Mare Anguis

TIMELINE: AUGUST 18, 2017. THREE DAYS TO THE ECLIPSE.

Isabella walks fast, purse clutched against her side, trying not to think about what may be waiting for her when she gets home, what she may have done by inviting a strange sunrise-skinned girl to stay for dinner. She's flirted with the magical world since she was a child and realized not everyone could see the spirits attending on their daily lives. She served her apprenticeship with the old auntie everyone had known was no relation of hers, who first taught her how to solicit the spirits for help, for the answers to impossible questions and the locations of hidden things.

It was when her auntie passed away that she had finally stepped forward and declared herself a proper hechicera, ready to convince the universe to do things her way through whatever means necessary. Even dead, her auntie had been there the whole time, supporting and egging her on, and when she'd followed up that declaration with the announcement that she was moving to America, the rest of her family had wept and cheered in the same breath, glad to see her following her own path—and, to a degree, even more glad that it was a path that would take her away from them. Hechiceras were nice things to have in the family, nice things to brag about or be able to call upon in times of emergency, but they were hazardous things to keep at home. If she was going to practice, it was better she do it far away from them, where there would be less chance of them getting caught in the backlash.

She knew those things, had known those things when she moved to California, when she allowed the whispering of the universe to guide her to a welcoming community and help her find her footing in a new land, and for years she had practiced the best ways of doing things. She had kept people carefully at arm's length, preventing them from getting close enough to be caught in the backlash when she inevitably pushed the universe too far and got slapped down for her troubles.

(For that moment, too, was an integral part of the hechicera's education. The moment when she pushed things too far and was knocked on her ass was a reminder of her place, telling her where the limits of her power were. Once she knew those limits, she could work to strengthen and expand upon them, growing the sphere of her influence until she was a properly powerful old hechicera and not a talented and ambitious young one.)

Only no one is really meant to be alone forever, however talented they are, however much the universe whispers to them in their dreams, and when a tall, handsome mechanic named Juan had walked into the occult shop where she'd been working, she'd been unable to resist making doe's eyes at him, standing just a little too close, bending just a little too far to give him glimpses of her cleavage. He'd been shopping for his sister's birthday that first time, and the time after, he'd been looking for a good luck charm for the shop where he worked.

The time after that, he'd been looking for Isabella, and the time after that, he'd found her. Their courtship hadn't been the stuff of fairy tales, but it had been the stuff of romance novels, all heated looks and sweat on skin, the taste of pheromones on their tongues making everything twice as delicious as it should have been, the sound of bodies against bodies. She's often believed that love begins with a look and grows to encompass every sense the body has. She had been lost from the moment she'd seen his soul.

Half her family had flown over from Puerto Rico for the wedding. Luis had paid for their tickets as a surprise to her, so she could be married with her Papa on her arm and her grandmother weeping in the front pew of the little church they'd rented for the occasion. She wasn't going to pretend she'd gone chaste to her bridal bed, but she'd gone careful and well aware of the mathematics of the situation, and Luis had been born eleven months after the wedding, carefully timed so as to erase any chance of gossip.

He'd come into the world covered in blood and surrounded by spirits, wailing as the newly arrived always seemed to do, and she'd been exhausted and aching and instantly in love. Everything else had been forgotten in an instant, because now Luis was here, and Luis needed her to be a mother, and in those moments, she would have sworn she could give up her practice forever, could retire from being an hechicera and find absolute contentment in being a mother.

That stage had lasted for a little over a week before boredom had stolen in, between the feedings and the diaper changes, and she had found herself performing small cleansing rituals on the energy in the house, chasing out the negativity that had gathered in the corners, sweeping away the shades of fear for the uncertain future. Things were uncertain, sure. So what? Things were always uncertain. Being an hechicera didn't give her the power to see the future, only the ability to occasionally ask the world to bend that future to her benefit.

Luis grew older every day, settling into his existence in the world. He had ceased to be a piece of her long before he left her body, and once he was out in the world, he had quickly established himself as his own person, capable of incredible kindness, unexpected flashes of brilliance, and a stubbornness she recognized from herself. He was as solidly ordinary as his father, and he was perfect, and she was doing her best to make a perfect world for him. If that meant using her natural gifts to nudge the universe, what of it?

All she's done since the day her perfect son wailed his way into the world is work to make that world a better place for him, and now, through a simple act of kindness, she may have fucked it all up. Her thoughts are full of blood and worse as she hurries for home, crosses streets against the light, plows through crowds with little consideration for the people she bumps against and blunders into. She has always lived her American life by the immigrant's credo: attract no unnecessary attention. What goes unseen goes unthreatened.

