Bruja Born

by Zoraida Cordova

  “Hey!” Rose screeches. She forgoes her meditation position and points a finger at Nova’s chest. It doesn’t matter that she’s fourteen and half his size. She has to adjust her glasses with her free hand, but her intention is clear. “I haven’t done anything. Don’t just lump me in with these two.”

  “Rosie—”

  “No. Leave me alone. I can’t think with you near me.” Rose shakes her head and starts to storm out of the room. “Good luck with your zombie boyfriend.”

  She slams the door behind her.

  “I take it back,” Nova says, smirking at me. “She’s my favorite of you three.”

  “If the world ended right now,” I say, “it would be a whole lot easier.”

  Nova goes back to his chair, suddenly amused as hell. “Thanks to you, we’re halfway there.”

  “Wait,” Maks says. “What did she mean by zombie boyfriend?”

  Nova picks up a book from the stack that’s beside his chair. The Creation of Deos. Alex used to bother me and say the only studying I did was about magic. Well, clearly, I didn’t study enough because I made the same mistakes she did.

  Nova opens the worn book, written by one of my ancestors. It chronicles all the gods and myths associated with them. It makes the Greek gods look tame.

  “Lula—”

  “I guess it takes jocks a little longer to figure things out,” Nova mutters.

  Maks snaps his fingers. “That’s where I know you from. You’re from Van Buren, aren’t you?”

  “No, asshole. You almost ran me over eight months ago.”

  “Clearly I didn’t do a very good job.”

  “Maks!” I shout.

  Maks is a lot of things, but he’s not hurtful. He turns his face to the side, and it bothers me that the motion is so close to the way La Muerte twitched her head.

  “Lula, please tell me what’s going on. I can’t remember a single thing that happened. The last thing I remember was—waking up and going to the boardwalk. Then there’s only black and voices. I’m covered in scars. Last night I—” He drops his voice. “I ate a heart.”

  Nova’s eyes widen in my direction. “Well, it’s a good thing I didn’t ask you to share that ice cream.”

  “Tell me the truth,” Maks says, his voice harder than before. “What did Alex do to you? What is wrong with me?”

  I walk around my bed to where he stands looking just as lost as when I found him on the carousel.

  “I can explain everything.”

  “Tell me the truth,” he repeats.

  I hate that Nova is here, watching us. If he had any sense of decency, he’d step out and give us privacy. But nothing, not an empty room or a stadium full of people, will change the words I’m about to say to Maks.

  He holds my hands with his, crossing our fingers together the way we’ve done so many times, and I can feel his heart racing like my own.

  “Did I die?” He sounds out every word, and I know the answer he wants me to give him.

  I shut my eyes, a well of tears spilling down my cheeks. Maks, his eyes wide and blue and desperate and waiting for an answer I’m afraid to utter myself because it makes this, all of this all true.

  “You are dead.”

  He pulls out of my hold.

  “Half-dead,” I try to correct.

  Nova lowers the book so I can see only his eyes. “Technically, casimuertos translates to almost dead. Not half-dead.”

  “I’m going to casi-kill you myself if you don’t shut up,” I say as an empty threat.

  It doesn’t do much to help Maks calm down either. He paces in a circle from one end of the room to the other. For a long time, I say nothing. The only sound is Maks’s feet on the wooden floors, and Nova turning the pages of the book.

  “I’m not sure how it happened,” I say finally. In a way, the truth undoes some of the knots in my chest. “I was trying to heal you. I told you we were in an accident. All of us. The buses crashed with a semitruck and other cars.”

  Every time I try to grab his hand, he yanks it away.

  “There was a metal pole driven through our bodies.” I keep going. It’s like opening up an endless well after a drought.

  Maks stops in his tracks. He touches the scar on his chest hidden beneath his shirt.

  “They tried to save us both, but I had a higher chance of surviving the surgery, so they pulled you off first.”

  He looks down at the ground for a long time. “I remember screams. No images. Just screams.”

