Bruja Born

by Zoraida Cordova

  Angela drapes an arm over the back of her chair, the queen of sugar and venom. Her lip curls, and I realize my mistake too late.

  “So you two thought you’d just show up here and ask for my help?” she asks. Black and bitter. “You think you know all about my family, don’t you? Do you know where I come from? We were run out of our island because of who we were, and when we came here with nothing but the clothes on our backs and fists full of seeds tucked into my pockets, we made a home out of nothing. You do not know my family, Alejandra Mortiz. So do not come into my shop with that scowl on your face like you know me. I don’t care if you’re the only encantrix in your generation. You’ll always be the reason my grandson gave up his only chance to have long life.”

  Alex is at a loss for words. For once.

  Angela stands and I know any chance of understanding Maks’s condition and freeing La Muerte is slipping.

  “I’m sorry,” I say, reaching for the sleeve of her dress. “We didn’t mean—”

  She narrows her eyes. “And you. Don’t get me started on you.”

  I recoil slightly. “What about me?”

  She holds her hands inches from my face and I fight the urge to jump back. People say that Angela Santiago dabs her potions on her fingertips. That if she touches you, your skin will grow sores or burn off or decay. They say she killed each and every one of her husbands, some slowly, some quick. They say her elixirs keep her from dying. So here she stands, with black eyes that could cut right through me, with poisoned hands, with a lineage so cursed no one dares to speak ill of them. And yet, her voice softens when she talks to me. “You are the reason the Veil of the worlds is broken.”

  “I’ve done a terrible thing,” I tell her, and my tongue is loose and my mind fuzzy. I drop the coffee cup, the warm liquid sloshing over my hands. “I brought Maks back from the dead and now people are dead and I want him to be alive but he came back wrong. Lady de La Muerte is trapped between realms and she says I’m the one who has to free her but she’s wrong because I’m not strong enough. I’m not even strong enough to help myself and I don’t know what to do.”

  I slap my hands over my mouth to stop the rush of emotions that beg to form into words.

  “Lula?” Alex slams her first on the table and turns to Angela, who is watching with fascination. “What did you do? You said—”

  “I said I didn’t poison you,” Angela says. “I never give my help unless I know everything my querent knows. It’ll pass in a moment. Now, where does my grandson fit in all this? Did he send you?”

  I tell her about Nova and his friend showing up. My breath is hard and labored because I want to fight whatever this truth potion is. I look at Alex and I know she’s going to be upset that I kept this from her. But Angela leans toward me, her eyes trained on me, her hand extended like she’s got an invisible reel on my voice and is tugging until she has what she’s looking for.

  “I saw his name,” I say, my words a rush of wind. “Nova—his name appeared on La Muerte’s arm. It was just one word. Noveno. I didn’t know—”

  Angela’s eyes are glassy and hard, her mouth a snarl when she says, “You didn’t want to know.”

  “Why didn’t you say anything?” Alex says.

  My lips are numb. Perhaps the side effect of the drink. I look down at the spilled coffee and shake my head. There is so much wrong that I don’t know what I could possibly do to make it right, even if Angela decides to help us.

  “Nova has been on La Muerte’s sights since he was born,” Angela says, more calmly than I expected. “I’ve tried so hard to help that boy. I hoped—”

  It’s like she catches herself because she snaps her gaze up and lets her words fade.

  Perhaps I look pathetic. Perhaps the scars on my face and the hollowness under my eyes tells her to have pity. Perhaps she’s afraid of the rift I’ve caused in the balance because she sighs and says, “I will tell you what you want to know.”

  “Thank you,” I say, and I can’t help but cry.

  “But I don’t want a silly rock from a banished land. I want you to make me a promise.”

  “What kind of promise?” Alex asks sharply.

  Angela slides her eyes toward Alex, actively ignoring my sister’s tone when she returns to look at me. “I want you to promise you’ll keep Nova safe.”

  “You kicked him out,” Alex says in a tone that would get her a smack from Ma. “How is that keeping him safe?”