Well, they've been seen now. She let Kelpie into their lives and opened those lives to the eyes of people she never wanted anything to do with. She should have demanded they move as soon as she realized alchemists had purchased the other side of the courtyard, should have taken the approach of "the best place for an enemy is as far away from me as possible" rather than "keep them where you can see them." "Keep them where you can see them" was the attitude of a younger hechicera, one with less to lose.

Luis is everything to lose.

She's almost running by the time she reaches the corner of her street. When she turns that corner and sees her apartment building up ahead, looking exactly as it did when she left it this morning, she starts running, hell-bent for leather, feet pounding the pavement like an open assault, and she doesn't care who stares, and she doesn't care who sees. She's running, racing for home like she's never had any other destination in her heart or mind, running harder than she's ever run for anything before.

The apartment door is locked. Whether that means anything is hard to say. Isabella fumbles for her keys, glancing constantly over her shoulder. Is that motion in the bushes the wind, or an alchemist crouched down and watching? Did that curtain just twitch? Is she being watched, is she alone? There are so many questions. It would almost be easier if it was dark, but no, it's the middle of the afternoon, and the sounds of the city are complicating everything.

Bobby finally realizes there's someone at the door and starts barking as Isabella slides her key into the keyhole, a sound that becomes a whine as she undoes the lock and lets herself inside. She's never been afraid of the family dog. He's a very good boy they got from the shelter as a leggy, rambunctious puppy, all lolling tongue and flopping ears, and he's never had a mean bone in his body. But as she looks around the dark living room, she finds him backed into the corner behind the couch, pressed between the frame and the wall. His ears are flat, and his lips are drawn back from his teeth, which seem suddenly very sharp and very white.

A chill goes through her. Alchemists don't like big, flashy magic. They think it's beneath them. They think magic is beneath them: only their precious science is worth the honor of their attention. In that regard, they're closer to hechiceras than they are to witches: Isabella may sneer at them a bit for staying shallow, because they do, but a witch is more likely to be able to do the sort of tricks that people will recognize as magical. Flowers pulled out of nothing, flames lit with the snapping of a finger.

Dogs that have never known anything but love moved inexorably and irrevocably to rage.

Bobby snarls, taking a shaking step toward her, and Isabella's heart gives a lurch. She wants to turn and run into the kitchen, where the knives are, but turning her back on a dog that looks like that might be the last thing she ever does. So she stands her ground, trying to still the hammering of her heart, and breathes, slow and even.

"Bobby," she says, voice soft. "It's me."

He keeps snarling.

"Where is Luis? Where's our boy? Bobby, where is Luis?"

He stops advancing, cocking his head to the side, a puzzled light coming into his eyes. His ears prick forward slightly—not all the way, but enough for her to be reasonably sure he hears her. She slips a hand into her pocket, where the blend of herbs and salt she used to close the circle this morning still clings to the fabric. Rolling her fingers together, she scrapes up a pinch of the mixture, which is meant to encourage peace and harmony. Right now, a little peace and harmony can't hurt.

The wards are down. She feels it in her bones, would have realized it faster if she hadn't been distracted by fear and the barking dog, but the wards are down and the apartment is dark and Bobby is growling and it's reasonable that she's still too distracted to go investigating the reason. She can't exactly ask the dog to hold on a moment with his growls and clear agitation. That wouldn't work. So she tosses the pinch of salt and simples into the air, murmuring a quick plea to the spirits she's coaxed into watching over this house to come and attend upon her. She needs them. She needs them as she has never needed them before.

Much like an alchemist, she has never focused her talents on the big or the flashy. Those things can be faked with all manner of tricks and tools, and they tend to be the hallmark of an amateur, someone just dabbling in the invisible arts. Her focus has always been on protection and connection. She knows the small gods of this apartment complex as well as she knows her more physical neighbors. They're half the reason she didn't move out when the alchemists moved in. Yes, staying this close to an alchemical research station was a risk, but it was at least slightly balanced out by knowing that the local universal energies were inclined to like her and give her a hand when she asked.

Please,she thinks, as hard as she can, into the space where the quiet call of the universe has always existed for her. Please, for the love of my son, whatever they've done, brush it aside. Calm this space. Calm this space, and I will reward you with sweet smoke and fresh cream, and all the offerings my hands can carry. Remove their influences here. Give me back my companion.

There is a brief, intangible brightness in the air, indescribable but present, like the feeling of waking in the morning in a room already filled with sunlight. Not the light itself, but the sensations that accompany it, the golden brilliance of a day being born, of potential and possibility. A shadow flits through the air and is gone, burned out by that brightness, which fades as quickly as it came. Bobby stops growling. His ears come all the way up, and his tail thumps, once, before he's lunging at her.

