“Alex doesn’t have many friends.” The traitor who birthed me pleads my case. “It’ll be nice to have some young blood.”
I want to cut off my head and add it to the mounted wall. They can label it “Head of a Friendless Girl.”
“It’s okay if you’re busy,” I say. What’s more embarrassing than your mother trying to recruit friends for you?
“It’s okay,” Nova says, walking toward us on his way out. “I’ll probably be out on deliveries. But I got you, Ms. Carmen. I’ll have Angela throw in some extra goodies just for ya’ll.”
My magic swirls at the base of my stomach and I yell at myself internally to quell it. He takes my mom’s hand and thanks her once again. Then he stops right in front of me. The studs in his ears twinkle like faraway stars. He lowers his face, and I don’t know if he’s going to hug me or kiss me on the cheek good-bye, but either way, I feel like a deer in headlights when he smiles. It seems sincere. Although, what do I know about boys?
He whispers, “I’m sure you’ll look beautiful surrounded by your dead.”
Seashells chime when he leaves.
I look around the store to see if that was weird for anyone else, but Mom and Lady are already deep in conversation. Rose is still chatting with the mounted jackalope. Lula’s on the phone, probably with Maks.
My mom pays for our ceremonial supplies. The blood of the guide we have to get somewhere else.
I think of Nova saying, You’d be foolish to try.
Except, I’d be foolish not to. Nova is wrong. It’s not like getting my period or having a growth spurt. It’s a choice, like my dad leaving, like Mom raising three girls by herself, like me studying hard to get far, far away. It hits me like a cold wave. I can choose to not have a Deathday. Can’t I?
As we leave Miss Trix and drive to the exotic pet store, I repeat his words over and over. My mom picks out a parakeet with powder-blue feathers and a yellow part in the center shaped like a heart. I rest her cage on my lap on the way home. She flutters restlessly the entire time. A part of me wants to open the cage, roll down the window, set her free. But I don’t. I hold the cage tighter.
For the longest time I feared this magic would get loose, and now it has. Everyone keeps telling me that this is a normal part of being a bruja. That I can’t stop this from happening.
And for the first time, I wonder: What if I can?
7
Protect me from the living,
protect me from the dead.
—Rezo de El Guardia, Protector of All Living Things
My answers are going to be in the Book of Cantos. As much as I hate to admit it, Nova is right. If there are hexes that give unfaithful lovers groin gangrene and potions that melt warts in the blink of an eye, then there has to be something to get rid of my powers. What will my family say? Lula and my mom, they don’t see themselves the way I do. They see themselves as beings of a higher calling. Chosen. All I see is their bruises from the recoil. It has to end somewhere, and it has to end with me.
Rose watches me curiously on the ride home. I wonder if she can see my intent. But as Mom drives down the Brooklyn streets, Rose shakes her head and keeps watching the night fall.
“Alejandra, are you even listening?” Lula says.
“What?” I ask.
“I’m just saying how cute it is to see you flirting.”
I scoff. “I wasn’t flirting.”
“It’s okay, mi’jita,” my mom says. She turns on her signal and makes the right onto our street. “You don’t have to be embarrassed. He seems like a perfectly nice young brujo.”
There’s no use arguing with them. I lean my head against the cool glass window. It helps the throbbing pain that starts at my temples and travels down my neck.
“Why is it so dark out?” Lula asks. “It’s not even five.”
Then Lula shouts as a dark shape slams into her side of the car. My mom swerves to the left, narrowly missing two cars at the intersection. Rose knocks into me, and I hold her in case it happens again.
“What the hell was that?” I shout.
“I don’t know.” Mom white-knuckles the wheel. She turns back, but the street is empty. We make a hard left into our driveway, crashing into the garbage bins. She shuts off the engine; her keys rattle in her hands. The streetlights down the block explode one by one. Long shadows move across the quiet neighborhood houses.
“Control yourself, Encantrix.” But even as Lula says it, she knows I’m not doing this.
“It isn’t me!”
“Get in the house,” my mom shouts at us. She opens the glove compartment and riffles through the junk until she finds a flashlight.
The street is so quiet all you can hear is our heavy breathing and quick steps. Rose grabs Lula’s hand and I grab Rose’s. We start to run up the narrow driveway to get to the kitchen entrance. I hold out my hand for my mom, but she’s still standing at the car, shining a flashlight at the side where we were hit. I let go of Rose and go back to my mom.
“I said get in the house!” She starts to push me away, but I’ve already seen it. The car is dented. A black substance, like moss, covers the damage.
“What is that?” I ask.
Something lands on top of the car. In the dark, I can’t see its face, but I can hear the scratch of metal and snap of teeth. The smell of a thousand corpses lives in its mouth. It breathes me in, like a hound on a scent.
The outdoor lights turn on. Lula and Rose are banging on the windows, screaming for us to run inside. The creature hisses at the flash of light and jumps back into the shadow before I can see the rest of it. My mom grabs my wrist and pulls me all the way into the house. We slam the door and bolt it shut.
“What’s happening?” Lula shouts, pacing circles in the kitchen.
Rose presses her head against the wall beside the sink, rubbing her temples over and over. “We have to go.”
I turn to my mom. “What is that thing?”
She doesn’t answer me. Her dark eyes are fixed on the door lock as she mumbles a prayer to La Mama.
“Mom!” I’ve never shouted at my mother. Not ever. But I have to so she’ll snap out of it.
“I think it’s a maloscuro. They’re shadow demons.” She squeezes the bridge of her nose, like she’s trying to remember more details but fails. “I need the Book.”
“It’s right here,” Lula says, flipping through the Book of Cantos. “Maloscuro. Once they were brujos who broke the Mortal Laws of the Deos. El Papa broke them until they were nothing but charred skin and bone. Yet he didn’t let them die. They lived, dragging themselves on hunched backs and broken limbs, holding on to shadows. A circle of brujas banished them to Los Lagos, where they could no longer harm the mortal realm. They’re attracted to great power. Light can ward them off but…”
“But?”
Lula look up at me from the page. “It cuts off.”
“These were the things Uncle Julio warned were under our beds?” I ask. “How sweet.”
“That’s not funny,” Lula snaps. She slams the Book shut and points at the door. “That thing is still out there. We have to do something! We can’t just sit around.”