Alas, Don Alberto wasn’t the type to take assertive rein of his life and look for a better wife. Of course he would be back.
Eva felt a crack in her fa?ade. The desire to act out—to indulge in it. She linked her arm with Néstor’s as they watched Don Alberto head to the front foyer.
“Can the man be any more mechanical?” she murmured to her uncle.
Néstor shrugged. “It’s rude that we don’t walk him out.”
“I don’t think that’ll stop him from coming back.”
“By the Virgin, Eva, you have him smitten.”
“Whatever he sees in me… at least it keeps grandmother off my back.”
Her young uncle cackled. With arms still locked with his, Eva accompanied him to the stables. Even though Néstor had saved her from dealing with Don Alberto’s accusations, Eva’s belly swirled in anger. She was wounded from the comment. Don Alberto was right, and it incensed her into wanting to do something destructive.
Bitterly, Eva noted she must have been born wrong, because being the good granddaughter felt like so much work.
“You’re riding to see Don Jerónimo?” she said.
Néstor unlatched himself from her and ordered the stable hand to ready a ride. “I need to comfort him, even if he never really cared for his grandfather.”
Just the day before, Do?a Antonia had opened the family breakfast by announcing the death of the Contador patriarch, Don Jerónimo’s grandfather and Do?a Rosa’s father. The official account was that he’d passed in his sleep, which no one bothered to question, since the man had already been headed into his eighth decade.
Néstor smiled with a blush. “Well, it’s not like I don’t miss him.”
“Let me come with you,” Eva said on impulse.
Néstor’s gaze rounded, his lips parting. He knew she had bowed out of geomancia. But Eva was tired. She just wanted a small breath of fresh air. A morsel, to replenish her strength so she could continue faking this role. “I should offer Do?a Rosa my condolences.”
Néstor eyed Eva suspiciously, but he complied. This was the best part about him: While everyone else was busy judging each other and drowning in someone else’s embarrassment, Néstor merely indulged impulses.
The sky east of the Serrano hacienda was covered in black rain clouds, so Néstor arranged for a carriage. The rain started halfway through the ride. When they arrived at the Contadors’ town house, they found another gilded carriage parked outside the iron gates. It was a carriage bedecked in art depicting scenes from Pentimiento scripture. Eva and Néstor exchanged a look. The archbishop was also making a house call.
“Maybe they’re arranging the funeral,” Eva said behind Néstor as he gestured for the house butler to let him in.
Thunder rumbled as Eva followed Néstor through the foyer and into the hallway connecting the innards of the house. Every window-lit room they passed was covered in long shadows, the rain clouds blocking the late afternoon sun and joining the Contadors in their mourning. The air smelled dusty, of dead flowers. The windows hadn’t been opened in days. Eva looped her arm in Néstor’s and clung to him as they crossed hallways decorated by the framed painted faces of the Contadors who’d come before. She felt rotten, for she had abandoned Do?a Rosa for so many months. Surely the woman didn’t miss her, but it still marked Eva as nothing more than self-interested.
Néstor paused at the foot of the stairs to the second floor, and Eva nearly crashed into him. Loud voices rang from the adjacent hallway leading to the outdoor kitchen and the house yard. Don Jerónimo descended the stairs in a hurry. Frowning, he offered Néstor and Eva a quick greeting before heading to the kitchen.
“A rot for this city!” One of the loud voices erupted from the yard. Eva would recognize that voice anywhere. After all, she had to listen to it every Sunday morning during Mass. “She’s bringing the scorn of the saints by being here. The Virgin will stop protecting us for as long as we continue tolerating this nonsense.”
Eva’s heart pounded. She understood. She knew the speaker. And she only wished her conclusions were incorrect.
Her answer came quick. Eva, Néstor, and Don Jerónimo emerged into the yard, where the pouring rain drowned the cries of Do?a Rosa. A party of acolytes stood outside her dwelling, boots covered in mud and clothes clinging with water, undisturbed by the rain. The archbishop’s voice rang from inside the home, joining the sound of crashing glass. Eva imagined him shattering Rahmagut’s icon behind that curtain door.
She tried running into the hut, but Néstor’s hand stopped her from leaving the roofed safety of the kitchen. She shot her uncle a scowl, but he didn’t release her. Eva couldn’t believe he lacked the courage to defend Do?a Rosa and that he expected the same from her.
Don Jerónimo’s mother, a slim, pale woman with a hawkish face, stood under the awning to watch the ransacking. “Now that Don Julio’s dead, there’s nothing stopping the archbishop. No one in this city’s going to risk their neck protecting that nozariel.”
“What’s her crime?” Eva asked heatedly, even though she already knew the answer.
Don Jerónimo’s mother gave Eva an unkind look. “She doesn’t need one. The Virgin does things for a reason, and that reason doesn’t have to make sense to us.”
Panic welled in Eva. She wanted to demand justice. She almost did it, too, until she imagined what her grandmother and Décima would say of the ordeal: how Eva completed the soiling of her own reputation by defending the curandera.
Two acolytes dragged Do?a Rosa out of her home while the heavens wept over the yard. Every servant in the Contador house gathered under the awning to watch the spectacle. A few faces were more satisfied than concerned.
“Do not despair, my children,” the archbishop told the watching crowd as he crossed the yard with an acolyte shielding him with an umbrella. “This witch will face the justice of the church. The Virgin will be the one to judge, not I.”
Do?a Rosa writhed in the acolytes’ grip. Her hair and clothes were made limp by the rain, but her eyes burned with hatred at everyone who watched. Everyone, including Eva.
With his cloying, omnipotent tone, the archbishop told the crowd, “Please understand this act needed to be done. The saints become unhappy when their own people start worshipping demons. We cannot lose their protection. We cannot have this conflict of beliefs.”
At that moment all Eva could think about was the milk snake, slithering from her dream into Pura’s bed.
“It weakens the spirit—it makes you vulnerable to be snatched up by a demon. Therefore, I will conduct a public inquisition on all suspected to have communed with false gods.” His assisting acolyte handed him an icon of a sitting man—the one Do?a Rosa kept in the corner of her home. He waved the icon at all the watching servants, his eyes glowing at their fearful reactions.
Shoulders bumped against Eva, and she was nearly pushed into the rain. There was a wicked spark in the air. It stung like the bite of a mosquito on the back of her neck. But Eva knew it had nothing to do with magic. She glanced at the people surrounding her and only saw fanatical faces.