desperation makes my voice shrill. “You have to help me get them back.”
Nova stares at me in a way that makes me feel like a thing that crawled from the sewers. I’m a decrepit, crooked, beastly thing clawing at his feet. I am the thing that should be feared. I am the thing I hate most. The gods ask too much, my father said. But it wasn’t the gods that did this. It was me.
“Alex, relax!”
“A demon just took my whole family, and you tell me to relax?” I shove him, his head snapping against the wall. He’s taller than me and all muscle, but I can feel my strength growing. “You said it would work. This is your fault!”
“My fault?” he scoffs. He grabs my wrists, and I take a sinister pleasure in his shock that he can’t make me budge.
“You have to know about this stuff. I know you do.” My belly swells with magic. It chokes my heart, my lungs, burns tears to my eyes.
“Alex, you’re hurting me.” Nova’s eyes are wide. Lines crinkle his features. His lips, dry, part. A strangled cry. My name. His heartbeat at the center of my palms. His pulse in my veins, slow and steady and bright.
I want to scream. My power rages, hateful and wonderful all at once. My family is gone, but the power is still there. They’re gone and it didn’t even work.
Nova falls on his knees. His hands pulse with a weak conjured light. He’s trying to fight me. His light burns against my bare skin. I hiss, releasing him. Instantly, the wrinkles on his face smooth out, the color returns to his skin. The mini-storm I conjured dies.
My body buzzes with awakening. “I’m—”
“Don’t say you’re sorry!” He staggers away, then finally lies down in a pile of feathers.
I close my eyes. I’ve gone beyond feeling like I’m in a dream or a nightmare. I’m in a limbo of my own making.
“I could have killed you.” I dig my hands into the dirty fabric of my dress. My mom was right. She should have sewn in pockets.
When he’s regained his breath, when the silence becomes so unbearable that he has to say something, he mutters, “It’s done.”
Even without touching him, I can sense the way his muscles ache. There are bruises on his chest. I can’t know that, but somehow I do. I watch as he moves toward the front door, so slow, as if treading water.
“Wait!” I push myself up on shaking legs. “Where are you going?”
He flinches as my fingertips brush his shirt. He turns the full fury of his eyes on me. “Home, like I should have in the first place.”
“You can’t just leave.”
“I warned you, you might not like the consequences. I know you want to find someone to blame other than yourself, but you did this, Alex. What did you think was going to happen? The entire universe would change just because you don’t like how your lot turned out? Well, guess what, princess? The rest of us don’t get to choose. Why did you think you’d be any different?”
He keeps going. For a moment, I’m too stunned to move. Everyone I would turn to is gone and I just accidentally tried to kill the only person left.
“I don’t have anyone else.” What I want is for Nova to stay. I want that door shut. It’s a spark in my mind, and in a split second, the command leaves my body. The door slams shut. Nova whips around, his hands glowing protectively.
“You can’t keep me locked here.” He looks scared. Big, bad street boy with tattoos covering his skin, and he’s scared of me.
Part of me hates it. A whisper, deep in the back of my head, relishes in it. I can hurt him. I can make him feel my pain. It’s so easy. That’s the point of being an encantrix, isn’t it? Nova said it himself: I can do anything. I can get my family back.
“Nova, please.”
He rubs his close-cropped hair and exhales. “Tell me exactly what you did.”
I open the door to my family altar. The black-and-white photos of my ancestors have changed. Their eyes are completely white. I grab the Book of Cantos and shut the door. Nova rights a coffee table that flipped over. It wobbles when I set the Book on it. I show him the canto. I describe what happened.
Mom, I’m so sorry, I think. Grief and guilt hit me like a wave, but I can’t—I won’t—cry in front of Nova.
“It was meant to block the blessing, like you said. Then I combined it with a phrase from the Canto del Regreso and changed it a bit… I was offering my power to Lady de la Muerte.”
Nova shakes his head. “How many cantos have you done in your whole life?”
“This is my first,” I whisper.
“Thought so.”
“Can you not? Just tell me they’re alive. Where did they go? They can’t just have vanished into thin air.”
“Technically, they did,” he says roughly. He flips through the pages of the Book of Cantos until he lands on a map that spans two pages. “But they also went somewhere. This is Los Lagos.”
“How do you know that’s where they are?”
“Look at the burn marks on the floor.”
“Feathers.” Feathers, feathers, everywhere. They flutter in defeated little tufts. The
y’re burned into the floor and walls.
“Look where you were sitting in the circle.”
I try to look beyond my parakeet’s severed head and am thankful that there aren’t any human body parts. I bend down and touch the burned marks of a craggy tree, just like the one painted on the back room door of Lady’s shop. It’s the symbol for Los Lagos, an in-between world I know nothing about except for bedtime stories of lost souls and fantastical lands.
“My grandma says that’s where souls go to wait their passing, but there are also creatures that live there, banished from the Earth by the Deos.”
“Tell me they’re alive,” I whisper.
Nova hesitates to speak. He sighs. “I’m not going to lie. There’s a chance that they’re alive.”
“Chance?” My legs feel like jelly. I have to sit again.
“Well, if only their souls had gone, we’d be surrounded by corpses.”
“A chance is all I need.” I look to Nova, who traces the pages of the map. “Are you sure?”
“Our people don’t have many other dimensions. There’s the Kingdom of the Deos, which is our version of the Greek’s Olympus, but I always figured that’s a fairy tale.”
“Oh that’s a fairy tale,” I say.
“The other alternative is that they’re just gone, princess.”
Los Lagos. Spirits and monsters and other realms. If there’s a chance of saving my family, no matter how small, I have to take it.
“How do we get there?”
He cocks an eyebrow. “We?”
“You have to help me,” I say, putting my hands on my hips and puffing out my chest. Very intimidating.
“Let’s say I help you.” He leans in closer to me, and now it’s my turn to move back. “What do I get in return?”
“What do you get?”
“Yeah, what do I get? In case you hadn’t noticed, everything in life, this one, the next, and the unseen—they all have a price.”
I spit at the ground where he sits, and he chuckles. “You’re disgusting.”
“I like you, Alex,” he tells me. He stands, and I follow. “You’re difficult to like, you know that? But I do. You have a spark. Los Lagos isn’t somewhere you just go unless it’s life or death, and a brujo’s got to eat. Don’t take too long to think about it. The longer they’re gone, the harder it’ll be to get them back. That’s just common sense.”
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