I glare at Rose, but Maks just laughs. There’s something frightening about his laugh, especially here in front of a shrine dedicated to the dead. Or undead, I suppose.
We keep to the side of the building as we walk toward the parking lot. Alex breaks the lock with her magic, and we zigzag between cars until we find Maks’s. His parents have been too busy to pick it up. I want to believe it’s a sign the Universe is in our favor. I want to send a prayer to the sky, but I just keep walking. The Brooklyn lullaby of sirens fills the air. Past the parking lot, behind a row of houses, the red and blue lights whirl where the cops are at the crime scene.
“Anyone bring the keys?” Nova asks, looking over his shoulder. With the sunset, there is only the bright streetlamps that make shadows jump out around us.
“Move over,” Alex says, pushing him out of the way. She presses her hand over the car door. Her eyes darken as she summons her power, and then there’s the click.
“Okay, now does anyone know how to hot-wire a car?” I ask.
“I got this.” Maks cracks his knuckles.
“You do?”
“Yeah, remember my cousin Rome?” Maks pulls a plastic cover from the underside of the front seat. “He works at a garage. The summer I was benched after my surgery, he had me work there so I wouldn’t go nuts in the house.”
“I didn’t know that,” I say.
He pulls at some wires and starts to twist them. “I’m glad after two years of being with me I can still surprise you.”
When he winks, I get butterflies. I haven’t felt this way in so long. I press my hands on my abdomen, like I can feel real wings unfurling.
“Guys,” Rose says, craning her neck around another parked car. “I think we’re being watched.”
“I’ll go check it out,” Alex says.
“I’ll come with you,” Nova says.
“No,” Alex says harshly. “I’m stronger than you. You’ll just get in my way.”
Nova looks like he’s been punched in the gut, but he doesn’t follow my sister as she runs out of the parking lot.
“When did Alex get so mean?” Maks asks. He jumps as something shocks him. He undoes the wires again and mutters something about color schemes.
“She’s not mean,” I say. “She’s stressed.”
“Did my gran say something to her?” Nova asks, crossing his arms over his chest and leaning against the front of the car.
“Yeah,” I say. “She said to tell you to stop whining.”
Nova kicks the tire and sucks his teeth. “Forget y’all. I’m going to see what I can get from the crime scene.”
“Shouldn’t we stick together?” Maks asks, frustrated.
But Nova’s already gone.
“Do you see anything?” I ask Rose.
“No. All I see and hear is static. Like when we—” She stops abruptly and looks over at Maks. “At the hospital.”
I nod, understanding what she means. The night we tried to heal Maks, she said the same thing. It has to be up to me to sense the casimuertos. But I don’t know how I made the thread appear when I was looking for Maks.
The roar of the engine is followed by the beam of headlights. Maks dusts off his hands and smiles victoriously. He pumps a hand in the air, the way he did when he saved an impossible goal and basked in the uproar of the crowd. Maks will never play again, I think.
He climbs out of the car and grabs me around my waist and lifts me into the air, bringing me back down slowly, so we’re close enough to kiss. His cool breath is on my lips, and I shiver under his cold touch. Maks will never be warm again, I think.
Then, clouds roll in with a gust of wind. Lightning crashes all around and wrenches us apart.
23
La Mama and El Cielo gave birth to
El Viento, Lord of Flight. They didn’t stop there.
Flowers and trees rose across hilltops,
leaning toward their mother’s light and their father’s sky.
—Tales of the Deos, Felipe Thomás San Justinio
I push myself off the ground, and tiny pebbles stick against my palms. I touch my chest, expecting to see the thread of silver, but there’s nothing there besides a deepening ache.
“Rose?” I call out.
There’s a dent on the door where Maks was slammed into the car. But if he feels pain, he shrugs it off and stands.
“You guys okay?”
“That’s Alex.” Rose appears from around the back of another car, a bloody cut on her forearm. “I recognize her power.”
“I’ll go find her,” I say, unzipping the duffel bag of weapons and retrieving a machete. “Stay here, both of you.”
I run in the direction Alex went, ignoring Maks’s and Rose’s protests.
“Alex!” I shout her name. The block is completely deserted. When I run around the corner I have to stop. My insides seize with a stabbing sensation, and my legs threaten to give out under my weight. I crawl on the sidewalk toward the lamppost, scraping my knees as I dig in my jacket pocket. I knew it would get worse before it got better. I pull out the glass bottle with the elixir, but my hand cramps, and I look down to see the veins beneath my skin roiling like black snakes. I take a swallow, leaving some for later.
I breathe deep, aware of every inch of my body, every spark of agony. It’s like my guts are threaded with live wires. But I keep breathing, the elixir burning cold in my belly until the pain ebbs to nothing. When I can stand, I look up at the sky to search for Alex’s lightning, but there are only thick rain clouds. I keep running, but this street turns into a dead-end alley.
“Lula! Stay back!”
It’s Alex.
I hear footsteps behind me, but when I glance over my shoulder, the street is empty and pitch black. I run into the alley, follow the sound of fists pummeling flesh and bottles shattering.
Alex is surrounded by five figures. She’s conjured an orb of light overhead, but she can’t seem to hold it and fight at the same time, so it pulses like a strobe light.
“Sorry about the lightning,” Alex says, looking at me past her attackers, hands up in a fighting stance. “It was supposed to be a little warning thunder clap.”
A guttural growl comes from the shadows that surround my sister. I shake out the cramp in my hand and grip the machete tighter.
Casimuertos.
I pick up a bottle from the pile of garbage and throw it at them. “Hey, over here!”
Two of them turn on me.
“Oh no!” I cover my mouth at the familiar faces staring at me.
Raj and Dale. Or what’s left of them after the accident. The skin around Raj’s jaw is missing, exposing the white bone and bloody mess of his gums. Dale’s sickly gray skin is covered in burns and bruises. There’s a long gash on the side of his head where the stitches are coming undone.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” I say, losing my nerve. You already have, a voice growls in my thoughts.
They answer with unintelligible grunts. Raj lunges for my chest, but I kick out and throw him off balance. Dale grabs ahold of my jacket and pulls hard. I swing the machete upward, hitting his side.
But when I pull the blade back, he keeps charging for me and knocks it out of my hand.
“They’re not stopping,” I shout at Alex. “Remember the book—”
“The author of that book never met me.”
Despite the confidence in her voice, she’s panting and clutching what must be a cramp at her side. She shuts her eyes, a hard breeze picking up dirt and garbage around us. Her magic gives me vertigo, and I stumble to the brick wall for support.
She raises her fists into the air and shouts above the whistling wind.
“I call on El Terroz, Lord of the Earth and Its Treasures. Quiebra!” Then she punches the ground with bare fists. The ground trembles and bucks, knocking all of us over, expect for her. One of the brick walls crumbles on top of three casimuertos. Her victorious grin is gone as her eyes fall on something moving behind us.
Dale and Raj are standing back up.
“I can’t knock them out long enough to rip out their hearts,” Alex says. “I’m fading.”
She picks up two bottles from the floor. Shatters the ends and holds them up as weapons. I can’t leave my sister to fend for herself. I push myself off the wall, screaming, and shove Dale down. He slams his head on the corner of a metal Dumpster. I roll on my side and scrape my knees as I stand.