the storm. My ears ring in the dead silence. I stumble in the dark, my

hands bloody and stinging as I crawl through shattered glass.

I’m afraid to see, but I force my burning eyes open.

They’re gone. Everyone is just gone .

In their place are dozens and dozens of scorched feathers. Every

window is shattered. Every candle is extinguished. My mom always said,

“When the Deos answer your call, they snuff out the lights.”

11

Deos, take my offering.

Return my pain al olvido.

Return, return, return.

- Canto del Regreso, Book of Cantos

“What did you do?” Nova’s voice startles me.

I stare at his dirt-caked boots making their way toward me. He’s

still in that blue shirt.

I made them go away… I can’t say it out loud. I touch the outline

of feathers burned into the wooden floor, then the singed parakeet

feathers that flutter around me.

I grab my face with my bloody hands. Tree branches tap at broken

windowpanes, like long, thin fingers calling for my attention. My

insides ache. My magic is slipping. Air swirls and thickens around me

until everything is drenched in rain, washing the blood away,

revealing stinging cuts all over my bare arms and legs.

I remember that I’m not alone. Nova is here. Nova will know what

to do. I need them back.

Nova kneels down beside me and takes my hand in his. I hold on to

him and pull him toward me. Fear splinters the green sea in his eyes.

He wants to flee. He looks at the open door. He breaks my hold, but

I’m on my feet in a heartbeat. I pin him against the wall. His heart

races beneath my palms.

“Alex, stop it. Let go.”

My name sounds foreign coming from him. Alex. Alejandra. Who am I

if I’ve lost them forever?

“You have to help me!” Desperation makes my voice shrill. “You

have to help me get them back.”

Nova stares at me in a way that makes me feel like a thing that

crawled from the sewers. I’m a decrepit, crooked, beastly thing

clawing at his feet. I am the thing that should be feared. I am the

thing I hate most. The gods ask too much , my father said. But it

wasn’t the gods that did this. It was me.

“Alex, relax!”

“A demon just took my whole family, and you tell me to relax ?” I

shove him, his head snapping against the wall. He’s taller than me and

all muscle, but I can feel my strength growing. “You said it would

work. This is your fault!”

“My fault?” he scoffs. He grabs my wrists, and I take a sinister

pleasure in his shock that he can’t make me budge.

“You have to know about this stuff. I know you do.” My belly

swells with magic. It chokes my heart, my lungs, burns tears to my

eyes.

“Alex, you’re hurting me.” Nova’s eyes are wide. Lines crinkle his

features. His lips, dry, part. A strangled cry. My name. His heartbeat

at the center of my palms. His pulse in my veins, slow and steady and

bright.

I want to scream. My power rages, hateful and wonderful all at

once. My family is gone, but the power is still there. They’re gone

and it didn’t even work.

Nova falls on his knees. His hands pulse with a weak conjured

light. He’s trying to fight me. His light burns against my bare skin.

I hiss, releasing him. Instantly, the wrinkles on his face smooth out,

the color returns to his skin. The mini-storm I conjured dies.

My body buzzes with awakening. “I’m-”

“Don’t say you’re sorry!” He staggers away, then finally lies down

in a pile of feathers.

I close my eyes. I’ve gone beyond feeling like I’m in a dream or a

nightmare. I’m in a limbo of my own making.

“I could have killed you.” I dig my hands into the dirty fabric of

my dress. My mom was right. She should have sewn in pockets.

When he’s regained his breath, when the silence becomes so

unbearable that he has to say something, he mutters, “It’s done.”

Even without touching him, I can sense the way his muscles ache.

There are bruises on his chest. I can’t know that, but somehow I do. I

watch as he moves toward the front door, so slow, as if treading

water.

“Wait!” I push myself up on shaking legs. “Where are you going?”

He flinches as my fingertips brush his shirt. He turns the full

fury of his eyes on me. “Home, like I should have in the first place.”

“You can’t just leave .”

“I warned you, you might not like the consequences. I know you

want to find someone to blame other than yourself, but you did this,

Alex. What did you think was going to happen? The entire universe

would change just because you don’t like how your lot turned out?

Well, guess what, princess? The rest of us don’t get to choose. Why

did you think you’d be any different?”

He keeps going. For a moment, I’m too stunned to move. Everyone I

would turn to is gone and I just accidentally tried to kill the only

person left.

“I don’t have anyone else.” What I want is for Nova to stay. I

want that door shut. It’s a spark in my mind, and in a split second,

the command leaves my body. The door slams shut. Nova whips around,

his hands glowing protectively.

“You can’t keep me locked here.” He looks scared. Big, bad street

boy with tattoos covering his skin, and he’s scared of me.

Part of me hates it. A whisper, deep in the back of my head,

relishes in it. I can hurt him. I can make him feel my pain. It’s so

easy. That’s the point of being an encantrix, isn’t it? Nova said it

himself: I can do anything. I can get my family back.

“Nova, please.”

He rubs his close-cropped hair and exhales. “Tell me exactly what

you did.”

I open the door to my family altar. The black-and-white photos of

my ancestors have changed. Their eyes are completely white. I grab the

Book of Cantos and shut the door. Nova rights a coffee table that

flipped over. It wobbles when I set the Book on it. I show him the

canto. I describe what happened.

Mom, I’m so sorry , I think. Grief and guilt hit me like a wave,

but I can’t-I won’t-cry in front of Nova.

“It was meant to block the blessing, like you said. Then I

combined it with a phrase from the Canto del Regreso and changed it a

bit… I was offering my power to Lady de la Muerte.”

Nova shakes his head. “How many cantos have you done in your whole

life?”

“This is my first,” I whisper.

“Thought so.”

“Can you not? Just tell me they’re alive. Where did they go? They

can’t just have vanished into thin air.”

“Technically, they did,” he says roughly. He flips through the

pages of the Book of Cantos until he lands on a map that spans two

pages. “But they also went somewhere. This is Los Lagos.”

“How do you know that’s where they are?”

“Look at the burn marks on the floor.”

“Feathers.” Feathers, feathers, everywhere. They flutter in

defeated little tufts. They’re burned into the floor and walls.

“Look where you were sitting in the circle.”

I try to look beyond my parakeet’s severed head and am thankful

that there aren’t any human body parts. I bend down and touch the

burned marks of a craggy tree, just like the one painted on the back

room door of Lady’s shop. It’s the symbol for Los Lagos, an in-between

world I know nothing about except for bedtime stories of lost souls

and fantastical lands.

“My grandma says that’s where souls go to wait their passing, but

there are also creatures that live there, banished from the Earth by

the Deos.”

“ Tell me they’re alive,” I whisper.

Nova hesitates to speak. He sighs. “I’m not going to lie. There’s