16

16

AFTER ANDRÉS SPLASHED HISface with water from the pump, the three of us went to the servants’ quarters. Andrés walked gingerly, shading his face from the harsh morning sun with a hand. He had not spoken a word since Paloma announced Ana Luisa was dead. If possible, he looked worse than he had when she had woken us.

“What happened?” I asked Paloma as she led us to where Ana Luisa was. Where Ana Luisa’s body was.

“I woke up and she was gone,” Paloma said curtly. She walked a half step ahead of us, her dark shoes striking the earth with firm purpose, as if their beat were the only thing keeping the tears that hummed beneath the surface of her voice from welling up again. “She wasn’t ill, she hadn’t mentioned any pain . . . I think it was her heart.”

Andrés nodded, then set his mouth in a pained twist. Sympathy tugged at my heart. The blow to his head must have been even worse than I thought.

When we reached Ana Luisa’s house, a small crowd of people had gathered outside the door. They parted at the appearance of Paloma, followed by Padre Andrés and myself, whispering to one another as we stepped over the threshold into the darkness of the house.

Paloma took us directly to the sleeping quarters. It was similar to Andrés’s room: simply decorated, humbly furnished. But unlike his room, herbs covered the threshold, lined the walls. The air had the inevitable smell of stale copal, mixed with something foul.

Two beds were on either side of the room. One was empty, its sheets in disarray. The other was Ana Luisa’s, the floor surrounding it etched with imitation witch’s marks.

And there she was.

I stopped, barely a few steps past the doorway. My breath vanished from my throat.

I had not been fond of Ana Luisa, nor she of me. The figure of Juana stood between us, an impenetrable barrier that made us adversaries before we could even learn to know each other. I did not know if we would have ever moved past our differences.

That did not make the sight before me any less shocking.

In death, Ana Luisa’s face was fixed in an expression I had never seen her wear in life: her mouth dropped open into a surprised oh, her eyelids torn back so far by fear her pupils were naked and round and stark against the whites of her eyes. Her arm was outstretched, stiff.

Ana Luisa pointed to the wall by her daughter’s bed.

My stomach dropped.

Though I was beginning to feel my staring was disrespectful, I could not rip my gaze from her stiff, bloodless face.

Fear.

I knew that fear. I had felt it last night. I felt it every night inside the walls of San Isidro.

“I woke up and she was like this.” Paloma’s voice trembled barely above a whisper. “I can’t even close her eyes. I tried—” Her voice broke.

Andrés’s posture shifted. He put a hand on Paloma’s back; she immediately turned into his embrace and began to sob against his chest. He hushed her gently.

I was suddenly aware that I was intruding on a private family moment. Paloma deserved the same privacy I had needed when Papá was taken away, the privacy I was only able to get at night, sobbing into my sheets with Mamá stroking my back. I took a step away from them and turned to leave.

As I did, I glanced at the wall that Ana Luisa pointed at in her final moments. An unassuming stucco wall, so like the wall Andrés had been thrown against last night. White, rough, plain. My eyes dropped to the floor before it. There was a cross there, a simple wooden cross like the one that hung in Andrés’s room.

It was broken.

The center of the cross was cracked, its short arms almost fully detached. It looked as if someone had taken the heel of their shoe and smashed the center of the wood, not once but over and over again, grinding it into the floor.

A chill coated my palms, slick as oil.

Something had been here last night.

Something frightened Ana Luisa to death.

I shuddered and left the house, blinking as I adjusted to the painfully bright morning.

Other villagers had stepped away from the door, but still hovered, forming an arc around it. Next to José Mendoza, I recognized the woman from the baptism Andrés had performed a few days ago. She was crying. The child on her hip watched me solemnly.

What was I supposed to say? Ana Luisa had been their friend. Perhaps they had lived alongside one another for years. Perhaps they had known her longer than I had even been alive. Who was I to tell them to go away?

But part of me saw Paloma’s back shuddering with sobs and saw myself.

