Cazadora

by Romina Garber

  “I knew it!” says Saysa, slamming her hand down. “I knew I’d heard of this place before because I remember reading or hearing that fact, but where—?”

  I spring up to standing, same as Tiago and Enzo and the other wolves.

  Footsteps.

  The air tingles with magic, and the ground grows warm beneath my feet, as the brujas’ anticipation triggers the elements.

  We’re not expecting anyone else today.

  “Standing ovation, huh?”

  Tinta arrives with his noodle-like brother, Fideo—and ten more wolves. The air relaxes as everyone gets up to greet them.

  “You didn’t say!” says Zaybet, and I wonder if the delight in her voice is just relief or something more.

  “No paper trail, remember?”

  “We have to take extra precautions now,” explains Fideo. “Cazadores are looking into everyone. We can’t raise suspicions.” He turns to me, his coppery-brown gaze soft. “I’m sorry we were harsh with you.”

  “Yeah,” says Tinta, his eyes as gentle as his brother’s for a change. “We get so passionate about politics that it turns us into asses.”

  “Todo bien,” I say, and each of them pulls me in for a hug. All good.

  “¡La loba!” says Ezequiel, who came with them. He pulls me into a hug too, and I don’t think I’ve ever been happier to be called the she-wolf. He and the brothers join us at our table and dig into the empanadas.

  “The tribunal deputized the entire species, which of course backfired, because now everyone has been using the excuse of chasing down leads to get out of their usual obligations,” says Tinta with a wicked grin that’s the twin of Zaybet’s. “There’s always the usual restlessness before the full moon, but compounded with this news, everyone’s excited and things are messy. Which means we get to be more than just cool and aloof.”

  He looks at her with a challenge in his eyes, and in Zaybet’s gaze, I see reflected back what she doesn’t think is there. She’s wrong about her feelings. She loves him. I think she’s just afraid of where that leads—because as long as neither of them is willing to cede ground, they’re not going anywhere.

  We move a lot faster with the influx of lobizones, and the sky is the deep orange hue of late afternoon by the time we finish building enough beds. At least we won’t have to sleep on the floor.

  The temperature dropped today, so for merienda we pass the mate and gather round a fire that Laura and the other Encendedoras are constantly controlling so we don’t disturb the magma below.

  We had another surprise arrival: Nuni, the witch who gave me the invisibility potion. She’s sitting next to me. “Use my gift?” she asks, the red flames reflected in her caramel-colored eyes.

  “Not yet.”

  Cata, Saysa, and Tiago are sitting next to one another, across from us, and I feel their collective gaze.

  Ezequiel sets a tub of batter beside a heating stone that’s illuminated like an ember. “Loba, this is going to be the best panqueque you’ve ever had,” he says, spooning batter onto the stone. He turns it over an instant later, and when it’s ready, he tosses it into the fire.

  “First one’s always bad,” he explains, then he spoons a second panqueque. This one he serves on a plate and hands to me.

  I’ve seen Ma do this dozens of times, but for some reason, the way he tossed out the first panqueque bothered me. He barely looked at it. Maybe it would’ve tasted fine.

  Argentinian pancakes are crepe-thin, so he gets through them quickly, and it’s not long before everyone is devouring their own. I lather on a liberal amount of dulce de leche, then I fold it up the way everyone else does.

  Warmth spreads through me as I bite into the soft, sweet dessert, and every single one of us goes for thirds. I’m warmed by more than just the meal. As I look around, it’s the first time I’m sitting with friends who know the real me. The half human me. And they accept me.

  I’m out of secrets. The masks are off, and I’m not wearing any lies.

  The twitch in my eye is subtle, but I feel it. A tiny stab of doubt. There’s one thing I haven’t brought up. But my ability to deflect magic pales in comparison to my hybrid heritage.

  “Still waiting on fourths,” says Tinta, holding up his plate to Ezequiel.

  “You’ll spoil your dinner,” says Zaybet, swiping it. Fideo snorts. “We should get back to recruiting. We’re still a few Septimus short, and we’re low on Jardineras.”

