by Ramy Vance
“Your what?” Justin asked.
“The necklace I always wore.” It had never left my neck since the gods departed, not even when I changed illusions. Not even when I entered encantado form. It was bound to me, the one possession I couldn’t lose.
Justin knelt, and I heard a tinkling as the emerald gem rose into view, hitting the light with a single, blinding flash. “It slid under the refrigerator.”
I crossed to him, lifted it slowly from his fingers. I rubbed the gem, which swirled under the light. "The second life," my sister Ananda had called it when she gave it to me. Her precious amulet—her greatest treasure. She’d put it into my hands when we encantados became mortal, just after the gods departed.
“I don’t need it anymore,” she’d said. “Not where I’m going.”
“Where is that?” I asked.
She winked. “Las Vegas.”
She called it a last illusion that wasn't an illusion at all, but the most powerful magic still available in the world. I had worn it around my neck ever since. And I had been instructed to safeguard it until my end.
This wasn’t my end, but I understood now what I had been safeguarding it for.
I swicked open one of the drawers in the kitchen, found a series of utensils in a tray. I grabbed up the sharpest knife I could find and turned back to Inez.
“What are you doing, Isabella?” Justin asked.
I walked across the tiles toward Inez, the amulet in one hand and the knife in the other. “The right thing.”
“What is this?” Inez said as I placed the chain over her head, the amulet settling on her chest. She breathed faster with the pressure of the amulet on her. "Witch! Curse you."
I got on my knees in front of her, gripped the knife so that the end of it pointed right at the amulet’s heart—right at Inez’s heart—and took a quick breath. “It’s the end of this life,” I whispered in Portuguese, “and the beginning of another.”
For both her and me.
With that, I stabbed the point into the heart-center of the amulet.
↔
“ISABELLA, STOP!” Justin yelled. His arms swept around me. But it was done. The amulet’s magic had been released, and it swirled around us now in streaks of forest green.
The forests of my home. Of the Amazon rainforest.
Inez screamed as the magic enveloped her, cloaking her like many ribbons wrapped around and around and around as she spewed English and Portuguese words into the air: “Demon! Magia odiosa! Stop this—stop it!”
I allowed Justin to pull me back, the knife slipping from between my fingers and hitting the tile as the ribbons obscured Inez completely, from head to toes.
Soon, I couldn’t even hear her voice anymore.
“What’s happening?” Justin said, his arms still around me. So strong, so steady.
“You’ll see,” I whispered, my eyes filling. I swiped at them with the blanket’s edge; I didn’t want to miss this.
We watched in silence as the ribbons tightened to Inez’s form, and then all at once they wound themselves away, slipping to the ground and dissipating as they touched the tiles.
First her face. Then her chest and arms. Then the rest of her, like a painting. Like a dream.
“Holy … ” Justin murmured.
Like her father, Inez had been beautiful. Would be again, for the rest of her life. Her long life.
She blinked, lowered her eyes. Black hair ran in rivulets over her shoulders and down her chest. “What have you done,” she breathed, and the voice that issued into the small kitchen didn’t have the creakiness I’d come to know, but a softness. Youthfulness.
I pressed against Justin’s hold, and he allowed me to slip out. I came toward Inez, who stared at me with the wide-eyed uncertainty she must have borne as a young woman. Her father’s same wide-eyed gaze.
Those green eyes glittered as I untied her hands, one and the next. She didn’t spit on me. She didn’t yell. She only lifted her hands, turned them over. And back again. Brought them to her hair, her face.
“Porque?” she said.
I set one hand on the back of her head like an ordaining. “I’m sorry, Inez. For your mother. For your father. And for the seventy years you spent seeking revenge. This time, you can spend them in joy instead of fear.”
Because that was the true root of all anger, all hatred: just fear.
And for my part, I didn't feel so afraid anymore.
She stood, crossed to stare at her blurred reflection on the stovetop. For a minute, no one spoke. Not until Inez did.
