Her inhuman black eyes lock on me. “You know my face.”
The woman at the crossroads. She looks different now, but I know her the way I know the comfort of a sunrise and the power in my blood that allows me to heal. Lady de la Muerte. Goddess of Death and the Mortal Earth’s Dawn.
She moves in slow, careful steps, like she’s on delay. She motions outward with her arm. The sleeves of her dress fall back to her elbows, exposing translucent, white skin. Names appear up and down her arms. His name makes my breath catch in my throat. Maksim Horbachevsky. The names keep scrolling, and there are many I recognize: Ramirez James. Samori Jones. Kassandra Toussaint. Noveno—they scroll too fast for my eyes to keep track of them all.
“Why did you do this?” I demand.
“I do nothing,” she says. “I collect.”
“You can’t take him!”
“That is not for you to decide. That is for the Deos to decide.”
“You ask too much. You have always asked for too much!”
“Watch yourself, Lula Mortiz. The Deos have also blessed you. Do not betray us.”
Lady de la Muerte takes her eyes off me and turns to a boy face down on top of two other bodies. The number twelve is on his letterman jacket.
“Do not betray us,” she repeats as she lifts her spear straight in the air and slams it into the boy’s back. A great light crackles and winds around the spear, absorbing into the metal.
She’s collected his soul.
? ? ?
“She’s awake,” Rose says.
Her eyes are puffy and her round cheeks are flushed. She’s sitting at my bedside, carefully avoiding all the wires I’m hooked up to. Behind her, my dad and Alex snap awake from their sleep.
“Don’t try to sit up,” Alex tells me. There’s a limp in her step and violet bruises dot her neck. They’ve been healing me.
“I heard you,” I say.
“I felt you. When it happened, I mean.” Alex presses her hand on mine and looks over her shoulder nervously.
“Maks,” I say. “Is he okay?”
“Baby,” my mom says, rushing through the open hospital room door. Her skin is covered in angry cuts and fresh bruises. Dad too. I try to think of the healing cantos they’d have had to go through to fix everything wrong with me. “How are you feeling?”
“Alive, thanks to you,” I manage. My tongue is thick and my head throbs at the back of my skull.
“We’ve been healing you slowly since you got out of surgery,” Ma says, gently brushing my arm. “We still have the smaller cuts, but the police want a statement.”
“Let her rest awhile longer,” Dad says softly.
I shut my eyes, tears flooding at the corners.
“What hurts?” Rose asks, looking over my body to see how she can make me comfortable. “I can push the morphine button.”
I shake my head. I don’t want to keep replaying the accident. I don’t want to see Lady de la Muerte’s ghoulish face.
“What about Maks?” I ask again. I didn’t see Lady de la Muerte take him, but I saw his name on her arm and I remember the voices around me when I was being brought in. He won’t live for much longer.
“He’s in a coma,” Dad tells me. He looks older than ever. His gray eyes are heavy with sorrow and the wrinkles on his forehead are like cracks in the sidewalk.
“But he’s alive,” I say, my voice breaking. “Can we heal him?”
There’s a knock at the door followed by a man in brown leather jacket. His cigarette-stained teeth and suspicious eyes mark him as a detective.
“My sister just woke up,” Alex says. With the spine-crushing black boots she’s wearing, she’s almost as tall as the detective. “She needs more time to rest.”
The detective gives my sister a side-eye look, and it’s that gesture which jogs my memory. He’s the same detective that ran the investigation on our “home robbery.” When we returned nearly dead from Los Lagos, no time had passed on this realm. Windows were shattered, feathers burned into the walls, floorboards ripped right out. Yeah, a robbery. There was no other explanation that wouldn’t reveal us or our magical community. But the cops bought it, and the case was closed. Now, Detective Hill is back and his muddy-brown eyes settle on each and every one of us.
“We’re old friends now, aren’t we?” Detective Hill asks, trying for charming but ending at patronizing. He looks my dad up and down, then my mother and sisters. “You’re all pretty banged up, there.”
“We were in one of the accidents on the BQE,” Alex lies.
“It’s a mess out there,” Detective Hill says, running his hands over his thick salt-and-pepper hair as he turns to me. “That’s where you come in, Miss Mortiz.”
“Yes, Detective,” I say, sounding like I swallowed a cheese grater. But the sooner he leaves, the sooner I can check on Maks.
“First of all, I’m glad you’re feeling better. It’s been a hectic couple of days.”
“Days?” I try to sit up but a shooting pain keeps me pinned to the bed. “How long have I been asleep?”
“Four days.”
“Four days?”
“I don’t mean to upset you, Ms. Mortiz,” Detective Hill says. “But there were a number of casualties and we’d like to get to the bottom of what happened. You’re the only survivor who’s awake.”
“The only one?”
Detective Hill nods gravely. “Do you remember anything?”
“How many—” I’m not sure what to ask. How many dead? Alive? But Detective Hill understands what I want to know.
“Five players and three cheerleaders are in comas. Others are out of surgery, but it doesn’t look good. The victims of the pileup behind the bus are still unconscious and the ones who walked away with broken bones say they didn’t see anything. No one has been able to give any statements, and you’re the only soul who can string a sentence together. So you can see my frustration. This accident added fifty bodies to the morgue and I’ve got no answers as to how this happened.”
“Fifty,” I repeat. Then I remember my vision. “Kassandra?”
He flips open a notepad. “Kassandra Toussaint. She goes back into surgery to remove debris from her stomach. Really rare blood type and not enough to go around.”
The machines measuring my heart rate go off like a carnival ride.
“Calm down, nena.” My mom pushes past the detective to get to my side.
I open my mouth, but it’s like I’m breathing through a straw and the rest of me is buried under cement. My mother’s hand is warm, resting behind my neck. At first I think she’s going to use her magic, but then she simply brushes my hair away from my face, blowing cool breath against my eyelids. Something about her presence calms me in ways I can’t explain. I’m not better, not by a long shot, but at least I can breathe again.
“You all right?” Detective Hill asks.
“I don’t care who you are,” Alex says suddenly. “But I’m going to call the doctor to kick you out if you don’t have any more actual questions.”
“Don’t threaten me, Ms. Mortiz. I thought I’d seen the last of your family five months ago, but here we are again. It seems bad luck follows you.” His tongue pushes against his cheek, like he’s digging for food particles stuck in his teeth. Then he mutters, “Curious, isn’t it?”
“I don’t remember much,” I say. “I was sitting with Maks. Everyone was listening to music and dancing, like usual. They were excited for the game.”
“Does the driver always let you stand up and party?”
“What? No, that’s not what I meant.”
“But you said ‘like usual.’”
“Yes, but—” My head aches at the temples.
“You’re twisting her words,” Alex snaps.
“Stay out of this, Miss Mortiz,” he shouts.
My vision blurs with tears and I breathe fast because my heart is racing. Dad tries to step in, but Ma puts an arm on his shoulder, because we know it would be worse if he gets involved.