  I pinch her and she jumps, making sparks sputter over her head.

  “Every family heals in their own time. You should know, what with your father’s return and all. But Nova’s my flesh and blood. I can’t lose him and I can’t help him. Promise you will do everything in your power to protect him.”

  Angela fishes through the tangle of necklaces she wears and finds a silver locket. When she pulls the bottom part off, she reveals a thick needle. From the perfume locket, I can smell something like roots and dirt in oil form.

  I hold out my hand nervously.

  Angela’s whole face wrinkles as she grimaces at my gesture. “Put your hand away. You think I want to make a deal with someone marked by Lady de la Muerte? It has to be her.”

  I wish I could read my sister’s thoughts. She’s in a staring match with Angela Santiago, and I’m afraid that between them, the whole bakery will combust with their magic. But then, Alex turns to me and I can see her make the choice.

  “What happens if she fails?” I ask.

  “The poison activates and spreads to her heart.”

  “No,” I say, and when I stand, Alex’s eyes notice the fresh bruise on my arm that has somehow spread below the hem of my sleeve.

  “Lula,” Alex says softly. Her hand guides me back to my seat, and everything about this is wrong because she’s my little sister and I should be the one protecting her.

  Alex holds her finger out. “I, Alejandra Mortiz, swear by the Deos to do everything in my power to protect Noveno Santiago. From my blood to the Deos.”

  Angela looks pleased and pricks my sister’s finger. A bead of blood bubbles to the surface, and though she remains still, I can see the flash of pain in her eyes.

  “Please,” I tell Angela. “I need to know everything about the casimuertos and Lady de la Muerte.”

  Angela stands, her chiffon dress billowing around her ankles. “Follow me.”

  • • •

  We walk past the counter and into the back. Baker racks are stacked with pastries, and every surface is finely coated in flour.

  Angela stops momentarily with her hand on the next doorknob. “Ah, you might want to hold your breath.”

  “What? Why?” Alex asks.

  I take a gulp of air, like I’m about to dive into the deep end, as Angela opens another door and leads the way.

  It’s a small greenhouse with bright lights hanging from the ceiling. All kinds of plants sprout from bins and pots. Some snake around bamboo shoots all the way to the ceiling, and crystal beans sprout from bright-green blooms. There are rows and rows of exotic flowers I’ve never seen before in the lushest hues: reds as bright as love, the blue of sorrow, and black roses whose velvety petals hold beads of condensation.

  I can’t help but wonder what these flowers smell like. I want to open my mouth and gasp in awe, but my nose already itches terribly, and my lungs burn with the need to breathe.

  Finally, we reach the end, go through yet another door and into a narrow hallway.

  Alex and I suck in air, and I bend over and sneeze ten times in a row.

  “Ay, Deos, qué dramáticas,” Angela grumbles.

  The light above us flickers, and I can tell Alex is nervous. I hold her hand and give it a gentle squeeze.

  Angela unlocks the door with a skeleton key, and the hinges whine as she pushes it open. She reaches into the dark and pulls on a chain. The light takes a
few tries to turn on, but when it does, I can’t believe what I’m looking at.

  There’s a life-size statue of Lady de la Muerte against the far wall. I don’t want to be the one to tell Angela Santiago that Lady de la Muerte doesn’t exactly look like that. The pale skin and the scrawling black ink on her arms is right, but this statue gives the goddess of death a beautiful, young face and a halo of dark hair. She holds a spear, the metal spike splintering a large stone beneath her feet.

  Hundreds of small, white flowers and melting candles are lined on the floor. The entire room is her altar. That’s when I notice something else between the flowers. Skulls. Some human, some animal, all covered in traces of dirt as if fresh from the grave.

  I resist the screaming urge in my gut to turn around. Instead, I lick the dryness on my tongue and smile.

  “What a lovely room of skulls,” I comment.