  As the fire dies down and Septimus scatter to their various tasks, Tiago and I lock eyes. His sapphire orbs send a thrill down my belly.

  He stands and gestures to the woods with his head, jostling his overgrown dark strands. I guess he’s finally ready to have it out.

  “So what was it like growing up among humans?”

  Nuni is still sitting next to me, making no indication of leaving. “Um, it was—I didn’t have a typical upbringing.” I glance at Tiago, but he’s gone.

  As my chest deflates, I turn to face Nuni more fully. “My mom was afraid of you all finding out about me, so she kept me hidden.”

  “What about your dad?” she prods.

  This time, I don’t even consider telling the truth. “Don’t know him.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Her heavy gaze is so full of sympathy that I find myself wanting to open up more. “We didn’t have papers where we lived. My mom got arrested, and she wanted me to keep hiding. But I guess I just couldn’t. I needed to learn the truth about who I am.”

  “And who are you?” asks Nuni, only the way she says it doesn’t sound sarcastic or sappy. She seems sincere.

  “Pick your label,” I say with a hard exhale. “Lobizona, ladrona, hybrid, freak—whatever it is, I’m always wrong.”

  The self-pity that’s crept into my voice makes me cringe, and I ask, “What about you? What brought you to the Coven?”

  The frozen look on her face makes me hurry to say, “I’m sorry—that was rude. You don’t have to tell me if you don’t feel comfortable—”

  But her lips curve into a sad smile. “It’s not that. It’s just strange, coming across someone who doesn’t know my story.”

  Nuni looks down at her small hands, which are cupped together on her lap. “I got pregnant when I was thirteen.”

  I wince, both at the words and their delivery. She sounds detached from their meaning. Like slicing open the same cut again and again, until you’re numb to the pain.

  “Brujas aren’t known to be fertile until closer to fifteen, and pregnancy before twenty is rare. Our magic isn’t strong enough yet. I was the first case of my kind, the riskiest delivery on record. I’d only just inherited my magic on the same moon that—that it happened.”

  The way she stumbles, this other wound isn’t as numb, and I know not to press on it.

  “My mother caught me trying to mix a potion to end the pregnancy, and she turned me in to the Cazadores. I went before the tribunal and begged for mercy, but they forced me to carry to term.”

  Zaybet’s words come back to me: Septimus don’t have divorce or abortion.

  “I barely survived childbirth,” she goes on, resuming her disaffected tone. “My baby was stillborn.” Nuni’s prematurely gray hair and ancient eyes make much more sense now.

  “Then there was the postpartum depression.”

  I blink as I realize her torment didn’t end at childbirth.

  “For more than a year, I was powerless, stuck in a home I hated, both pitied and scorned by my pack. All while the lobizón who did this to me was quietly shuffled off to a different manada. He was engaged to be married before my magic came back.”

  I have never in my life been more speechless. I don’t know what to say to someone who’s endured so much. “I’m sorry, Nuni.” The words ring empty against her horrors.

  “Me too. But like you, I learned the truth about who I am.” Her eyes spark, as though from the ashes of her childhood, a new Nuni was born. “All that time without magic, I could still mix potions. So I st
udied the craft, and I practiced, until I brewed the cure that freed me.”

  “Can your brew cure other brujas’ postpartum too?”

  “It’s … complicated. No bruja has ever been able to conjure a one-size-fits-all formula. Part of the problem is that for the mix to be most effective, it requires blood from the father, which means drawing a few drops every moon to test new batches. Not all wolves are willing.”

  “Why not?” Anger sears my skin. “We bleed once a month!”

  The way she looks at me makes me feel eons younger, and I wonder how innocent I sound to her. “Not everyone thinks postpartum depression is a bad thing. Not even all brujas.”

  “How?” is all I can muster.

  “Since it cuts off our magic, we can no longer go to Lunaris, which means we’re able to stay behind to take care of our newborns. Without it, we’d have to leave them in the care of twelve-year-olds. There are manadas where mothers are forbidden from accessing Felifuego before their child turns two.”

