She flips back to the beginning. “There has to be something on how to kill them without calling in the National Guard.”
I take a deep breath and fight through the pain. Snatch the book back. “Let’s see. More anatomy of a heart. Bones. Eyes turn white or yellow when they’re consumed with hunger. Death, death, death. Ah.”
I flip the final page. “Typical methods of zombie exterminations do not apply to casimuertos, as decapitation will only slow it down. A single casimuerto can be killed by destroying its heart. A horde can be eliminated by using a divine weapon to kill the—”
“What is it?” Her voice a whisper now.
“The human they are bound to.”
She looks confused, then frowns with the realization. “So—”
“I have to die.”
21
A casimuerto is neither living nor dead, but something in-between. Created by a deep bond of love, the heart is the only food that can keep them in a state close to human.
—The Accursed Book/El Libro Maldecido, Fausto Toledo
“There’s always another way,” Alex says, but her voice is distant. “I know there is.”
I press my hands on the uneven cement floor. That’s what Lady de la Muerte meant when she spoke to me. Destroy the heart and make the sacrifice. I hit my head on the wall behind me. I’m an idiot for thinking the sacrifice would be only Maks.
“Lula, get up,” Alex tells me.
But I’m not listening to her. I’m staring at the statue of Lady de la Muerte. At the skulls at her feet, eye sockets stuffed with white peonies.
“Lula.”
“Stop!” I shout. “Gods, Alex. We are infinitely patient with you.”
She gets down on her knees so we’re eye level. “I’m sorry. I don’t want you to go down that path. Once you start thinking you’ve failed, you already have.”
“I really screwed up.”
“So did I. But here we are.”
I nod, take her hand. She helps me up. My head spins, and I have to hold on to her arm to stabilize myself.
“Hang on,” Alex says. She opens the book and snaps photos of the pages with her phone. “She didn’t say anything about phones.”
We shut the door behind us and hold our breath as we race to the other side of the greenhouse, past the kitchen, and to the front of the bakery.
Angela is placing sweets in a white box. “Find what you were looking for?”
“More or less,” Alex says evenly.
“Where did you get that book?” I ask her, walking around the glass counter, holding on to Alex for support.
“Nena, don’t take this the wrong way but you don’t look good,” she tells me.
It’s my turn to laugh. “Well, I feel as good as I look.”
Angela moves slowly, methodically, taking her time. She cuts a piece of string. She ties it neatly around the box to keep it closed.
“The book,” she says, “was written by an old friend. Fausto was obsessed with finding the cure for death.”
“There is no cure for death,” Alex says.
“Doesn’t mean we don’t still try to find it. Most of the time, the good people, the rare and truly good, don’t want the cure for themselves. They want to save someone they love, isn’t that right? But when Fausto started to research successful attempts, he came across incidents like this.”
“Seven of them,” I say.
“Seven that were recorded,” Angela corrects me. “Death makes people desperate, and our history is long.”
“What about Death herself?” I ask.
“What about her? She’s a goddess, born from the shadows to keep the world in balance. Even from the gods themselves.”
“The Book of Deos doesn’t have much information on Lady de la Muerte, but you have a whole shrine devoted to her. Your statue is closer to her likeness than any I’ve seen.”
Angela watches me for a moment as if seeing my future right before her eyes, and by the look on her face, it doesn’t look good. “Lady de la Muerte has collected so many lives as a product of my work, it is only fitting I choose her as the patron of my magic. She is a reminder that everything ends, even the reign of gods. Even this world.”
“She wants me to find her spear,” I say. “In The Accursed Book, it said she used it to kill some casimuertos. It’s a divine weapon, isn’t it? Where did it come from?”
“Her spear was made from the dregs of the elemental Deos. There’s a rhyme about it in the Book of Deos, if I remember correctly. As for your other problem, here.”
She takes something out of her pocket and sets it on the counter beside the pastry box.
“What’s this?” I ask. The tiny bottle is corked tightly. The liquid is black with tiny flecks of silver.
“An elixir for your pain.”
Alex takes it from me and sets it back on the counter. “We can’t. My mother will make something when we get home.”
Angela turns her dark gaze on my sister. “That is not for you to decide. It’s for her. She said it herself. She has to free La Muerte. Can’t do that and walk around the city almost dead herself. Besides, I grow the kinds of herbs your mother, La Mama bless her many talents, has never heard of.”
“I have nothing to offer you,” I say.
“You don’t have to. La Muerte and I have a score to settle and I can’t do that if she’s trapped. Consider it a gift.”
I want to say that when it comes to magic, nothing is just a gift. Gifts of power come with blessings or curses or sometimes both. I want to say that I’ll return her kindness by being nicer to Nova. But my insides are as twisted as my tongue, and so all I can do is take the tiny glass bottle and say, “Thank you.”
“Just remember,” Angela says. “The casimuertos consume because they are never sated. It’s the thing that makes them the most human, even though they are unnatural to this world. Do not fail her.”
So I’ve been warned.
“Thank you, Do?a Angela.”
“Don’t thank me yet.” She pushes the pastry box toward Alex. “Take this for your parents with my blessings.”
Alex doesn’t talk back.
We’re halfway outside when the bells jingle overhead. Outside the sky is darker. The streets empty. An unseasonable chill in the air.
Angela calls out to Alex one more time, and we stall at the doorway.
“Tell Nova to come home. When he’s ready.”
? ? ?
We take the train back home. We don’t talk. Alex holds the pastry box in her lap and stares out the window at the graffiti on the subway walls. I reread the pictures of the book she took on her phone but nothing stands out. Then I take out the small potion and shake it between my fingers.
“Are you going to drink that?” Alex asks.
“I’m still feeling the side effects from the other potion,” I say, clearing my throat in the process.
Alex nods quietly. There is nothing quite as sobering as the truth. “I can keep healing you. You don’t have to.”
I can’t keep having my sister suffer the recoil of healing magic for me. “I will. I just…I think it’s going to get worse, and I want to save it for when it does. I can manage this.”
She looks at me like she wants to disagree, so I change the subject.
“Find the spear, free La Muerte, destroy the heart, and make the sacrifice.” I rest my head on her shoulder, a hard weight pressing down on my chest.
“I’m going to save you,” Alex says. “This isn’t how your story ends.”
I don’t want to tell her that she’s wrong about one of those things. “Until we can find the spear, we need to make sure no one else gets hurt. We can’t tell anyone about what we read. Especially not the parts about me dying.”
“Agreed.”
The train rattles more than usual, and the b-boys jumping around in the car rethink their busking strategy. I’m afraid Lady de la Muerte is going to appear out of nowhere again, but the last time I saw her she looked about as healthy as I do. At the next stop, the car empties out.
“I should’ve listened to you.” I rest against her because my body feels drained. “To Ma. To everyone.”