Chapter 27

CHAPTER 27

WHEN I OPEN MY EYES, Sebastián is the first thing I see.

I've never woken up next to someone who wasn't my parents, and it feels more intimate than I expected. There's a kind of vulnerability to seeing each other in the morning light.

"I can't believe you're still here," I say, reaching up to touch his cheek. I'm used to seeing him haloed in silver, not in the warmth of day. He looks younger in the gold-tinged air.

"I watched you sleep all morning," he says, "and it has become my definition of peace."

I feel my cheeks flushing. Once we accepted that he wasn't going to disappear, he offered for me to sleep longer while he kept watch for my family members.

"Are you hungr—?"

Sebastián's voice drops out, his expression changing completely as his head angles away from me. Then he says, "Someone is coming."

I get dressed in a rush, while he disappears.

My mouth is parched, and I can't catch my breath. I'm not ready to fight my uncle or my sister yet. Not ready to remember I lost what was left of my family last night. Not ready to wake up —

"It is not them," says Sebastián, startling me as I come out of the bathroom. "It is an older man. He walks with an aid. He is now approaching the front doors."

" Felipe's father, " I say, my heart falling with dismay. "Should I answer?"

"If you do not, and your aunt disappears, too, more people will come knocking. Eventually, you will have to answer."

"But what do I say to him? You want me to lie to a man to his face about his dead son, and in a language I barely speak?"

BANG. BANG. BANG.

"If you care about keeping this castle's bloodthirst at bay," says Sebastián, "then take it from another bloodthirsty beast—the best thing you can do is communicate to this man in the language he best understands that he must stay away from here."

Sebastián is right that I don't want cops showing up, nor do I want to draw more attention to this place. So I open the front door.

The man on the other side looks aged with worry, and my soul hurts for him. His heart fears he's lost his son, but his brain isn't aware of the facts yet. Right now, Arturo is caught in the despair of not knowing.

Maybe I can spare him some pain.

"Hola, Estela," he says, nodding in greeting. "?Está tu tía?"

I shake my head. My aunt is not home.

"No la he visto en la clínica," he adds. I didn't see her at the clinic.

I shrug and try to summon actual words, but he barrels on before I can open my mouth. "No importa, he venido a verte a ti." I have come to see you.

"?A mí?" I ask. Today, I have no trouble with Spanish. In fact, I even feel more comfortable pronouncing the words.

"?Sabes dónde está Felipe? No ha regresado de su viaje, y hablé con su amigo Sergio, a quien iba a visitar, y me dijo que no lo ha visto en meses. Pensé que como ustedes han estado tan unidos, a lo mejor te ha confiado algo."

I understand everything he says—it's as if in recovering Antonela, I've unlocked my access to Spanish. Arturo is asking where his son is because his friend Sergio hasn't seen him. Arturo is here because he hopes Felipe confided in me what his real plans were.

I picture Felipe's room with all its posters of la Sombra from every angle, the dark shrine he built for its worship. I think of the attic in Libroscuro, with its ancient books about the castle and the town and its ties to the supernatural. I remember the way Bea's photo sits on the mantel at the Sarmientos' home, just beneath la Sombra's crest. And I flash to Felipe saying his family are the keepers of the Book.

There is no police station in Oscuro, but there is a bookstore, and this castle, and a clínica run by a Brálaga. In my digitizing work for Bea, I barely got through the first last name in the clínica's files because there are so many people of the same family here. Oscuro's residents stay for generations. Mom used to say populations remain firmly entrenched in a place due to culture or poverty. In this case, I think it's superstition.

The people who remain here, the Oscurianos, were raised to fear this castle, to be in awe of it, to watch it from the shadows. They adhere to a higher power than law enforcement or religion.

Above all, they believe in la Sombra .

"Felipe told me he received a mission," I say, trying to channel his fierce conviction. "I don't know where he went. I don't even know what he meant. But I believe him."

Arturo's eyes have gone wide. He stares at me for a long moment, and I get the impression of a man whose faith is being tested when he asks, "The fire that took your sister… it is true?"

His accent is rough, but I understand him. I nod in assent.

"And—Felipe—he's gone to the same place?"

"Yes," I say, unsure what the fallout will be—if I should expect the cops or a mob next. "Bea chose to go with him," I add, hoping Arturo doesn't run into her. "My sister is guiding them."

Now Arturo's expression slackens a bit, slightly eased. "Pensé que la doctora no quería a Felipe." I thought la doctora didn't care for Felipe.

"I think seeing how close he and I got changed her mind."

He nods, his eyes dazed with the shock he's just been dealt. "I wish I could understand," he says. "Pero Felipe creía en el poder de la Sombra. Siempre fue su sue?o pertenecer al castillo." Felipe believed in the power of la Sombra. It was always his dream to belong to the castle.

"I don't understand, either, but I believe," I say, and we look at each other, in the shadow of our grief.

When Arturo has gone and I'm alone again with Sebastián, he leads me to the kitchen. I feel nauseous from my lies. I refuse the glass of water he holds out to me, and he pulls me into him, pressing a kiss to my head. "You did the man a great kindness."

"I lied."

"You are carrying the weight of the truth for him because you know there is no fixing what is broken."

"I'm continuing my family's manipulation of the people here."

"You are giving him a place to store his grief," he says, and I remember what Bea said about why my parents kept Antonela's existence from me: They chose to carry the grief for you.

"It is what you came here hoping to find," says Sebastián. "A dark fairy tale you could sell to yourself to help make sense of the unfathomable tragedy that befell you."

