Chapter 14

CHAPTER 14

WHO IS HE ?

The question runs through my mind the whole way back to the castle.

I store the blood in the fridge, which is significantly less packed today. I salvaged what I could of the meal last night, but I had to toss out most of the food.

For once, I'm relieved it's daytime because shame still scorches my cheeks over how badly I misread the situation with Sebastián. I can't believe I attacked him the way I did.

As much as I could use the distraction of the bookstore, I'm going to skip it today, since it's the full moon and Beatríz could show up any moment. I want to confront her as soon as she returns. Besides, I can't let her find ten bags of blood in the fridge.

I have so many questions for her—about the fire, the death certificate, the mysterious he Gloria referenced. I thought my aunt would be back by now. Where did she run off to so suddenly? Why didn't she leave a phone number to reach her?

Because she isn't coming back.

The thought keeps nipping at the nape of my neck, like a biting breeze. Maybe Beatríz brought me here as her immediate replacement.

My brain feels like it's boiling over with questions and doubts and suspects. I need to organize my thoughts. Now that I have a proper journal— Dad's —I'm going to use it instead of the notepad. I make my way to my room—

BANG. BANG. BANG.

I'm starting up the stairs when someone knocks at the front door. My back stiffens—who could it be? Beatríz has keys. Unless this is someone with news about her…

Panicked, I race to the entrance and call across the wooden door: "Who is it?"

"Felipe!"

Relief floods my veins, and I swing it open. "Hey!" I say in surprise.

"Hi!" He holds up a wicker basket. "I brought lunch."

"Oh! Thank you," I say, reaching out for it.

"You do remember we made plans, right?"

Today is his day off! I completely forgot that I told him he could come to the castle.

My gut twists, inner compass spinning out of control with warning. My aunt could be back any moment, and I really want to confront her about the death certificate and the black fire without Felipe present. "Can we do this another day—?"

"I'm already here, and I have the food," he says, frowning and holding up the basket like an exhibit at a trial.

"Fine," I say, but my gut still refuses to let me open the door. As much as I want to break Beatríz's rules as punishment for her abandoning me, something is telling me this is a bad idea. My aunt seemed dead set against letting anyone visit la Sombra, and remembering the full moon parties, I say, "Let's picnic in the front garden."

Felipe's smile wilts into a pucker. "You mean this plant cemetery? No way. I want to go inside."

"I'm—I'm not sure it's a good idea. Beatríz told me I'm not allowed visitors."

"We made this plan days ago," he argues. "Why are you changing your mind?"

"It's just that—after everything we've been reading, I can't help thinking—what if there's a real reason Beatríz doesn't get any visitors? Aside from her charming personality?"

Felipe's expression turns into a full-faced frown. "You said I could come. Now you're going back on your word?"

"I'm just not sure—"

"Are you seriously doing this to me?" he says, for the first time sounding truly angry. "I opened up to you more than anyone else in my life—you know how much it means to me to finally see inside la Sombra! You don't even care about this town or this castle, but I thought you at least cared about me."

"I do—!"

"Then why would you screw with me like this?"

"I'm not—!"

He drops the basket on the cobblestones. "Here. Have your picnic alone. I'll see you at the bookstore when you need something. I guess that's how this friendship works."

He turns and marches down the dead garden toward the gate.

"Felipe, wait— you can come in! " I blurt.

He spins around and hurries back, like he's afraid the offer could expire. The bad mood has already melted off his features as he stares at me in anticipation, basket back in hand.

"So, how does this work—do you move, or do I swing you open?"

I force myself to take one step back, then another, and he rushes inside eagerly, as if la Sombra were a chocolate factory and not a cursed castle.

Felipe's neck swivels as he takes in the entrance hall from every angle, and his silent awe is so thick that it almost feels holy, and I have to break it. "Any books in there?" I ask, pointing to the basket he's carrying.

"Maybe," he says, his gaze soaring up the walls to the red glow of the candle-like lamps. He's never seemed less interested in reading. His eyes glow brighter here than even at Libroscuro, despite the fact that this castle has only a sliver of the attic's light.

"Most areas are off-limits. A lot of repair work needs to be done." I cringe at hearing myself. I sound like my aunt.

"I want to see the tower," says Felipe.

"Um…"

"Don't tell me you haven't been there yet?" he asks, reading my expression as easily as I read his.

"I… haven't." I can't believe I've spent a week here and haven't even thought of searching for the tower.

"Let's find it together!" He looks like he's approaching enlightenment.

I really hope I didn't make the wrong decision letting him in, but it felt cruel to refuse him when he's spent his whole life longing to see this place.

"Okay, fine," I say, since now that he's brought up the tower, all I want to do is find it.

