It wasn’t that I was no longer alone. It was that he was back. A friend. An ally. A shoulder to lean on.

We set up camp in the green parlor an hour past nightfall, two soldiers preparing for a nightlong battle as rain poured outside: blankets and candles, copal and herbs. Charcoal for witch’s circles. Holy water. A golden crucifix around Andrés’s neck, gleaming in the light of two dozen tallow candles. He stood before me, the witch in priest’s clothing, a pocketknife in one hand and a censer in the other. The locked door to his back, the fireplace to mine. A circle of protection surrounding us both.

Andrés set the censer at his feet. Smoke rose like mist at dawn as he then held the knife out to me.

“Ready?” His voice was low as a prayer.

I took the knife.

As mistress of the house, Andrés needed my intent, my will, to help draw whatever it was in the walls out. To banish it, and then—if all went according to plan—to purify the rooms.

The sensation of curling my fingers into the worn grooves of the wooden handle was almost like taking Andrés’s hand. Candlelight danced off its sharpened tip. I inhaled deeply.

I placed the tip to my thumb, pressing until blood welled ruby bright. Then I followed Andrés’s instructions and stepped toward him, heartbeat quickening as he unbuttoned and loosened his collar, exposing the delicate skin of his throat. There, just beneath his Adam’s apple, his pulse throbbed, gentle and rhythmic and far steadier than mine.

I placed my thumb on that pulse, smearing blood on skin in a slow, gentle movement.

“I am María Beatriz Hernández Valenzuela, wife of Rodolfo Eligio Solórzano Ibarra and guardian of this house,” I recited, my voice coming out hoarse. “And it is as guardian that I grant you authority to speak for me. To call on the powers in this house and beyond and ensure my will be done.”

My hand remained on Andrés’s throat as his eyes fluttered closed. His voice hummed against my thumb before I heard it speak. He told me in advance what the opening incantation meant, but still the hairs on my arms stood on end to hear a Latin prayer slip into his grandmother’s sleek mexicano:

“I call on the Youth, the resurrected lord of smoke and night, guardian of witches and nahuales. Teacher of those who will listen, brother of those reborn on new moons. Guide us through the night. Give us tongue to speak to those whom the lord of the underworld has misplaced, that we may set them on the right path.”

The smoke around us began to move.

He had warned me that the copal would dance. I was to stay still, to keep my gaze on Andrés and focus my will on him. To not look at the shapes the smoke might take. In my peripheral vision, I caught the sleek movement of a puma’s prowl, the beating wings of a screech owl.

But I kept my focus on Andrés. On the movement of his throat as he spoke, on the gentle beat of his pulse. I focused on breathing in time with him.

This was it. If I followed his instructions perfectly, this would be the end of the sickness of San Isidro. The end of the rot in its walls, the poison in its darkness.

Andrés’s prayer finished. The swirling shadows around the periphery of the circle faded; a silence profound as the cool depths of a well settled over the room.

“Very good,” Andrés whispered. I raised my eyes and met his. My thumb was still against his pulse. He was calm; I was not, but I was in his hands. He knew what he was doing. He had cured many houses of inhabitants who had overstayed their welcomes, and while this house had taken him off guard the other night, he was now prepared.

“Step back,” he said. I lowered my hand from this throat and obeyed. “Whatever happens, do not leave the circle,” he added, his voice a low rasp as he spread his arms wide, his palms facing upward.

I nodded. He had explained this as well: the power of the circle drew from our intent and from the circular movement of Andrés’s prayers around us, unbroken, constant. This circle itself was a doorway. A path. For whatever plagued San Isidro to be spirited away from here, away from Apan, toward whatever awaited it beyond.

A soft cooing noise lilted down from the ceiling, but it was drowned out by Andrés as he closed his eyes and began a new prayer, one that harnessed the gravelly undertones of his voice and roughened it.

The rich timbre of his voice and of the words he recited slipped into my body, twining around my ribs and spine like vines, like roots, firm and strong and alive. Though I could not understand their meaning, I felt their shift, felt how they grew richer, more seductive, their power curling toward Andrés.

Come, it called, teasing and soft. Come closer.

My head spun, giddy with the need to draw near to him, but my feet remained planted on the ground. The call was not meant for me. The blunt force of its power was not focused on me.

It was focused on the house.

For a moment, it listened. Perhaps it, too—perhaps she—felt the roots taking hold, felt the heady draw of the call.

Come into the circle.

Then the house rebelled.

A low whine built in the back of my head, thickened to a hum, and grew louder still, until a roar ripped through the circle.

No, my bones screamed. No. That’s not what she wants.