This isn't the lunge she feared, the one that ends in teeth and tearing. This is the enthusiastic greeting of a dog who loves his people, who hasn't seen her in too many hours and missed her company. His tail wags wildly as he slams into her shins, and she bends forward, almost sick with relief, to run her hand along the bony crest of his skull, the silken fur of his ears.

"Where's Luis, buddy?" she asks. "Where's our boy?"

Bobby looks at her with infinite trust in his eyes, tail still wagging, and barks, once, then dances away in that playful way of dogs in familiar spaces, his wild bouncing bringing him coincidentally close to his food dish, which is, at this hour of the day, empty.

There are spirits among those she called upon to calm the air who take their offerings from the things she puts into Bobby's bowl, and so she lets him lead her to the kitchen, where she gives him a scoop of dry kibble and tops it with two slices of bacon left over from breakfast and a raw egg from the co-op. People who say you shouldn't give your dogs raw egg are worried about salmonella, and she avoids the risk by buying eggs from healthy chickens who can't pass the infection along. She gives the bowl's contents a rough stir before she sets it down and Bobby falls to crunching, ears going flat once more, this time with the blissful single-mindedness of a dog doing the hard work of eating.

Isabella leaves him.

The apartment isn't large; it's not like Luis can hide for long, even if he's actively hiding, which she hopes he isn't. Whatever ripped down the wards and antagonized the dog is gone now; she can feel it. So as she works her way down the hall toward the bedrooms, she calls, softly, "Luis? Are you home?"

A sniffling sound from the closet where she keeps the vacuum cleaner. Luis has never been a boy to seek safety in small spaces, but then, his dog has never turned mean for no clear reason; if he were afraid enough, he might well have chosen the securest place he could think of.

"Luis? Sweetheart? I'm going to open the closet door now."

She doesn't want this to be a gotcha or a scare loaded atop the scares he's clearly already experienced today; she wants this to be a gentle reminder that the world is still here, the world is still his to love and live in, and she's still here, ready to help him do both those things. So she eases the door open, unsurprised but relieved to find him tangled in the coats at the back of the closet, tear streaks on his cheeks and blood on his lips, chin, and hand.

Even expected, the sight of the blood is enough to make her stop and breathe sharply in. His eyes widen.

"No, Mama! He didn't bite me! I think…" He hesitates. He knows what happens to pit bulls who bite, even by mistake; he's heard the stories from the kids at his school, the ones who love to talk about killer dogs and how some animals are just bred bad. Isabella would shake them all if she could, demand to know who's pouring that poison into their ears, and why they feel the need to pour it onward into her son's. "I think he would have bit me, only I ran when he got all mad and started growling. I don't know why, I didn't do anything! But he growled and I ran and when I shut myself in the closet, I smacked my nose into the wall hard enough to make it bleed."

"And your hand?"

"Wiping the blood so it didn't go all over my clothes."

It's a believable-enough story that it doesn't matter whether or not it's true.

"All right, baby, well, Bobby's calm now, and having a little snack, so let's get you cleaned up and you can tell me what happened, all right?" She puts her hand on his shoulder, urging him out of the closet, and when he emerges, she wraps her arms around him in a tight hug, reveling in the warm closeness of him, the concrete reality. This is her boy. He's here, he's alive, he's lost a little blood, but boys are full of blood at this age; he has blood to spare, quick, vital creature that he is. He'll never notice its lack.

"I'm not a baby, Mama," he says, even as he burrows into the warmth of her.

"You'll always be my baby," she replies, and kisses the top of his head before she lets him go. "Now. What happened?"

"I came home from school and I was going to take Bobby for his walk, so he could do his business and then I could watch TV, but when I opened the door, a man came out of that apartment you told me to never go near."

"What kind of a man?"

"White man. Tall, really skinny, wearing a suit like he was going to go work in an office or something. He didn't look right."

"Not right how?"

"Not right," says Luis, and his voice peaks and breaks, like the ghost of puberty yet to come has dropped by for a brief visit, stealing away his childhood piping for an instant. Isabella fights the urge to clutch at him again. "I don't know how to say he wasn't right, only that he wasn't right. He stood like something that shouldn't be standing the way it is. Like he didn't belong here. Do you understand?"

She doesn't, and because of that, she does. Luis doesn't share her connection to the hidden world around them, but a person doesn't need to be connected to the hidden world to know when something is a threat. Not being able to see why someone is a threat would create a feeling of dissonant wrongness, indescribable and absolutely real.