"From its outer geography," he says, a wrinkle forming between his eyebrows, "we know it's on the west side of the castle."

I visualize the long corridor that leads to the mirror room with the chandelier. Now that I think of it, the ground even felt like it was ascending when I took that path.

"I know where to go!" I say, hurrying ahead at a quick clip. Since it's daytime, and we're wearing shoes, it should be easier to navigate the mirror room's minefield of a floor.

I'm eager to see if I'm right about the tower's location, but Felipe might as well be wading through water, moving slow enough to absorb every square foot of la Sombra. He stops walking altogether when we reach the grand hall with the exoskeleton ceiling. Cutting to the center of the space, he rotates to take it all in.

"There are no photographs of the inside of la Sombra," he says as he admires the crest hanging over the fireplace. "I had no idea what to expect."

"What do you think so far?"

He doesn't answer me.

As we approach the gargoyle-flanked grand staircase, Felipe looks up in awe and wordlessly starts to climb.

"Not there," I say. "Those are the bedrooms. There's only one cool space there, and I'll take you after we find the tower."

He joins me back on the ground floor, and I show him the dining hall, along with the sunny kitchen. "We can leave the basket here if you want," I offer.

"Nah, we'll find a better spot to eat," he says, looking less impressed with this room than the others. "The kitchens were probably on a lower level, originally," he says, frowning at the modern appliances. "The staff would come up to serve the meals. This must have been remodeled in the past century."

He makes a good point. The windows here aren't stained glass but clear, which is why it's so much more luminous than any other part of the castle. Not to mention the tiled walls and stainless-steel appliances all point to recent modifications.

"There's that refrigerator you mentioned," he says, grinning.

Terror grips my gut that he's going to open it and find bags of blood, so I say, "Why don't we take a break? We can sit in the dining hall and dig into the food—"

"No, no, no, we're going to picnic in the tower," insists Felipe, and I'm relieved when he shoots out of the kitchen.

We stride past the bookshelf that's an entrance to the secret wing with the dungeon. But I'm not taking him there, nor to the purple room. No trap- or trick doors. It's bad enough that I let him into the castle.

"There are two paths," says Felipe as we approach the bifurcating corridor.

"I've been down the right wing three times, and the tower isn't there. But I haven't seen all of the left. I think that has to be it."

Felipe looks at the other passage like he longs to check out both wings, but he doesn't argue and follows me down the narrow path. "Whoa," he says when we arrive at the mirror room.

"We need to be careful—" I start to say, but the debris on the floor is gone. Someone must have swept it because the ground is glossy and spotless. Sebastián?

Felipe is still absorbing the chandelier, walking under it slowly, his chin tilted up. But the falling fixture creeps me out, and I walk a little faster, eager to try the door at the other end of the chamber.

It opens to a round stairwell with spiraling steps embedded into the wall. "It has to be the tower," I say when Felipe joins me.

We climb in silence, our breathing labored. When we reach the top, there's a small landing with a single door.

I try pulling it open, but it's heavy, so I have to use both hands. Once it swings out, I realize why—the door is as tall as the ceiling, and on its other side is a soaring bookshelf packed with texts.

The library is in the tower, I realize.

Actually, the library is the tower. A rolling ladder orbits the room, which is lined with floor-to-ceiling shelves brimming with books. A thick band of stained glass circles the top of the space, a buffer between the shelves and the ceiling, letting in sunrays and spotlighting the dust floating in the air.

"The ceiling is flat," says Felipe. "But the tower is pointy." He looks at me with excitement brightening his eyes. "Maybe there's a way up. I've read that castles like this one were built with secret rooms and passages."

He really has done his research.

We survey the book spines around us and pull out texts at random to see if they open trick doors, taking turns using the ladder to reach the higher levels. "What's that?" he asks me, and I come over to see where he's pointing: a solitary book is shelved face out.

No, not a book.

A tablet .

I reach up and try to pry it off the wood, but it's been affixed there. "It doesn't come out," I say.

"Let me try," says Felipe, and I move back while he runs his hand across the dark screen, then attempts to twist it like a door handle. But nothing happens.

"Maybe it's dead and needs to be charged," I say.

He inspects the tablet's sides. "I don't see anywhere to plug in."

I look up at the top of the wheeled ladder, to the window that wraps around the ceiling. I can't shake Felipe's notion that there could be a secret room up there. "I have an idea. When I get to the top, roll me around."

I climb to the topmost rung, so that my head and shoulders are facing the stained glass. This must be how the service staff used to reach the windows to clean them—but judging by the dust, no one has been up here in a while.

"Okay, move me!" I call down.

Felipe starts to roll the ladder slowly, and I survey the glass as I revolve round the room, looking for hinges or any kind of opening mechanism. I've nearly traveled full circle when I find it.

