7

7

JUANA SEIZED MY SHOULDERand yanked me back from the chest.

“We’re going to the kitchen,” she ordered, her voice slicing through my shock. She shifted her grip to my arm and drew me sharply to my feet. “Come. Now.”

The kitchen? Why on earth would we do that, when there was enough blood in my chest to flood the carpet if it were tilted over? Juana’s face was stark white, her eyes wide as they darted about the room.

“I need to speak to Ana Luisa,” she said. Her voice was hollow, as if she were forcing it to sound a certain way. “To get to the bottom of who is behind this prank.”

I was still incapable of speech. Someone had ruined thousands of reales worth of my silks, and she called it a prank?

She half dragged me to the staircase. We took them fast, two at a time, thundering down into the shadows of the main hall. The temperature dropped as we did; I gasped as Juana yanked me past the corner that led to the north wing and its unnaturally sharp chill.

The heavy taste of copal on the air reached me before we saw Ana Luisa. We turned a final corner to the glow of the kitchen doorway, plumes of smoke reaching into the hall like curious fingers. Sprigs of herbs—the plants I had been weeding—were scattered on the ground at the kitchen’s threshold, and Juana stepped carefully over them. My skirts brushed the herbs aside as she dragged me to the back of the kitchen, which was open to the side garden.

Ana Luisa herself clicked her tongue loudly and set to rearranging the herbs I had knocked out of place; Juana reached violently for a jug of water and turned to me.

“Hold out your hand,” she barked.

I obeyed, eager to wash the blood off.

But it had vanished.

There was no blood.

I yelped as Juana poured half the ice-cold contents of the jug over my hand anyway, half drenching my skirts. She seized a bar of natural soap and rubbed my hand hard, as hard as if she were scrubbing away ink.

“It’s clean now, it’s clean,” I cried when she drenched my hand again. It was stiff and achy from the cold.

She set the jug down. Her eyes were hard as steel. The uncanniness of her resemblance to Rodolfo struck me, but I had never seen a look like that cross Rodolfo’s face.

I was overcome by the urge to step back from her, but she still held my hand. Hard. My wedding ring dug into my finger, almost to the bone.

“I will get to the bottom of this. I will speak to the servants. They know me and obey me.” Her tone clearly indicated that they certainly would not do the same with me. “Do not speak to them of this. Understood?”

I nodded. I breathed in sharply when she released my hand, half expecting to see blood again from where my ring had dug into flesh.

Juana released me and strode to a pantry; when she reemerged, it was with a clay jug gripped in one hand.

Blue smoke blurred my vision; copal burned in a shallow clay bowl by the open-air ranch stove where Ana Luisa was cooking.

I glanced over my shoulder. Deep shadows lengthened from the house to the whitewashed walls that encircled the gardens. Beyond, the southern and western skies deepened, as if the weight of the shadows drew them into darkness. The faint baying of dogs rose into the twilight; indistinct voices, perhaps from the hacienda village. They sounded as if they came from unreachably far away, from the unseeable side of a dream, as if reality broke off where the house’s stucco walls did. Or perhaps that was where reality began, and I was the one trapped in an uneven, unending dream.

“Come inside,” Juana barked. She was motioning for me to sit at the small table. She had conjured cups made from jícara and poured clear liquid from the jug into them.

Ana Luisa fanned the stove. The rich smells of warming tortillas and frijoles drew my feet back into the kitchen. I sat as Juana set the jug on the table heavily.

“A su salud,” she said dryly and, lifting one of the cups to her lips, took a long draft.

A judgmental click of the tongue from Ana Luisa. “Before dinner, Doña Juana?”

Juana did not reply. The color had not returned to her face, but the tight line of her sharp shoulders was loosening. She was no longer a snake coiled to strike. Slowly, the warmth and smells of the kitchen were dispelling the shock of the sight of the chest.

The kitchen was having the same effect on me. It was the kind of room that had no touch of men, either Rodolfo or previous generations. The kitchen in Tía Fernanda’s house had felt like a prison to me, the place I was shunted because nothing better could be made of me. This kitchen felt like a refuge. Smoke curled up in the doorways from their bowls of incense like sentries; my eye followed soot markings around the doorway that led to the rest of the house. Geometrical shapes darkened the white paint where it met Moorish tile. They looked fresh, as if they had been newly drawn.

Juana pressed a cup into my hands.

“What is this?” I asked.