"I do," she says. "I think what you saw was a very, very bad man. Did he see you?"

"I don't know. I thought he did, for just a second, but I shut the door and sat on the floor with Bobby, and he didn't come knocking or trying to look in the windows, so I figured he was gone. And then Bobby got all weird and mad, and everything turned scary, and I went and hid in case the man was coming back."

Isabella hesitates. If Luis is telling the truth, the man he saw may have pulled down the wards as casually as she brushes away cobwebs during her once-monthly dusting sessions, barely noticing the act even as she performs it. Removing the wards would have let whatever negativity he was pouring out of himself come flowing into the apartment, and while Luis has never been sensitive, Bobby is. It was part of what attracted her to him above all the other leggy, loving puppies in the shelter, any one of whom could have been a beloved member of their family. If that alchemist took down the wards without even knowing it, it's easy to believe Bobby could have been easily driven into a frenzy by the shadow of his passing, and not targeted at all.

Relief washes through her like bleach through a stain, washing her fears of intentional attack away. "All right, buddy. Thank you for telling me."

Luis sniffles. "I didn't ever take Bobby for his walk."

Meaning there might be a mess somewhere in the apartment, a little biological time bomb for one of them to find. "That's fine. You had good reason to hide, if a strange man was walking around and Bobby was all worked up about it. You didn't do anything wrong, I promise." She guides him to the kitchen, where Bobby has finished his snack and is now deeply immersed in licking his genitals, ignoring the humans. Luis still flinches away from him, and Isabella hates the alchemists even more than she did before. To make a boy fear his own dog…

She wets a paper towel and carefully, gently cleans the blood from his face, revealing no damage beyond a forming bruise around his upper lip that won't be bad enough to catch the attention of the school administration. Oh, how she hates the phrase "boys will be boys" and the way it leads to casual dismissal of violence between children, but she appreciates that in this case, it's going to work in her favor—no one call to child protective services because a boy got a bruise, as long as he's not showing any other signs of abuse.

She hopes this particular gap in the supervision doesn't lead to any children slipping between the cracks and being forgotten, even as she knows that it does, it must, it always has. Children are so sturdy and so fragile at the same time. It's easy to forget.

She's wetting a second paper towel when someone knocks on the front door. Bobby lifts his head and looks toward the sound, a low growl building in his throat as the hair on the back of his neck lifts up. Luis gasps, breath catching. He's never been scared of the dog before. He clearly is now.

Isabella feels almost bad as she straightens and says, "Wait here."

"I don't wanna," he says. "I want to stay with you."

"I know, love. But I need to get the door, and in case it's someone you don't want to talk to, I want to get it by myself."

He frowns deeply, clearly uncomfortable with the idea, but manages to force a nod and flatten himself against the counter, as far from Bobby as he can get in the confines of their small kitchen.

Isabella leaves them there, a boy and his dog. She's not worried Bobby will turn violent again; the growling this time has a different timbre, more frightened than furious. Carefully, she makes her way to the door.

"Hello?" she calls, not opening it.

"Oh, good, you're home," says Catrina's familiar, too-high voice. "I need to see you."

Isabella automatically reaches for the doorknob, which locked behind her when she came inside. She hesitates, hand hovering above the metal, and tries to pin down the question now itching at the edges of her mind, all sharp edges and urgency.

Without letting herself dwell too hard on why she's doing it, she pulls her hand away from the doorknob and reaches the deadbolt instead, flipping it home before she reaches higher up, for the chain.

"You saw me this morning," she says. "I'm tired now. This isn't a good time."

"Come now. Aren't we friends?" Catrina's voice drops, turns cajoling. "Didn't I open my home to your practice? And didn't you promise to keep me safe from the world I was only half-aware of?"

"I did do that, and so did you," says Isabella carefully. When she'd met Catrina, the other woman had been exactly as she'd remained up until this morning: smug and quietly superior, convinced of her own power and innate authority. She'd never once paused to ask herself whether the people she envied for their position had done anything to earn it; the accident of her birth was the only thing she considered to have been necessary to grant her whatever privileges she desired. Catrina was a lovely woman when you played to her ego and didn't contradict her in any way, and a remarkably fragile one when you didn't. Like many people whose social superiority had rarely if ever been challenged, she'd been unprepared to react quickly when people didn't do what she expected.

