She gives me her cheek and I wonder why everyone in my family does this—tries to act as if nothing hurts us. All that power coursing through my little sister’s veins and she still doesn’t want me to see her crying.
“We’ve all made selfish choices. But you can’t play with death like this, Lula. Keeping Maks here won’t make things go back to how they used to be. Nothing will because we aren’t the same girls we were once, and that’s my fault. But we can get through this together, just like you and Rose and Ma did for me. Just like we’re trying to do for Dad.”
My eyes burn and I choke on a sob as she holds me until it passes.
“What do we do? Alex, I don’t know what to do.”
We watch Maks turn fitfully in sleep for a few moments. Alex stares like she’s expecting him to wake up and attack us. I tell her about his outbursts and how sometimes he’s there and sometimes he’s not.
“Are you sure it’s a good idea to keep him here?” she asks.
“Where else can I take him?” I try to stand, but my leg muscles cramp. Alex helps me up.
“Okay,” Alex says, pacing once more. Candlelight plays with her shadow, making her look taller and longer than she already is. “First, you should make more of the calming draught. Dilute it so that it doesn’t give him the sleeping side effect. We can study him.”
“He’s not a lab rat,” I counter.
“I’m not saying he is. But we have to figure out what triggers his violent outbursts. How are you going to explain the hole in the wall to Mom and Dad, by the way?”
I press my hand over my rapid-beating heart. “I—I don’t know.”
“Forget it. You make the potion. I’ll look through mom’s books to see what I can find about La Muerte’s spear. The last bit will require help.”
“What kind of help?”
“Well, we have to figure out what he is.”
“He’s Maks. I’m telling you. You’ll see when he wakes up.”
“He may have a heartbeat, but normal people don’t vanish from one place and appear in another. Whatever he is, we need to know. And the only person we can trust who knows about spirits is—”
There’s a quiet knock on the door. Her soft voice filters from the other side. “It’s Rose.”
“I was just going to get you,” Alex says as she opens the door.
Rose walks in. She looks at Maks but doesn’t have the same reaction that Alex did. Her fine, straight hair is loose over her shoulders. Her face is calm, as if it’s every day I have my formerly deceased boyfriend sleeping in my bed.
“It’s not what you think,” I tell her.
One corner of her mouth quirks. “I think I finally found the reason my head feels like it’s being hit with a sledgehammer.”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
She sighs, as if I’m missing the obvious. “My power isn’t like yours or Alex’s. It’s linked to spirits. When we were in the hospital, it was the worst, which isn’t surprising. But when we came home, it still bothered me. I thought it might be residual. I was listening to what you were saying—”
“You were listening?” Alex asks, her voice louder.
“What else is there to do in this house?” Rose rolls her eyes. “I’ve been eavesdropping on you guys for years. Anyway, when a person and their spirit are aligned, everything is copacetic. One of the reasons that I can hear spirits is because the alignment is gone. They’re detached from their body. Most spirits move on to the next life. I don’t hear from them. The ones that don’t move on make the most noise. They’re calling out for something that they’ve lost.”
“Like the ones in the River Luxaria in Los Lagos?” Alex asks.
“Those are spirits that refused to move on,” Rose says, taking off her glasses to rub her eyes. “I can’t always hear the spirits in other realms, unless they’re looking for me. Being a seer means being a beacon for the undead. My soul glows. If they can see it, they come for me—usually to ask for help I can’t give them.”
“That’s what’s making your head hurt now?”
Rose gnaws on the inside of her cheek and nods. “There’s a rift in the balance. I should’ve felt it sooner, but it’s hard to separate that with all the magic we’ve called on this week.”
“I’m so sorry, Rosie,” I say.
“No, Alex was right. I wanted to help you. I’m responsible for Maks’s condition too. Something happened during our canto. You said you were going to get me because I can feel his spirit, determine if he’s really human.”
“And?”
The three of us stand at arm’s length. If we reached for each other, we could make a perfect triangle.
Rose licks her lips and glances at her feet before saying, “Maks’s soul is detached. It’s like it’s stuck, halfway in and out. I don’t know what he is, but he isn’t completely there. I thought he might’ve been to another realm like Dad. But Dad’s soul is fine, except a faint red glow, like something inside of him has changed. That’s not the biggest problem though.”
I take a step closer to my baby sister. I remember holding her as a baby—her fat cheeks always bright red, her tiny hands so cold, it scared my mother.
“I’ve been feeling this way since we got home. But Maks only got here today. Maks’s spirit isn’t the only one that’s detached.” She takes my hand and the chill of it makes my body shiver. “Yours is too.”
13
Bathe in the sun.
Sleep with the moon.
Our souls are as one,
our ending too soon.
—Witchsong #7, Book of Cantos
“My soul is detached?” I ask my sister. My hand goes to my chest as if I can feel the part of me that’s untethered. But all I find is my racing heart beneath my skin. “Are you sure?”
Rose never fidgets. But now, she bites her thumbnail down to a stump and can’t seem to stay in one place.
“It was faint before, but now that Maks is here it seems to be getting worse. When I look at people,” she says, “I can see the outline of the soul. When everything is right, it’s only the faintest glow. For example, Alex’s is in place. I see the usual white light but—”
Alex snaps her attention to Rose. “What do you mean but?”
“But there are black and red outlines too. That’s your soul being touched by your time in Los Lagos because time works different. And then, because of the curse you cast.”
Alex looks down at her hands. A black, eight-pointed star is marked at the center of her palms. Thin lines spread from it like a burst of lightning, the mark she retained from welding such power, for banishing her magic.
“Why didn’t you tell me before?” Alex asks.
“You see this all the time?” I ask Rose, and all I want to do is hug her. “How can you stand it?”
Rose lifts her shoulder and tries to brush it off. Turns her face toward where the candles on my altar are nearly extinguished. “No one ever asks. Besides, it doesn’t happen all the time. It’s mostly when I have my lessons with Valeria.”
We watch my altar silently, shadows dancing against the wall. One candle has burned all the way down to the metal strip and goes out, a long smoke line shooting upward.
“I’m sorry,” Alex tells Rose.
“Don’t be. I don’t like to talk about it,” she says, leveling her brown eyes back on us. “When it does happen, I can usually ignore it. After having this power for so long, I just do what I can until my Deathday helps me balance it. It’s like always being surrounded by noise—eventually it fades into the background. But now I can’t ignore it because whatever we did has affected you and Maks.”
“We have to fix him,” I say, and part of me wonders why it’s so much harder to ask for help from the people who love us. “Ma has enough on her hands with trying to be the midwife and healer to every magical being in the tristate area. The High Circle would probably put a stake through my heart without asking questions. Dad doesn’t even remember the last seven years. It has to remain with us.”
I place my hands on my sister’s shoulders. The next candle blows out.
“I’ll get you fresh candles,” Rose says.
“I’ll get the books.”
“I’ll make the potion.”
I walk up to my altar and blow out the last flame.
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