It was not until my breath began to give out that I realized I was screaming, that my hands were clamped over my ears, that I could barely breathe for the pain of the sound. My skull was about to shatter.

Before me, Andrés stood serene amid the roar. Eyes closed, hands outstretched, lips moving around the verses of prayer. Copal swirled like hurricane clouds, menacing and thick around the circle as Andrés rose.

He rose into the air.

It was not a trick of the shadows, a trick of the smoke; his eyes still shut, his arms stretched out like a benevolent saint, crucifix gleaming around his neck, he rose into the air and remained there, his shoes two feet off the ground.

With a violent motion, he snatched his hands into fists.

The roar cut off. As if strangled.

Silence washed over the circle like a flash flood, profound, heavy silence broken only by my whimpering. My hands were still over my ears; a trickle of salty warmth dripped from my nose onto my lips.

My hands trembled as I let them fall away from my ears. Andrés’s brow creased with concentration; now, with a sharp jerk, he drew his fists into his chest. As if tugging something. Yanking it toward him.

A furious shriek split the room. I fell to my knees, hands clamped over my ears again.

The air vibrated. It rippled and lashed out, alive with anger.

I tilted my head up to Andrés. Stop, please, I begged silently, but the shrieking grew louder, the air shook violently, until—

It stopped.

For a moment, Andrés hung suspended in silence, energy rippling around him like waves.

Then an unseen force snatched him bodily from the air and flung him against the wall of the parlor. He struck the wall with the crack of skull to stone; with a yelp of pain, he fell.

He collapsed on the floor in a heap, boneless as a rag doll.

“Andrés!” I cried, lurching to my feet. He didn’t move. Didn’t make a sound. “Andrés!”

Do not leave the circle, he said.

I didn’t care. The crack of his head striking the wall broke me, shattered whatever sense was left in me.

I raced toward him, throat stinging as I broke through the wall of copal smoke. “Andrés!”

A cold wind swept through the room, buffeting the candles, buffeting the smoke. It seized my chest like a vise, catching my breath, forcing me to my knees. A low wail lifted, then rose to a roar, winding around me, squeezing my chest so hard I thought my ribs were going to snap.

I could not breathe.

Blood dripped from my nose, then my mouth, pouring hot over my chin, choking me; I gasped and sputtered. It dripped onto my skirts, a relentless stream of red; though I coughed and spat it would not stop. I reached a hand to cover my mouth, to staunch the blood; it came away red, with two teeth, pink, fleshy gums still attached to them. The shrieking did not cease. It was a dagger in my skull. I wanted it to stop, I needed it to stop, it had to stop, but when I drew breath to cry out, to beg Andrés, I heaved and vomited more blood onto the floor before me.

Andrés. I had to get to Andrés.

I forced myself forward. Crawled to Andrés’s side.

I put a hand on his face, over his mouth, feeling for breathing. My blood smeared on his lips. “Andrés. Andrés.”

His groan brushed against my fingers.

He was alive.

The shadows carved his face sharp, making it otherworldly, dark and pointed like depictions of the Devil.

A sudden bloom of smoke, smoke that did not smell like copal, caught my attention. I glanced over my shoulder.

A candle had been extinguished. Then a second. A third. Slowly, deliberately. It was as if someone were going and closing a hand over the flames to kill them, one by one.

No one was there.

“Andrés. Andrés, please wake up,” I whispered.

The last candle went out.

The house, it, she—she was no longer within the walls. Was no longer the cold, the cries of Juana’s name, nor even the winking red eyes.

She was the darkness.

Andrés’s unfinished ritual had drawn her out and—

I had broken the circle.

Triumph hummed on the air, hard and metallic.

I was flushed with prey instinct, my breathing growing ragged as the two paths that now lay before me came into focus. Either I stayed in this room and was killed, or I fled and survived.

Andrés had not moved. I looked at the heap of his body and saw a little boy, curled under a church pew. I could not leave him behind. Not alone. Not with the dark.

I grabbed his arm and hauled it over my shoulder. I braced one hand against the rough stucco wall as I lifted him; my legs trembled, I wasn’t strong enough, I was too small to carry a man of his height out of the room, I—

Darkness coiled around his neck and tugged him down, his weight dragging on my arms.

No.Though clammy sweat slicked my palms, the sides of my throat, the small of my back, I tightened my arms around him.

“Get back! He’s mine.” My voice came out as a rough snarl; I barely recognized it. I shouted at the dark, a feral, wordless bark. With that, I hauled Andrés up as fast as I could, pushing with all the strength I had in my legs.

His feet caught his weight underneath. He was up. He wasn’t perfectly conscious—his head lolled to the side, onto his shoulder—but he could bear weight.

