“They don’t seem so hard to kill.”
“I mean, decapitation has never not worked.”
“Please, listen!” I stand in the middle of the room. A mix of angry and curious faces stare back at me. Frederick’s serum is starting to fade, and a dull pain starts to pulse at the base of my heart, right around my ribs. “I’m Lula Mortiz. I’m the one responsible for raising this undead army, and I called you all here because you are my only hope to stop them.”
“You went against our word,” Gustavo says, staring at me like he might commit murder himself. His wife, Anna, clutches her amethyst prex, trying to get Adrian to sit back.
“I know—” I start, but he interrupts.
“You violated our most sacred laws. Now you seek our help again to clean up your mess, and you put us in the same room as the people who have hunted us for eons.”
“This concerns us all,” Frederik says coolly. “The Thorne Hill Alliance is a neutral place. The Knights of Lavant are bound by the same laws as the rest of us. No one will harm you here.”
Gustavo makes a distasteful noise in his throat, but Rhett ignores the outburst and gives me the floor again.
“What do you propose?” Lady asks me, her head wrap twice as tall as usual, and her neck adorned with polished gems and a tiny clove of garlic that rests in the dip of her clavicle.
“I don’t understand,” Elisabeth, a witch from the Thorne Hill Alliance, says. “How did you create these zombies?”
“They’re called casimuertos,” I explain. “It means almost dead. They’re literally straddling the line between living and dead.”
“What’s keeping them alive?” Elisabeth asks. “I mean, our magics are different, but all magic needs an anchor. Something must be tying them to this realm.”
There’s a flurry of discussion and suggestions. Beheadings and fire and a quest for a magical spring that cures everything.
I bring my fingers to my lips and whistle hard and loud.
“I am the anchor.” When I speak those words, it silences them. I wonder how many are thinking it would be best to kill me right here and now. “The casimuertos are feeding on my life force. Our magic can’t heal it and potions won’t help. There’s a weapon that can sever the tie and destroy all the casimuertos bound to me. But this is bigger than just the casimuertos. La Muerte is trapped. The balance between the living and dead is broken. Spirits can’t be collected or cross over. Our world can slip into that in-between space.”
“What do you need to do?” someone asks.
“I need to call upon the elements to retrieve the Spear of Death.”
“Even if we gathered every witch on this continent,” Valeria says, “what’s to say we can summon the power of the Deos?”
“This is a fool’s errand,” Gustavo mutters.
“You can think that, but it’s the only option we have,” I say. “Lady de la Muerte needs the spear. I trapped her, and I have to free her.”
“Isn’t that a good thing?” Mayi asks quietly. She shrinks back a bit when all eyes turn on her. “No death, I mean…”
Lady pulls out a cigar from her long skirt and lights it. Her fingers are trembling. I’ve never seen her scared in all my life. “In a perfect world,” Lady says, her eyes lingering on the vampire for a moment. “Immortality is for the gods. This world needs a balance of life and death. Without it, there is no renewal. There is stagnancy and chaos. Look at all those bodies out there.”
“You really think you can conjure the elements?” Helena of the High Circle asks. “Conjuring is rare magic in our times.”
“I’m an encantrix,” Alex says, standing beside me. “I was blessed by the Deos. I can summon all the elements.”
“No,” my dad shouts. “That’ll kill you before Lula has a chance to see the spear, let alone get to it.”
“Yeah, you’d die from the recoil, even if you could survive conjuring,” Mayi says.
“McKay, can you put up the texts on the screen?” I ask.
The shifter pushes a button and the rezo for Lady de la Muerte appears. I read it out loud.
“El Fuego extinguished into ash. La Ola crumbled into salt. El Terroz clove the earth in pieces. El Viento fell and kept on falling.”
Nova steps forward, resolution in his Caribbean-sea eyes, as if daring anyone to challenge him. “I’ll be your light, Ladybird.”
“No,” Alex says, taking his hand. The magical burn marks work their way up to the knuckles now. “The recoil will literally kill you. You’re not—”
“That’s for me to decide.” He yanks his hand back.
“Sit down, son,” my dad tells Nova. “My lightning, it can substitute fire as well. I should be the one.”
“Dad—” I start to say, but whatever is going to come next gets caught in the cry I silence.
“I can summon wind,” Adrian shouts excitedly. He runs up to me, pulling out of his mother’s and father’s grips. He stands in front of me. “You remember, right, Lula?”
“You’re doing no such thing,” Anna tells her son.
Adrian doesn’t look at his mother, but at me. “My mother asked me to keep my power secret because of what happened with Alex. She thought you guys might be bad influences on me. But I am a Son of El Viento, Lord of Flight, and I can do this.”
“Thank you,” I say, gripping his hand in mine as he stands beside my father. He’s half the size of my dad and thin as a lamppost, but there is more bravery in this kid’s eyes than in most of the people in this room.
McKay holds his hand out. “Okay, so fire and wind. What about one of the mermaids? They might be able to be one of your water witches.”
My mom speaks up from her seat. “Unless they can command the sea itself, conjure it to move with the others, it wouldn’t work.”
“I think I can,” a voice comes from the crowd.
I’m not sure it’s even her until she stands. Rose. Her long, brown hair is a tangle of waves. Her chest rises and falls quickly, a nervous shake in her usually still hands.
“That is not your power,” Valeria says. “That’s impossible.”
Rose shakes her head. “It isn’t. I don’t know how or when, but my power has changed.”
“Rose?” Ma steps forward to touch Rose’s round cheek.
“It happened once last year,” Rose says. “I healed a cut on one of the patients. I thought I imagined it, so I ignored it. But during the healing canto, when we tried to heal Maks, I felt stronger. It was like…this energy coming awake.”
“That doesn’t mean anything,” Gustavo says.
“Of course it does,” I tell him, standing in front of him so he won’t look at Rose with the same disdain he looks at me with. “The other night, when I left headquarters, Rose saved me. She conjured light, just like Nova.”
“What makes you think that means you can conjure water?” Lady asks, more curiosity than doubt in her sultry voice.
“Every time, there was one thing in common.” Rose walks to the center of the room and takes Nova’s hand. “I was touching another bruja.”
An understanding passes from Rose’s eyes to Nova’s. A radiant orb forms in his free hand, dragging across his body like a rope, and down his other arm. Rose raises her arm and a beam of light radiates from each one of her fingers.
There’s a series of gasps in the room.
I can’t stop smiling.
The old brujas and brujos of the High Circle press their thumbs to their lips, then foreheads, and whisper a rezo to the gods. None of them have ever witnessed this kind of magic.
“Can I try something?” McKay asks Rose.
“You’re not a brujo,” Rose says.
“No, but I’m still of the magical variety. I want to see something. May I?” She nods and they hold hands like they’re about to arm wrestle. “Close your eyes and think about the most beautiful person in the world. Think of their face. Then slowly, think about seeing that face when you look in the mirror.”
Someone tries to protest, but another person shushes them.