Isabella realizes, with a sick, sinking feeling, that she's started thinking of Catrina in the past tense: part of her has already written the woman off as lost. They're not friends. They've never been friends, not in any of the ways that truly matter. She and Catrina have never gone shopping, braided each other's hair, or shared secrets while giggling over ice cream, and she feels a pang for not having tried harder. Maybe the other woman had secret depths that Isabella has never bothered to go searching for. Maybe she could have been a bosom companion, a true friend to walk through life with.

Not anymore. There are strange harmonics in her sweet, familiar voice, things that sing to Isabella's sensitivities as black flags, warning signs of death come to the door.

"You made me promises, Isabella Diaz. You told me your coven would bring good things to my door, would light up my halls with power, would purge the shadows from the corners and the cobwebs from my dreams. You promised me wonders. Well, it wasn't wonders that came to me today."

"What did come?"

"Let me in, and I'll show you." There's a sour, cajoling note to Catrina's tone, beguiling and bitter. It blames, that note. It points fingers into nothingness, and says any crimes committed here belong to Isabella above all, no matter whose hands commit them.

Isabella's heart is hammering hard, a brutal pounding against the inside of her chest. "No," she says. "I don't think so."

"Mama?"

"Stay in the kitchen, Luis!" she snaps, and feels instantly bad about raising her voice to the boy, who has had such a long and terrible afternoon, and doesn't have the tools to understand any of it. She's always done her best to keep her home life separate from her work, and until today, it's seemed as if she could keep that up forever. Now she's wondering how long the tower of her deceptions has been teetering.

"Come on, Isabella, be a friend," cajoles Catrina.

"I am being a friend, Catrina," says Isabella, and the last, itching piece of information finally tumbles into place, bringing understanding in its wake.

She never told Catrina where she lives.

"Or I would be, if you were Catrina," she adds, a little slowly, a little sadly. She really did like the woman, frustrating and snooty as she could frequently be. This isn't the ending she deserved.

The woman outside her door hisses. The sound is inhuman. It belongs in the mouth of some great prehistoric reptile, something massive and scaled, slouching out of the depths of a primeval swamp with murder in its primitive mind. Isabella can't reconcile that sound with Catrina, not at all, and her confused curiosity is strong enough to lure her to the peephole, rising slightly onto her toes as she looks out onto the space outside her door.

A walkway runs along the side of the building, connecting the rowed apartments so the occupants won't have to walk on grass or wade through mud to get to their doors. The same runs along the second floor, overhanging the first. It's an earthquake hazard, but it's that or tier the building like a wedding cake, each floor losing a few square feet of living space as they try to keep things in balance. Each floor's hanging walkway supports the lower floor's exterior lighting, and so even as the sun is dipping lower, Isabella can see the figure outside her door with perfect clarity.

It's Catrina, and it isn't Catrina at the same time, and Isabella feels bile rise in her throat, hot and burning and difficult to swallow back down. The figure outside her door has Catrina's face, skin pulled tight across the shape of her skull, and Catrina's hair, silver-blonde and tied in a high ponytail that only serves to pull her face tighter. She has Catrina's body, familiar in its angles and its height. And that's where the familiarity ends.

The way she's standing isn't human. It's more like the stance of a large predatory insect that has somehow figured out how to take its natural gift for camouflage and elevate it to a whole new level of functionality. She stands like a praying mantis, almost, her hands tucked high against her chest in a way that might be comfortable or even natural for some but is entirely wrong for her. And it's not even that creating the impression that she's more something masquerading as human than actual human being—people carry their hands in all sorts of ways, and none of them radiate inhumanity the way Catrina is right now.

It's the strangeness of her posture, the subtle, almost indefinable little things about the way she moves, the slight sway as she stands staring at the door. People mock Lovecraft for his tendency to write things off as indescribable, but the truth is, the human mind isn't equipped to process every form of sensory input. There are colors humans can't see, sounds they can't hear, flavors they can't taste. The world is greater than the human form can comfortably encompass. Catrina has always moved solidly within the lines of what it means to be a human. Here and now, she doesn't, and it's that complicated, almost indescribable wrongness that keeps Isabella's eye glued to the peephole, trying to understand what she's looking at.

There are ways a person can be forced to share their skin with something else, something called and cajoled and finally imprisoned inside the structure of their skeleton. Alchemists usually don't practice those methods, but it's possible that if Erin was right about their ritual work leading to pits of raw chaos energy pooling around the house, Catrina might have reached for a reassuring calming chant or the like and managed to tap into something she shouldn't have been anywhere near.

There's no good reason for Isabella to be jumping straight to "an alchemist did this," except that everything about this day has primed her to place the blame on them. The alchemists are up in arms, they're nearby, and they have reason to be targeting ordinary people who might have crossed paths with their escaped creation.