“Mezcal.” She was already refilling hers. “Instead of harvesting aguamiel for pulque, the tlachiqueros carve out some maguey hearts and cook them in an open pit to crush and distill.”

I studied the clear liquid. Women were not supposed to drink.

You’ll never get a husband.Tía Fernanda’s voice wound through my mind.

Well. I already had. And he had given me a house with servants who played dark-spirited pranks.

The alcohol bit my tongue and filled my mouth with the smokiness of an open fire.

“Finish it,” Juana ordered.

I paused. Her own cup was full again. I thought of the clink of glasses at balls in the capital, of the glint of champagne in the candlelight and raised, energetic voices of dancers between turns. Drink loosened tongues. I had to be careful, watch mine . . . but what if Juana didn’t? What could I learn from her if I kept her drinking? Questions bubbled to the surface: who would pour blood on my silks?

Doña María José’s crepe-paper voice slipped under my skin. Poor thing. Such a delicate constitution. How had my husband become a widower? What did Juana think of her departed sister-in-law?

So I obeyed Juana. I lifted my cup to her, then waited for her to echo the motion. When she did, we tipped our cups back in unison. I coughed as the alcohol stung my throat.

“Welcome to San Isidro,” Juana said flatly.

“What is wrong with the people here?” I said when I had caught my breath. “Who would do that?”

Juana solemnly poured herself a third cup as Ana Luisa set plates and food on the table and sat to my left, opposite Juana.

Juana poured Ana Luisa a jícara cup and handed it to her, then reached for a basket of tortillas wrapped in cloth to keep them warm. “I think it is best we forget it,” she said, not meeting my gaze.

“Forget it?” I repeated, incredulous. Easy for her to say, when she hadn’t sunk her hand into warm, sticky . . . I shook my head to clear it. My hand had been clean before Juana drenched it in icy water. How was that possible? “But—”

“Just eat,” Juana said briskly. “Our senses are not about us.”

They weren’t when we finished eating Ana Luisa’s hearty country food either, thanks to the mezcal. Juana kept my cup refilled, even when I protested that I had had more than enough.

But I was right. Drink loosened her, made her cold face animated. I had never seen Rodolfo drunk—was this what he was like? Jovial and open, casually touching my hand with calloused fingers and cooing over how beautiful my green eyes were? Juana had Rodolfo’s same powerful magnetism, and I found myself laughing alongside her as she told stories from the fields or mocked petty community dramas with Ana Luisa, though I knew none of the names of the characters in the stories or their meanings.

I was lulled into a sense of comfort, blanketed by liquor-bright voices and the smell of the fire and the copal, the smoky sentries keeping watch. I was certain they had both drunk enough that I could ask them the questions that itched beneath my skin. I slipped into a dip in their conversation, keeping my voice as girlishly innocent as I dared.

“I’m so curious about her,” I said.

“Who?” Ana Luisa said.

“What was her name?” I paused, as if I couldn’t remember it. Of course I remembered it. How could I not? “María Catalina.”

Deep inside the house, far from the warmth of the kitchen, a door slammed.

All three of us jumped. Juana and Ana Luisa perched like hunted hares on the edges of their seats, their attention fixed on the kitchen doorway.

“What was that?” I breathed.

“Draft,” Juana said, voice hollow.

But none touched the copal smoke. It curled, languid as a dancer, into the still, shadowy house beyond.

Juana took the jug and emptied it into her cup.

Ana Luisa reached out as if to stay her but relented when Juana shot her a look I could not parse. I had lost count of her cups, and by the look of it—by the slip of her eyes, the roll of her posture as she leaned her elbows on the table—she had as well.

I mimicked her posture, lowering my chin to my hands to appear small. Innocent. “What was she like?”

Tell me things, I willed her, as if the force of my alcohol-slurred thoughts alone could sway her. Tell me why Rodolfo won’t speak of her. Tell me why the other hacendados dislike you.

A distant look stilled Juana’s expression. I knew the look well from Rodolfo’s face—she was no longer with me, but somewhere in her memory. Somewhere far from here. “Exactly as an hacendado’s wife should be,” she said, an exaggerated twist to her voice. “Refined. Elegant. Rich, of course, for Rodolfo cared something for numbers then. Canny. She saw everything.”

My face was numb from drink, and I prayed it did not betray how my pride smarted. Was I not as an hacendado’s wife should be? I knew I was not rich, that I brought little of value to my marriage, but that did not mean Rodolfo had lost his financial sense entirely when he married me.

Then the meaning of Juana’s words sank into me. The lilt of her mockery peeled back a veil, and for a fleeting moment, I glimpsed truth.