  I recall the red-and-black Felifuego leaf that looks like it’s singed. The one that protected me from the Sombra in my dreams. When I found it in Señora Lupe’s class at El Laberinto, she said it’s the only known cure for postpartum depression—and it’s hard to spot, so brujas depend on the wolves’ keen eyesight to hunt for it.

  “Here,” says Nuni, handing me what looks like a bottle of Septis, only smaller. And instead of blue, it’s pink.

  “What is it?”

  “Protection. Take one before sex.”

  I feel my cheeks burning. “Oh, I don’t—I mean, I’m not—”

  “Don’t be ashamed,” she says, staring at me intently. “This is your only body. Take care of it.”

  * * *

  After my heavy talk with Nuni, I follow Tiago’s scent into the trees.

  I find him shirtless, a sheen of sweat glazing his skin. His feet are planted as he grips an iron bar that’s sticking out of a trunk. It must have been part of a gate once. Tiago tugs, his muscles growing taut, and when the metal slides out, he falls back a few paces from the force of his effort.

  Then he looks at me.

  “Hi.” My gaze strays down the perfect ripples of his torso.

  “Let’s go,” he says, and he spins around and disappears through the trees.

  I race after him, pulling on my lobizona powers without shifting, until I’m running at full tilt, nearly as fast as I would as a wolf. I chase Tiago’s scent, a wild beast on the hunt, until I reach the end of the trees.

  The sky over us is gray, but in the distance the sun has ripened to red as it sets. We’re on a rocky precipice where we can see the ocean extending endlessly into the horizon. Behind us is a different view altogether, and I understand why Tiago brought us through the trees instead of the settlement.

  There’s a knot of charred land that tells me this is probably the eruption point. And since it tilts down, the lava must have oozed right through the middle of the manada, destroying everything, setting off blasts, and stopping just shy of the patio de comidas.

  “I’m not mad at you,” says Tiago, and I force my gaze to stay above his neck as he takes my hand and presses it to his chest, right by his scar. “I’m scared for you.”

  His pulse is racing, and he takes my other hand too.

  “We’re going to be fine,” I say. “Zaybet thinks we can get enough Septimus here before the full—”

  “It’s not just about this moon, Manu!” His voice cracks on my name, fingers tightening around mine. “It’s every moon. Now that they know a hybrid exists, they’ll never stop coming for you.”

  Something about the word hybrid hurts, even though it’s what I am. “Well, I can’t do anything about it,” I say, my hands going limp in his. “I was born this way.”

  “That’s not what I mean,” he says with a sigh. “I’m sorry. I just don’t want this for you—”

  “And I do?”

  “You’re the one who chose to broadcast the truth to the world!”

  “Before Yamila beat me to it! I was never going to stay hidden, and Cata’s cover story wasn’t going to hold for long. In a pack species, there are no secrets—you’re the ones who taught me that.”

  “Funny how we’re only a pack to you when it’s convenient.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Why didn’t you come to us first?”

  “I already knew your opinions! And I’m more grateful than I can express to you guys for all you’re risking—but you’re not the ones facing extermination. If they’re going to kill me, at least I’ll die as myself.”

  My voice gets scratchy and my eyes burn, and I spin away to hide my tears.

  I’ve been trying so hard not to fall apart, but nothing is mine. That’s why I didn’t decorate my room at the Coven or unpack my clothes at the academy. I’m not safe anywhere on this planet.

  “You’re right.” Tiago comes closer but doesn’t touch me. “I’m sorry. Please forgive me.”

  When I turn, his blue orbs look so lost that I couldn’t stay angry if I tried. I let him take my hands again, and as he crushes me to his bare chest, he murmurs, “The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.”

  I smirk into his warm skin, and when we pull apart, I say, “I had rather have a fool to make me merry than experience to make me sad.”

  His mouth hitches up on one side, and I ask, “Why are you so triggered by all the attention you get in Kerana? I mean, if you wanted to lay low after the whole lobo invencible thing, why be the star player of a championship-winning Septibol team?”

