“Will you let me talk?” I shout at Alex and Detective Hill. “Yes, everyone was extra excited. It was the final game and most of the team are seniors. Coach kept telling everyone to sit, but they didn’t listen. The next thing I knew, the bus swerved and everything turned upside down.”
I shut my eyes but can’t stop the images from flooding my mind. Blood and flesh and glass and bones and a woman dressed in black. “When I came to, Maks was trying to keep me conscious. Then I woke up here.”
“Thank you, Ms. Mortiz. You’ve been most helpful. I hope you have a speedy recovery.” Detective Hill looks at Alex. “See? That wasn’t so bad, was it?”
I nod and we wait in silence as he slowly makes his way out the door.
“One last thing.” Detective Hill turns around. “The scars on your face. They’re older than the accident. How’d that happen?”
“We used to have a dog,” I say, touching the claw marks raised with scar tissue. “Rabies.”
We’re locked in a staring match. I’m afraid that if I look away first, I’ll be admitting to the lie. Who we are is cloaked in so much secrecy that when it comes time for sinmagos to believe us, we’re too suspect. That’s why our kind doesn’t go to hospitals. We don’t seek the police. We get justice ourselves, save our own, protect our magic.
I win our staring match, and it’s a small victory. He looks away, eyes heavy with dark circles and distrust. He starts to leave, shaking his head as he says, “Shame. Such a pretty face.”
5
La Mama cried and cried, waiting for El Papa
alone, with no one but El Cielo,
who loved her, who greeted her with arms wide open.
—The Creation of the Deos, Antonietta Mortiz de la Paz
My grandmother always said that our magic was about belief. It’s also about intent. The first time I tried to heal, I had no idea what I was doing. I was six and a bird had fallen out of a nest in our backyard. The power slumbering in my body woke, pure and innocent. I just knew that I wanted the bird to be okay. I reached out with my power, unsure of the primordial magic that cycled between us, until the sparrow stretched its wings against my palms and took off into the sky.
I was always glad to be a healer like my mom. Rose has the Gift of the Veil. Alex is an encantrix, blessed with all the gifts of the Deos. Dad once had the power to conjure storms. Our power is what we make it, but we all have our limits. At least, that’s what I was taught.
Now, as my family refuses to heal Maks, I start to wonder if perhaps we set the limits ourselves.
I can barely stand, but one way or another, I’m going to get to Maks. I use the rail attached to my bed for balance.
“Absolutely not.” My mother blocks my door. Her black curls are wrapped in a colorful scarf, and her dress is a bright blue—the color of La Mama and eternal hope. My mother holds a white quartz prex in one hand, and the prayer beads rattle when she gesticulates and shouts. “You’re not strong enough to heal the broken wing on a cockroach, let alone the kinds of injuries that Maks sustained.”
“Maks is not a cockroach!” I yell.
“Fine. Butterfly, take your pick. My point stands.” I can see in her eyes that she’s wavering between thanking the Deos I’m alive and wanting to throttle me herself. “His body is too weak for even the doctors to try to save his life, and they’ve tried, Lula.”
“We can do it together,” I say, foolishly hopeful.
“You didn’t have enough fun almost dying?” Alex asks. She leans against the wall in front of me, and Dad stays close to the foot of my bed, boxing me in. “You ready to try harder?”
“But you all healed me,” I point out.
“You’re family,” Alex says plainly. “Maks broke up with you.”
“So, if he hadn’t, you’d try?” I rake my fingers through my hair, my scalp throbbing painfully. “You literally gave up your power to save Rishi from dying in Los Lagos. Do you remember that? You did it even though it could’ve cost you your entire family. Maks was there for me when I couldn’t talk to any of you. But I’m not surprised you don’t get it, Alex. Everything bad that’s ever happened to me has been because of you!”
Alex presses her hand to her stomach and gasps like I’ve struck her.
“Don’t talk to your sister like that,” Dad says.
“You haven’t been part of this family for seven years,” I tell him, regret twisting into my heart the moment the words leave my lips, but I can’t seem to stop. “You don’t get to tell me how to talk to my sister.”
“Lula!” Alex’s brown eyes follow a path to where Rose sits by the window, playing with the arms of the stuffed animal on her lap. She bought it in the gift shop downstairs, a bright “Get well soon” stitched into a silk heart. Looking at her sitting there, caught in the middle of this fight, my fight, makes tears sting my eyes.
“I’m sorry,” I say. The ache in my legs wins, and I get back into bed.
“Maks is in a coma,” Mom says, trying her best to remain calm. “The kind of canto we’d have to perform would be dangerous to more than our family. We might as well turn ourselves over to the Thorne Hill Alliance or walk up to a pack of hunters.”
“Your mother’s right,” Dad tells me, his eyes mirrors to mine. “The hunters are out there and have little love for our kind. I wish I could take away your pain. But I can’t.”
When I was little, Dad used to tell us stories about being young and outwitting hunters. He said they fought with silver swords and sprung from the shadows. To me they were just stories. I would face the Alliance and the hunters if it meant making Maks better.
“But we would be saving a life,” I say. “I’ve read the Book of Cantos dozens of times, and I know there has to be something in there that can help without upsetting the balance of things.”
“We have laws too,” Mom says, pacing the length of my bed and rubbing the quartz beads in her hands so hard I fear she’ll have nothing but pebbles soon. “This far gone, I don’t know who you’d get back, but it might not be Maks.”
“Brujas who break the order of things always pay a price,” my father says.
I can’t—won’t—listen to this. “Then I call a meeting of the High Circle of Brooklyn.”
“No,” Mom says, a deep ache in her voice. “I can already tell you they’re not going to help.”
“How do you know?”
“Because we asked them to heal you,” Rose says. “They wouldn’t. That’s why the recoil is so bad for us. We channeled our power through Alex, and then into Ma, because she’s the healer. Even with Alex’s magic you’re not a hundred percent.”
“But the High Circle is family,” I say. Maybe not all of them, but our aunt Lady is the Alta Bruja. Valeria is Rose’s godmother. The rest grew up with my parents, fought alongside them in their youth.
“They’re afraid,” Alex says. “There’s too much heat. Between the regular cops and the Thorne Hill Alliance sniffing around—”
“Why would they be sniffing around?” I ask. “Brujas aren’t part of the Alliance.”
Alex shakes her head. “One of the boys who died was related to one of their members. They want to make sure there was no foul play.”
“I want to see the High Circle,” I say, my thoughts racing to form a plan. “I want them to look into my eyes and tell me there is nothing we can do.”
I’m afraid my mother is going to yell at me again. I’m afraid Dad is going to walk out that door and never come back. I’m afraid I won’t be able to get through the rest of the day.
Instead, my mom places her hand on my face, tracing her thumb along the scars on my cheek. “If that’s what you need to hear, then I’ll make the call.”
? ? ?
After our parents leave to get coffee, my sisters stay. Rose is wheeling herself around in the chair a nurse brought in case I wanted fresh air. Alex flips through a stack of newspapers, searching for signs of anything strange in even the smallest headlines. She hasn’t spoken a word since our parents left, and I feel a tinge of guilt after the mean things I said to her.
I clear my throat and look toward the door to make sure the coast is clear. “I have a plan.”
She squints in my direction. “I don’t like that face.”