"Stop!" I say, and once the ladder is stationary, I reach for the latch on the side of the window. When I unhook it, I swing open the sooty stained glass and reveal an outdoor balcony.

"Come!" I wave Felipe up. "And bring the food!"

He climbs the steps with the basket, which he hands to me, and I pass it through the open window, then I hold on to the frame to pull myself up. Felipe joins me outside.

The balcony is barely big enough for the both of us, and I could probably slip between the wide-gapped iron bars that enclose it. But it's got the best view I've ever seen.

The green countryside, the thicket of woods, the tiny town of Oscuro, the mountains on the horizon… The world looks so vast from up here, the sky so infinite—and yet, la Sombra looms larger than everything.

Somehow, it's not hard to believe this castle could be a black hole powerful enough to swallow us all.

We sit down, and Felipe sets out a row of crackers and small plastic containers. He spoons some olive tapenade on a cracker and hands it to me, then he makes one for himself. The crunchy seediness against the bitter saltiness of the spread makes for a tasty combination, and I finish it in two bites.

"Your aunt doesn't like me very much," he admits as he hands me a cracker layered with a different spread.

"What makes you say so?" I ask, curious to hear what he thinks about that.

"I used to hang around the castle a lot, hoping she would need help carrying something so that I could have an excuse to come inside. I only stopped because she called my parents and told them I was stalking her." He chuckles and crunches on a cracker.

My laugh turns into a mmm of appreciation as I taste a delicious whipped spread that smells like truffles.

"What do you remember about your childhood?" Felipe asks as he plucks a loaf of bread from the basket and rips off a piece. He tears the chunk in half and lathers the creamy spread onto both sides, then cracks some pepper and hands me one of the halves.

"My first memories are of snow," I say, staring at the bread's whipped white surface with its dusting of black stars. "I remember a wooden cabin and a red sled and a puffy purple jacket. When I was young, we moved through Montana and Wyoming and Colorado. I was around ten when I asked my parents if we could try a warmer climate, so I spent most of my teens in Arizona and Texas and Florida."

I take a bite of bread and think about how diametrically opposed Felipe's and my upbringings have been. He's lived in the same home his whole life and plans to remain there, forever—while I've spent my life everywhere but my own home. Until now.

"What were they like?" asks Felipe between bites of his own bread. "Your parents?"

My gut hardens, threatening to cut off my appetite. I don't want to talk about them… but if I stop, they'll be gone for good. "We used to say Mom had wings."

" ?Alas? " asks Felipe, miming flying with his arms.

"I don't mean it literally. It's just how Dad and I used to describe her. She was always soaring ahead of us. She'd wake up first and set the coordinates for the day."

"Were you closer to her or your dad?"

"The three of us were our own world," I say after a moment. "We were all we had. I think Mom was more of a loner at heart. She liked to venture out on her own a lot, so I probably spent more time with Dad."

My voice catches, and I clear my throat. I want to stop talking, but to speak of Mom and leave out Dad feels like too deep a betrayal.

"I wanted to be just like him," I say, the admission dislodging something in my throat, and even if I wanted to stop now, I couldn't. "Ever since I was a kid, he would let me help with his work. He taught me how to read, how to drive, how to play poker."

That's why I have to find out who killed him and Mom. Because this time, he's not here to close the case himself.

"You said you might have brought a book?" I ask, eager to change the subject. I lean over to peek inside the basket.

"Oh, right." His voice is muffled as he chews. Swallowing, he says, "After the tour."

"Then let's keep moving," I say, and we pack everything inside the basket.

Beatríz could be back any moment, and if I want to get answers from her, the first thing I do probably shouldn't be to piss her off. "You should head home soon, before my aunt gets back," I say to Felipe as we're cutting across the mirror room.

"The tour isn't over yet," he complains, and when we approach the fork to the east wing, he turns in that direction. I walk through the string of empty rooms to the windowless cathedral for the fourth time, and I wonder if Felipe will say anything about the red rug that conceals the trapdoor to the purple room… but he doesn't mention it.

"There's nothing more to see," I say. "I really think you should go before—"

"Catch me!"

Felipe breaks into a sprint, and after a moment's shock, I dart after him. " Felipe! "

He cuts down the crimson corridor toward the front of the castle. "Stop!" I call to him.

As he races past the dining hall, his hand digs into the basket.

"Felipe!"

He starts up the grand staircase, and when I follow him, a cracker strikes my head. He laughs, and I shout, "Are you serious?"

I dodge another cracker as I chase him up the left side that leads to the moon temple. As we're running down the hall, he grabs a handful of grapes to lob at me.

"Don't you dare !" I shout, but the fruits slip from his fingers, and he steps on them, sliding forward in a funny dance and falling on the basket.

