A Fierce and Subtle Poison (16 page)

Twenty-three

THE FIRE CAUGHT
Isabel’s blanket, singeing its edges and causing a toxic stink. Instead of beating out the flames, Isabel gazed warily at the smoldering fabric the way someone might gaze upon an unwelcome person standing in her doorway.

When it became clear Isabel wasn’t moving, I slung my arms around her waist and lifted her near-weightless body. Pain spiked in my head. I threw out my left hand to brace myself against the wall, and something large and sharp, the exposed end of an old nail, punctured my palm. Fresh blood burst from my skin.

The front door was swinging madly on its remaining hinge. I grabbed it with my bloody hand to keep it steady and carried Isabel into the merciless rain. Outside, the winds came from every direction, causing the tall grass and Isabel’s hair to whip and twirl. Isabel started yelling in Spanish, even though her voice was no match for sounds of the storm.

I placed her down on her feet. She swayed slightly but then regained her balance.

“Wait here!” I shouted.

My mission was to find the scooter, but the smoke and rain and flakes of ash from the cabin made that mission hard. Staying upright, let alone moving forward, was nearly impossible. My legs almost immediately fatigued as I trudged through shin-deep pools of water and muck. I was dizzy and thirsty. Nearby, the cabin pulsed with a wet heat.

A gust of wind plowed into me from behind, spun me one hundred and eighty degrees, and threw me onto my knees. I sucked rainwater off the ground and was reminded of my insignificance.

I hauled myself to standing, turned, and fought the wall of wind until I finally found the shed. The door was missing, and I could see the scooter leaning against a metal table on which rusty tools had been carelessly left and were now rattling as if they were alive and angry about it. Isabel was right about the roof. The rain poured freely through gaps created by missing or rotted boards.

I dragged the scooter out of the shed and back into the field, climbed on, and twisted the key in the ignition. It didn’t catch. I counted off five seconds and tried again. Nothing.

I offered a desperate prayer to the goddess who makes the storms. I couldn’t remember her name and hoped she wouldn’t mind. I told her I was sorry that she was angry. I was sorry for men like my father and Dr. Ford, men who come to the island only to tear things down, build things that don’t belong, and make girls disappear. Maybe she was upset with me. I was no saint. I’d done some shitty things in my life, but I was trying to do better.

“
Would you please give me a break
?
” I cried out.

I twisted the key in the ignition again. It caught, and I cried out in triumph. Clicking on the single headlight, I released the hand brake and lunged forward, the wheels of the tires spitting up mud and grass behind me.

Isabel was where I’d left her, standing in the field and struggling to keep the blanket around her shoulders while the wind fought to claim it. When she saw me coming, she wiped the hair out of her face and motioned to the cabin, which had started to sway. The nails and windowpanes squealed loudly against the strain of the heat and expanding wood.

The wind won, as it does, ripping Isabel’s blanket of leaves from her hands and carrying it high in the sky. Isabel held her arms up, her fingers splayed desperately.

“Forget it!” I yelled. “Just get on!”

I slowed down enough for her to climb onto the scooter, and together we burst through the field. Just before we entered the dense mass of trees, I turned to look over my shoulder and saw the cabin lift from its foundation. For a long second, the fragile structure seemed to hover, perfectly intact, no more than a foot off the ground. Then it crashed down into a heap of splintered wood and rusted metal. The wind screamed its victory.

Isabel wailed and buried her head between my shoulder blades. I turned to refocus my efforts on getting us through the forest in one piece. It seemed unlikely. Above our heads, the rain hit the wide leaves of the palms and then poured down onto our heads in thick streams. Beneath us, the ground was more uneven than it had been out in the field. The path we’d been on a few hours ago had turned to sludge. The wind hurled palm fronds into the side of my face. They stung like slaps.

“Where do we go?” I shouted back over my shoulder.

“Back to the main road! Then left toward Rincón.”

What should’ve taken minutes seemed to last hours. If the goddess had somehow magically started Rico’s scooter, she must have dusted off her hands and decided that was enough for the day.

All I saw were trees and mud and water. The single headlight didn’t illuminate shit. Every time the front tire caught a root or a rock, my entire body tensed in anticipation of a blowout. I tried not to think about missing a turn and wrapping us around the trunk of a tree. I imagined someone years from now finding our sun-bleached skeletons alongside the rusted and mangled carcass of a scooter. The stories people would tell about us would pale in comparison to the truth. What a sad thing it would be to simply disappear in this forest.

The mud road beneath the scooter’s tires eventually changed to a gravelly slush, and then, once we finally turned onto the main highway, to slick asphalt.

The rain still poured down from the gunmetal clouds that swirled and cracked, and there was paltry traction between Rico’s balding tires and the wet road. We drove with the current, with the rain rushing along with us back to its source: that sea into which I’d always wanted to disappear. But not today.

