Labyrinth Lost (Brooklyn Brujas #1)(61)

“What do you mean ‘not exactly’?”

So I tell her about Rishi and how she followed me here. How we started at the Selva of Ashes and met the avianas. How we faced the Devourer and found the Hidden Path.

I brace myself for another slap from the cane, but it never comes. I gnaw on the inside of my cheek.

“Do you know what the Devourer did when she saw me?”

Mama Juanita shakes her head solemnly.

“She laughed. She laughed because she thinks I can’t beat her. I’m sorry I did this to you. Every step I take, I think about how everyone I love is going to die because I’m not enough.”

“Listen here, nena.” She clicks her cane on the water, sending a wave that spills onto the banks. “You listen good. I don’t ever want to hear you say that. You are the blood of my blood, and you are more than enough. You think we don’t know the burden of our power? I lived with it for ninety years. Believe me, I know.”

“You’re the first one who’s actually called it a burden.”

“I can say whatever I want. I’m dead. But burden or gift, this is who we are. Just think, nena, if you didn’t fear your own power, then you wouldn’t have respected it enough to rein it in. But you have to get past that. Magic is an extension of us. Imagine the things that we could do. Create. Destroy. This Devourer, she doesn’t fear her power. She fears someone who could be stronger than her.”

I think of the fear in the Devourer’s face when I was able to cut her. I enjoyed that feeling. I wanted to see someone afraid of me.

“I’m not blaming your mother,” Mama Juanita says in that passive-aggressive way of hers. “Bless her heart, but if I had been alive, this whole mess never would’ve happened. You would’ve known not to mess with cantos you had no business messing with. You would have memorized every herb and poison in the Book of Cantos.”

“But you weren’t,” I shout. “Where was the magic when my dad left us, huh? Where was the magic when my mom had to take two jobs just to pay the mortgage? How was I supposed to see the good in magic when we’ve only had suffering? I don’t live in the old days, Mama. I live in Brooklyn circa now. The only reason this happened is because of me. Not my mom. Not you. Me.”

Something inside of me just snaps. The earth trembles. Boulders roll down the hill. Mama Juanita cocks her eyebrow and takes a puff. The winds around me have funneled into baby tornadoes. Mama Juanita reaches out her hand to touch one, and for the first time since I was five, the old woman smiles. Actually smiles with teeth biting on that cigar.

“That’s my girl,” she says. “You need your family blessing. You need to hurry and free us.”

Then, her smile disappears. She looks over her shoulder and winces. It’s only for a moment, and then her sassy, cranky self is back.

“What happened?”

“I’m sorry.” She shuts her eyes and shakes her head. “I didn’t come to make you feel guilty, nena.”

“Could’ve fooled me.”

She purses her lips but keeps talking. “I came to tell you that your magic isn’t enough. You’re an encantrix. You’ve been chosen. You have magic, but all brujas need a way to conduct it. That’s why wands and charms became part of witchcraft. Our bodies, they’re just flesh and bone. The Deos are not, but our powers come from them.

“Without your family blessing…” She lets it linger. “That’s what the Deathday is for: to fortify you, so you can use your gift and not burn your body or mind so quickly. Have you started feeling it? The nightmares, the body aches? That’s the recoil, but it’ll get worse. At least I don’t see any marks.”

“Marks?”

“Without a Deathday, your power starts to consume your body. It eats away at you. It leaves behind black marks. When you’re covered in it, well, that’s when you know it’s the end.”

I shake my head. “No, that can’t be right.”

She leans in close, reaches for my face but grabs air. “Tell me you don’t have marks, nena.”

“I don’t.” I don’t, but Nova does.

“Alejandra, you can’t—” Mama Juanita drops her cigarillo from her lips. She chokes on black smoke.

“Mama!”

The shadows slither around her neck.

I reach for her, but this time I do grab air. She flickers away, and for the first time in my whole life, I see fear in her eyes.

“Alex!” Nova shouts. It’s like I’m hearing him from the other end of a tunnel.

The water gives beneath my feet. My mouth fills with water. My dreams are of the dead. My family. My friends. Myself. We lie in a field of thorns and turned earth. Over us stands the Devourer. She licks her fingers. Every single one. Then settles her red stare, her face hidden behind that helmet of bone and steel. I feel her hunger. My hunger.

When she takes it off, she’s wearing my face.





30


The oceans sparkle with your tears.

The land aches for your return.

—Folk song, Book of Cantos

I did not travel through a portal and across a strange land only to drown in a pond. I kick up and reach the water’s edge.

“Alex!” Rishi and Nova both shout, running for me.