  Angela chuckles in that gravelly voice of hers and turns to a wall of books. They’re all old and mostly the cloth hardback kind you only get at used bookstores. None of them have names on the spine, but she thumbs her finger along them like she knows their contents by touch. When she finds the one she’s looking for, I’m disappointed. It isn’t a giant tome of a book like The Creation of Brujas or The Book of Deos. It’s a thin, worn thing, barely a pamphlet.

  “That’s it?” I say.

  Angela gives me a look and flips the book in her hands. “Fortunately for the human race, we haven’t had many recorded cases of casimuertos. Zombies…now that’s a different story.”

  “See? I said he wasn’t a zombie,” I tell Alex.

  “I never said he was,” she says. “I said ‘zombielike.’”

  “You two done?” Angela raises her eyebrows, jingling keys around her finger.

  I reach for the book, but Angela holds it back. “This ain’t the library. It’s the only copy.”

  “Like, ever?” Alex asks.

  Angela glances darkly at my sister. “Read it, don’t touch anything else, and when you’re done, come see me.”

  She walks out without another word and back through her poison garden.

  “Charming,” Alex says in a huff.

  “You’re lucky she hasn’t killed us by now and added our heads to her altar of death.”

  She doesn’t disagree, and we start flipping through the pages.

  “I can’t read in Spanish,” Alex says, handing the book over to me.

  I’m not much better, but the diagrams help. The cover has a faded symbol burned on the center, and it takes me a moment of staring to realize it’s an anatomical drawing of a heart. I flip it open. The title page reads El Libro Maldecido.

  “The Accursed Book,” I translate for her. I flip the page. There are anatomy drawings of the casimuertos. Arrows point to its heart, eyes, and brain. My fingers tremble when I turn the page. The event is marked by a year and location. 1913. Vinces, Ecuador.

  “It says here that there was a case in Ecuador. A circle of brujas was trying to save the life of one of their own after she was murdered by her husband. The woman was presumed dead, and the canto unsuccessful. But the next day, the dead woman rose and started killing people in her town. They too rose as casimuertos soon after.”

  My heart sinks like an anchor plummeting to the bottom of the sea. I look around the room for somewhere to sit or some water to satiate my parched throat but find neither. I lower myself onto the floor and Alex follows. My feet throb like my toes have just been smashed.

  “What?” Alex asks, staring at the spines of books Angela asked us not to touch. “How did they get rid of them?”

  “They didn’t,” I tell her. “The village was razed to the ground.”

  “Okay, so not helpful.” Alex reaches over me and flips to the next page. There’s a diagram of an open chest with several lines extending out of it—just like the spool of silver thread that I saw coming from my chest.

  Next page. A crude drawing of a casimuerto, blood dripping from its eyes and mouth, a heart gripped tightly in its fist.

  “The casimuertos must feed off human hearts to quell their ravenous desire to live,” I read the caption. “It is never sated.”

  “Endless supply of human hearts,” Alex says dryly. “Do you think we’ll be able to get that at the supermarket?”

  “Stop it,” I growl. “You’re not helping.”

  “I’m sorry, but I have to laugh in the face of our impending doom by zombies.”

  I glare at her. She holds her hands up in defeat. “Fine, casimuertos.”

  “Another case recorded in 1683, outside Salamanca, Spain. An encantrix raised an army of casimuertos to do her bidding. Lady de la Muerte cleaved the bruja in two and struck her undead army from existence with her spear.”

  “Then why the hell hasn’t Lady de la Muerte done that to you?” Alex asks. “Not that I want her to.”

  “Because she’s trapped between realms,” I say. “Here, this one is recent. Juan Buenavista, a grieving young husband couldn’t see his bride go. Maria Azucena was killed leaving the chapel on their wedding day. Juan, son of a brujo but with no magic of his own, took her to the desert and made a deal for his soul with El Corazón to bind her life to his. The longer she lived, the weaker he became, and the stronger her craving for human hearts grew. Caracas, Venezuela, 1965.