I gripped the handlebars, bracing for the hissing winds that seemed bent on sending us spiraling into the sky. My ears were ringing, probably because I was clamping my jaw shut with such force that I was surprised my teeth didn’t shatter. More than once I had to remind myself to exhale after anxiously holding my breath until my vision had started to blur.

But neither the unrelenting weather nor the awful conditions of the road distracted me from the fact that Isabel, without the protection of her leaves, was fading fast. Her body felt like a wet sack flung against my back.

All I could do was keep driving. The landscape tore by, dark and frenzied.

A few miles down the road we sped past a reflective sign announcing we’d arrived in Isabela, a town originally named for the queen of Spain, now known for its beaches and cockfights. As we passed the dark town, only a few lights twinkled from buildings far off in the distance. Like San Juan, Isabela was another sea-facing city where people were used to sealing themselves into their homes to wait patiently for the world to find its balance again. They knew the score. Storms come; storms go.

For a long time the road was empty, except for our little scooter, the rain coming down in sheets, the angry wind, and the spinning gray clouds. Eventually, we passed another sign, this one for the town of Aguadilla, and I felt Isabel shift behind me. She tugged on my jacket with her thin fingers, trying to pull us closer. I leaned back, burning and shivering as her wet lips grazed my ear. She swallowed and took a couple of breaths in preparation to speak.

“Turn . . . here.” There was an extended pause between the two words. “To the right.”

I did as she asked, maneuvering the scooter onto a barely visible road that led into a thicket of trees.

I let out the throttle and shot forward. With the thin stretch of road in front of us bubbling like furiously boiling water, there was no way I could’ve seen the spikes.

Twenty-four

THE TIRES BLEW
out in two loud, successive pops, causing the scooter to shake violently as if suddenly possessed. Despite my best efforts to keep a hold of the handlebars, I flew into the air and landed face-first in the mud. I heard a sharp crack as my right wrist twisted under my body at an unnatural angle. I cried out, my mouth filling with brackish water, as I started to float and move along with the current. With my good hand, I made a fist and slammed it through the water and into the mud to keep from being washed away.

I crawled to my knees and took several gasping breaths as I tested the mobility of each of the fingers of my right hand. Thin ribbons of pain shot all the way up into my jaw.

Despite that, I managed to stand, disoriented, in a wide-leg stance. In the middle of the road a few yards back, the scooter was on its side, crushed. Though its front and back tires were pulverized down to the rims, the motor was still despondently firing. What a champ.

A few feet beyond the scooter, a piece of metal stuck up from the ground, then another right next to it, then another.

I looked down the road in the opposite direction but couldn’t see anything aside from rain and trees.

“Isabel!”

A thin, pale hand shot up from the other side of the road. Cradling my lame arm, I trudged forward. Isabel was crouching in the underbrush near the trunk of a massive tree. As I approached, she stood abruptly.

“Watch it!”

Her arm was outstretched, and around her wrist were two thick leaves, secured in knots. Others were shoved under the straps of her tank top, close to her heart. Despite a line of shallow cuts running across her cheek, Isabel was, of all things, smiling. It was a wan smile on a tired face, but a smile nonetheless. She held up her other wrist, around which were the same leaves tied in the same way.

“Dumb cane!” she exclaimed.

“So, you’ll be all right?” I asked.

Isabel stepped out of the underbrush and into the road. “For now. How about you?”

“I’m okay.” In an attempt to mask the pain, I bit down on the inside of my lip. “Our ride’s wrecked, though.”

Isabel’s eyes shifted to the remains of Rico’s scooter, then to the road ahead.

“So we run,” she said.

So we ran, or at least tried to run, down a road turned to river in the driving rain. I kept my wrist close to my body, because when I let it swing down by my side the pain was unbearable.

Eventually, we turned a corner. Up ahead was the glow of a faint light. The sight of it caused both of us to run faster, kicking up the thick mud and water under our feet.

Soon, what had been just a small light took the shape of a white, luminescent square: a window. Something moved across it. While it could’ve been a palm frond or a coconut falling from one of the trees, I was hoping it was a girl.

The cabin that eventually came into focus was bigger than the one we’d just seen lifted up into the sky and then thrown to the ground. It was sturdier, cobbled together out of large, round stones and bolstered by wooden beams. Rather than standing unprotected in the middle of a field and exposed to the elements, this one was nestled in a kind of alcove, surrounded on three sides by dense trees.

In the road, maybe forty yards in front of the house, was a light blue Mercedes-Benz, the old kind with the hubcaps that boasted the Mercedes symbol and matched the car’s color. As we neared it, Isabel slowed to a stop, taking in the house, the trees, the car.

