Bruja Born (Brooklyn Brujas #2)(66)

I’m prepared for her to scream, to tell me how much I’ve let her down. I even brace to have something flung at my head.

Instead, my mother sighs deeply. It’s like a weight pushing down her thick, strong body. She shakes her head from side to side and pours the boiling water into the teapot. She sets the tray on the table between us and I breathe in the scent of bitter roots and jasmine.

I fear I’ve broken more than just the balance of the world. I’ve destroyed the trust my mother had in me.

She just sits there and stares at the door, waiting for my father to return. Dark circles ring her eyes, but her plum lipstick is still somehow unblemished.

As the day breaks and the sunrise shines into this strange, metallic kitchen, a shadow spreads across her neck in the shape of handprints—the same ones she healed from me. And seeing my mother hurt is worse than anything else in the world.

Dad and Nova walk in, a draft following at their heels. My father is still shaking from having used his power, and his face is scrunched up with ire and worry. There’s a brownish-red smudge on his cheek that at first looks like dirt, but when I look at Nova, he too has a bruise on his face. I wonder if we are ever going to be more than a pile of broken bones and bruises.

Dad and Nova exchange glances and something passes between them, something untold that the four of us aren’t privy to. I envy Nova for this.

“The casimuertos are down,” Nova says. “For now.”

My mom gets up and hands them both a cup of tea. Dad shuts his eyes before drinking it, and I don’t know if he’s cursing the Deos or praying to them.

“What happened while we were gone?” Dad asks quietly.

“I wasn’t completely honest about the canto we used on Maks.” I take a sip of tea to wet my dry tongue. Then I confess. “When the bodies went missing, I thought that was the end of it. But they just reappeared in different parts of the city. The day I left the house for a walk, I really went to the boardwalk. That’s where I found Maks.”

“How did you find him?” Mom asks.

“I’m connected to them. Tethered. That’s why I haven’t been healing properly.” I explain about the threads.

“Lula—” Mom starts to say.

“Let me finish,” I say. “Please. Otherwise I might not be able to say it again. La Muerte told me I had to free her, but when I found Maks, I felt like finally something had gone right.”

My lips are so dry I feel like, if I start to cry, they might bleed. So I hold it in. “Alex and I went to see Nova’s grandmother. She let us read a book she had on casimuertos.”

Dad is pacing in a circle around the table. He touches his bottom lip with his fingers, face sunken in with so much burden it makes him look like he’s aged a decade.

“The book,” he says. “El Libro Maldecido?”

“Yes,” Alex says. “How do you know that?”

“Patricio?” Mom asks.

Dad frowns the way he does when he struggles through his memory. “Remember Fausto Toledo back in our circle?”

“That was twenty years ago,” Ma says. “The circumstances were different.”

“Raising the dead is raising the dead. He wanted to create an army to fight against the Knights of Lavant.”

At their name, Nova, Alex, Rose, and I exchange a not-so-secret glance. But we’re not about to interrupt my dad, so we let him keep talking.

“But he failed,” Ma says. “The bodies were taken out to the island and dumped in the sound.”

“That wasn’t in Angela’s book,” I say.

“It wouldn’t be,” Dad says severely. “Fausto wrote it. After his army failed, he started to die. Not even sinmago doctors could treat him. He simply withered down until there was skin and bones. It was his punishment for what he’d done. He tried to figure out a cure for death. Spent years gathering up stories about the undead. You see, casimuertos aren’t created by a virus. They’re bound by magical blood. And the only way to kill them all is—”

He freezes, stormy-gray eyes glassy when he looks at me, like he’s only just remembering the cost. “No. I’m not losing you again. Lula—”

I can’t stand the hurt there, the way my mother presses her hands against the table for support as she stands to wrap her arms around me. They squeeze me, gently but firmly.

“The Alliance is helping,” I say in an attempt to assuage their fear. “La Muerte told me there was another way. I think we’ve figured out a way to break her free, but we have to find her spear first.”

I explain to my parents about the elements.

“We need the High Circle and we need them here now,” Alex says. “The casimuertos are multiplying faster than the THA and Knights of Lavant can kill them.”

Glass shatters. Mom’s dropped her cup on the floor.

“What did you say?” Dad asks.

Alex looks stunned, blinking too fast. “Knights of Lavant?”

“You spoke to them?”

“They showed up,” I say. “We were being attacked by casimuertos in an alley and they were just there. Why?”

“I want you to stay away from them.”

“But why? We want the same thing—to destroy the casimuertos.”

“Patricio,” Mom whispers, placing her hands on his shoulders. “Be calm.”