Her stomach sinks. She warded her house like a vault door before she'd gone to the coven meeting in the morning, making it virtually impossible for anyone who wasn't already a resident to even notice the place existed. Hostile forces should have walked right by, never realizing the trail they were trying to follow went cold behind a door they didn't see. She protected her home and her family and…

And she didn't do the same for Catrina. She'd taken Kelpie, her little alchemical runaway, and she'd walked down the street as proud and exposed as anything, all the way to Catrina's house, and she hadn't been scattering salt and iron shavings behind them the whole way, she hadn't been squirting essence of St. John's wort into the air like a strange perfume. She'd been cocky and convinced the steps already taken would be enough, and now it seems Catrina has paid the price.

The thing inside Catrina's skin turns its face, focusing on the peephole, and smiles.

It's not a normal expression. Her lips draw back from her teeth and keep on drawing, smile growing wider and wider, until that smile must split the skin, must strain the muscles of her cheeks, until her teeth are exposed all the way to the rear molars, no secrets left in the caverns of Catrina's mouth, the corners of which are red with beaded blood. It doesn't fall, only pools there, thick and somehow sluggish—the blood of a thing that has died but not yet started to decay.

"Come out, Isabella," she croons. "Come out, little hechicera, and talk to your friend. I can tell you about my day. I'm sure you'll find it very interesting."

Isabella takes a step back from the door, self-preservation telling her not to stand so close.

"You're not Catrina," she says, voice strained but carrying. "She's never once called me an hechicera."

"If I'm not Catrina, it's because of you," says the creature outside. "It's because you led the danger to my door, you left me unprepared for what was yet to come. You did this. Not me. Not her, either. She was spoiled and indolent, but she was innocent. She believed magic was a trinket, a toy she could buy or bargain for. She thought the hidden world was hidden out of greed, and greed was something she knew well, so she thought it was destined to belong to her. You tried to warn her off, tried to tell her to stay shallow, stay within the bounds of what she could survive, but she was never going to listen. You know that. Women like her never, never listen to the help. And that's all you were to her. A different sort of cleaning service, a slightly more self-important version of the women she paid to make her life easier. Money is a kind of alchemy, you know. You can use it to turn other people's lives into your own, to steal their time and add it to what you already have. You knew what she was from the moment you met her, but she offered you the funding you needed to do the things you wanted to do, and so you ignored your reservations, and you pretended not to see her frailties, and now here we are, and if Catrina's gone, that's on you."

"Begone, foul spirit," snaps Isabella, all too aware of the boy in the kitchen behind her, the boy who is probably listening and wondering what all of this means, the boy she needs to protect at all costs. Catrina was an innocent, but the creature inside her skin is right about one thing: Catrina sought out the magical world on her own. No one had to push or lure her. She was just sensitive enough to know that there was something she didn't have, and that had driven her to desperation, willing to do anything for proof that she was right, and more than anything for access to the power she could feel just out of reach.

It was right about two things, actually, because Isabella had known what Catrina was from the moment they met, had seen the greedy desperation in Catrina's eyes. But she hadn't welcomed Catrina out of greed or self-interest. She had done it because that desperation had been the result of a lifetime of being overlooked as foolish or shallow, of being treated like a pretty piece of furniture rather than a person. Catrina's life had been one of immense privilege, absolutely, and she'd done things she should have atoned for, but she had also suffered, and suffering doesn't care how much a person has or how fortunate they should feel. It still hurts. Isabella had looked at Catrina and seen a desperately lonely woman aching for connection, and she had been in a position to extend a hand that could easily have become a lifeline. Catrina would have insisted that she never needed saving. Isabella had known better from the beginning.

Catrina was an innocent who chose not to be, in small, mincing steps that were always going to lead her deeper than she could possibly realize. Luis, though… Luis is a true innocent. He's done nothing to deserve this, nothing to put himself into the path of danger. If this creature makes it through the door, he'll never escape intact. Maybe not even alive. There are many things the shape standing in Catrina's skin could be, and none of them are good ones.

Isabella glances around the dim living room, familiar in the fading afternoon light as only a place you've been so many times that you cease to ever truly see it can be. Juan knows she has an interest in the occult—given where she was working when they met, how could he not know?—but she's always made an effort to keep her profession away from her family. An hechicera's bag of tricks may not be as gruesome or as immoral as an alchemist's, but it could still be difficult to explain if Luis found it and started waving it around. There aren't even candles.

She swears under her breath. There's salt in the kitchen, and a Tupperware of iron shavings in the junk drawer, but going back there means leaving the door unguarded and possibly dealing with questions from Luis, who is absolutely terrified by this point. She stands frozen, unable to decide what happens next.

