Labyrinth Lost (4 page)

“How is that not offensive?” I'm filled with the urge to turn him into a slug. Then I lose my spark when I realize he's right. I wouldn't even know where to begin.

What
do
I want? To stop my Deathday? That's only half the problem. I'd still have this magic inside me. Magic killed my aunt Rosaria and Mama Juanita. My magic killed Miluna and set my father running. I could've hurt Rishi the other day. It destroys. I wonder…

“I'm saying. Just 'cause you can doesn't mean that you should.”

“You don't know my reasons.”

He grins slyly. “I don't have to. If you want to compare the monsters in our closets, I'd win by a landslide. Besides, I don't care what you do. I just figured I'd give you a little warning.”

“Why?”

His blue-green eyes flick from my lips to my clavicle. “I'm a nice guy.”

I snicker. “Okay. Where would you start?”

Nova looks over his shoulder where Lady and my mother are comparing the benefits of different bushels of sage. My sisters are in a corner giggling probably because this is the longest I've voluntarily talked to a boy my own age.

Nova leans in closer to me. I look at the in-between colors of his eyes—they're like the shades of Caribbean seas—and hate that someone so cocky is so pretty.

“Listen, Ladybird,” he says, “the ceremony happens whether you want it to or not. But if you reject your blessing, it'll have an effect on your power. The whole point is that the ceremony makes your power stronger but easier to contain.”

“If I wanted a lesson on spells, I'd talk to Lady.”

He makes a face. “Spells are for—”

“Witches, I know the drill.”

Nova laughs and raises his hands. “Fine. Every Book of Cantos has something to block negative forces. My grandmother uses them on her bakery, so she doesn't get bad reviews. You can probably use the same to block the blessing of your ancestors. But you'd be foolish to try. You don't know what could happen.”

“What if—” I bite my tongue. Nervous sweat accumulates between my shoulder blades. “What if I wanted to get rid of it?”

“I already told you it's too late to stop the party without getting your moms pissed.”

“No,” I whisper. “Get rid of the magic.”

“Oh. Damn.” Nova stares at me. I hate that it makes me feel exposed, judged even. I can practically feel his thoughts racing. Would he tell Lady? Perhaps I'm not special in feeling this way, like I'm in a body that doesn't fit quite right, but saying the words aloud makes me realize that, maybe, I can change my fate.

Nova raises an eyebrow and shakes his head. A fat vein in his throat jerks when he tenses. I decide I don't care what he thinks of me. He doesn't exactly look like a saint.

He rings the bell on the counter and says, “Then I don't think I'm the person who can help you.”

Finally, Lady makes her way to us with my mom. I get shooed away from the register.

“What are you planning, Trouble?” Lady asks Nova.

For a moment, I'm afraid he's going to rat me out. Nova winks at me and that dimple appears, like we weren't just discussing a bruja's greatest family betrayal. I go stand beside my mother. She looks at Nova, trying to place him. Surely all the brujos and brujas in the tristate area know each other. She tells me all the time that there are so few of us left and our connections matter.

“Look at that face,” she whispers to me, like we're schoolgirls.

“
Ma
.”

Nova smiles—no sarcastic laugh, no mocking twitch of the lips. Just a smile. His dark hair is shaved short, so all you focus on are his cheekbones and lips and lashes.

I take the list from my mom's hand. Everything is crossed out except for one: blood of the guide. I shut my eyes and think of Lula's Deathday. We strung white fairy lights in the yard and spent all night hot-gluing sparkles on her midnight-blue dress. I glued my fingers so many times that they were raw and bloody. I probably bled as much for her Deathday as the sacrificial dove. If I think on it, I can see Lula's slender hands holding the dove, red dots smattered all over her perfectly calm face.

Lady punches numbers into the register. “Love canto? Finally met one you couldn't charm with your pretty green eyes.”

In this light, they're more blue than green. But I don't tell her that.

“Nah, Lady,” he says. “Ain't never had no trouble with love.”

“That's a double negative,” I say.

Lady's grave laugh fills the store. Then she says, “Twenty-five dollars.”

“You raised the price on liar tongues? What the hell, Lady?”

He takes out crumpled-up bills from his pocket and smooths them out like each dead president just insulted his mother.

Lady shrugs. “You think rent here's getting any cheaper? You want to do your love canto or don't you?”

“It's not a love canto!” He pushes the money toward her, a sudden jerk going through his body. He glances at me, then gives me his back. Beneath the close crop of his hair is a crescent moon tattoo, El Papa's symbol, right behind his ear.

“Just put the rest on my bill,” my mom says.

“Five bucks,” Lady tells my mother, shoving his candle and tongues and feathers into a black plastic bag. “What do you say, Nova?”

Nova looks to the floor for one, two, three, before facing my mother and saying a somber, “Thank you, Ms…”

“Carmen,” she says.

“Nova Santiago.”

“You're a bleeding heart,” I tell my mom.