I cleared my throat. “I think Paloma requires privacy,” I said. Murmurs quieted as Andrés stepped out of the doorway behind me. He held up a hand to shade his eyes.

“Funeral Mass in an hour,” he said. “Burial after. I require volunteer gravediggers. May God bless you.”

Despite the grimness of this pronouncement, the tightness in my shoulders eased. I had the sensation that all of us around Ana Luisa’s door responded as one to the soft authority in his voice. Something in the air shifted; relaxed. I am here, his presence said. And if I am here, all will be well.

A few voices repeated the words back to him, and the people dispersed, retreating to their homes or moving to other parts of the hacienda to begin the day’s work.

Andrés let loose a long sigh.

“What on earth happened?”

“My aunt had a weak heart,” he said, keeping his voice low. Paloma’s sobs had waned but were still audible. “A number of people in my family do. It might have been natural, but . . .”

The terror on her face caused both of us to think otherwise.

“Did you see the cross?” I murmured.

Andrés nodded slowly, carefully, as if his head were made of blown glass and shaking it too hard would cause it to shatter. He had not lowered the hand that shaded his face.

“What if when we broke the circle—”

“You broke the circle?” he interrupted.

I stared at him. Was this a joke? “Last night. You broke it first, and then I followed.”

The crease between his brows deepened. A shadow of fear passed behind his eyes. “What?”

“Do you not remember?”

“I . . .” He chewed his bottom lip. “No.” His voice wavered close to cracking over the word. “I know we began the ritual. And then . . . Paloma was pounding on the door.”

A long pause stretched between us. How could he not remember? He looked just as panicked by this thought as I felt. “What happened?”

I dropped my voice to a whisper, as dry and raspy as my mouth felt. “The thing—whatever you drew from the house—it hurt you. It threw you against the wall. Your head . . . you were hurt, so I ran after you, and it—”

“It’s loose,” Andrés finished grimly. What little color remained in his face drained completely. “It must have been here last night.”

My gut twisted. I knew he was right. A wild, unfettered darkness was roaming free beyond the walls of the house. I had felt it last night as I drew water from the pump. “Do you think that’s why she was pointing at—”

He nodded, the movement slow and ginger. “It must have been here.”

“Andrés.” Paloma’s voice snapped through the air with the finality of a book being shut. Andrés jumped; winced at the sudden movement. She was right behind him, her eyes bloodshot, her hands curled into fists. “What are you talking about?” she accused.

“The rain,” Andrés said quickly. “It will rain this afternoon. Two hours before sunset.” Then he paused, as if weighing whether or not to continue. “I was wondering . . . did you hear anything unusual last night?”

For a moment Paloma stared at him blankly. Understanding, then frustration, blossomed over her features.

“Stop. Enough.” Her voice cracked in exasperation over the words. “Why can’t you be a normal priest? Sometimes that’s what this family needs.”

She turned on her heel and disappeared back inside the house.

Andrés watched her go, looking as wounded as a pup that had been kicked. Then his hands rose to his temples and he closed his eyes. He swayed gently where he stood. Was he going to be ill again?

“Are you all right?” I said softly. My hand strayed to his arm; I drew it back quickly.

“I need to go back inside,” he murmured. He was ghastly pale.

“I will go clean up the parlor,” I said.

“Don’t touch the circle.” The urgency in his exhausted voice sent a chill down my spine. “Do not go inside the marks. I can still feel it. It’s . . . active. Please, be careful.”

“I will,” I promised, and let my hand fall. He ducked his head gingerly beneath the low doorway and melted into the darkness of Ana Luisa’s house.

What had we done?

I began the walk up to the house, my feet heavy with dread. What would I find there?

“Beatriz.”

I whirled to face the voice. Juana was walking up the path to the villagers’ quarters. She held two letters in one hand and waved them at me, gesturing for me to come to her. One was opened, the other not.

My heart lifted with hope. Was one from my mother?

Any other day, I would have stood my ground and insisted she come to me. Dig in my heels for a battle of wills to see which one of us was the true master of San Isidro. But not today. I didn’t have the strength to fight her.

