Bruja Born (Brooklyn Brujas #2)(23)
The news anchor looks somberly into the camera and speaks. “Reports confirm two teenage boys were found and pronounced dead on the scene in Coney Island, Brooklyn. Adam Silvera is on-site with the person who discovered the bodies. Adam?”
The camera cuts to a crowded street. The setting sun is red and angry behind the tall reporter as he holds out a microphone to a middle-aged black woman whose eyes look like they’re going to pop out of her skull.
“Thanks, Naomi. I’m here with Beatrice Jean. Mrs. Jean, can you tell us what you saw?”
“I just finished my shift at the hospital. I walk home. I’ve always felt safe. When I tripped over something, I thought I was being attacked. I didn’t know what I was seeing. My feet were covered in blood. How did no one see them? No one—”
“It sounds like you’re in shock.”
“Of course I’m shocked. I’ve lived here for thirty years. I’ve never in my life seen something like this.” She makes the sign of the cross over her torso.
“Thank you for your time.” The camera moves away from Mrs. Jean’s face, but the haunted look in her eyes lingers in my mind. The mic shakes in Adam’s hand. “The police have closed down neighboring streets and are canvasing the areas. There are no suspects. One of the victims has been identified as a student from Thorne Hill High School by his school ID. The other victim carried no identification.”
My heart thunders in my chest and I double over as the pain becomes unbearable.
Despite that, I have a driving urge to run. I pull on jeans and a hoodie and head for the door. I don’t leave a note. I don’t take my phone.
I rub the hand of La Mama’s statue as I leave, but when my thumb grazes the porcelain, the hand breaks cleanly off at the wrist.
Words echo in my ears. You have betrayed the Deos.
When I unlock the door and step outside, my body sighs. A light, warm as flesh but completely transparent, materializes over my chest. It unfurls into a dozen silver threads that float in front of me like jellyfish tentacles.
One string of silver light is brighter than the rest, and it tugs me forward. I don’t know where it leads, but if I want answers about what’s happening to me, I know I have to follow it.
10
And they feared
her touch so cold,
her cloak of shadow,
her thorns of gold.
—Song of Lady de la Muerte, Book of Cantos
I race toward the subway. Garbage and dirty water lodged in storm drains cook under the June sun. Nothing smells like New York during the summer. As I pass a mass of strangers, no one bats an eye at me or the silver thread coming from my chest.
I run across the street to make the light. The pain shoots up my hips and settles around my abdomen, and I stumble into an old woman selling mangos from a cart.
“?Estas bien?” she asks me, raising a gloved hand stained with sticky fruit juice.
I try to smile, but when she looks at the scars on my face, she can’t help but jump back a bit.
“I’m fine,” I say. “Thank you.”
I enter the subway station, swipe my MetroCard, push the turnstile with my hands, and make a beeline toward the front end of the platform. I tie my hair into a bun and pull up my hood. I’m wearing Maks’s hoodie from his first year on the team. It’s too big for me, but hopefully it’ll help cover up my curves and make me look like a boy. My face has been on the evening news as the only survivor of the crash, and I don’t want to be recognized.
The train barrels into the station, stale air pushing against my hot skin when the doors open up. The train car is empty because there’s a man passed out across three seats and the air conditioner is broken. It’s better this way, less chance I’ll be recognized.
I take a seat on the opposite end of the car. I try to breathe through my mouth, but the smell is overwhelming, like stale beer, sea sludge, and urine. It’s only a few more stops to Coney Island. I stare at the thin, white scars on the top of my hands from the shattered glass that fell around me during the crash. The silver threads from my chest have dimmed except for one, floating in the direction the train is going.
My heart gives another painful tug. I imagine this is what fish feel like when they have a hook driven through their cheeks and then get reeled in. I lean my head back, feeling every bump and jostle the train makes when a whistling noise fills the air.
“Lula Mortiz,” something hisses.
The man jerks into a sitting position. His skin is pale and covered in dirt, and his hair is matted into clumps.
His eyes snap open and find me instantly. His irises go from brown to black, then spread like an ink stain across the whites of his eyes. His mouth stretches in an unnatural way, like someone is pulling his jaw open. Tattered shadows slither from the ground and trail inside, rattling his entire body.
My heart races as I dart to the doors. The train is approaching the next stop, but the platform zooms by.
“Oh hell.” I rattle off a string of curses and start to run for the red emergency lever you’re never supposed to pull. What’s more of an emergency than being attacked on the train by someone possessed?
But the train breaks abruptly. The momentum flips me over once, and I hit the sticky floor with a thud. I fear I’ve ripped my stitches as something wet hits my skin. When I touch it and bring it to my nose, it’s just ketchup.