  “They took us both to surgery, but you fell into a coma. They didn’t think you’d come out of it. I tried to heal you.”

  Maks finally meets my eyes. “The way Alex did with you?”

  “Alex and Rose helped. You started to fade, and the goddess of death came for you. I was desperate. I couldn’t let go, so I panicked. I tethered you to me—to my life force. I heard you come alive. Then you were dead and gone, but a few days later I found you. I found you, Maks.”

  “My parents,” he says, after a long silence. “They think I’m dead?”

  “Yes. Your body—all the bodies went missing from the morgue. The police are looking into the body snatchers.”

  “And the—hearts? In the news. The two guys with hearts torn out of their chest?”

  I can’t tell him that I found him holding one of the dead boy’s wallets. I just can’t. I grab on to him and don’t let go.

  Maks shakes his head. “Don’t. Don’t touch me. Please. You need to—I need—first you tell me I died. Then you brought me back only to have me die again. Then my body went missing. Not to mention my sudden desire for human hearts and the guy in the next room who tried to kill your sister. Please, Lula. Give me a minute.”

  I turn to Nova. “What’s he talking about?”

  Nova slams the book shut. “You missed the best part. My friend Vino? You know how I brought him here for help? Because that’s what the Mortiz family does, right? They help.”

  “Stop being an ass,” I tell him. “What happened to Vino?”

  “He changed,” Nova says, eyes raking Maks from head to toe. “Into one of them.”

  “But Maks didn’t go anywhere near him.”

  “Right.” Nova looks like he’s mentally walking on a tight rope and anything I say might tip him over. “It was the thing in the park. Which means, we’ve got a whole mess of casimuertos to find.”

  “Where’s Vino now?” I ask.

  “Ran off,” Nova says, pressing his full mouth shut to stop from shaking. “I stabbed him. I stabbed him right in his neck. He was trying to hurt Rose, and no matter how hard we hit him, he wouldn’t get off.”

  “And he still ran?”

  Nova nods, then hits his fist against the wall. “I shouldn’t have come here.”

  “But you did,” I snap. “You’re here. You have two choices. Either help us and prove that you’ve changed, or go squat in the park because all you know how to do is run from your problems.”

  The door opens and Alex walks in holding a plastic bag full to the brim.

  “Glad everyone’s getting along,” she says darkly.

  “To be expected,” Nova mutters. “What’s that face for?”

  “It’s the only one I’ve got,” she says. She rolls her eyes and I can see the struggle in her body because I know her better than she knows herself. “Nova. I need—”

  “No,” he cuts her off.

  “You’re not even going to hear me out?”

  Nova squeezes the bridge of his nose with his black-tipped fingers. “I know what that bag is full of. I know you want to see her.”

  Alex shakes her head, not ready to give up. “Do you know anyone who might know as much about death and blood magic?”

  “It’s a bad idea, Alex.”

  “I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t urgent.�
��

  “It’s always urgent. Don’t you get it? That woman kicked me out. She’s the only flesh and blood I have in this city because the siblings I got left are either locked up or in a ditch somewhere. I don’t want to see her.”

  Her breath hitches, and I swear she’s letting herself feel sorry for him, despite swearing to every Deo in existence she’d never forgive him. Meanwhile, Maks is busy admiring the scars that riddle his body. I want to look away from Nova’s pain, but I can’t because as much as I hate it, I know what he’s feeling.

  Alex places her hand on his. “I’m not asking you to come. But I won’t go see her without your okay. Not after everything we’ve been through.”

  Nova looks at my sister’s face, and I see how much he cares about her. He keeps his arms crossed over his chest, his hands tucked into his armpits. Then his glance falls to me. Does he wonder if we’re the same? Desperate and willing to do anything? Whatever it is, he nods once, and I suppose that’s as good as we’re going to get.

  “Who are you going to see?” Maks asks me.

  “The scariest bruja in all of Brooklyn,” I tell him.

  Nova’s laugh is bitter as he says, “But I call her grandma.”