“He must’ve passed us while we were back at the other cabin. I don’t think the police are coming this way, or else he wouldn’t have put down the spikes. Those were just for us.”

“Maybe, but Mara Lopez tracked me down at some random church in the dead of night, so I doubt a rainstorm and some spikes are going to stop her.”

Isabel dug into her back pocket and held out the damp and mud-splattered note that the woman from Mayagüez had given her.

“Take this,” she said.

“Why? What am I supposed to do with it?”

“Put it with the others. That’s all I did. People need something to put their hope in.” Isabel swallowed and nodded her head as if convincing herself that she was doing the right thing. Stepping forward, she shoved the note into the front pocket of my jeans. “You be the wishing fountain now.”

Without waiting for a reply, Isabel took off toward the house. As she neared one of the front windows, she crouched to peer through it. I took my place beside her. The inside of the house was dark, except for a couple of lanterns burning on small bedside tables. Through the muted light all I could make out were the faint outlines of two beds, much like those in the other cabin, and across the room from those, a long table about the height of a kitchen counter. Everything else was fogged up, dark, and indistinct.

“Lucas,” Isabel hissed. “
Mira
. Look!” She pointed at the front door. A padlock the size of my fist hung from the handle. Isabel gave it a tug. “He’s nearby or else he would’ve taken his car.”

“I’ll go around the side,” I said, “and see if I can find something we can use to smash the lock.”

I scanned the dark ground around the perimeter of the house. The rain rolled off the roof and steadily dripped from the eaves onto my shoulder. The runoff found a rhythm. It hit harder—more urgently. Then, a blast of cold hit the back of my neck.

I spun around and saw the girl; she was at least six feet away, partially hidden in the shadows of the trees. Her feet were bare and covered in sand; her skin was concrete-gray. She was wearing a pale, apple-green sundress. Its hem fell to her ankles. The wind continued to swirl, but the fabric of her dress didn’t rustle; the ends of her hair weren’t picked up and tossed around. She was soaked even though the rain seemed to bend and part around her.

She wasn’t Marisol. She wasn’t Sara.

“Water.” Her voice was a chorus. “He’s by the water.”

The girl took a single step forward, toward me, away from the trees. Isabel called out my name, and my head whipped toward the sound. I felt the disappeared girl come close. Her breath was cold and smelled like cinnamon. I would ask her questions:
What’s your name? Who misses you?
But when I turned back toward her, there were several feet between us again.

She opened her mouth. Isabel’s voice came from it: “Lucas!”

I took a stagger-step forward before turning and running to the front of the house, where Isabel was attacking the door with a large, jagged rock. She struck the lock once, twice, and on the third time it broke from the wood frame. The wind caught the door, and it immediately swung inward, spraying rainwater into the dark room. Pieces of paper scattered, and small, unidentifiable objects skittered across the floor. Something large and solid tipped onto its side and rolled across a hard surface. For a split second, it was still. Then: the firecracker-pop of glass breaking.

Isabel and I tumbled inside, and I pushed the door closed behind us. Because of the broken lock, I had to stand with my back against the wood. In the relative quiet, a brew of smells hit my nose: ammonia, bleach, dried sweat on unwashed skin, the unmistakably sweet stench of rot.

“We’re too late,” Isabel declared.

I nearly conceded, but then the sound of fabric rustling came from one of the beds, followed by the gasp of a child startled out of sleep.

“Hello?” I called out.

I dragged a squat table in front of the door to hold it in place. Grabbing a lit lantern from the ground, I held it up to the closest of the twin beds. The head of a small dark-haired girl emerged from underneath the covers.

“Celia?”

I rushed forward, but Isabel smacked her palm against my chest. “Don’t touch her!” She dropped her hand and leaned in. “You don’t know what she’s like anymore.”

What she’s
like
: near death, full of poison, a small and fragile monster. Just like Isabel.

I approached Celia, scanning her face and what I could see of her arms for red rashes or white blisters, but there was no sign of her being sick or hurt. Leaves weren’t shoved under her bedcovers, pressed against her skin, or threaded through her hair.

I let out a yelp of victory. I couldn’t help it. I’d done it. I’d beaten the police and a mad scientist and a curse and a storm and a goddess who makes storms, and here Celia was, alive and seemingly well, right in front of me. It was so brilliant.

I crouched down at Celia’s bedside, and Isabel appeared over my shoulder, holding another lantern.

“You remember me, right?” I asked.

Celia nodded.

“Are you okay?”

Celia’s eyes sparked with amusement as she watched the water drip from my clothes onto her bed. “You’re wet.”

I smiled. “Yeah, I know. We got caught in the rain. Here.” I pulled the wolf charm from my pocket and placed it in her hand. “You lost this.”