" A place to store my grief, " I repeat. Is that what this castle is? Not just for me, but for all of Oscuro.

Our collective shadow.

I scan my blood on the tablet to gain access to the journal room. Sebastián is at my side as the bookshelf door opens.

He's already reading a journal by the time I make it up the stairs. He sets it down and picks up another before I've even opened one. At this rate, he'll get through the entire collection tonight.

"Here is something," he says after a stretch. "An ancestor your age, Araceli, writes that they see smoke every time bad luck befalls them. A second entry tells of their discovery of a twin sister, Isabel, whose childhood death had been kept a secret. That is all. Araceli did not write again."

I remember how Matilda wrote just the one entry, too. By the time I pick up a second journal, Sebastián has finished reviewing a couple of rows' worth.

"Look," he says, showing me a drawing of a figure standing in front of the mirror in the room with the chandelier. Two other figures stand behind the person, and a speech bubble over their heads says: No hay luz en Oscuro .

"That's the memory spell that let me see Antonela's past," I say, reaching down to turn the page.

The next drawing shows the room we're in now. A figure holds a book open. It has a red cover.

" Manifestation spell, " I read. " This will bind your twin's energy to yours if they are on this plane. " I swallow. "That's what I did." The admission comes out a whisper.

Bea was right. I shouldn't have listened to Teo. "Bea's death is my fault."

"No, it is your sister's."

My sister's .

The word still sounds strange. My whole life, I would have given anything for a sister. Someone to share the back seat with, fight with over the radio station, play with when we got to a new place—a built-in friend.

But our own family sent her to Hell, where they ruined her. They molded her into a monster who's murdered everyone I love. And now she's coming for me.

I'm just about to give up on the journal I'm reviewing when I spot something on the page I recognize. The drawing of a book with la Sombra's crest on the cover.

"I've seen this before. It's the Book from the thirteenth tale. The one Felipe says his family is hiding."

Sebastián comes over, and I read the entry out loud:

The worst day of my life started like any other.

Abuelo tended the jardín de sangre, Abuela cooked, and Mamá was resting her very pregnant belly in bed. Papá should have been watching me, but he was more interested in reading the newspaper.

My aunts lived with us, but they were vacationing in France.

I was by the dining hall when the lights on the walls started flickering. All of them, all at once. I had seen that happen before, but no one else ever said anything, so I assumed it was normal. Yet now for the first time, it occurred to me that maybe the others could not see it.

The lights seemed to be leading me deeper into the castle, toward the jardín de sangre. Except before I reached the door to the cathedral, something broke through the stone floor, spraying chunks of rock into the air.

I fell back and shrieked as a large shape crawled up from underground, and all the lights shut off.

In the blackness, I could barely breathe as the intruder moved closer. I felt them hand me something—a book —and they whispered one word:

"Run."

The lights blasted back on, and the intruder was gone. Yet the book remained.

I opened to the first page, where a note had been tucked inside. It was clear the writer had only a rudimentary grasp of my language, but the message was this:

Your ancestor is dangerous

Their plan to share power with your world will destroy it

It is what they did to mine

Now I give my life to end theirs

I have gone far to spell this Book

I hope it can stop the threat when it appears

Give the Book to one not of Brálaga blood to hide

They and their descendants will be its keepers until the right Brálaga comes for it

I was only ten, and I doubted my parents would believe me, or give me permission to go. So I ran off on my own to the first place I could think of, the home of a family friend I could trust, and I explained what happened. They agreed to hide the Book and tell no one, but only if I would let them walk me back to la Sombra, as I was young and it had gotten late.

When we reached the castle, the front door was open, and there was a sinister aura in the air that made us both hesitate to enter. The keeper of the Book was too afraid to go inside, but I barreled ahead.

I did not find anyone. It was like my entire family had vanished. Deep down, I knew someone powerful had come looking for the Book.

My aunts cut their vacation short. They kept asking me what happened, but I could not speak of it. It was then they decided to tell me about my twin brother.

They showed me the journal room and shared the story of how they sent him to the other castle. It was only after reading others' entries that I discovered the Brálaga curse.

My aunts had damned us all.

As punishment, I never told them the truth of what happened to our family. I write this entry many decades later, long after their deaths.

Seven years after losing my parents, my twin returned to me. I could feel Franco's presence in the castle, and we found a way to communicate using the mirror. The manifestation spell bound his spirit to me, and he possessed one of our aunts to corporealize and return to Earth.

When her body gave out, he took her sister's. When hers gave out, he possessed people outside our bloodline, but their bodies broke down even faster. The whole time, we searched for a permanent solution to his problem, some kind of Earthly shell that would last, but we never found one. We barely had six months together before he faded away.

It has been seventy-one years since that day. At eighty-eight years old, I am the oldest Brálaga in recorded history. I have not returned to this room since Franco died, and I do not plan to come back here again. I record this message for whoever needs to read it in the future.

The keeper of the Book and I never again mentioned what happened that day. Yet, shortly after their death, I received a note:

I am the new keeper of the Book. I vow to keep this secret alive through the generations of my bloodline, so it will not be forgotten.

I have no idea what the Book is or what makes it dangerous for us to behold. I wish I had read some of its pages, but I was a terrified ten-year-old when it was handed to me.

If you are the one for whom the Book was meant, I wish you good fortune.

Your ancestor,

Lala

I read through it to myself a few more times.

Six months.

That was how long Franco managed to hang around. Antonela could cause a lot of damage in that time.

"I need to find the Book," I say to Sebastián.

His face hardens like I've said the wrong thing.

"That will have to wait. Your uncle is here."