An idea strikes.
“I’ll give you my car,” I say, fishing my keys out of my pocket. I hold them out in front of me; the metal glints in the candlelight. “As collateral. If I don’t come back, you can keep it.”
Her hands pause. I jump on her hesitation.
“It’s a good car. Parked right in the lot. A green Sunfire. A little old, but definitely worth more than three grand.”
She considers for a moment. Finally, she holds out her hand, and I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding.
She snags the keys. Suddenly she’s all business.
“This spell will send you to Los Demonios for a short time only. The exact amount of time is unknown and changes with each attempt. You will arrive at an unknown location. The location changes with each attempt. You will have pain in your head, which can vary from mild to excruciating. I am not responsible for anything that may happen to you on your visit. You will not be refunded if you find your experience unsatisfactory.”
My stomach churns.
Her little speech has me seriously questioning my decision, and I might even have backed out if she weren’t leading me firmly by the shoulder through a dark, narrow tunnel so small we have to crouch to fit through, all the while holding the swinging lantern out in front of her.
Where is she taking me?
I wish Bishop were here. As soon as I have the thought, I remember the way he took Aunt Penny’s side, and my anger comes flooding back. I don’t need Bishop’s help. I got by sixteen years just fine without a man in my life. I’m sure I can get through another day.
Just when my back is starting to get sore from crouching down at an unnatural angle, the tunnel mercifully opens up into another room. It’s round, smaller than the last, with five black entrances carved into the rock walls. It’s furnished with only a wooden chair that has cutouts of roosters on its back. I wonder whose grandma she robbed for it.
“Sit,” she demands.
She takes my candle, then gestures to the chair as she looks around for someplace to hang the lantern.
I cross to the chair and sit, my hands gripping the armrests. She crouches back into the hole we came through and disappears.
I’m alone in a cave. This day hasn’t turned out at all the way I’d imagined.
I wait for what feels like forever. A drip sounds somewhere in the distance, but otherwise it’s completely silent.
After a while, I hear a shuffling sound in one of the tunnels behind me—not the one we entered through. My body shifts into panic mode and I picture a cave monster ripping me to shreds, but then the witch emerges. She has her apron full of supplies, which she dumps unceremoniously onto the ground. As she tinkers, I peek over and spot a dirty chalice, a rusty dagger, and a rabbit’s foot, to name only a few things. Just what does she plan on doing with all this?
“Give me your hand,” she says suddenly, gripping the rusty dagger in her palm.
I white-knuckle the armrests.
“Give me your hand,” she repeats impatiently.
“What are you going to do with that?” I ask.
“Cut you.”
Well. Don’t beat around the bush or anything.
“That thing looks like it has hepatitis,” I say, eyeing the dirty blade.
She doesn’t respond.
“Haven’t you got a cleaner one? Or some bleach to disinfect it at least?”
She glares at me, what’s left of her patience rapidly evaporating.
I take a breath of courage and thrust out my arm. She catches it around the wrist, and I recoil at the surprising coldness of her hand. She poises the blade horizontally, just below the crook of my elbow. I look away before the metal makes contact with my skin, trying not to focus on the lifetime of treatments I might require after this ceremony is done. I gasp as the blade slices into me, then bite down hard on my lip as heat spreads across my arm. I can’t help looking as the first pricks of pain burst from my arm, where bright red blood spills from a three-inch gash at an alarming rate. I was not expecting her to cut me that bad.
My instinct is to curl my arm against my body and try to stanch the blood flow, but the witch holds the dirty chalice—which now contains the rabbit’s foot, the black-rock crystals she was crushing earlier, and what appears to be a peacock feather—right under the wound, filling it with my blood.
In just moments, the crystals are completely dissolved and the brown fur of the rabbit’s foot is nearly fully covered in my blood, but still the witch holds my arm over the cup, staring into it with an unblinking gaze.
A damp sweat breaks out on my forehead. My head spins, though I’m not sure if it’s due to the blood loss, my revulsion, or a combination of the two.
After my last complaints, I’d decided to shut up and just go with it, but the way the witch is staring into the cup, I’m starting to get worried that she nodded off to her special place.
“Isn’t that enough?” I ask.
Instead of her usual nonresponse response, she deigns to speak. “No.”
“Well, how much do you need?”
“Enough to open your mind.”
“That’s cryptic.” I realize I’m hyperventilating. I bite down on my lip again. It’s okay. This will get me to Paige. I need to do this. It’s for a good cause.
“The portal to Los Demonios lies in all of our minds,” she continues in a rare display of chattiness. I guess she feels bad for draining my lifeblood as well as my bank account. “But few people can access it. Only when your mind is in a fragile state can you see it. Even then most need help passing through.”
“How…” Black spots dance in front of my eyes when I try to speak. I focus on the words, wetting my lips. “How do you open the—”
And then everything goes black.
7
I blink my eyes open and find myself lying flat on my back, two tall buildings rising up on either side of me into a sky thick with smoke. The air crackles with electricity; the scent of something sharp and dry fills my nose.
Where am I?
Hot pain radiates down my arm.