Take from my blood.
Take from my soul.
Take all of me
even if I am no more.
—Salvation Canto, Book of Cantos
I wake to a scream.
I sit up straight, disoriented and drowsy. My eyes are so tired they feel swollen and refuse to open.
“Lula, what’s wrong?” Maks’s voice, far away even though his hands are on my shoulders.
Then I realize I’m the one screaming.
I’m the one trying to break out of his arms, kicking and flailing because the pain that sears my skin is so strong I just want to crawl out of it.
“Lula?” This time it’s Alex. She bangs on the door; then there’s the thick blast of magic shaking the room until she’s in.
“What should I do?” Maks asks. His voice is nervous, and I can sense—no. I can feel his frantic energy like it is part of me. “Help her!”
I turn on my side and bite the pillow to drown my scream. The pain bursts out of my abdomen, skin burning to the touch, swollen and wet with sweat and blood.
More footsteps and voices fill the room. There’s not enough air for all of us and I choke. Everyone is talking at the same time, my sisters and Maks and Nova. Their voices like knives at my eardrums.
“What’s wrong with her?” Nova.
“I don’t know! She just started screaming.” Maks.
“When will Ma be back?” Rose.
“I don’t know.” Alex. “Get me two crystals and the sleeping draught.”
“No.” Me. “No sleep.”
“What’s she saying?” Maks.
“Shut up and let her work.” Nova.
Footsteps. Stomping. Shouting. Screaming. Fists. Fighting. Crashing.
“Both of you.” Alex. “This isn’t helping.”
“Here.” Rose. “Ale, I can’t sense her.”
“Don’t talk like that. I need your help.” Alex. “Not you, Nova. My sister.”
Alex calls on her magic. Cold stone on my skin. Shut eyes. Darkness. Sleep.
“Lula. Lula, open your eyes!”
? ? ?
I do as Alex says, but when I open my eyes, I’m not in my room. I’m not anywhere I can recognize.
I’m haloed by a tumultuous black sky pinpricked by lightning. The ground is fluid, black water beneath my bare feet.
“Hello?”
Lady de La Muerte appears in front of me in a whirlwind of smoke and shadow.
“I see you’re out doing my bidding.” La Muerte speaks in that cold way of hers. She tilts her head to the side to examine me. Her skin is the gray of death. The air around us is enshrouded in a bone-chilling cold. I touch the tips of my ears and they’re hard as ice. But the pain in my side is fading.
“Am I dead?”
“Not yet.”
“Why?”
“You broke the balance. You created abominations. You trapped me between realms. Now you must free me.”
“I’m not a goddess. I don’t know how to start. I don’t know where to start.”
“Find my spear. Kill the casimuertos.”
“There has to be another way. A way to heal Maks and free you. What about the other Deos? Where are they?”
“The Deos are where they have always been.” Lady de la Muerte walks around me like a feline considering its prey. Her black dress hangs off her slender body. She walks right up to me and presses her finger on my chest, her black crystal nail digging into my skin. “We require as much as you ask for.”
“The Deos ask too much, then,” I say. “I can’t be the one to free you.”
“Why is it that humans like to say that the Deos ask too much when it is you who want the world to change at your whims and desires? We gave you the world. Find a way to live in it.”
She floats around me. Her arms are bare, like before, but the markings on her skin are fading, every name diluting like a drop of ink in water.
“What’s happening to you?” I ask.
She runs her long, thin fingers along her arm. “These are the names that should be claimed. But can’t be. Instead, they float adrift on my skin. Every day the balance remains broken, more souls will be trapped in the in-between.”
I get close enough to see the faded names. We stand on the water, the coldness seeping through my socks and freezing my feet.
“Are they all casimuertos?” I ask.
La Muerte looks up at me. Her black eyes hold entire galaxies if you look long enough.
“No. But lost souls share the same kind of darkness.” Her movements are twitchy, and for a moment, she shudders. “Do you know what a world without death is?”
“Safe.”
“Stagnant.”
I shut my eyes, my lashes, coated in frost, rest on the tops of my cheeks. “I don’t know what to do.”
“Stupid, wretched witch. I have told you. Find my spear. Kill the casimuertos. The longer they live, the others will—”
“Others?”
When Lady de la Muerte smiles, it is like looking into your greatest fear and losing to it. She knows it; she feeds on it. “You tethered more than Maksim Horbachevsky. What do you think happened to the other bodies?”
“I didn’t—” A knot forms in my throat, blocking anything I could say. I’ve felt them. The never-ending pain, the silver threads. It wasn’t just Maks. I knew but I didn’t want to know.
“Selfish, stupid, reckless human. Get out of my sight.”
I swallow the bile on my tongue. “I don’t know how I got here.”
“Here? The outside of the world. Cold and brittle. There is no life or death here. It is one of the many in-betweens of the universe. Get to work, Lula Mortiz. Destroy the heart and make the sacrifice. Or the unbalance will remain, and the world you love will fall to the chaos you have unleashed.”
I feel myself sinking into the blackness at my feet. She leans into my face, and I can smell the rotting earth on her breath, winter on her skin.
“I don’t have the power to fix this,” I shout.
La Muerte places a hand on my chest and pushes the air out of my lungs. “Then find it.”
19
Her pain is exquisite.
Her love is sublime.
La Tortura consumes.
La Tortura divides.
—Rezo for La Tortura, Child of El Corazón and Lady of Love Unrequited “She’s awake,” someone says.
My hearing is interrupted by a hard ringing sound.
“Thank God,” Maks says. He’s sitting on my bed, holding my hand.
When I sit up, the pain I felt before is gone. “What happened?”
Nova reclines on a chair near the door. He’s scowling, arms crossed over his chest. His blue-green eyes could burn holes through my skin.
Then I see the bruise on his cheek.
I look up at Maks, who has a bruise on the opposite cheek.
“Alex is getting supplies,” Nova says roughly.
“Supplies for what?” I pull my hand from Maks’s. I pull the covers off and notice Rose sitting cross-legged on the floor, hands resting on either knee.
“No talking yet,” she says. “I need to get her out of my head.”
“Her who?” I ask.
“Lady de la Muerte.”
“What happened?”
Nova holds the sides of the chair. “Your sister has the Gift of the Veil.”
“I know that,” I say through gritted teeth.
“Then you know she can see between worlds. The Realm of the Dead specifically. Now that you’ve essentially torn up the balance of life and death, it’s easier for the other side to try to inhabit your sister.”
“No one is inhabiting me,” Rose growls.
“Like possession?” Maks asks. “Is that what was happening to you, Rosie?”
I turn sharply to Nova. “Stop.”
“You need to tell him. Like ASAP because if not, the shock on his sinmago ass could mess things up more.”
“What did you call me?” Maks shouts.
“Wait,” I say, standing up. For the first time, I notice the handful of crystals stacked on my nightstand, all cracked in half and completely black. It took four of them to heal me? “What does Rose getting possessed have to do with anything? Why can’t my all-powerful encantrix sister heal me?”
“What’s an encantrix?” Maks asks, frustrated. “What is going on?”