Alex stands back and looks between Rose and me. “What?”
“Rose conjured light.”
Rose walks around us and sits on the sofa. She takes off her glasses and examines a long crack in one of the lenses before placing them on the table. Her round cheeks are pink from running back and forth, and there’s a layer of soot on her palms. She rubs a hand on the knee of her jeans, darkening the denim until her skin comes away clean.
“How?” Alex asks.
“I said I don’t know,” Rose shouts.
Nova walks in, sits on the edge of the sofa, and puts his hand on Rose’s shoulder. In a way, it feels like he belongs here. “It’ll be okay, kid. We’ll figure it out.”
“We need Mom and Dad,” Alex says. “I tried to call them but got voice mail.”
“Rose,” I say, “has this ever happened before?”
She stares at her hands. “I’m not sure. During the healing canto in the hospital I felt something strange. It was like, when I touched Alex, my power was as strong as hers.”
“Have you ever heard of something like that?” I ask Nova.
“No, but right before Rose conjured, I was trying to access my powers as well. The casimuerto was on top of you, and I was getting ready to blast it, but then Rose did it first.”
“I grabbed on to you,” Rose says, balling her hands into fists. “Just for a moment to steady myself because we ran so fast. I put my hand on your arm. It was this surge, like my whole body was—”
“Lit up like Christmas,” Nova finishes. “That’s what I feel like when I use my power.”
“Try it out,” Alex tells Nova. “Light it up.”
“I’m not a circus act.”
Alex shrugs. Nova looks like he’s about to protest some more, but then looks at Rose and his features soften. He holds out his hand and conjures three balls of light that flitter around the room.
“No, I’m a seer.” Rose shakes her head. “That’s what I’ve always been. This is just a one-time thing because I wanted to save Lula. Just leave it, okay?”
“But, Rosie—” Alex presses on.
“I said leave it!”
Nova extinguishes his conjured light.
“It’s fine,” I say, pulling Rose closer. “We don’t have to figure this out now.”
Alex holds her hands up in defeat, but I know she isn’t going to drop this completely. “You’re right. You saved Lula, and that’s what matters.”
But Alex gives me a look that says this isn’t over.
“Wait,” I say, looking around the room. “Where’s Maks?”
“He freaked out and went full casimuerto,” Nova says.
“I think it’s the hunger,” Alex says. “Frederik put him in their containment unit.”
“What?” I shout, but she places her hands on my arms and shakes me.
“He’s fine now. They got him something to eat.”
And I swallow the choking doubt in my throat when I say, “I need to see him.”
? ? ?
“Lula,” Maks calls out for me behind a glass wall. He sits precariously on the edge of narrow metal bench. Seeing him this way, seeing him at all sends a current through my body. How could I have run from him the moment I was too afraid?
He presses his hands on the glass, leaving red prints. His eyelids flutter closed, hiding the pale blue of his eyes. He slumps down to the floor and whatever they used to keep him sedated knocks him to sleep.
“What have I done?” I ask myself, but I realize I’ve said it out loud. McKay is the only one in the holding area with me.
“You wanted to save him.” McKay lifts one shoulder and drops it. “You might possess magic, but you’re still human.”
Everything from the last couple of days makes my chest tighten, and I can tell the elixir is wearing off because the pain in my abdomen returns. “I’m going to end this,” I say.
“Let me guess, we throw you in the volcano in which you were forged?” His lips don’t smile, but his coffee-brown eyes are bright, like there’s a well of hope inside of him. “It’s a fight against magic, witchling. The biggest sacrifice is always the answer.”
At that I have to laugh because I’ve always been so confident in my knowledge of magic. Turns out I don’t know anything.
“In The Accursed Book,” I tell him, “it says the only way to stop the hordes of casimuertos is to destroy the heart of the source with a divine weapon. They’re tethered to me. La Muerte says there’s another way, but I’m no closer to finding her spear than I am to finding a cure for this.”
I both hate and appreciate the sympathy in his eyes as he sighs deeply.
“I’ve seen people come back from worse,” he says. “Frederik was turned into a vampire by his own sister six hundred years ago. Took him three centuries and he nearly lost his soul, but he killed her before she could set the world on fire. Your own sister gave up her magic for her girlfriend and still saved you all plus all of Los Lagos. I went vegan and I’d thought I’d never come back from a steak taco bender. I’m telling you, witchling. You’ll get through this. The THA helps people, just like you and your family do. If there’s another way to save you, we’ll find it.”
“Will he be okay here?” I ask, looking back to where Maks is asleep.
“We have two stars on Yelp. Most of our prisoners don’t really like the cells.” McKay rings his arm around my neck and leads me back to my family. “Come on, Lula. The night is young, and there’s a whole mess of magic to unravel.”
26
La Ola swam across the seas a thousand times,
the oceans too wide and not wide enough.
—Tales of the Deos, Felipe Thomás San Justinio
McKay and Frederik bring out a spread of cold pizza and chips, but I can’t stomach much of it. I guzzle soda because it’s the only thing that doesn’t make me want to retch.
We’re back in the surveillance room with the eye on the door, and the monitors are being closely watched for new movement. For every red casimuerto dot that vanishes, another one pops up somewhere.
Members of the Thorne Hill Alliance walk in and out, seeking orders from McKay and Frederik before heading out to help hunt casimuertos. They steer clear of us. Though I suppose if there were strangers in my house, I’d be wary too.
“Mom and Dad just texted,” Alex says, tucking her phone in her back pocket. “They’ll be home in the morning.”
I’m dreading seeing my parents, especially my mother. But at the same time, I long to see her just to hear her voice, even if she’ll be yelling.
One of the hologram displays has a live feed of the holding cells. Maks is still knocked out. But Derek and the other two casimuertos are banging on the walls, leaving their bloody handprints everywhere. There’s a tray flipped over on the floor in a clear rejection of the cow hearts Frederik procured.
“How can you eat at a time like this?” Alex asks Nova, watching in amazement as he pounds on his chest and belches.
“With my mouth?” he responds.
“I guess the cow hearts aren’t working,” Rose says.
“Neither did the synthetic hearts,” McKay says, pulling up another hologram.
“The hunters gave you a heart before,” Nova says with his mouth full. “Why can’t they do that again?”
The hair on my arms stands up. “I don’t know who it was from.”
“More of a reason to act fast,” McKay says. “We have only one lead on your lady of death.”
He uploads Alex’s files of The Accursed Book onto the screen so we can study it. He keeps rubbing his temples as if the answer will manifest from the friction, but all it does is upset the vampire even more.
“Go over everything again,” McKay tells me.
There’s a collective groan of frustration, but I do it, retracing my steps from the very beginning with Alex’s glamour on my scars and ending with my last visit from La Muerte. I can’t help but trace the length of my scars across the side of my face as I realize this is the first time I’ve thought about them in days.
“If there’s one thing I’ve learned,” Frederik says once I’m done, “it’s that gods never say what they mean. They don’t see things the way humans do. Every divine text is a human interpretation of forces they can’t even begin to understand.”