I don’t have time to reply. Screams twist like cyclones in the
room. A force hits me in the gut, and I fly backward. I push myself up
as the floor beneath me rips apart. My feet dangle over the edge, and
I see spinning black and stars, like the seam of space and time is
coming undone.
“It’s you.” That voice again. The one that possessed Rose. It’s
coming from the portal. “I’ve found you.”
Black tree roots shoot out and wrap around my neck, lifting me
into the air and toward the vortex, where a creature is waiting. I see
infinite, dark eyes hiding beneath a helmet made of bone. Lady de la
Muerte? It can’t be.
Then I hit the ground. My mother stands in front of me with a
machete in her hand. Lady raises her hand and, with a blast of her
power, sends me flying across the living room. My head spins. My
throat burns where the roots crushed my throat. I try to push myself
up, but my shoulder feels dislocated. My family blocks my path to the
vortex. Dozens of roots slither out, like the heads of a hydra
reaching for me. Instead, the roots snap around my family, living and
dead.
“Mom!” I shout.
My mother screams as the black roots wrap around her waist and
drag her into the vortex.
“Alex!” I hear Lula cry out for me.
There’s a final boom, followed by total darkness and the end of
the storm. My ears ring in the dead silence. I stumble in the dark, my
hands bloody and stinging as I crawl through shattered glass.
I’m afraid to see, but I force my burning eyes open.
They’re gone. Everyone is just gone .
In their place are dozens and dozens of scorched feathers. Every
window is shattered. Every candle is extinguished. My mom always said,
“When the Deos answer your call, they snuff out the lights.”
11
Deos, take my offering.
Return my pain al olvido.
Return, return, return.
- Canto del Regreso, Book of Cantos
“What did you do?” Nova’s voice startles me.
I stare at his dirt-caked boots making their way toward me. He’s
still in that blue shirt.
I made them go away… I can’t say it out loud. I touch the outline
of feathers burned into the wooden floor, then the singed parakeet
feathers that flutter around me.
I grab my face with my bloody hands. Tree branches tap at broken
windowpanes, like long, thin fingers calling for my attention. My
insides ache. My magic is slipping. Air swirls and thickens around me
until everything is drenched in rain, washing the blood away,
revealing stinging cuts all over my bare arms and legs.
I remember that I’m not alone. Nova is here. Nova will know what
to do. I need them back.
Nova kneels down beside me and takes my hand in his. I hold on to
him and pull him toward me. Fear splinters the green sea in his eyes.
He wants to flee. He looks at the open door. He breaks my hold, but
I’m on my feet in a heartbeat. I pin him against the wall. His heart
races beneath my palms.
“Alex, stop it. Let go.”
My name sounds foreign coming from him. Alex. Alejandra. Who am I
if I’ve lost them forever?
“You have to help me!” Desperation makes my voice shrill. “You
have to help me get them back.”
Nova stares at me in a way that makes me feel like a thing that
crawled from the sewers. I’m a decrepit, crooked, beastly thing
clawing at his feet. I am the thing that should be feared. I am the
thing I hate most. The gods ask too much , my father said. But it
wasn’t the gods that did this. It was me.
“Alex, relax!”
“A demon just took my whole family, and you tell me to relax ?” I
shove him, his head snapping against the wall. He’s taller than me and
all muscle, but I can feel my strength growing. “You said it would
work. This is your fault!”
“My fault?” he scoffs. He grabs my wrists, and I take a sinister
pleasure in his shock that he can’t make me budge.
“You have to know about this stuff. I know you do.” My belly
swells with magic. It chokes my heart, my lungs, burns tears to my
eyes.
“Alex, you’re hurting me.” Nova’s eyes are wide. Lines crinkle his
features. His lips, dry, part. A strangled cry. My name. His heartbeat
at the center of my palms. His pulse in my veins, slow and steady and
bright.
I want to scream. My power rages, hateful and wonderful all at
once. My family is gone, but the power is still there. They’re gone
and it didn’t even work.
Nova falls on his knees. His hands pulse with a weak conjured
light. He’s trying to fight me. His light burns against my bare skin.
I hiss, releasing him. Instantly, the wrinkles on his face smooth out,
the color returns to his skin. The mini-storm I conjured dies.
My body buzzes with awakening. “I’m-”
“Don’t say you’re sorry!” He staggers away, then finally lies down
in a pile of feathers.
I close my eyes. I’ve gone beyond feeling like I’m in a dream or a
nightmare. I’m in a limbo of my own making.
“I could have killed you.” I dig my hands into the dirty fabric of
my dress. My mom was right. She should have sewn in pockets.
When he’s regained his breath, when the silence becomes so
unbearable that he has to say something, he mutters, “It’s done.”
Even without touching him, I can sense the way his muscles ache.
There are bruises on his chest. I can’t know that, but somehow I do. I
watch as he moves toward the front door, so slow, as if treading
water.
“Wait!” I push myself up on shaking legs. “Where are you going?”
He flinches as my fingertips brush his shirt. He turns the full
fury of his eyes on me. “Home, like I should have in the first place.”
“You can’t just leave .”
“I warned you, you might not like the consequences. I know you
want to find someone to blame other than yourself, but you did this,
Alex. What did you think was going to happen? The entire universe
would change just because you don’t like how your lot turned out?
Well, guess what, princess? The rest of us don’t get to choose. Why
did you think you’d be any different?”
He keeps going. For a moment, I’m too stunned to move. Everyone I
would turn to is gone and I just accidentally tried to kill the only
person left.
“I don’t have anyone else.” What I want is for Nova to stay. I
want that door shut. It’s a spark in my mind, and in a split second,
the command leaves my body. The door slams shut. Nova whips around,
his hands glowing protectively.
“You can’t keep me locked here.” He looks scared. Big, bad street
boy with tattoos covering his skin, and he’s scared of me.
Part of me hates it. A whisper, deep in the back of my head,
relishes in it. I can hurt him. I can make him feel my pain. It’s so
easy. That’s the point of being an encantrix, isn’t it? Nova said it
himself: I can do anything. I can get my family back.
“Nova, please.”
He rubs his close-cropped hair and exhales. “Tell me exactly what
you did.”
I open the door to my family altar. The black-and-white photos of
my ancestors have changed. Their eyes are completely white. I grab the
Book of Cantos and shut the door. Nova rights a coffee table that
flipped over. It wobbles when I set the Book on it. I show him the
canto. I describe what happened.
Mom, I’m so sorry , I think. Grief and guilt hit me like a wave,
but I can’t-I won’t-cry in front of Nova.
“It was meant to block the blessing, like you said. Then I
combined it with a phrase from the Canto del Regreso and changed it a