  “Because one reputation was earned, the other was not.”

  “You don’t think surviving an encounter with a Lunaris demon as a thirteen-year-old merits admiration?”

  “Admiration?” His voice fades on the word. “All I did was split away from the pack, then I got lost after nightfall. It was my first visit, and I broke the only rule of Lunaris.”

  He blows out a hard breath. “I didn’t see the demon before it attacked me. It’s pure luck I’m not dead. I just managed to evade it long enough that by the time its claws sliced into my chest, day was dawning, and it ran away. I was literally saved by the light.”

  “But you survived.” I press my palm to his cheek.

  His eyes sear into mine, and he says, “Manu … there’s something I’ve been wanting to tell you.”

  I wonder if he’s finally going to share whatever it is that’s been weighing on his mind, and I drop my hand.

  I think he’s still struggling with the words, then I realize his gaze is locked on something beyond me.

  I twist my neck and spy a creature surfacing in the ocean. It’s large and dark, like a whale coming up for air. Only where the blowhole should be, a hatch is opening, and a head pops out.

  The Septima’s auburn hair blows in the wind as she scours the island, and my heart plummets to the ground.

  Yamila found me.

  24

  We race back to the camp, where the Encendedoras are starting a new fire. “Don’t!” calls Tiago.

  “They found us!” I say, out of breath. “The Cazadores—”

  “Just one ship,” he cuts in. “It’s possible they’re just scouting and don’t know we’re here.”

  “But Yamila is with them.”

  At the name, a chill blows through the group.

  “La Espiral—” I start.

  “Is hidden,” says Zaybet.

  I look at Laura wildly, thinking of the last time I saw the ship on the surface. “It spiraled underground,” she assures me. “They won’t find it.”

  “You’re the one we can’t let them find,” says Zaybet to me. “Same goes for you three, since Yamila knows you’re together.”

  “Is there enough invisibility potion for four of us?” I ask Nuni.

  She shakes her head. “Just one.”

  “What about us?” asks Tinta. “We can’t be found with Manu either, remember?” He holds up h
is wrist like he’s showing Zaybet his watch, but all we see is brown skin. “The whole Coven will be at risk if the Cazadores learn who we are and discover our horarios.”

  The horarios can’t be removed outside el Mar Oscuro, but I’m sure that doesn’t mean a talented Jardinera couldn’t sense their presence and try tracing the Coven’s location—and the whereabouts of every Covener.

  I think about how the resistance has stayed hidden all this time, and I realize the sacrifices Septimus must have had to make. The us versus me mentality required for the Coven to still exist. I can’t let the whole movement come crumbling down because of me.

  “Let’s not just stand here!” says Fideo. “We need to hide—”

  “Where?” demands Ezequiel.

  “There’s too many of us! They’ll sense our presence.”

  “Then let’s leave—”

  “You don’t think they’d notice all of us charging down the hill? Or a fleet of ships taking off?”

  “A fleet,” I repeat, quieting everyone down. “But not one ship.”

  I look to Zaybet and Laura. “What if the seven of us leave, and the Cazadores find everyone else here? What would they do?” I turn to Tinta y Fideo. “They can’t prove I was with you. Would they even suspect you?”

  “They’d ask to see their Huellas,” says Zaybet, frowning as she turns it over in her head.

  “They could link us to the Coven—”

  “How?” I ask Tinta. “I thought most Septimus don’t even think it’s real. You could just claim to be part of some weirdo lunar worshipping cult or something.”

  The brothers sport twin bemused stares, but Cata understands. “You’re here for a retreat,” she says to them, cottoning on to my idea. “You’re lunáticos.”

  “What’s that?” I ask.

  “Septimus who think there’s a special lunar energy the night before the full moon that they can tap into—basically, what you wanted,” she says with a wave of her hand.

  “Tinta y Fideo’s presence will brand this as a quirky, rich, young Septimus fad,” says Zaybet, nodding along. “But you need to sell it. We can’t lose this place. We won’t find another discreet location like this one to open a portal, not in time anyway.”