Fingernails drag across the door, scraping the wood. It sounds like they might be leaving gouges in their wake, like they might be something more than "fingernails" at this point.

"Isabella," says Catrina's voice. "Little hechicera, let me in, or I'll let myself in, and you're already going to regret this. Don't regret it worse. I can do this quickly, or I can do it slowly, the way he did it for me."

"He who?" asks Isabella.

"The man who showed me everything you've been hiding, Isabella," says Catrina's voice. It's still horribly, brutally recognizable, even if it no longer belongs to her. "The man who sat me down and showed me the gates of the City. I always knew you were hiding things. I knew you were jealous of how much greater than you I had the potential to become. I never knew you were such a sneaky, slinky little liar."

Nails across the door again, but this time it's clear from the splintering sound that "claws" would be a more accurate word.

Isabella takes a step back, breath hitching in her chest. Even if she had her tools, this isn't the sort of thing she does or deals with; she has no recourse here. Once that creature breaks down the door, if it does, she and Luis will be helpless to escape.

This isn't what she does. This isn't what she trained for.

But it may be how she dies.

"I never lied to Catrina," she says, voice shaking. "I told her I would teach her to the limits of her power, help her hone her skills within the sphere she had the potential to control. I never promised her the entire elemental world. That would have been the lie. I didn't lie to her."

"To me, you mean," says the creature, voice filled with new, bubbling overtones, like the creature is speaking through a layer of silt. It's horrifying to hear. Isabella can't close her ears or turn away. "You say you didn't lie to me, but he said you did, and he unlocked more power in an afternoon than you've given me in years. Which of you should I believe? The woman who took my money and drank my coffee and elevated a toy above me in her estimation, or the man who showed me the Impossible City, who opened my eyes to the truth and my flesh to the splendor. The light will guide us home."

Isabella takes another big step backward, toward the kitchen. If she can't save her son, at least she can put her body between him and the thing that's coming to destroy him; she can die first and buy him a few more seconds. And if there's a cruelty to making a son watch his mother die, she can't imagine it outstrips the cruelty of making a mother watch her child die. One way or the other, they both suffer, and she's simply choosing the path her instincts order her to take.

The claws rake across the door again. Wood splinters and bows inward. This isn't a playful swipe; this is the beginning of a true assault. Isabella cries out, soft and strained, as she finally whirls and runs for the kitchen.

Luis is huddled on the floor, Bobby growling between him and the door. Luis's fear of the dog seems to have been overwhelmed by his fear of whatever's happening in the living room; he has his arms around Bobby's neck and his face pressed against the dog's soft, familiar fur, tears running down his face and leaving salted tracks behind.

"Oh, baby, baby," Isabella half-moans, hurrying to gather them both into her arms, a boy and his dog, a dog and his boy, and a woman who is not a witch but is something broadly similar, all huddled together on the kitchen floor as a terrible, impossible thing attacks their apartment door.

They can see the ending coming, each of them in their own way. Isabella knows Luis's thoughts won't be filled with the terrible economy of alchemists, who take the bodies of the dead apart and use them in a million different ways, refusing to let them rest.

Even dogs aren't safe. Bobby won't rest either, once they're taken. Isabella buries her face in her son's hair and breathes deeply, her own tears dripping down to mingle with the scent of his shampoo.

The clawing and tearing at the door continues for several seconds more, until it is replaced by a heart-rending silence. The wood hasn't given way; there would have been a final cracking sound if it had. Instead, the attacker has just… stopped. Isabella lifts her head and looks over her shoulder, frowning. Alchemical monsters don't just stop, especially not the ones who aren't built to look as human as possible for long periods of time, to blend in with the communities that unknowingly shelter them. The creature that stole Catrina's face and voice should still be trying to claw its way inside.

Then she hears a sound that would be welcome and wanted under any other circumstances, but is terrifying under these: a key, a simple key, sliding into a lock.

The key turns. The deadbolt disengages. A moment later, she hears the door open as far as the chain allows, only to draw up short when it hits the limits of that tether. Juan's voice, normally so beloved, asks, "Isabella? Luis? Are you here, are you all right? What happened to the door?"

"Juan?" Isabella hears no strange harmonics or bubbling undertones in his voice. She doesn't know what the alchemists did to Catrina, but that form of puppeteering must take longer than an instant, or there would be no question left of who ruled the world—the alchemists would have taken over long ago. As it stands, whatever they did to Catrina will have been expensive in terms of both resources and effort, and is probably not something they've done lightly.

Somehow, that doesn't make Isabella feel any better.