I crack up so hard that I fall to the floor, too, and we're both cackling in the dim lighting. When we calm down and get up, I say, "There is a room here worth seeing before you go."

I lead him to the moon temple with the stained glass windows. As soon as we step inside, Felipe falls into a deeper, more reverent kind of silence than even the library. He approaches the wall and touches the words carved there.

"From the spell," he says to me, his eyes wide and sparkly. " No hay luz en Oscuro. "

I don't like the way he's looking at me, and I regret showing him this room almost instantly. "Time to go," I say, hanging by the entrance and not moving any closer.

"Do you remember anything about your childhood in Oscuro?" he asks, walking over to me, and I'm glad he's moving in the exit's direction.

"Like what?" I ask, wondering if this is what he was getting at earlier, when he asked about my childhood memories.

"Like me."

I want to work my legs, but I can't. " What? "

"We met," he says, standing just a couple of feet away from me. "When we were little."

"But— what ?" I sputter. "Why didn't you mention it—?"

"My earliest memory is of this castle," he says, his voice so low that despite his proximity, I strain to hear him. "I remember running toward it, until my father caught me in his arms and carried me away. I don't know how old I was, or if the memory is even real. I just know I've been trying to get here my whole life."

He turns from me and starts pacing the room, his fingers trailing along the wall, touching the words etched there.

"I was five when I tried again. I ran from our front yard. I made it all the way up the castle's front garden. That's when I saw you."

"Did I see you?" I ask, my legs still leaden.

"You did," he says, his tone growing tender. "You came up to me, and you gave me a flower." He flashes me his crooked smirk, and I feel my own features softening to learn how far back my connection to Felipe goes.

I just hope he knows it's a friendly connection and nothing more.

"I managed to come to the castle a few more times," he says, approaching me. "But I only found you in the garden again once. Do you remember?"

As he asks the question, I see the flicker of an answer. Wild green grass, a rock, and a young me talking to a boy with the biggest and brightest eyes I've ever seen.

And blood .

I look down at my palm, and then at Felipe. He's standing before me now, grinning to see that I've made the connection. The glow of his amber eyes is warmer than ever, like it's been spiked with a new emotion.

He shows me his palm. There's no physical scar on his or mine, but I remember .

We sliced our skin with a stone and mixed our blood. I don't know why.

"I will never forget," he says. "I told you I wanted to live in la Sombra, and you said I had to be of your blood. So you offered to help."

I don't recall the details yet, but I know it happened.

"I knew then," he goes on, inching closer to me, "that one day we would share this castle together."

The new, uncomfortable energy between us is back.

"Felipe, we're friends —"

"Can't you see we're each other's best match?" The light in his eyes is becoming too bright, and I can barely look at him directly.

He moves in, and too late I realize I've backed myself into a wall.

"As soon as I saw you on the news," he says, speaking eagerly, with a frenetic energy, "I knew you'd come home. So I started learning English. I'd studied it at school, but for months I drilled the language into my brain, watching movies and reading books until I could speak it perfectly . Just so there would be no obstacles between us."

"You've known me for like a week—"

"No," he says, taking my hand. "I've been waiting for you over a dozen years."

This was what Beatríz meant about Felipe consuming too much fantasy. He's spent so much time reading fiction that he believes he's starring in his own epic romance.

"Felipe, listen to me," I say, freeing my fingers from his and looking him in the eye. "I care about you a lot, but as a friend. I don't want anything more."

"Don't say that," he urges. I try to sidestep him, but his hands hook onto my hips, and he presses me into the wall.

"Come on," he pleads, "give me one chance." Now I see the brightness in his eyes for what it's always been—not fascination, but fanaticism .

I shove against him, but he doesn't budge. "Stop, please— !"

Felipe's tongue cuts me off, forcing its way into my mouth. I can't fight him off, and when I try twisting my neck, his hands clamp around my face.

I struggle against him until spots cloud my vision, as if I'm about to pass out. I feel a strong gust of air blow from my mouth into his, but not in a way that robs me of oxygen, and all of a sudden I know what's happening—

Black smoke blankets my view.

Felipe's fingers go limp, and I scramble away from him.

I can't see a thing through the fumes, so I cling to the wall, dragging myself in the direction of the exit, until the air clears.

I look wildly around me. Felipe is exactly where I left him. He looks paused, like my parents on the subway.

"F-Felipe?" I say, my voice trembling.

He turns to me, and my heart rams my chest when I see his eyes.

They're made of black smoke.

His whole frame begins to shake, and his mouth falls open. I cover my face with my hands to keep from screaming.

"Estela," says Felipe, speaking in a deadened tone unlike his lively voice. "If you want answers, come to the woods at midnight."