The Hacienda(60)

“Beatriz.”

I turned.

Andrés stood before a tasteful white headstone. I stopped next to him, averting my gaze from the stone until my arm brushed his, as if merely looking at the name I knew was carved there could harm me.

Do?a María Catalina Solórzano de Iturrigaray y Velazco, d. 1821.

My fingers trembled as I made the sign of the cross and pressed my thumb to my lips.

Andrés cursed under his breath.

I looked up at him in surprise, hand dropping from my mouth. “What?”

He lifted a foot as if to stamp it on the grave.

“Andrés!” I gasped, seizing his arm to stop him. “Are you crazy?”

“She did this to my home. She did this to my family,” he spat. But he set his foot down beside the grave. “Besides, it’s empty earth. I can sense it,” he added. A dark tremor of feeling underscored the words. “She’s not here.”

Her body.

It wasn’t here.

The plaster crumbling and slipping beneath my fingernails. The skull grinning at me from the wall. A glint of gold in the darkness. My heartbeat throbbed in my ears. “Does that mean . . .”

“Yes.”

María Catalina’s body was interred in the walls of San Isidro. But—

“Who put her there?” I cried, voice pitching high. “Why?”

“I don’t know,” Andrés said quietly. “But now that I know for certain she’s behind everything, I think I know what to do to close the circle.”



* * *




*

IN OUR ABSENCE, MENDOZA had joined Paloma waiting for us in the courtyard, and together, all four of us stepped inside the quiet, watchful house with the caution of lost travelers seeking shelter in a cave. Would its predatory occupant return? When?

I cast a glance at the north wing, and a chill snaked down my spine. María Catalina was there. Someone had bricked her body into the wall and hidden the evidence.

An earthquake, or water, I can’t remember which, Rodolfo had said. I will have Mendoza look into repairs.

“Se?or Mendoza,” I said, fighting to keep my voice casual as our group continued to the green parlor. “Did my husband ask you to do any repairs on the house before he left? Mend any . . . water damage?”

Mendoza cleared his throat. “No, do?a. He didn’t.”

His voice trailed off when he saw the door to the green parlor on the floor, and the circle on the floor of the empty room beyond. He let out a low whistle. “Do I want to know, Padre?”

“Probably not,” Paloma piped up from Mendoza’s side. “I certainly didn’t ask.”

Andrés swept into the room, each of his movements sharp with anxiety. He paced around the circle twice as I picked up a broom and began sweeping the final remnants of shattered glass and broken candles out of his way; Mendoza shook his head, then he and Paloma began work on the door.

“Palomita,” Andrés said. I looked up, surprised by the tenseness of his voice. “Could you please stop speaking castellano? It would help my memory if . . .” He left the sentence unfinished.

Mendoza shot Paloma a questioning look. Paloma answered with an obliging shrug, and seamlessly slipped into their grandmother’s tongue as she and Mendoza positioned the door on its hinges.

I flitted in and out of the room, slowly moving pieces of furniture, forbidding Andrés from helping me as I dragged in a heavy rolled rug. By then, Paloma and Mendoza had left. Andrés stood at the edge of the circle, fingertips at his temples, eyes closed. Shoulders tight.

He began to pray. First in Latin, then not. When the words María Catalina slipped between one portion of Andrés’s prayer, an unpleasant hum built in the back of my skull and spiked into pain. I winced, closed my eyes, and placed my hands over my ears as he continued.

I was glad I did.

A shriek split the room, white and bleeding with fury, stretching breathlessly, impossibly long, raking over me like talons. I cried out. My eyes snapped open; I half expected to see the window shutters splintering and shattering from the sheer rage that was flooding the room.

Andrés had not moved. Fingertips pressed to temples. Shoulders wound with tension. I could see his lips move through continued prayer, though I could not hear him over the noise.

The shriek cut off.

The room was still. It was the emptiness of a tomb, airless, its belly filled with the absence of life rather than the presence of silence.

Andrés released a long breath and rolled his shoulders back. No power hummed from the circle at his feet. No buzzing filled the back of my skull.

He looked over his shoulder at me. Despite the exhaustion in his posture, the stubble on his jaw, a fey sort of victory burned in his shadowed face. “I did it.” He took a deep, shaky breath. “She’s confined to the house again.”

Behind him, a pair of red lights winked from the corner of the room, then vanished.

Terror shot through me, lodging itself in my throat.

Yes, Andrés had succeeded. He had muscled the darkness back into the house and closed the circle.

I did not feel the same victory. The danger was contained, yes, but the fact remained that Ana Luisa was dead. We knew that the body of María Catalina was in the wall and that her spectral rage fed the activity of the darkness. But we did not know who put her body there.