My mom is always the lady who gives a dollar to the young, homeless kids on the street. She always says, “If it were you, I'd want someone to help you too.” This is different. So he's not doing a love canto. He could be doing a canto to make someone lose their voice. Who needs
liar tongue
for any kind of good magic?

“Santiago?” Mom asks. “Are you Angela's grandson?”

“Yes, ma'am.” Nova nods, losing the confident posture from before. “Angela the Great.” He says her name like he doesn't think she's great at all, like he doesn't understand why people call her that. My mom doesn't seem to catch that, but I do.

“I ordered some of her sweets for Alejandra's Deathday next week,” Mom continues.

“Alejandra,” he says, and I realize I never told him my name.

“Alex,” I correct him.

“I work at the bakery,” he tells me. “I'll probably be the one delivering them.”

“Oh, you'll have to stay!” Mom says.

I tug on my mom's sleeve, but she slaps my hand away.

“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?

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.”

I've never seen Lula so afraid.

“My Circle blessed this house,” my mom says, wiping her brow with the back of her trembling hand. “It can't enter here. We can wait it out till sunrise.”

“Alex, use your power,” Lula tells me.

“I don't know how!” There's a tight pain in my belly and a greater pain in my chest.

The house rattles as a force slams into the structure. Picture frames and dishes shatter as they fall to the floor.

“Lula!” my mom shouts. “Get the candles and Papa Philomeno's finger bone. Alex, bring me the sage. Rose—Rose?”

Rose slides down to the ground. She shuts her eyes and throws her glasses across the floor. A bloody tear runs down her cheek. My mom bends down to brush Rose's matted hair back. Rose's hands are spread out at her sides. Her eyes widen and dilate, until there is only black. A strangled cry comes from my little sister.

“Alex, the sage!”

I run into the storage closet and grab a sage stick. Then I remember. I rip open the box with my father's things. I dig through old clothes and papers until I find it. A mace. The handle is made of wood and steel. The spikes are consecrated silver metal.

When I run back to the kitchen, Rose begins to speak.

“Rosie?” I edge closer to her.

Her eyes settle on me. She trembles with the spirit that's taken over her body. The lights blow out all around us, and my little sister points to me and says in a stranger's voice, “It's you. I've found you.”

“What does that mean?” Lula asks my mom.

I start to reach for Rose, but the kitchen window shatters as the maloscuro breaks through, the force of it knocking me on my back. Its sinewy body separates the three of us from Rose. The creature turns its head to me. Tar-black skin that looks hard to the touch covers long limbs that end in claws. It slinks forward on all fours, leaving black marks on the tiles. The face is the worst. Even with its wide mouth distorted by curved teeth and a crooked nose that sniffs for my scent, I can still see where it was human once.

When we were children, they would scare us to sleep with stories of the maloscuros under the bed. But we aren't like normal families. Our monsters are real. Sometimes we are the monsters.

The creature hisses, a long, curling tongue licks the fear in the air. Lula grabs a plantain mallet from the sink and hurls it. The maloscuro growls as the mallet hits it square in the face.

“Stop! You two, get your sister and get out of here,” Mom says, taking the mace from me. She stands in front of us like a human shield. She whistles, long and slowly. The maloscuro twists its long neck toward my mother. Its gleaming, black eyes are rimmed with diseased-yellow rings. With every sharp whistle, the beast follows my mother's movement toward the back door.

“Mom,” Lula cries. Fat tears run down her face.

At the sound of Lula's voice, the creature snaps out of the trance. It snarls at Lula, raking long, black claws across her face. We all scream as Lula falls to the ground. She presses her hand to her bloody face and shuts her eyes against the pain. The maloscuro raises its claws for a second strike, and I know I have to do something. My heart feels like it's in my throat, beating a scream from my mouth. I jump in front my sister, my crazy, rude, wonderful, beautiful sister.

The air in the kitchen thickens like fog. Fear takes ahold of me. I fear this is my fault. I fear this power will only bring terrible things. I fear this is only the beginning.

I take everything I'm afraid of and shove it aside. It's like my body isn't even mine, a bright burning light surrounds me, flows through me and hits the maloscuro. I fall on my knees, shaking as I hold the barrier between the creature and us.

The kitchen rumbles with thunder. The charge pulls from my stomach. It both tickles and hurts, an invisible chord that links me to the magic and the maloscuro. I feel its essence and my skin crawls. It's malign, unwanted,
death.

I cry out as my control on the shield weakens. The creature needs only a little bit of weakness to get in. A burning pain slashes across my chest and then instantly goes cold. The maloscuro freezes in place. Its wicked, wide mouth is open, like a bear trap ready to snap around my head. The rotting smell makes me gag.

“You froze it!” my mom marvels.

“I can't hold it!” Sweat drips down my face. Blood drips from the bleeding cuts on my chest.

“Get back,” my mother says. She raises the mace over her head and screams to the Deos. She swings down hard. The spikes crunch against the maloscuro's skull. A wet splatter hits my face. She hits it again and again. When she brings down the mace for a final blow, our whole house trembles.