“You know,” she said in Portuguese, gripping the stove’s edges and staring into it like a pond, “I don’t even remember his face. I was too young to remember what he was really like.”
“He was dark-haired and handsome,” I said. “As much as you are beautiful.”
She turned toward me, her face angled up to meet my eyes. And for one moment, I couldn’t speak. She looked so much like the man I had once loved, and once you truly love someone, seeing them again—even their likeness—can still floor you.
“Is this real?” she whispered. “It’s another trick—a dream, a—”
I shook my head, took a deep breath. “It’s magic, but it’s no trick. This is my gift to you.”
“Why?” she said again.
“Because you lost your father, and no matter what he was to me, he was your god. Losing your god changes everything.”
Tears filled her eyes. She lowered her forehead to the countertop and wept with her arms crossed over her head. She sobbed as if she was alone, unselfconsciously.
I knew it was time for us to go. My eyes rose to Justin, and I extended my hand toward him between the folds of the blanket. Something floated high in my chest as he touched my hand, and the two of us walked into the living room and found our clothes and shoes laid on the floor.
Justin lifted his jeans. “They’re too wet to wear.”
“Just the shoes, then,” I said, pulling on my boots.
He did the same, and the two of us stepped out of the silent apartment and into the frigid night.
We closed the door behind us, stood facing onto the street for a few seconds.
“Well,” I said. Now the barrage of questions would begin. What was all that? Where did she come from? Why was she trying to kill you? And just the thought of them lidded my eyes, made me feel exhausted.
“We’re naked," Justin said.
I glanced over at him, pulling my blanket tighter around me. He didn't say anything else. I suppressed a smile. “Nothing you haven’t seen before.”
He let a small exhale of amusement, the first good feeling I’d managed to elicit from him as Isabella. As me—not Kat.
His eyes traveled up and down the road. “I know where we are. It’s about ten minutes from the O3 house.” Then his gaze came back to me. “What should we do about her?”
“Inez?” I shook my head. “Nothing.”
“She tried to kill you. She summoned a massive were-dog thing.”
“It’s over.” I revealed El Lobizon’s claw from the folds of my blanket. It glimmered, iridescent in the moonlight. “El Lobizon won’t be hunting us anymore.”
And I knew it to be true.
I lifted my eyes; for how cold Montreal was, the city certainly had its appeal. As a Brazilian—used to forests and temperate nights—that wasn’t easy to admit.
Justin’s voice interrupted the drift of my thoughts. “What will you do with that thing?”
I returned my eyes to the claw. “I’ll keep it. As a reminder of who I’ve been, and who I want to be.”
“And who do you want to be?”
I adjusted the claw under the moonlight, watched the colors play across it. “Still me, but the better part. The part of me who makes choices I can stick by. Do you know what I mean?”
“Yes,” he said. “I think I do.”
“You think you do?”
“Well, we’ve only just met.”
Touche.
“We should walk back to my place together, just to be safe.”
My eyebrows lifted as I turned to him. “Your place? You don’t hate me?”
He shook his head. “Hate? I’ve never hated anyone. I mean, you did trick me into believing you were my girlfriend, which was a terrible thing to do. And I nearly died ... twice.”
I lowered my eyes. “Yes.”
His hand came out, the warm fingers finding mine. “But you also saved my life in the river. You gave that woman an incredible gift. You were brave tonight, Isabella.”
“I’m an Other. An encantado. My true form is ...”
“Is …?”
“Terrible. Ugly.”
I felt him shrug. “So you’re a pink mer-dolphin when you aren’t a beautiful young woman. Trust me, I’ve seen weirder Others since I came to McGill.”
I raised my face, trying to keep my chin from crumpling. “Really?”
“Oh yeah. You should meet Mergen; he either looks like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man or a translucent scarecrow.”
