Bruja Born (Brooklyn Brujas #2)(65)

The image in my mind flickers, and then I see Derek. His eyes are as white and clear as quartz. Red veins spread across the white of his eyes. He moves like his joints are rusted, hands stretching out toward my face.

“Lula,” he sings my name.

Wake up, I tell myself. But I feel like my body is pinned down by an invisible force.

“Lula,” someone else calls out my name.

In the shadows of my dream, they are only silhouettes. But as a white light shines over them, I can see their faces. Derek is joined by others. I recognize the dead from the accident and so many more. There’s a man with a bullet hole in his forehead advancing with the other. A woman with both eyes missing. A man with a kitchen knife stuck in his chest. With every step they take, more of them appear.

Someone else calls out my name.

Maks. His voice travels through the darkness like an echo. He is everywhere and nowhere.

“Maks?”

“Lula.” The way he says my name, like a curse, makes my skin crawl.

My dream changes.

I’m pulled up higher and higher into the ether. We’re on the beach. The wind blows sand into my eyes and the waves almost reach the boardwalk.

Maks is facing away from me. He’s hugging himself, a terrible shake racking his body.

“Maks?” I edge closer to him.

“You did this to me,” he growls.

“I was trying to save you. All I wanted was to save you.”

He whips around, and when he does, the sight of his eyes is startling—the blue has faded to ice white. The jagged scars that cover his body are pronounced and red. When I look at him, I don’t see the boy I loved. I see his walking corpse. A casimuerto.

That’s when I notice it. The thread that binds us together, a silver thread coming undone. Maks puts his hand around it.

“No!”

And he tugs.

The pain makes me fall to the sand. He tugs again, and this time, white-hot pain floods every part of me.

“Why won’t it work?” He grabs me by my shoulders and shakes me.

“Why are you doing this?” I ask him.

“Because I remember now.” His hands trace the sides of my neck. “I remember everything.”

My scream dies in my throat, but I can hear another in the distance. My face feels red and my thoughts darken with a lack of oxygen.

“I remember it all, Lula!” Maks shouts, his grip crushing my windpipe.

Wake up, wake up, wake up.

I open my eyes.

But his hands are still around my throat. And I can’t breathe. And I can’t call for help. And I’m not dreaming.

Maks is killing me.





27


The world burned and splintered and drowned.

To save their creations, La Mama and El Papa

let La Muerte rise.

—Tales of the Deos, Felipe Thomás San Justinio




The air sparks with electricity. Maks’s skin is covered with pinpricks of currents that bring him to his knees. Then rain falls from a dark cloud that blankets the ceiling. Maks’s body is flung to the side, but his nails still rake across the thin skin of my throat.

My dad’s hands hold spheres of electricity. His eyes are black as night.

My mom runs to my side and presses her hand against where I’m bleeding. When I try to talk, my throat burns worse than ever. Even the breath I take is jagged and small.

“Rose,” Alex shouts. “Help me carry her out. Pull the door lever!”

They shoulder my weight and carry me to a bed.

“It’s okay,” Mom tells me. The sight of her face is calming. Her magic floods through me, finding the places that hurt the most. I wince as a bone snaps into place. “It’s okay, nena. We’re here.”

I know this won’t last. They’re going to find out what I’ve done and be angry with me. But for now, I let my mother hold me and brush my hair away from my face. I let her mend the skin around my neck and press kisses on my forehead just as she did when I was a little kid. I let her thank La Mama that I’m alive and threaten to kill me in her name as well. I let her be my mother.

“Lula,” she says, her voice pleading. “What did you do?”

“Yell later,” Alex says. “First, we need to summon the High Circle.”

“No,” I say, trying out my voice. “I should explain. About Maks and the others.”

Dad rubs the soot off his hands on his sweatpants, his gray eyes like perfect storms. “Others?”

I take a deep breath and sit up to face them. “I messed up.”

? ? ?

The important moments in life always seem to happen around kitchens, from holidays and parties to everything in between. So I’m not surprised that, somehow, we end up in the THA kitchen to talk about how I cast a spell that will destroy our city.

Ma makes a strong black tea with Frederik’s herbs. She slams the kettle on the stove. She cranks up the flames. She sets the jar of loose leaf so hard on the counter I’m surprised it doesn’t shatter. The entire time she mutters in the Old Tongue.

“You have no idea what you’ve done.” Her voice is tired and angry.

I stay quiet. Alex and Rose are busy examining the dirt under their nails because they know Mom’s anger is coming for them too.