"What happened to the door? And why is the chain locked? Is Luis with you? Fuck, Isabella, tell me what's going on!"

He doesn't normally swear in front of Luis, but the fear has him now, too. He may not be sensitive, and the Catrina-thing may have made her retreat when she saw him coming, but he can see the damaged door, the shattered wood and splinters, and you don't need to be sensitive to the spiritual universe to understand that that's a bad thing.

Isabella unwraps herself from her boy and his dog, twisting to look toward what remains of the front door. "Juan? Is anyone else out there?"

"No, just me. Isa, what happened?"

She wants to be brave and she wants to be cautious as the same time. These are not impulses that can be mutually fulfilled. The dog has stopped growling, which decides her; his ears aren't up, but he no longer looks like he's going to attack at any moment. Moving with slow and agonizing care, she rises, taking a carving knife from the block on the counter, and holds it low to her thigh as she starts back toward the living room. Luis has his eyes squeezed shut and his face pressed against Bobby's neck.

"Mama will be right back, sweetheart," she says, softly. She's not sure he even hears her.

Knife against her leg, she makes her way to the front room.

It looks so normal. It shouldn't be allowed to look this normal, not with everything that's happening, but the Catrina-thing didn't quite break through the door before Juan somehow scared her off; from this side, it's perfectly intact, if open and stopped by the chain.

Isabella walks in a wide arc, so she can see out that propped-open door when she stops. There's Juan, normal, familiar, and beloved, protective coverall still zipped over his street clothes, a smear of oil on one cheek. He looks utterly baffled by the situation, which is more than reasonable. This is an utterly baffling thing to come home to.

"Isa?" he says when he sees her, relief radiating outward in a wave. Then he pauses, frowning. "Isa, why do you have a knife? What's going on?"

Something inside her snaps with a small shattering sensation, some safety wire giving way before the flood of relief that washes through her. "We have to leave," she says, rushing for the door. She drops the knife and fumbles for the chain, but he's still holding the door open, and she can't get the slack she needs to unlatch it. "Juan, let go of the door, and I can—"

But his eyes have gone glassy with shock. His mouth works in silence for a moment before he makes a thin, pained choking noise, and a bubble of blood forms at the corner of his lips, a terrible echo of the way the Catrina-thing's smile tore. He slumps forward, against the door, pulling the chain even tighter, and later, she'll understand that was a blessing: that was the only thing that saved their son.

In the moment, she isn't half that rational. Her husband is bleeding from the mouth and nonresponsive, limp against the door. "Juan? Juan?!" She grabs his shoulder, trying to keep him from slumping to the floor, trying to take some of his weight off the door. He's larger than she is, enough so that she can't do anything more than slow his descent, even when she grabs on with both hands. He's going to fall.

When he hits the ground, he's gone forever,she thinks nonsensically, as if holding on to his arm will somehow keep him from dying, something which is patently already an impossibility. He's going to die. He's going to die, or he's already dead—he's not making any more sounds, and the blood from his mouth is thick and dark.

Then the Catrina-thing appears behind him, her terrible wide smile a rictus slashed across her face, her eyes bright and manic behind a mask of skin that's started sagging around the edges, like she's coming to the end of the time she can spend in this form. Her arms are still her arms, but they're longer than they should be, and each ends in a spade-shaped claw, like something stolen from an armadillo. She still stands wrong, moves wrong, sways wrong in the breeze from behind her, and her claws are tipped with blood.

"I told you to let me in," she chides. "This didn't have to happen. This is your fault, Isabella. He could have come home to an empty apartment and walked away a grieving widower, convinced his beloved witchy wife had run off with another man. But no, you had to argue with me, and now he's dead, gone to take the graveyard path all the way to the Impossible City."

Her giggle is like glass breaking inside a trash compactor, is like rotten ice breaking on a stagnant lake, is like frozen waste being fed into a garbage disposal. It's the most terrible thing Isabella has ever heard.

"Now, then, shall we finish this?" asks the Catrina-thing, and slams into the door with all her weight, which seems to be much greater than her frame implies. The chain shudders in its socket, the metal bar at its base threatening to tear free of the wall. Isabella shrieks and spins to run back to the kitchen where Luis is waiting, intending to wrap herself around him once again. She hears the creature stepping back, hears it slam into the door a second time, and, worst of all, hears the chain give way.

There is a thundering gallop behind her, like something large has dropped onto all fours and is pursuing her into the apartment, and then there is a ripping, tearing sound, wet and awful, followed by the sound of a sack of concrete being dropped. Isabella stops, struggling to breathe, and turns to look back.