I laughed a little, wiped my eyes. All I wanted right now was to stay by Justin's side, to hold his hand, to climb into the same bed as him. And maybe those things were possible. But just because they were possible didn’t mean I had to rush them along. We’d both nearly died, and we needed sleep. Food. Warmth. And we had time for those things. I didn't have to pretend I was someone else anymore; the illusions between us had fallen like a veil.
Plus, there was the real Katrina. Still out there, somewhere.
I took a long breath before I smiled up at him. “Thank you for the offer to walk back together. But I’m going to head back to my dorm tonight.”
“Okay,” he said with a little surprise. He squeezed my hand before turning away, but I held on.
“Justin,” I said.
He glanced back.
My thumb rubbed once over the back of his hand. “See you around?”
He nodded, a curl forming at the side of his mouth. “See you around, Isabella.”
I started toward my dorm, the claw clutched in my hand. As I walked, a bird screeched through the night once. It’s just a bird, Isa, I thought, because I had nearly cleared a foot off the ground.
But I still jogged the rest of the way back to the dorm, and not just because it was cold.
CHAPTER 12
When I closed my eyes, I saw him. The wolf—the hunter.
He’d been behind my eyelids all week.
I lifted my head, turned toward Aimee on the bed next to me. “Did you shower today? You might have my scent on you.”
She lifted her own head, eyes lidded as she let a puff of smoke into the air. “Isa, this is my last joint, and I’m not going to waste this afternoon obsessing over the past.”
The past, I repeated. The past. I lowered my head, let out a long sigh against the current of my thoughts. It didn’t matter if she had my scent on her—the hunter was gone. He was in the past. “Sorry.”
“Usually I’m the paranoid one.”
She was right; we’d reversed roles. Which was strange, because a little weed had almost never made me paranoid like this. And I had been high many, many times—chalk it up to five hundred years of immortality and a whole lot of natural curiosity.
Then again, a week ago I had survived a vengeful Brazilian stalker and her supernatural wolf, all of which had resulted in just barely surviving a dip in a frozen river. That kind of experience rewired the circuitry of your brain.
I hadn’t seen Inez since. I took that as a good sign—the best possible sign: she was enjoying her new (youthful) life. Or, at least, not trying to kill me anymore.
Next to me, Aimee’s hand found mine. “Just be in the moment. Tell me what you see.”
I lifted my eyes. Above us, the dorm room swirled. “It’s a storm,” I said, nearly dropping the bud as I propped up on my elbows. I reached up from where I lay on my bed, fingers tracing through the air.
“No”—Aimee plucked the blunt from between my fingers and raised it to her mouth—”it’s the ocean.” She set it to her lips, inhaled.
“That’s beautiful,” I whispered, the paranoia ebbing. I flopped onto my stomach, pressing aside the wrappers on my duvet. “Hey.” I lifted one wrapper, then another, and a third, finding each empty. “You ate it.”
Aimee blinked once as she raised the bud from her mouth, and with it, offered a new stream of white smoke to the ocean on our ceiling. “Ate what?”
I crumpled the wrapper I held. “The last Twinkie.”
She gasped. “You accuse me?” She struggled to her elbows, half-lidded eyes searching out my own. “I’ve only had one to your six.”
As she sat up, I spotted a glint on the bed. I shoved her aside. “Hey!” she yelped, but I’d already snatched the flattened mass of dough and cream from beneath her. “Chill out, Stay Puft.”
I still didn’t know who Stay Puft was; I held the treat to my chest. “You were hiding it.”
She huffed and dropped onto her back. “I’ll never understand Others and their obsessions with junk food. It’s not like you never had access to that stuff.”
“It’s not junk,” I said. “If you had lived five hundred years before the mass production of refined sugar, you would understand.” I tugged the plastic with pinched fingers. It came apart with machine-perfect exactness, and the aroma of porous dough and cream touched my nose. I stared at the Twinkie before me. The last one.
Aimee caught my eye. “What is it?”
I held it out between us, an offering to the GoneGods. “Do you think eating this is the equivalent of burning a little time?”
