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?
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.