“Where’d you find it?”

“She found it,” I said, motioning over my shoulder to Isabel. “So you feel all right? Are you sure? No stomachache? No itchy skin?”

Celia shook her head.

“You really think she’s fine?” Isabel asked.

“She seems like it.”

“Still . . . We should get her out of here. Quickly.”

Isabel went off to inspect the rest of the room. First, she leaned over the unmade bed next to Celia’s, running her hand over the mattress. Past the beds, a crude divider made from an old sheet was hanging from hooks in the ceiling. Isabel pulled it back, revealing a cot with a neatly folded blanket placed across its end. An overturned crate served as a makeshift nightstand, and books and journals were stacked at least two feet high on it. Fastened to the wall over the cot was a rough-hewn shelf filled with more books, along with what looked like a wooden cigar box and a photo in a frame. Isabel picked up the photo and looked it over, her eyes revealing nothing.

“What’s wrong with your hand?” Celia asked me. “Did you hurt it? If you hurt it, the doctor will make it better for you.”

“Who else is here, Celia?” Isabel asked from across the room, slamming down the picture frame. She knelt down next to her dad’s cot, flicked a small plastic cigarette lighter that she’d found, and lit yet another lantern that was sitting atop a couple of hardback books. “Is there a girl named Lina?”

“Lina was here, but not for very long,” Celia replied. “She was sick. The doctor said she might have to go to the hospital. I heard him come and take her out of bed.”

“How long ago was that?” I asked.

Celia shrugged and picked at the loose threads on the edge of her blanket. “I don’t know. It was during the storm. Are you a saint?” she asked suddenly, turning her head toward Isabel. “You look like a saint from the pictures in church.”

I glanced at Isabel. The shadows in the cabin hid the sickly color of her skin, and her face glowed in the lanternlight.

“I’m not a saint.” Isabel stepped over to a long wooden table in the middle of the room. An array of leaves in various stages of decomposition and more stacks of books and paper covered it. There was also a set of eyeglasses, a pair of thick gloves, a surgical mask, and a collection of pencils, most of them worn down to nubs. Isabel picked up one of the books at random, a thick, hardcover volume, and started flipping through its pages.

“I’m the doctor’s daughter,” she said.

“Are you magical?” Celia asked, her eyes widening. “Your dad tells stories about you. He says you’re magic.”

Isabel shut the book and glared at the little girl. The corner of her mouth twitched.

“Take the girl,” Isabel demanded, grabbing a set of keys from the table and tossing them to me. “Now. Use his car. Go back to Arecibo and get her to a doctor. Be sure to keep her wrapped her in a blanket—just in case—and say she’s possibly been exposed to poisonous plants. Do something about your wrist as well. It looks terrible.”

I stood. “What about you?”

Isabel didn’t answer. Instead, she grabbed the two lanterns she’d recently lit, went over to the door, and set them down by her feet. Using her teeth, she tore the leaves from her wrists and then yanked the others out from under her shirt. A gust of wind blew open the door, knocking back the table, and throwing Isabel slightly off balance. The lanterns almost tipped over, but Isabel grabbed them just in time.

“What about you?” I repeated, rushing toward her. “We still have to find Lina.”

“Wake up, Lucas!” Isabel hissed. “Lina’s dead. My dad took her out to the beach to dump her body, and that’s where I’m going.”

Water
, the girl had said.
He’s by the water.

“Just wait a minute.” My voice was trembling. “We have your dad’s car. It’ll take a couple of hours to get back to San Juan. We’ll drop off Celia. After that we’ll find more plants and worry about your dad from there.”

“I told you I’m not going back,” Isabel said. “I thought you understood.”

“Isabel.” I lifted my good hand to hold hers. She dodged away.

“You promised me, Lucas! Save the girl.”

“Isabel, you can’t just leave!” I reached for the soaked fabric of her shirt, but she dodged me again and knelt down to pick up one of the lanterns. She rested her fingertips on one of my muddy shoes. Her gesture was so careful, like that of a tentative ghost.

Isabel stood, holding a lantern in each of her hands. She stepped to the side to peer once more into the small cabin. Then, finally, her eyes met mine. They were full of fire and fight.

“I would watch you when you would stand by the water,” she said. “The way you looked out to the horizon . . . I knew we were the same. We both wanted something. We weren’t really sure what it was, or if we deserved it . . . But now we know, and now we have it.”

“Isabel. What are you doing?”

“My life . . . ” she began. “This is not a life. I’m sorry, Lucas.”

“Isabel . . . ”

She smiled, just a little. “You are the only one to have your wish come true.”

“Isabel!” I shrieked.

She wouldn’t hear me out. Instead, she took a step back and hurled one of the lanterns at the cabin’s back wall, where it burst into flames.