She stared at me, her blue eyes widening. “That would mean …”
I waited, the delicacy still held out between us. I started into a slight nod; whatever Aimee was about to say would be profound, important.
“That would mean the entire food industry has been designed around forcing us to burn time.”
I nodded harder.
She sat up. “Sugar. It’s in everything. Absolutely everything.”
I pushed half the Twinkie out of the wrapper and bit it off, nodding still.
Somewhere under the pile of covers, a chirping sounded. We stared at each other, both perplexed. It sounded again.
“Isa, I think a bird flew in.”
I threw the covers aside, wrappers flying with them, and uncovered the source. I lifted my phone, blinking hard at the unfamiliar number on the screen. “No bird,” I murmured, and all at once, I couldn’t remember what time it was. How long had we been here? I accepted the call. “Hello?”
“Isabella?” came a man’s voice.
“Is that your new hot thing calling?” Aimee asked, leaning close. “Justin, is that you?”
I set a hand on her face, palm atop her nose, and pushed her back. My head swam, and I sat up on the bed to keep myself still. “Professor Allman?”
“I’m sorry to be calling so late,” he said. He spoke almost too fast for me to follow. “I’ve got huge news. It’s about your genetics research.”
“My genetics research,” I repeated, the details of my own life returning to me from the haze. “On Other DNA?”
“Yes,” he said. “Isabella, you’ve received a huge grant. Well, the whole biology department, but they’ve earmarked most of it for your work.”
I pressed Twinkie crumbs off my mouth with the back of my hand. “No shit. I mean—sorry, Professor. Why my work? I’m just an undergraduate.”
He laughed a little. “To be honest, Isa, I had the same reaction. As you know, we have a whole host of graduate students and professors doing important work here. But they were very specific about supporting your gene-mapping project.”
That was strange; reactions to my Other gene mapping efforts had been mostly received with indifference, if not occasional derision. The truth was, even at an open-minded place like McGill, most people still placed a priority on Homo sapiens. Not many cared all that much about Others, much less their
DNA. Only the military had ever shown interest in the makeup of Others, while universities—and more specifically, science departments—considered our kind so foreign, our biologies were considered almost indistinguishable from magic.
Of course, magic is science unexplained. Being an Other, I could see patterns that escaped human scientists’ minds. Not that it mattered—almost every paper I’d put forth in my three semesters was dismissed as fiction. Seres humanos estúpidos.
“Who’s ‘they’?” I asked.
A pause. Stoned as I was, I sensed a weight on the other end of the line. “The Other Anti-Extinction Initiative.”
Aimee, whose head was pressed alongside mine, shot me a confused glance, which I returned. “Who?” she whispered.
“Isabella,” Professor Allman asked, “are you alone?”
“I’m in my dorm with my roommate.” And 100% not high.
“I think it’d be best if you just came in to my office tomorrow so we can discuss this. It’s good news—great news, so you should be happy. But it’ll mean changes.”
Changes. He’d delivered that word with none of his typical enthusiasm.
A knock sounded at the door. Tap-ta-tap-tap. Justin’s knock. Then his muffled voice: “Isabella?”
He was early. Two hours early.
My stomach slid over, and I rose, pressing wrappers and crumbs off my shirt. “What time tomorrow?” I said into the phone.
“Noon. And be prepared for company, okay?”
Aimee was already sashaying to the door. “I’ll get it,” she called. Aimee was never this loud, this extroverted. GoneGodDamn, how high had we gotten?
“I’ll be there, Professor,” I said, ending the call and making a dash for the mirror—my eyes looked redder than a black cadejo—while flapping my hands at Aimee, who saw none of what I was doing, both hands trying to yank the door open.
“This door is broken,” she said.
“It’s a turn knob.” I pushed my red hair away from my face, disentangling a glob of something yellow. Cheese? Yes, it was cheese. When had we eaten—
“Justin!” Aimee called, throwing her arms into the air. “Isa, it’s your namorado.” She had been taking Portuguese 101, and somehow she’d already learned the word boyfriend.