“Run,” I whispered to him. His head lifted slightly. “We have to run.”

So, so quiet.

We would be safe in the capilla.

Half carrying Andrés, I lurched for the door. The violence of the ritual had blasted it off its hinges; it had struck the far side of the hall and shattered a blown-glass vase. We stumbled over it, shoes crunching broken glass.

To the front door. My legs burned with each step; my damp palms fumbled the handle. We burst through the door.

Rain drenched the courtyard, slicking the path with mud. Rain cooled my scalp, ran down my face, soaked my dress as I staggered into the night.

The farther we drew from the house, the more Andrés seemed able to carry his weight; by the time we slumped against the wooden door of the capilla, he lifted himself back up. I wrenched the door open, and we half fell into the dim chapel.

Someone had lit prayer candles before the humble painted wooden statue of la Virgen de Guadalupe. It was enough light to see by, enough light to make a sob rise to my scream-savaged throat.

The door thundered shut behind us. My legs gave out at last, and we fell forward into the aisle between the pews. My knees struck tile floor; I threw myself out to try and catch Andrés so he would not strike his head a second time, but he had fallen on his shoulder and rolled onto his back, coughing and wheezing in pain.

I was on my hands and knees, like I had been in the parlor, when blood was pouring—

I looked down at my hands.

There was no blood on them. Nor on my skirts.

I jerked myself upward, sat back on my heels, and touched my chin. No blood. Felt my mouth for . . . I shuddered in horror, but my teeth were intact. Firmly attached to my gums and my jaw.

Tears stung my eyes and cheeks as I sucked in greedy lungfuls of air, my breathing and Andrés’s the only sound in the empty chapel. That and the thundering of my heart as it slowed, slowed, slowed.

So, so quiet.

Even the darkness here was different. Shadows dyed the corners of the room a soft, deep charcoal gray. The dark of dreamless sleep, the dark of prayers in the night. The dark touched by hopeful fingers of dawn.

Andrés opened his eyes. He frowned at the ceiling. “Where—”

“The capilla.” A hoarse croak, barely my voice at all.

His face was gray and gaunt; at my words it went paler still. “No . . . don’t leave the circle.”

“You were hurt,” I said. “It was hurting you more. I couldn’t leave you.”

“Broke the circle . . .” he murmured at the ceiling.

Had I made a mistake, bringing him here? No, something had gone wrong. Something had flung him across the room. It could have killed him. It could have killed both of us. Who cared about breaking the circle when he could have died?

“Damn the circle,” I whispered, tears blurring the vision before me: Andrés on his back, blood dripping from his nose, pale and gaunt between the pews. “You’re broken. That matters more.”

“Not broken.” A cough wracked his body. He grimaced. “Fine.”

“Lying is a sin, Padre Andrés.”

A wet laugh. He turned his head to the side, eyes shining up at me, feverish and overbright, as he smiled. Lopsided and without restraint. There was blood on his teeth.

He reached a hand up and gently brushed the back of his knuckles over my cheek. Goose bumps raced over my skin at his touch.

“An angel,” he murmured. “Are you an angel?”

His head had hit the wall hard. He couldn’t be in his right mind.

“Tell me where it hurts,” I said, voice cracking.

Awareness flickered behind his eyes; his brow creased with concentration. “I think . . . broken rib.” He winced, lowering his hand to his torso. “Or two.”

“Shall I get a doctor?”

“No,” he grunted.

“But what if you’re bleeding on the inside?”

“Doctors aren’t witches,” he said. “Can’t fix broken witches.”

We were safe now, safe from whatever mistake we had made, but his behavior sent a wave of panic through me. What sort of damage could a blow to the head like that cause? Would he survive the night?

“Of course a doctor could fix a broken witch,” I insisted calmly.

“Pierce with pikes and burn the witch,” he murmured, eyes fluttering closed. “Salt the earth and scatter his soot.”

The curl of panic beneath my lungs expanded. He wasn’t making sense. “No one is going to burn you, Padre Andrés,” I said, forcing authority into my voice. “Not on my property. Now look at me.”

He opened his eyes, gazing up at me with an open adoration that made something in my chest bend close to snapping.

“You will be more comfortable if you can sleep in your bed.”

“Bed,” Andrés repeated dreamily.

Yes, bed was the best idea, but there was no way I was going to be able to carry him all the way to his rooms at the back of the capilla. I checked his limbs for any signs of broken bones, but apart from his ribs and his head, Andrés had no other injuries that I could see.

“Can you stand?”

He grunted in the affirmative and began to hoist himself up.

