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.”