19

19

THE SHADOWS AROUND THEhouse grew long. The afternoon rain Andrés predicted came and filled the small central plaza of the hacienda village with mud.

I adjusted my wool shawl around my shoulders, making sure its longer end covered the basket I carried. It was still heavy with copal, though Andrés and I were now halfway through our task.

He walked a step ahead of me to the next small house and rapped on the door. It opened; warm light from inside slicked his rain-soaked shoulders, caught on the drops that fell from the rim of his hat as he dipped his chin.

He greeted the young woman at the door cordially, smiling at the baby on her hip as he introduced her to me as Belén Rodríguez. Briefly, he explained that he thought it best that all the villagers stay inside once the sun set. Belén followed Andrés’s movements as he turned to me and took copal from the basket. Assessment flickered behind her eyes when they lingered on me, even as she accepted the incense Andrés offered.

I thought you would be like the other one, Paloma said. Was this woman also wondering why the wife of the patrón stood next to the witch priest in the mud and the pouring rain?

The answer to that was simple: Andrés was still injured, and I had not let him out of my sight since finally bringing him out of the green parlor at midday. There were moments he swayed on his feet; memory recall seemed to cause him intense physical pain. His frustration with himself was palpable. It simmered beneath his calm exterior, turning ever inward. I had watched over him as he napped on the terrace, and now we were preparing for nightfall.

There was something about battle that changed the way a man felt about his comrades, Papá said. Andrés and I had seen a fierce battle together and barely made it out alive. I had known him for such a short time, yet I felt bound to him. I called it loyalty. Perhaps it was something deeper.

But the villagers did not know that. As far as they knew, he was still their invincible son; the blow to his head had not touched Andrés’s air of quiet authority.

Our work done, Andrés and I walked side-by-side in silence toward the capilla. He had agreed with me that spending the night alone in the house was dangerous, and that I should not endure it. With little fanfare, he decided that I would spend the night in his rooms.

This was what I had wanted, too, without knowing how to broach it. Still, I couldn’t help but feel a touch scandalized by how quickly he had come to such a conclusion.

Andrés opened the door, and I immediately understood his reasoning.

There was a fire lit in the hearth and leftovers from the afternoon’s meal on the small table. Paloma knelt in the corner, unfolding blankets and spreading them on the ground opposite Andrés’s cot.

She looked up in surprise when I stepped over the threshold.

“What is she doing here?” she cried as Andrés entered and shut the door.

Ah. Rather than brave the small house where her mother had died, Paloma was going to spend the night under the same roof as her cousin. And Paloma’s presence made mine permissible.

“I think it is clear that the situation requires unusual measures in order to ensure everyone’s safety,” Andrés said softly.

“But—”

“Would you want to spend the night alone in the house?” I added. It was without question that the house was unsafe. To be alone anywhere on the hacienda grounds was unsafe. I was sure that was why she was here—so that Andrés could keep her safe from whatever prowled in the darkness outside.

Paloma stared at me, somewhat aghast. She opened her mouth to speak, then met her cousin’s gaze over my shoulder. Whatever look he gave her was enough to settle the matter.

We ate in relative silence. After Andrés said the blessing, Paloma asked him the occasional question about villagers and their reactions to our crepuscular visits bearing copal. She did not invite my input, so I kept to myself until it was time to prepare for sleep.

Then Andrés pointed to the cot. “Doña Beatriz, you can—”

“Absolutely not,” I said.

“Don’t be an idiot, Andrés.”

Paloma and I met eyes. We had spoken in the same breath, our voices ringing with twin chastisement. Neither of us would let Andrés sacrifice a good night’s sleep in this state, my status as the lady of the property be damned. He was outmatched two to one for stubbornness. And he knew it.

“Ya, basta,” he sighed in defeat.

I moved my makeshift sleeping pallet—a bundle of blankets on a thick patterned rebozo—to a space near the door and sat, relieved that Paloma seemed to have forgiven my presence. I busied myself with taking my hair down as Andrés sat obediently on the bed at Paloma’s instruction.

“Can’t you do anything to heal yourself?” she asked softly. “Remember what Titi said about severe headaches, that—” Then, mid-sentence, her voice spilled into their grandmother’s language.

My fingers slowed as I braided my hair. Had she been speaking castellano all this time for my sake?

Andrés made a soft noise of understanding, then touched fingertips to his temples gingerly. “If I could remember how, I would,” he replied in castellano. I lost it as a child. Not fully, it seemed. He seemed to understand Paloma perfectly as she carried on speaking in a low voice, switching from one language to the other until she abruptly burst into tears.

Poor Paloma. I turned my body away from her and Andrés as I nestled beneath my blankets, hoping to give her some semblance of privacy. I curled into a fetal position, thinking of the nights Mamá and I spent in the narrow bed at Tía Fernanda’s. How hard I sobbed—for Papá, for the loss of our life, for the loss of my future. Paloma was proud and would likely not accept spontaneous sympathy from me. But if she ever asked, I knew then it would come pouring out of me like a flood.

Presently, their conversation calmed, and slowed; I heard Paloma settle into her bundle of blankets and, after a few minutes of silence, start to snore lightly. I shifted to put my back to the wall. Though by then I had closed my eyes, sleep did not come so easily. I listened to Andrés rise and rake the embers in the fire, the brush of bare feet on the ground, the shift of fabric being folded, the strike of flint and the blooming aroma of copal. A soft shuffle back to the bed.

I slitted my eyes, peering out through a veil of lashes. Andrés lay on his bed with one hand under his cheek. The crease of pain that he had carried all day between his brows had softened at last; his chest rose and fell slowly. If he was not asleep, he soon would be.