  “That’s why I haven’t been healing properly,” I say. I want to shut the book and set it on fire. “So basically, everyone dies. That’s the moral of the story.”

  “No,” Alex says, pointing to a thin arrow at the corner of the page. “There’s more.”

  I flip the page, something like hope fluttering in my heart. “Upon consuming his heart, Maria Azucena became nearly unstoppable. Her strength quadrupled. Her senses heightened. Even her hunger grew. It took a High Circle and a dozen more brujas to sever her head, but not before she killed dozens. They burned her body parts in separate pyres. El Corazón claimed both their souls.”

  “It’s good to know gods only care about souls and blood.” I half cry, half laugh. “Well, if Maks eats my heart, he gets superstrength.”

  “That’s not going to happen, not while I’m still breathing.” She grabs the book from me. “We’ll find a way to save you.”

  “Save me? What about Maks? What about the others? Are we going to burn New York to the ground? Alex, this is hopeless. It’s called The Accursed Book for a reason.”

  I hunch forward and grab hold of my side. The pain is back with a vengeance. I bite back on the cry and breathe until it subsides. I have to keep Alex focused.

  She flips back to the beginning. “There has to be something on how to kill them without calling in the National Guard.”

  I take a deep breath and fight through the pain. Snatch the book back. “Let’s see. More anatomy of a heart. Bones. Eyes turn white or yellow when they’re consumed with hunger. Death, death, death. Ah.”

  I flip the final page. “Typical methods of zombie exterminations do not apply to casimuertos, as decapitation will only slow it down. A single casimuerto can be killed by destroying its heart. A horde can be eliminated by using a divine weapon to kill the—”

  “What is it?” Her voice a whisper now.

  “The human they are bound to.”

  She looks confused, then frowns with the realization. “So—”

  “I have to die.”

  21

  A casimuerto is neither living nor dead, but something in-between. Created by a deep bond of love, the heart is the only food that can keep them in a state close to human.

  —The Accursed Book/El Libro Maldecido, Fausto Toledo

  “There’s always another way,” Alex says, but her voice is distant. “I know there is.”

  I press my hands on the uneven cement floor. That’s what Lady de la Muerte meant when she spoke to me. Destroy the heart and make the sacrifice. I hit my he
ad on the wall behind me. I’m an idiot for thinking the sacrifice would be only Maks.

  “Lula, get up,” Alex tells me.

  But I’m not listening to her. I’m staring at the statue of Lady de la Muerte. At the skulls at her feet, eye sockets stuffed with white peonies.

  “Lula.”

  “Stop!” I shout. “Gods, Alex. We are infinitely patient with you.”

  She gets down on her knees so we’re eye level. “I’m sorry. I don’t want you to go down that path. Once you start thinking you’ve failed, you already have.”

  “I really screwed up.”

  “So did I. But here we are.”

  I nod, take her hand. She helps me up. My head spins, and I have to hold on to her arm to stabilize myself.

  “Hang on,” Alex says. She opens the book and snaps photos of the pages with her phone. “She didn’t say anything about phones.”

  We shut the door behind us and hold our breath as we race to the other side of the greenhouse, past the kitchen, and to the front of the bakery.

  Angela is placing sweets in a white box. “Find what you were looking for?”

  “More or less,” Alex says evenly.

  “Where did you get that book?” I ask her, walking around the glass counter, holding on to Alex for support.

  “Nena, don’t take this the wrong way but you don’t look good,” she tells me.

  It’s my turn to laugh. “Well, I feel as good as I look.”

  Angela moves slowly, methodically, taking her time. She cuts a piece of string. She ties it neatly around the box to keep it closed.

  “The book,” she says, “was written by an old friend. Fausto was obsessed with finding the cure for death.”

  “There is no cure for death,” Alex says.

  “Doesn’t mean we don’t still try to find it. Most of the time, the good people, the rare and truly good, don’t want the cure for themselves. They want to save someone they love, isn’t that right? But when Fausto started to research successful attempts, he came across incidents like this.”