  20

  Pero he descubierto que el veneno más puro es la amargura en los corazones humanos.

  —The Art of Poison, Angela Santiago

  Bay Ridge is bright with new shops and an excess of hipsters priced out of Williamsburg. I don’t come down this way a lot, but the pizza and bagel shop Dad used to love is still open, sandwiched between a barbershop and a dollar store, where bearded old men bake in the sun on a rickety wooden bench. Kids about our age gather in groups at bodega corners and under the shade of bus stops, cutting school because it’s June and the end of school is so near you can taste the sweetness in the summer heat.

  Alex and I cross the street and turn a corner that marks the start of the poor side of town. Within a block, the houses are more rundown, more worn. Not even a fresh coat of paint would fix the cracks and lopsided porches or tilting foundations.

  A group of guys whistles at us, but we keep walking, linking our arms together. They laugh and shout out obscenities. Alex’s hand tightens around mine and the surge of her magic prickles my skin.

  Something pops, and I whip around to see a lamppost shattering over the catcallers. Some of them scream. Some cross themselves. None of them bother us anymore.

  Alex’s smile is feline and I can’t help but laugh. But a block later, when we reach the little bakery with frosted windows, we stop.

  The awning over the store is ripped, and though it’s a dirty brown now, I can see splotches in the fabric where it used to be red. There’s a wreath on the door I recognize as a protection spell. Black branches are twisted into a ring, and at the center is a cat’s cradle of copper wire with a glass eye at the heart. El Mal Ojo. When I was little, and I saw other brujas place the eye on their doors or walls or wear it as jewelry, I thought the eye could truly see. Even though now I know it doesn’t, it still gives me the creeps. I always thought it was strange that a curse and the thing that protects you from the curse are called the same thing.

  When we open the door to Angela’s Bakery, the bells at the top jingle a pleasant chime. Despite the shabby exterior, the floors are clean, there are two tables where people can sit and eat their pastries, and the cloying sweetness of citrus and lemongrass clings to the air.

  “Hello?” I call out.

  No one comes to the door, despite the chiming bell.

  “Deos help me,” Alex says, pressing a hand on her belly and shutting her eyes. “It smells incredible.”

  We both inhale dreamily. Butter, fresh bread, and burned sugar waft across my senses, and, for the first time in so long, my mouth waters with hunger. I press my hands against the glass separating me from rows of decadent cupcakes topped with sugared rose petals. They almost look too pretty to eat and remind me of the canto Alex used to do for me. I touch the scars on the side of my face.

  “Do you think Nova would kill me if I bought some empanadas?” she asks.

  “Why do you even care if he gets mad?” I ask her. “You treat him like he killed your pet. Huh. Technically you killed your pet…”

  Alex practically growls in my direction. “I’m going to ignore that. Anyway, I thought Nova and I could be friends after he showed up with Dad. I could get over the betrayal. But sometimes, when I sit and think about how lucky I am, how I love Rishi and how she makes me happy, how my family is safe, Nova just breaks into my thoughts and I feel helpless and stupid all over again. I just wish he didn’t get under my skin.”

  I tap my nails on the glass and consider what my sister is feeling because I’m the one who hasn’t let her forget what she did. Maybe I’m the one who has to tell her what she doesn’t want to hear. “I think there are many different kinds of love. I think you want to love him as a friend because you share a darkness that no one else can understand. You’ll never really be friends if you keep blaming him. But for right this second, you just have to be allies.”

  She acts like she didn’t hear me and presses her finger against the counter. Her eyes are set in a frown as if the rows of fried puff pastries oozing caramel did her wrong.

  “See something you like?” a raspy voice asks behind us.

  I grab Alex’s hand and jump.

  A tall old woman waits behind us. Brown skin sags along her jawline, and her long neck is ringed with big, colorful, wooden jewelry. Her thick, curly hair is white as salt and decorated with black feathers. The petals in the resin-covered orchids that dangle from her long earlobes bring out the fuchsia accents in her wildflower-printed dress. There’s a softness to the curves of her body.

