Labyrinth Lost (Brooklyn Brujas #1)(23)

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 bit… I was offering my power to Lady de la Muerte.”

Nova shakes his head. “How many cantos have you done in your whole life?”

“This is my first,” I whisper.

“Thought so.”

“Can you not? Just tell me they’re alive. Where did they go? They can’t just have vanished into thin air.”

“Technically, they did,” he says roughly. He flips through the pages of the Book of Cantos until he lands on a map that spans two pages. “But they also went somewhere. This is Los Lagos.”

“How do you know that’s where they are?”

“Look at the burn marks on the floor.”

“Feathers.” Feathers, feathers, everywhere. They flutter in defeated little tufts. They’re burned into the floor and walls.

“Look where you were sitting in the circle.”

I try to look beyond my parakeet’s severed head and am thankful that there aren’t any human body parts. I bend down and touch the burned marks of a craggy tree, just like the one painted on the back room door of Lady’s shop. It’s the symbol for Los Lagos, an in-between world I know nothing about except for bedtime stories of lost souls and fantastical lands.

“My grandma says that’s where souls go to wait their passing, but there are also creatures that live there, banished from the Earth by the Deos.”

“Tell me they’re alive,” I whisper.

Nova hesitates to speak. He sighs. “I’m not going to lie. There’s a chance that they’re alive.”

“Chance?” My legs feel like jelly. I have to sit again.

“Well, if only their souls had gone, we’d be surrounded by corpses.”

“A chance is all I need.” I look to Nova, who traces the pages of the map. “Are you sure?”

“Our people don’t have many other dimensions. There’s the Kingdom of the Deos, which is our version of the Greek’s Olympus, but I always figured that’s a fairy tale.”

“Oh that’s a fairy tale,” I say.

“The other alternative is that they’re just gone, princess.”

Los Lagos. Spirits and monsters and other realms. If there’s a chance of saving my family, no matter how small, I have to take it.

“How do we get there?”

He cocks an eyebrow. “We?”

“You have to help me,” I say, putting my hands on my hips and puffing out my chest. Very intimidating.

“Let’s say I help you.” He leans in closer to me, and now it’s my turn to move back. “What do I get in return?”

“What do you get?”

“Yeah, what do I get? In case you hadn’t noticed, everything in life, this one, the next, and the unseen—they all have a price.”

I spit at the ground where he sits, and he chuckles. “You’re disgusting.”

“I like you, Alex,” he tells me. He stands, and I follow. “You’re difficult to like, you know that? But I do. You have a spark. Los Lagos isn’t somewhere you just go unless it’s life or death, and a brujo’s got to eat. Don’t take too long to think about it. The longer they’re gone, the harder it’ll be to get them back. That’s just common sense.”

My power crackles on my skin. I level my eyes to his. “I could make you.”

Make him, whispers a little voice in my head.

“We both know you can’t control your magic enough to make me do much.” But when he can’t hold my stare, I know that he’s afraid. Maybe not of me, but of my power.

I hold my hands out at him. Nova steps back and readies his own. I want to break. I want to burn up with the anger I feel toward myself. I want to hurt him. Except…nothing happens.

Nova chuckles to prove his point.

“I hate you,” I say.

“Join the club,” he says.

What does a boy like Nova want? His arms are covered in tattoos. His blue shirt is new, but his jeans and shoes are worn to shreds. Other than his earrings, all the jewelry he wears is his blue prex. “How much?” I ask.

“How much do you have?” His voice is flat. I’d expected him to be more eager.

I think of the money in my savings account. I know very well that my mom won’t be able to afford college for three girls, no matter how much she prays to La Fortuna. I guess…no one will be going anywhere if I don’t get them back.