“You didn’t like her.”

Juana’s eyes bore into me, searching my face. Now she was present, sharp and frighteningly so.

I had misspoken.

Then she smiled, a thin, saccharine thing. She stood, took my hand, and brought me to my feet. How could she stand so solidly when I swayed, when the kitchen spun around me? She slipped her arm around my waist and guided me to the door of the kitchen, to the entryway that led to the rest of the house.

“I lied about the house,” she said into my ear. Her breath was warm and sweet with drink against my skin. “I lied twice, actually. The truth is I’m . . . afraid of it. I cannot go in, not in the dark. Neither will Ana Luisa. But you? Ah, you—” She released me, the suddenness of the movement pushing me into the dark. I swayed as I caught my balance. “It’s time for you to go to sleep, Doña Beatriz.”

She then thrust a handful of herbs into my hand; the pressure of her sweaty-palmed grip had released their sap and earthy aroma. Ana Luisa put a lit candle in my other hand. The smoke twined around them, their softly mocking good nights echoing against one another as the warmth and glow of the kitchen pulled farther and farther away.

I turned a corner, my feet certain they knew the way to my room, my body less sure. Juana’s words took their time sinking past the mezcal thickening my senses, and it was only when I had left the kitchen behind, when a cold draft struck my face, that I realized what she had said.

She was afraid of the house.

Cold sank through my dress, into the bones of my arms, winding into my chest in icy rivulets.

Juana and Ana Luisa shut the door to the kitchen.

I was alone.

My single candle barely cut the darkness. My head spun as I lifted the handful of crushed herbs to my nose, crinkling my nose at its earthy scent.

A peal of childish laughter sounded behind me. The candle’s flame flickered wildly as I shrank away from it, heart slamming against my ribs.

There was no one there.

I grabbed skirts in my herb-filled hand. Forward. I had to get to my room. The candle cast a thin halo of light, barely enough to see a foot in front of me.

More lilting laughter echoed behind me, coy and light, so unlike Juana’s amused bray. Was I imagining it? I had never been drunk before, and—based on the sway in my step and the spin of my vision—there was no doubt that I was. Did one hear things? Did one feel the clammy brush of cold against their cheek as if it were someone’s flesh?

I didn’t want to know. I focused on climbing the stairs as quickly as I could. Cool fingers brushed over my neck—no, I was imagining it, I had to be imagining the sensation of death-cold fingertips brushing over my earlobes, tugging at my hair.

Then two hands placed themselves on my shoulders and shoved me forward. I gasped as I fell to my knees, my temple striking the banister.

The voice grew clearer, shifting from mangled laughter into garbled speech, as if it were conversing with someone, lilting up the scale of pitch and anger as if it were asking questions, demanding answers . . .

Fright numbed the pain in my kneecaps and skull, narrowed my world to the candle before me, to the shuddering sensation of fingers tugging at my hair again.

I had to get away from it. What if those hands yanked me down the stairs? Would I end up like the rat on the front steps of San Isidro, head shattered on the cold flagstones?

Careful to hold the candle aloft, I forced myself to my feet, crouching protectively forward as I stumbled up the remaining stairs and ran to the patrón’s rooms. I thrust my weight against the door until it heaved open, then staggered into the parlor and let it slam shut behind me.

The voice stopped.

At the far end of the parlor, the dark shape of the chest came into view, its lid still arched open like an animal’s gaping maw. I cut it a wide berth and tripped over the doorway into my bedroom; I threw out my arm to catch myself and realized my mistake too late.

“No, no,” I cried as the flame of the candle vanished, extinguished by the rush of movement.

Darkness fell over the room like a wool cloak, stifling. Airless.

No.I could not be in this bedchamber in the dark. I could not. Not without Rodolfo.

My chest tightened at the memory of the flash of red eyes in the dark.

There were no cats on this godforsaken hacienda.

Juana had lied.

And she had sent me here alone.

My heartbeat raced as I fumbled through the dark for the matches I kept on my vanity, my hands clumsy because I would not release the fistful of herbs. There. There they were. Strike, strike, and a flare of flame burst to life.

“Thank God,” I whispered hoarsely, and lit the candles on my vanity. All of them. When I had an altar of trembling flame, their reflection in the mirror casting light into the rest of the room, I turned around.

Like an animal, the dark drew back.

A feral instinct unfurled at the back of my neck, under skin and muscle, flush to my spine.

I was not alone.