“I’ll sleep on the kitchen floor before I let you try anything,” she said between gritted teeth. “I’ll—I’ll burn this whole house to the ground.”
Javier laughed and moved his arm away. She had freedom.
“Celeste and Reina wouldn’t very much like that.”
“What is the matter with you?” She wanted to yell but instead hissed, lest everyone in the house hear their quarrel.
“Nothing and everything, depending on how you look at it.”
She seethed. “You were joking about having your way with me!”
“And frankly, there’s nothing to stop me. Look at yourself; you’re softer than a plantain—”
“Every time you use geomancia, you become someone else,” she said, her curveball catching him by surprise.
“We all do.”
“No.” This time she mustered the courage to shut the door. All in the hope of honesty. “I’m still me when I summon iridio. I can see geomancia, Javier, don’t forget. And I can see you’re not yourself.” Her voice trembled. The place where he’d struck her itched again. “You became that monster when you were healing Celeste.”
He closed the gap between them, fast like a fleeting thought.
Eva gasped and nearly crumpled to the floor. He held her up by the arms, his grip squeezing so tight she imagined it would bruise come the morrow.
“Have you considered the possibility that maybe I am myself with spells? That what you see now—none of it is real?”
She whispered, “You’re a demon?”
His nostrils flared. The black ooze began to fill the white of his eyes. He blinked and swallowed hard to clear it away.
“Are you?” Eva asked. “You tricked me out of my home. The least you can do is tell me. I didn’t want to hate you when I left Galeno. You did this all by yourself.”
“You hate me.” It wasn’t a question. He spoke as if he was realizing it for the first time.
“You’re delusional to think I wouldn’t. Maybe if you treat me like an equal—like you promised—and less like I’m some minion, then maybe I can begin to forgive you.”
“Forgive me?”
“Yes! For hitting me. For—for acting like an ass, always.”
He let her go. His red eyes blazed against her brown ones for a second. Then he had to look away.
Eva took one gulp of air after another. She waited. And waited. “Don’t you have anything to say?”
Javier’s gaze fell on the mark on the corner of her lip. “I’m sorry,” he finally said.
It drenched Eva in disappointment. He couldn’t have given her a more inadequate, hollow apology. “Sorry isn’t going to make the scar go away,” Eva said in a low voice. Her jaw worked itself into knots, until she realized how futile it was to expect decency out of him. He was as rotten as the magic possessing him.
She whirled to the door. He tried reaching out to stop her, but this time she was quicker. She descended the stairs in a mad dash. As she passed the first-floor hallway, she snuck a look of the kitchen and of Reina and Celeste at the dining table. They leaned close in quiet privacy, unaware of her passing. Eva didn’t stop until she reached the entrance foyer. There she took a deep breath.
How she hated him, and how she wanted him out of her thoughts. But how could she when they were bound by law and magic?
She took another deep breath.
Eva knew one thing for sure, though. She had to put up with it. Just by osmosis, she was learning. And she was going to use him—to feed her magical prowess—until she could blast him back into the depths of Rahmagut’s Vacío. Surely, it was where he belonged.
The last lick of dusk light spilled onto the foyer from the open door. Eva walked out to Gegania’s cobbled entryway, then to the sloped gravel steps leading into the vegetable garden, where Maior sat on a boulder with her hands entwined in prayer. Eva clutched her borrowed woolen ruana closer around her shoulders, the spell book still tucked under her arm. She thought of all the pious women in Galeno and of her hatred for Mass, but instead of repulsion, Eva felt the urge to smile. After all, it was Maior’s ruana warming her shoulders unused to this cold, and Maior’s mondongo that filled her belly.
Eva approached, and they exchanged some pleasantries, with Maior scooting to the side so Eva could sit beside her.
Ahead, the conuco and the hills remained quiet, unconcerned by the existence of people. The sky above the mountain peaks was streaked in pinks as the afternoon prepared to bid goodbye.
“I was just wondering if I should forget my old home,” Maior explained after a while. “If I want to go back at all.”
Eva perked up from leafing through the spell book. Memories of Galeno came to her, of the heat and the youngins and the scent of cattle seeping from every crevice. “Where is your home?”
“I grew up not far from here—I think. But I doubt I would ever be able to go back.”
Up close it was hard to ignore the ghostly woman in Maior. Eva could see the resemblance to Celeste. Blue eyes. Pointed nose. She forced herself to stare at her own dangling legs instead. “I don’t ever want to go back home,” Eva said.
Maior watched her with an arched eyebrow.
Maybe it was the fact they’d just met or the way Maior’s eyes watched Eva without judgment or expectation. It made the honesty come easily to her lips. “It was so stifling there. And my grandmother never let me forget about my mom. Or what I am.”
Maior’s gaze gravitated to the antlers peeking out of Eva’s curls. “Why do you want to forget your mom?”
“I don’t want to forget her. I just want to stop remembering her sadness so much. It’s not fair that they made it my fault.”
“What did you do that made her sad?”
Maior did this thing where she gave Eva her undivided attention, earnestly, without a hidden agenda. It was so different from how her family treated her, from how Javier schemed, that Eva allowed herself to be completely open. She sucked her lower lip and said, “I think… my mom loved so much she couldn’t take it anymore.” A sigh left her lips, but it was no relief.
“She loved you too much?” Maior said.
My father, Eva thought.
She remembered the days Dulce had spent watching the rain in silence, pining for someone else, when Eva’s and Pura’s love was just an arm’s length away. The truth of what ailed Dulce was no secret. Do?a Antonia had attested it to anyone who asked: Eva’s father had used darkness to addle Dulce’s mind, to seduce her and put a child in her.
But Eva didn’t want Maior to know her as the people of Galeno knew her. That was past Eva. The new Eva had no mamá y papá.
“No. She was tricked to love someone else—put under a spell,” Eva said with finality, hoping Maior would abandon the prying subject altogether.
Maior’s eyebrows bunched up. She had more questions, Eva could tell, but she graciously swallowed them down. “To love so much it hurts? Wow,” she said with a small frown. “I used to think I wasn’t capable of liking anybody.”
Eva waited for her to go on.
Maior smiled at the pink sky. “There was this man, in Apartaderos. He treated me nice. And there were so many other pretty girls—petite with long hair—rich daughters with horses and good fashion. He had green eyes like a cat, and he could’ve had any girl he wanted. Yet he went to the chapel every day, not for prayer or salves but for me. And it scared me, because I couldn’t understand the words he said. I used to wonder: What’s wrong with me? He’s perfect in every way, and I still can’t feel anything. Except pity, for us.” Maior hugged herself and made a weird, pained smile, stealing a fleeting glance at the weed-grown path leading back to the front door. “But… I’ve realized now that it’s not that I’m not capable of liking anyone. It’s just that I was looking at the wrong people, and the right person hadn’t come by.” She picked at her nails. “If your mom loved too much, it must have been torturous. I’m sorry she didn’t have a happy ending.”