Juana’s face loomed over me: calavera-white, her footstep soft as a puma’s, appearing out of the gloom. The burning of alcohol in my nostrils. The steady beat of rain on the roof. Blooms of smoke; the fading of Juana’s face. I felt circled by her, trapped. I knew she disliked me, even resented me, that our argument that night was heated, but this—
The glint of steel in the darkness. Once, twice. Again. Pain blooming in my throat, my breast. A sour swoop of vertigo. The sensation of falling; a sickening crack. Darkness broken only by the thunderous drumming, of rain.
I tried to push them away. These were not my memories. Their metallic tang was someone else’s fear. Cast it out, Andrés said. But the claws of the house held me too tightly, their needle tips sinking fang-like into the flesh of my throat. Cracking the fragile casing of my mind and sinking deeper, deeper, deeper . . .
Ana Luisa’s voice snapped through the gloom.
You acted too soon, Juana, she said. This wasn’t the plan.
Distantly, she came into focus over me, disgust carved into her face’s every line. She loathed me, I knew.
We cannot dig with the flooding, she said. It is impossible. Where will we hide her?
Juana materialized in the darkness. Her bronze halo of hair; a splatter of red bright on one cheek.
The north wing’s collapsed wall, she said, her tone flat and determined. I was fixing it today, she added. The mortar is still wet.
Distantly, I saw Ana Luisa nod curtly, and heard her voice; I could not make out words. I was falling, falling . . .
I struck stone. I was being dragged by two people, one hauling each of my arms, flagstones peeling away the skin of my cheek. Heavy panting; the scrape of brick on brick. Brick on brick on brick . . .
Juana, Juana. I know what you are, Juana. I know you slaughtered Rodolfo, Juana. I will rip your throat out with my teeth. Crack you like eggs. Grind your wretched bones in my jaws. Tear your flesh to shreds. Juana, Juana . . .
I rocked back and forth, sobbing silently. I was hallucinating. In the broad light of day, I was losing my mind. When the shadows grew long, when the sun set . . . I did not know if I had the strength to survive another night of the house.
Voices echoed through the gloom. Men’s voices. Real, mortal voices, with cadences that rose and fell with breathing, with echoes that began and stopped.
And Juana’s voice.
A sudden flood of light blinded me; I jerked away from it, startled. Unable to catch myself with my hands bound, I nearly lost my balance. The caudillo’s men had wrenched open the door. One seized me by my bound wrists and hauled me to my feet. If they saw my face streaked with tears, if they saw how I shook with the terror of the mad, they gave no indication that they cared. They led me down the hall, closer and closer to the chill of the north wing. My heart hammered against my ribs. My God, if they were taking me there, I should beg them to shoot me now. I could not face that cold, the glint of red in the dark . . .
They turned to the stairs.
I dug in my heels; they yanked me forward. Pain burned dully in my arms and shoulders.
“Where are you taking me?” I asked.
They did not reply. I discovered soon enough: Juana waited by the door of the study, my ring of keys in her hand. She tapped her foot impatiently.
“You know I didn’t do it.”
“That’s quite enough from you,” she said. “I will not tolerate further insult to my brother’s memory.”
She made a motion as if to wipe a tear from her eye and turned to the caudillo’s men. “She’s mad, you know,” she said in a voice so sweet I wouldn’t have recognized it as hers if I hadn’t been watching her move her lips. “Ask Padre Vicente, he knows the truth. She thinks this house is possessed.”
They couldn’t believe this act. Did they not know Juana Solórzano? She was no victim. She was rotten, as rotten as the evil that blackened this house.
“Best step away, Do?a Juana,” one of the men said, a tone of concern in his voice.
Juana obliged, tucking a lock of her hair behind her ear. Her hair was dirty, yes, but her clothing so clean.
Though the door to the bedchamber was closed, I could still smell butchery. In my mind’s eye, all I could see was blood. Staining the floorboards, the walls. The sheets. My copal censer was in there, and candles—things I would need for the night ahead, but I could not brave it. I turned my face away for fear I would vomit again.
Juana was a monster. A gilded monster with my keys on her hip, looking beatifically at me as the caudillo’s men turned to leave the room.
I held her gaze until the door shut, picturing her covered in red, Rodolfo’s blood dripping down her face, splattering her clothes. I wanted to scream.
Slam.
I flinched. The tongue of the lock slid shut. A jangle of keys; the sound of footsteps descending the staircase.
I was alone.
A plate of cold tortillas was left on a table. My stomach growled. What if they were poisoned? I wouldn’t put it beyond Juana to do so. I glared at the food. Even if it weren’t, I couldn’t stomach the thought of food so near to where Rodolfo had died. Not when the smell of blood still hung in the air, drifting in from the next room.
I crossed to the far side of the study, away from the door to the bedchamber. The rug was damp beneath my bare feet. It hadn’t been earlier this morning. I was barefoot then too—I would have noticed.
I squinted up to the ceiling. Was there a leak? If there was, it was significant: the rug was soaked, the floor on this side of the room was dark and slick with . . .
I inhaled, and my nose crinkled at the strength of the smell. Alcohol. It reminded me of the night Juana and I drank mezcal, when I woke with a sour headache and knowledge that something was wrong in the house.
How long ago that seemed.
I frowned. Rodolfo had not drunk mezcal, as far as I knew—though, then again, I did not know.
And I never would.
He was gone.
It was a strange realization. It had not struck me that morning, when I found him, nor at any point during the day thus far. Judging from the color of the light coming in from the western-facing windows, it was late afternoon. Hours had passed. And still—
Rodolfo was dead.
I had cared for him, when we met. I was hungry for him and all he stood for. That hunger soured to fear and disgust in the last weeks, as I learned of his cruelty and his hypocrisy. But he was dead. As dead as my dream for a home.
Now what awaited me? Prison? An asylum? Execution, for my supposed crime? My heartbeat quickened at the thought. The vapor of the spilled alcohol was making me dizzy, but at least it masked the smell of Rodolfo’s death.
His chest lifting; his head turning. The jerk of his lips and the sharp movements of his glassy eyes . . . these were imprinted in my mind, burned there in a way more powerful than any nightmare. Andrés and the caudillo and José Mendoza staring at me, completely unable to see or hear.
Tell him the truth, that strangled voice said.
The truth was Juana killed him. Juana killed anyone who stood in her path. And she had won. With her crocodile tears and authority as an hacendado’s daughter, she had won. She told the men I was mad.