There was mud on her skirts. Her hair was mostly undone from its plait and falling around her face; thin blades of hay stuck out from amidst the sandy brown of her hair.

“What happened to you?” I asked.

“I was drunk and fell asleep in the stable,” she said bluntly.

I blinked in surprise. What on earth? Before I could ask what she meant by behaving that way, she handed me the unopened letter.

My own name winked up at me in Rodolfo’s elegant, sharp-tipped penmanship.

“He’s coming back for a short while,” Juana said, flat and unamused. “He’ll arrive the day after tomorrow.”

“What a surprise,” I said, for I had nothing else to say. Not to Juana, anyway. My mind was racing past her, up the path and to the house, the house where a witch’s circle still hummed with power and the shadows ripped themselves from the walls to prowl the grounds.

“Whatever charlatan’s game you have the priest playing up at the house, be done with it,” Juana said, her pale eyes fixed on my face with an intensity that made my skin crawl. “He was banished from San Isidro for a reason. Perhaps you’re amused by native superstition, but you know how little patience Rodolfo has for it.”

I nodded knowingly, though I did not know. Banished? There were many things I had not discussed with Rodolfo; banishment was one of them. Andrés had not mentioned it either. I did not trust myself to speak, not when a hot hum of anger coiled in my throat at Juana’s condescending tone.

Charlatan. Native superstition.Who did she think she was, to dismiss Andrés so? Couldn’t she see the way the people looked at him, how they needed someone like him? Or did she simply not care? Didn’t she know it was his own power that inspired Ana Luisa’s protective copal? His work was a gift. It might have the power to save lives in the battle we waged against the house.

A long, thin wail rose from the direction of Ana Luisa’s house.

My heart curled in on itself. Poor Paloma.

“What’s going on over there?” Juana asked sharply, as if only then noticing the heavy mood that hung over the courtyard.

“Haven’t you heard?” I asked. Her expression did not change. She was waiting for me to continue. “The Lord took Ana Luisa in the night.”

I wasn’t sure what I expected from my sister-in-law. I knew she and Ana Luisa were close—their camaraderie an easy, well-worn thing born from years of being in each other’s company. Did I expect her to break into Paloma’s sobs? To look as if the wind had been knocked out of her like Andrés?

“Well,” she said coldly. “Well.”

And that was it.

She turned sharply on her heel and strode to the stables.

---

*   *   *THE FRONT DOOR OF the house was ajar, just as I had left it last night when I stumbled into the rain with Andrés. It gaped at me, a dark mouth, toothless and foul breathed. Darkness cloaked the hall beyond it.

It was morning, I told myself. Nothing could happen during the day.

But things had happened during the day. Temperatures shifted severely. I found the skeleton in the wall.

But that was in the north wing. I would be in the green parlor.

Sickness lurched in my gut at the memory of falling to my hands and knees, dark blood pouring over my chin onto the floor.

It was an illusion. The darkness could not harm me.

It killed Ana Luisa, a voice wound through the back of my mind. I thought of cold hands shoving me down on the stairs, how frighteningly corporeal they had felt. How very real their hatred was. It nearly killed Andrés.

Fighting the urge to shudder, I looked up at the red tiles missing from the roof, the brown bougainvillea hanging limp from the stucco walls. San Isidro was supposed to be my victory. My future. My home.

Now all I could do was hope that it wouldn’t be my tomb.

I inhaled deeply, curled my hands into fists to steel myself, and stepped inside.

The house sat differently on its foundations. Whereas before it had been slumped and rambling, the limbs of a hibernating beast curled around a central wing, now . . .

Now it was awake.

The feeling of being watched no longer brushed gently against me, coy and shy. It was brash, its gaze open and lurid, noting my every move, watching my every step toward the parlor with the naked interest of a dog eyeing a slab of meat.

All I had to do was tidy up the parlor. Andrés would handle the circle. We had to make sure that there was no evidence of what we had attempted—what we had failed at—before Rodolfo arrived.

