“It has to do with what you’ve done, Lula.” Nova stands, pushing himself up in a flash. “I swear. You Mortiz girls will burn this world to the ground if you’re left unchecked.”
“Hey!” Rose screeches. She forgoes her meditation position and points a finger at Nova’s chest. It doesn’t matter that she’s fourteen and half his size. She has to adjust her glasses with her free hand, but her intention is clear. “I haven’t done anything. Don’t just lump me in with these two.”
“Rosie—”
“No. Leave me alone. I can’t think with you near me.” Rose shakes her head and starts to storm out of the room. “Good luck with your zombie boyfriend.”
She slams the door behind her.
“I take it back,” Nova says, smirking at me. “She’s my favorite of you three.”
“If the world ended right now,” I say, “it would be a whole lot easier.”
Nova goes back to his chair, suddenly amused as hell. “Thanks to you, we’re halfway there.”
“Wait,” Maks says. “What did she mean by zombie boyfriend?”
Nova picks up a book from the stack that’s beside his chair. The Creation of Deos. Alex used to bother me and say the only studying I did was about magic. Well, clearly, I didn’t study enough because I made the same mistakes she did.
Nova opens the worn book, written by one of my ancestors. It chronicles all the gods and myths associated with them. It makes the Greek gods look tame.
“Lula—”
“I guess it takes jocks a little longer to figure things out,” Nova mutters.
Maks snaps his fingers. “That’s where I know you from. You’re from Van Buren, aren’t you?”
“No, asshole. You almost ran me over eight months ago.”
“Clearly I didn’t do a very good job.”
“Maks!” I shout.
Maks is a lot of things, but he’s not hurtful. He turns his face to the side, and it bothers me that the motion is so close to the way La Muerte twitched her head.
“Lula, please tell me what’s going on. I can’t remember a single thing that happened. The last thing I remember was—waking up and going to the boardwalk. Then there’s only black and voices. I’m covered in scars. Last night I—” He drops his voice. “I ate a heart.”
Nova’s eyes widen in my direction. “Well, it’s a good thing I didn’t ask you to share that ice cream.”
“Tell me the truth,” Maks says, his voice harder than before. “What did Alex do to you? What is wrong with me?”
I walk around my bed to where he stands looking just as lost as when I found him on the carousel.
“I can explain everything.”
“Tell me the truth,” he repeats.
I hate that Nova is here, watching us. If he had any sense of decency, he’d step out and give us privacy. But nothing, not an empty room or a stadium full of people, will change the words I’m about to say to Maks.
He holds my hands with his, crossing our fingers together the way we’ve done so many times, and I can feel his heart racing like my own.
“Did I die?” He sounds out every word, and I know the answer he wants me to give him.
I shut my eyes, a well of tears spilling down my cheeks. Maks, his eyes wide and blue and desperate and waiting for an answer I’m afraid to utter myself because it makes this, all of this all true.
“You are dead.”
He pulls out of my hold.
“Half-dead,” I try to correct.
Nova lowers the book so I can see only his eyes. “Technically, casimuertos translates to almost dead. Not half-dead.”
“I’m going to casi-kill you myself if you don’t shut up,” I say as an empty threat.
It doesn’t do much to help Maks calm down either. He paces in a circle from one end of the room to the other. For a long time, I say nothing. The only sound is Maks’s feet on the wooden floors, and Nova turning the pages of the book.
“I’m not sure how it happened,” I say finally. In a way, the truth undoes some of the knots in my chest. “I was trying to heal you. I told you we were in an accident. All of us. The buses crashed with a semitruck and other cars.”
Every time I try to grab his hand, he yanks it away.
“There was a metal pole driven through our bodies.” I keep going. It’s like opening up an endless well after a drought.
Maks stops in his tracks. He touches the scar on his chest hidden beneath his shirt.
“They tried to save us both, but I had a higher chance of surviving the surgery, so they pulled you off first.”
He looks down at the ground for a long time. “I remember screams. No images. Just screams.”
“They took us both to surgery, but you fell into a coma. They didn’t think you’d come out of it. I tried to heal you.”
Maks finally meets my eyes. “The way Alex did with you?”
“Alex and Rose helped. You started to fade, and the goddess of death came for you. I was desperate. I couldn’t let go, so I panicked. I tethered you to me—to my life force. I heard you come alive. Then you were dead and gone, but a few days later I found you. I found you, Maks.”
“My parents,” he says, after a long silence. “They think I’m dead?”
“Yes. Your body—all the bodies went missing from the morgue. The police are looking into the body snatchers.”
“And the—hearts? In the news. The two guys with hearts torn out of their chest?”
I can’t tell him that I found him holding one of the dead boy’s wallets. I just can’t. I grab on to him and don’t let go.
Maks shakes his head. “Don’t. Don’t touch me. Please. You need to—I need—first you tell me I died. Then you brought me back only to have me die again. Then my body went missing. Not to mention my sudden desire for human hearts and the guy in the next room who tried to kill your sister. Please, Lula. Give me a minute.”
I turn to Nova. “What’s he talking about?”
Nova slams the book shut. “You missed the best part. My friend Vino? You know how I brought him here for help? Because that’s what the Mortiz family does, right? They help.”
“Stop being an ass,” I tell him. “What happened to Vino?”
“He changed,” Nova says, eyes raking Maks from head to toe. “Into one of them.”
“But Maks didn’t go anywhere near him.”
“Right.” Nova looks like he’s mentally walking on a tight rope and anything I say might tip him over. “It was the thing in the park. Which means, we’ve got a whole mess of casimuertos to find.”
“Where’s Vino now?” I ask.
“Ran off,” Nova says, pressing his full mouth shut to stop from shaking. “I stabbed him. I stabbed him right in his neck. He was trying to hurt Rose, and no matter how hard we hit him, he wouldn’t get off.”
“And he still ran?”
Nova nods, then hits his fist against the wall. “I shouldn’t have come here.”
“But you did,” I snap. “You’re here. You have two choices. Either help us and prove that you’ve changed, or go squat in the park because all you know how to do is run from your problems.”
The door opens and Alex walks in holding a plastic bag full to the brim.
“Glad everyone’s getting along,” she says darkly.
“To be expected,” Nova mutters. “What’s that face for?”
“It’s the only one I’ve got,” she says. She rolls her eyes and I can see the struggle in her body because I know her better than she knows herself. “Nova. I need—”
“No,” he cuts her off.
“You’re not even going to hear me out?”
Nova squeezes the bridge of his nose with his black-tipped fingers. “I know what that bag is full of. I know you want to see her.”
Alex shakes her head, not ready to give up. “Do you know anyone who might know as much about death and blood magic?”
“It’s a bad idea, Alex.”
“I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t urgent.”
“It’s always urgent. Don’t you get it? That woman kicked me out. She’s the only flesh and blood I have in this city because the siblings I got left are either locked up or in a ditch somewhere. I don’t want to see her.”