The fire lowered to embers. Its cast dyed his face the deep orange of twilight after a storm. Shadows hollowed his cheeks and the circles beneath his eyes.

Aren’t you frightened? Do you know what he is capable of?

I should be afraid of everything he did last night: calling on spirits, rising into the air. Everything I had ever heard from a pulpit or a whispered ghost story told me that witches were dangerous. They were cronies of the Devil.

Perhaps I was frightened of him. But one could fear and trust at the same time: whether because of that curl of intuition that drew me to him when he first came to San Isidro or because of the way he looked at me as if I were the sunrise at the end of a long, harrowing night, I believed he would not harm me.

These thoughts swirled through my mind as the embers died, their weight drawing me down into sleep at last.

I woke with a start. The room was silent, its dark the soft charcoal of safe places, but—

Behind me, the lock rattled. I pushed myself sharply up on my elbows, lurching away from the door. Andrés and Paloma were asleep, unaware.

Something was behind it. Something that caused a buzzing to build in the ground beneath my blankets, a persistent hum, like a far-off swarm of wasps drawing inevitably closer, closer . . .

I seized the copal censer, holding it in both hands between me and the door like a weapon.

Still the door groaned against its hinges, the whine of aging wood against a powerful winter storm. Cold seeped through cracks, reaching toward my blanket, shifting over my feet and legs like a physical weight.

“Don’t you dare come in here,” I hissed through gritted teeth. “Get out.”

For the length of several heartbeats, nothing happened. I could not breathe.

Then the door settled in its frame. The cold drew back. The humming slowed. Then it, too, faded, until I could hear nothing but Andrés’s and Paloma’s steady breathing behind me.

I don’t know how long I sat at attention, the censer in my hands, my focus honed on the door. My heart beating thickly in my throat.

Peace filled the room, settled, complete, disturbed only by the frantic pounding of my heart. It was so quiet.

Had I imagined it all?

---

*   *   *IT WAS STILL GRAY the next morning when Paloma insisted that she fetch José Mendoza to come to the house and fix the door of the green parlor.

“The patrón is on his way, and we’ve wasted enough time already,” she said, her tone of voice brushing Andrés’s concern away as sharply as a gesture. “The house is a disaster. We have no menu. How long is he staying? Only God seems to know, and now I have to plan for everything.”

She stepped outside, tying her apron strings with staccato gestures. Fingers of pale mist shrank away from her as she turned toward the village.

Andrés crossed the room in two steps and called after her from the doorway. “Do not go inside until I get there, do you understand?”

Paloma waved a hand dismissively. “You don’t have to tell me twice,” she said dryly over one shoulder. “But hurry up. I’m hungry and I won’t wait forever to get into the kitchen.”

Andrés sighed deeply as he watched his cousin’s retreating back. A full night of sleep brought life back to his face; the look of constant pain that creased it yesterday had softened. A new look of concern settled in the line of his mouth as he looked at me pulling my shawl over my shoulders.

That concern was echoed in my own posture.

The patrón was returning tomorrow.

RODOLFO RODOLFO RODOLFO

“I’ve been thinking about that dream,” Andrés said softly. “The one you told me about yesterday.”

Flesh-colored claws, eyes burning, burning, burning . . .

“And?”

He clicked his tongue. “I should have thought of it yesterday. I need to see something before we return to the house. You don’t have to accompany me, if you don’t wish . . .”

“Tell me.”

“The grave of Doña María Catalina.”

I inhaled sharply. I had never liked graveyards. Even before I knew what it felt like to be watched by something beyond the veil of earthly creation, my skin crawled among the headstones. Long before I ever set foot on Hacienda San Isidro, I had hated the trailing sensation of being watched. I was always worried that something might follow me, tangled in my hair like smoke or stray leaves, as I walked home.

But this time, I straightened. Curled my fingers tightly around my shawl. I was battered, exhausted, and frightened, but I was the daughter of a general, and I would not back down. I would not sit in the priest’s rooms alone, waiting for my fate to come to me. If Andrés thought visiting a grave could give us answers, I was ready to accompany him. “Let’s be quick about it, then.”

A thick carpet of dead leaves blanketed the graveyard behind the capilla. Though the mist had lifted, and the promise of sun teased warm over my face, the walk through the headstones left a cold feeling of rot in my bones.

Marble angels reached for the dying mist, their faces chipped or yellowed with age; thick lines of dust settled into the halo of statues and engravings of la Virgen. I followed a few paces behind Andrés as we wove through the statues; our shoes sank into earth still soft from the night’s rain when we paused to check names, searching for the correct grave.

Seven generations of Solórzanos were interred in the shadow of the slim bell tower of the chapel. You’ll die here like the rest of us. Would I, too, become another layer in this cemetery, rotting forever under the weight of the name Solórzano?

For every name on every stone was that of a don or doña Solórzano. Each date on the headstone a solemn reminder of how long the walls of Hacienda San Isidro had stood. 1785. 1703. 1690. 1643 . . .

“Where are your people?” I asked Andrés.

He rose from where he crouched by one of the markers, brushing away leaves to check the name. He shielded his eyes, then pointed at the low stone wall that marked the northern edge of the cemetery.

“Over there.”

And he returned to his task.

Beyond the wall were more graves. No marble angels marked the earth, no grand statues of la Virgen. The divide between hacendados and the villagers extended beyond life.

“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.

Doña 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.

“Señor 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, doña. 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.

Nor why.

Rodolfo returned in the morning.

The closing of the circle was but a slap of plaster on a crack in a swollen dam. Water surged behind it, ready to burst forth; the crack grew wider and wider with each passing hour.

And we still stood directly in the path it would flood.