  But her eyes—sharp circles the color of raw tourmaline framed by high-arched eyebrows—betray everything else. They belong to someone who has seen more than her share of dark days, and when they settle on me, I feel like she knows all my secrets.

  “The Mortiz sisters.” She almost sounds amused. She nods her head at Alex and holds out her hands in a display of welcome. “The encantrix herself. What can I do for you?”

  Alex’s jaw is set, and I pray, I pray she doesn’t ruin this. Angela is the woman who let her own grandson live on the streets. She’s a woman who dreams up poisons the same way others do wishes. My sister frowns, leans forward to speak, but I cut her off.

  “We beseech your help and information,” I say, squeezing Alex’s hand as hard as I can.

  “My, my—” Her dark eyes flick from Alex to me, a wicked glee sparks at the center. “Can I offer you something? Pan de bono, right from the oven? Un cafécito?”

  And because it would be an insult to turn her hospitality down, we croak out, “Yes.”

  While Angela busies herself behind the counter, Alex and I sit at an empty table. She does not look amused when I yank her ponytail and hiss, “Behave.”

  “I’m not a dog,” she mutters, and slaps my arm.

  It’s only the lightest tap, but I can practically feel myself bruise. The ache pulses hot, and when Alex turns her face to watch Angela, I lift the sleeve of my shirt and my heart sinks at the sight of the black and blue. I hide it and tell myself I’ll deal with this later.

  “I figured you take yours black and bitter,” Angela says to Alex. The older bruja sets three steaming cups on the table and takes the empty seat in front of us.

  Alex purses her lips and I pinch her thigh under the table. I take my coffee and hold it up to my nose, inhale the frothy milk and a hint of sweetness. Alex stares into her cup as if she can see her future reflected in the rippling, black surface.

  “It’s coffee, not poison, niña,” Angela says, her voice losing its amusement real quick.

  Alex fake smiles but sets her cup down without taking a sip. “Well, you did write the book on the subject.”

  “Believe me, if I
wanted to hurt you, I’d be more creative.”

  “Mmm, this smells great. Thank you.” In an effort to find a middle ground between them, I drink. The coffee is strong, the milk creamy and sweet with brown sugar and honey.

  Angela quirks a brow, and her demeanor softens when she turns to me. “Only the finest coffee from Santo Domingo. Does your mother know you’ve come to see me? Why not turn to Lady Lunes and the rest of the High Circle?”

  Alex and I look at each other.

  “Because they can’t help me,” I say, and I can’t resist taking another sip. The sweetness coats my tongue and my muscles are more relaxed than they’ve been in ages. “Our family’s books aren’t enough. Besides, if it were up to them, I’d be dead. What I’ve done—what’s happening—is beyond anything they’ve ever handled. It’s beyond us all, really, and I think it’s just starting.”

  She considers this, and her silence stretches too long for my liking. She points a pointed, black nail at the package Alex brought with her. “Is this your payment?”

  “This is for your foster kids,” Alex says. Then she takes a stone out of her pocket. It’s a glittering, purple stone. “This is for you.”

  “Amethyst?” Angela says, then chuckles, as if we’ve brought her a bit of rock from Coney Island.

  “No,” my sister says. “It’s a stone from Los Lagos. From Las Peñas.”

  Angela’s face falls abruptly. She picks up the stone and weighs it on her palm, then shuts her eyes and inhales. It’s like she’s sensing the power in the crystal right through her skin.

  “Not interested,” she says, placing the stone back on the table. Her black eyes gleam and a tiny smile plays at her lips.

  Alex sits back so quickly her chair scraps the floor. “Why?”

  “Alex,” I say, a warning in my voice.

  “I’m doing the favor of hearing you out. But you should’ve told my grandson to come himself.” She picks up her coffee—black as her eyes—and drinks deep.

  “This has—” I try to say, try to be the voice of reason. This has nothing to do with Nova. That’s what I want to say, but the words won’t come out.