“Let’s hope they catch him,” Mayi says. “Because then you witches are off the hook.”
“We’re not on the hook,” Rose says. She never takes her eyes off the card she flips. The ten of daggers, each one driven through a tiny hare.
I swallow the knot sensation in my throat, but it doesn’t help. I have a terrible feeling. It’s everywhere—my gut, my heart, my bones. Sometimes when I look at people out of the corner of my eyes, I see skeletons instead of bodies. What if La Muerte cursed me? What if the hunters come for us? What if the Alliance locks me up?
“Maybe we should talk about something else,” Paloma says, taking a dulce de leche puff from one of the many sugary treats on the coffee table. It’s amazing how some people can avoid reality so easily, turning to something like self-preservation and denial mixed together. “My aunt Reina is teaching me how to conjure crystals. But I can only get them the size of a bead right now.”
“You look really good on TV,” Mayi says, raising a mirror to check her lipstick. The bright pink is a beautiful contrast on her dark brown skin, but when she presses her fingers to her high cheekbone, her glamour magic ripples.
Mayi was the first person to show up with a bouquet of pink carnations, El Amor’s favorite flower, and a tray of her famous brownies dotted with huge chunks of caramel. I know Mayi means well, but everything she says makes me want to smash the candles on my altar and scream. I remind myself that she doesn’t know what to say to me. None of them do, so they just talk and talk and don’t think of their words. Everyone wants me to be better, feel better, without giving me the time to do so.
“The camera adds ten dark circles,” I say, fastening my bathrobe to give my hands something to do.
“Really?” Emma asks, her lips a round and confused O.
“She’s just playing,” Mayi tells Emma. “You look really skinny though, Lu. Your waist is the size of my neck. What diet did they have you on, ’cause I’m about to try it?”
“The Nearly Dead Diet,” Rose grumbles. She glares at Mayi and snatches another caramel brownie from the large tray.
“Don’t worry, Rosie. Your baby weight will fall right off soon enough.” Mayi smiles, and I’m pretty sure she says half the things she does to get under people’s skin.
“I wish I could say the same for your personality,” Alex tells her, marching from the kitchen and past the living room archway. Stacks of clean towels and bedsheets are balanced in her arms. She winks at Rose and heads back upstairs.
“No one was talking to you!” Mayi shouts.
She’s fought with Alex since they were kids. For a long time, Mayi was the one with a strange power. Glamour magic isn’t rare, but it isn’t common either. It’s unique enough that the High Circle always said they’d keep a spot open for her when she grew into her powers. But when Alex came of age as an encantrix, the invitation went away.
Although, after everything that’s happened now, I don’t think the High Circle wants anything to do with any of the Mortiz girls.
I almost feel sorry for Mayi. From the corner of my eye, I can see her real face, the one she hides behind her glamour, under the illusion. Her nose is crooked from a nasty fall when she was ten, and her dark skin is dotted with angry-red acne that no elixir has been able to cure. Every time she hides her face behind the glamour, new marks appear on her skin, and in turn, she hides it with more magic. But that’s the thing—one of our universal laws is that we can’t use our power on ourselves. I can’t heal myself and Rose can’t see her own future. And so, the more Mayi glamours herself, the worse it’ll be for her in the end.
“I can’t believe you’re on TV,” Paloma says, voice like sticky syrup. “I’ve always wanted to be on TV.”
Mayi slaps her upside the head. “Do you also want to go to the hospital?”
Paloma realizes the folly of her wish and gives me an apologetic smile.
“Where’s Alex going?” Adrian, a new addition to our class, asks. He’s fifteen and one of Gustavo’s sons. He cranes his neck toward the creaky wooden stairs that lead to the second floor.
“She’s helping my mother,” I say. “Does your dad know you’re here?”
“He knows I’m with Mayi,” he says by way of explanation. His hair is a mop of straight, inky blackness, and his skin is hazelnut brown. “Are they healing? Can I watch? My dad never lets me do anything.”
“Yes, they’re healing,” I say, slumping down on the couch. I am grateful for my friends’ visit, but they’ve been here for hours, and I’m exhausted from their endless questions about what it felt like to be put to sleep or have doctors prod around in my gut. “And no, you can’t watch.”
He frowns. “I wanted to talk to Alex about what to do—you know, when your powers come.”
“Why don’t you talk to us?” Paloma asks, and if her voice were a color, it would be an acidic green.
“Because she’s an encantrix,” Adrian says, as if it should be obvious. “She’s the only one in our generation.”
“And she knows nothing about magic or our history,” Mayi says, sounding more like her mother every day.
“None of that matters,” I say. “You can be the perfect little bruja, but the Deos won’t care, if they ever cared at all.”
“How can you say that?” Emma asks.
“Easy, I use my words.” I eat another sweet thing they’ve brought for me, but the sugar takes like dust and I’ve lost my appetite again.
“There’s no need to be snippy with Emma,” Mayi says. “We know you’re going through a hard time.”
“No, you don’t.” I sit up, my words turning to poison as they slither off my tongue. “You don’t know anything about what I’ve gone through or what I’ve seen. You guys want to sit around in a circle and summon ghosts and glamour yourselves for fun, but the rest of us have to deal with real life. My sister is an encantrix, but if you want to talk smack about her, I will be the one to end you.”
Paloma rolls her eyes and scoffs in my direction. “You’re no fun anymore, Lula.”
You’re no fun anymore.
No.
Fun.
Anymore.
Her words ring in my ears. Maks said something like that to me once…
I don’t care what Paloma thinks. They don’t understand. Not my sinmago friends and not these witches. Magic transforms. Magic is also unpredictable and unforgiving. You don’t know who you’ll become after wielding it.
Suddenly, despite the room full of brujas and a brujo, I feel alone. My heart gives a sharp jolt, like there’s something piercing it. I shut my eyes and let the pain subside.
“It’s hurting again, isn’t it?” Mayi says, frowning. “You should tell your mom.”
I breathe in and out slowly. I keep getting this pain in my chest. I have so many broken parts that a tiny pinch in my chest should be the least of my worries. But it keeps happening at odd intervals.
“We can try to heal you,” Paloma says. The most Paloma has ever used her power for is to change her failing grades into As. “We’re not natural healers like you, but maybe there’s something in the Book of Cantos.”
“And wind up turning into a slug?” I say, trying to sound like the old Lula. The one they expect me to be so quickly. “I’ll pass.”
“Have a little faith,” Mayi tells me. In this light, she’s ethereal. Like a fairy queen lounging, taking slow bites of the chocolate-caramel treats.
“I have faith,” I say, gruffer than I wanted to.
But Mayi looks at my unkempt altar and Emma purses her lips skeptically.
“Well,” Paloma says, “we’ve failed in cheering you up.”
“I’m sorry,” I say. “It’s too soon.”
These same girls I’ve know my whole life, girls I’ve shared magic with, stare at me like I’m a stranger. Their eyes are full of worry and something else I couldn’t place until just now: fear. They’re all afraid of me, with the exception of Adrian. He looks like he wants to move in and fanboy over my sister.