The door to the green parlor lay in the hall like a corpse, blown off its hinges as if by an explosion. My shoes crunched over shattered glass as I entered the room.

The temperature dipped; I shuddered. It was merely that this room faced west, and the sun’s rays had not yet touched it after a long, cold night.

Everything was as we had left it: the candles were in their spots, the blankets piled neatly by the hearth, unused, for Andrés and I had not held vigil as we had initially planned.

My heart skipped against the base of my throat as I thought of Andrés going limp as a rag, flung against the wall. The wall was rough, white, plain. No sign of supernatural events. No blood slicked the floor. No copal filled the air.

I began to clean. I obeyed Andrés’s orders to not enter the circle. It was easy to remember the urgency in his voice when I drew near to the charcoal markings to collect the candles. There was a warmth to the ground near them, as if a living body was lying on the stone. As if life pulsed through it. It was so at odds with the chill of the rest of the room that when I first brushed against it, I snatched my hand back as if it had been burned.

It’s active, Andrés had said.

I had no intention of discovering what that meant.

As I tidied, I preoccupied myself with an equally pressing concern: how on earth I was going to welcome Rodolfo back into this home. The very taste of the air inside these walls had changed since he was last here. I could not be inside the house at night without the comforting shroud of clouds of copal smoke. I could not sleep in the dark, as Rodolfo would wish.

Maybe I could take the blankets I had just stowed away and run to the capilla. Perhaps I could sleep beneath the pews as Andrés had as a child.

Perhaps I could tell Rodolfo . . .

You know how little patience Rodolfo has for it, Juana said.

Whether that was true or not, Rodolfo had admonished me in his letter and told me not to seek help from the Church again. When he looked at Andrés, he would see a priest. He would see the Church. He would see someone who had been banished from San Isidro, though I did not yet know why.

He would see that I had disobeyed him.

I had never upset Rodolfo in our short marriage. Fear skipped down my spine, its steps uneven and discordant, at the thought of how he had snapped at Juana at dinner. How quickly could that same anger turn on me? What would it look like?

“Beatriz.”

Andrés filled the high doorway, a basket of something that smelled of warm masa in one hand.

I frowned. That was the first time he had said my name without Doña, and it felt naked, almost profane.

He pointed at the wall, eyes wide in his gray face. The wall he had struck last night.

I turned my head.

Thick strokes of blood splayed across the white stucco, forming a single word, repeated over and over:

RODOLFO RODOLFO RODOLFO RODOLFO RODOLFO

It had been blank. Mere minutes ago it had been white and plain. And now—

A single droplet of blood rolled from the last O. It was fresh blood, as wet as new paint and dripping.

RODOLFO RODOLFO RODOLFO

I couldn’t look away. I couldn’t breathe.

RODOLFO RODOLFO

“Did she . . .” Andrés trailed off.

She. She.

I heard she died of typhus. I heard she was kidnapped by insurgents.

“Did you know Rodolfo’s first wife?” I demanded.

“I . . .” Andrés paused. “I met her. Yes.”

“What did she look like?”

“Like she came from a peninsular family,” he said softly. “Tall, white. She had the palest hair I have ever seen. It looked like corn silk.”

I tore myself away from the wall to look at Andrés. If he had eaten or rested, it hadn’t improved his appearance—his face was sickly, his expression queasy.

“Andrés. I had a dream when you were last here.”

I told him what I had dreamed: the woman in gray, her hair like corn silk, and her eyes like embers. Her flesh-colored claws. The shredded sheets, the marks carved deep in the wooden headboard of the bed.

He listened silently, still hovering in the doorway, either too ill or too stunned to move until I delivered the final piece of what I had to say.

“Juana told me Rodolfo is coming back in two days.”

Andrés looked back at the wall. His eyes followed a thick bead of blood as it carved a fresh path down the stucco. The scrawl was rough, frantic. Could it have been written in fear?

Was it a warning?

“I think you are in danger, Beatriz,” he breathed.

That I knew was true.

But from whom?