“Wait for me.” I scrambled to my feet, head spinning, chest tight. The best way to guide him was to sling one of his arms over my shoulder again. I braced as his warmth pressed against me, with too much weight. “No, you need to stand on your own.”

He corrected, and, swaying slightly, we cut a meandering path up the aisle of the chapel. Christ watched us from a wooden crucifix above the altar. The candles on the altar flung shadows across His hollow cheekbones, giving His carved face a condescending air.

“Either help me or stop judging,” I muttered under my breath.

“Hmm?” Andrés wondered.

I didn’t reply. Thankfully, he began to bear more of his own weight as we neared his rooms in the back of the chapel. I cautioned him to mind his head as we passed through the doorway.

The rooms were dark, but it was a gentle dark. The same safe, soft charcoal dark of the chapel. I followed Andrés’s lead to the bed and helped lower him onto it.

I fumbled for candles and matches, finding them near the small round fireplace. I lit more than was necessary—out of habit more than actual fear. Here, we were not watched. Here, it was quiet. Quiet but for rain pattering on the roof and Andrés’s sigh as he kicked off his shoes and lay on the thin mattress.

The warm candlelight lit the sparsely decorated room. I cast a look around: a painting of la Virgen hung above the fireplace. Whitewashed walls, a wooden cross opposite la Virgen. A clay bowl and jug on the table. A single chair, a stack of books next to the bed, their spines worn with use.

Andrés curled into a fetal position. Sweat shone on his forehead; sudden distress drew his brows together.

“Are you all right?” I asked.

“I may be—”

I seized the clay bowl and swept across the tiny room to his side just in time. He retched violently. I bit my lip, holding the bowl still until he was done vomiting and set his cheek on the mattress in defeat.

The other afternoon, I had spotted a water pump behind the capilla. I brushed Andrés’s hair away from his face. “I’ll be right back,” I said softly.

I took the jug and the soiled bowl into the rain. It pricked my face and nearly soaked my dress by the time I was through washing the bowl and filling the jug, though it had only been minutes.

I walked back to the door of Andrés’s rooms, heavy jug in one hand, bowl in the other, when something caressed the back of my neck, gentle as the curious step of a tarantula.

A feeling of being watched.

I whirled to face it. “Don’t you dare,” I snarled.

But there was nothing there. Nothing but the thick, impenetrable darkness that cloaked the valley of Apan.

I glowered into the dark. And when I reentered Andrés’s little room, I set the jug on the table and fished into the pocket of my dress for the piece of copal resin I had taken to keeping there.

Once there was a curl of smoke at the door, I filled a clay cup of water for Andrés, but he had already drifted into sleep.

I knelt at his bedside and leaned my head against the mattress, careful to make sure it didn’t touch his. Panic and fear had drained every drop of energy from me; I was like a wet rag that had been twisted, twisted, twisted, and then hung out to dry.

Andrés’s breathing was steady, deep, and mine linked with it, with the rise and fall of his chest.

So, so quiet.

I didn’t remember falling asleep. I hadn’t intended to. Bright morning spilled into the room from the high windows, illuminating candles burned low and only the slimmest curl of copal.

The rapping at the door sounded again.

I lifted my head and turned to Andrés.

Carajo, I imagined him hissing.

But he lay still. Said nothing. Blood had dried and cracked at the corner of his mouth, and in the morning light, his face was as pallid as it was last night.

“Andrés!” The rapping gained fervor. The panic in Paloma’s voice pitched through the wood of the door. “Andrés, I need you. Wake up!”

It was Paloma. Thank goodness. Then the only excuse I needed for our current state of impropriety was that Andrés was clearly ill, and I had spent the night tending him.

I stumbled up on stiff legs, straightening my skirts as pins and needles ran up and down my calves. Tucked a curl that had torn loose from its knot sometime in the night behind my ear. Cleared my throat. My lips were cracked, parched. I prayed my voice would work.

I opened the door.

Paloma’s face was wild, tear streaked. “Andr—”

Her voice cut off and her eyes widened as she took me in, her mouth open in a surprised oh.

Then she saw her cousin.

“What happened to you?” she shrieked. I jumped back as she shoved into the room and fell to her knees at Andrés’s side. “You idiot! What mess did you get into this time?”

“I’m fine,” Andrés murmured, patting one of her hands gently. “Don’t worry, everything’s fine.”

Everything was not fine. He could have been killed last night, and my stomach sank when I realized we had not yet assessed the extent of the damage the broken circle had caused. But he lied effortlessly, the rasp in his voice comforting even when he looked like Death hovered near, waiting to snatch him away.

“No, it’s not fine,” Paloma cried. A sob thickened her voice. “Mamá is dead. She’s dead, Andrés!”