Ti recovered and yelled a mighty cry. He ran toward Maldonado again, only to be pushed back like I had been in the bone room. I could see him fighting against the magical force, leaning in as if he were wrestling a hurricane. Grandmother walked over to him.
Luz crawled out of the nearest tunnel, silver-ruined hands holding Adriana to her chest. She pushed to standing, cradling the other woman, and walked toward us with laborious steps.
“Is she okay?” Olympio asked.
I shook my head. “I don’t know.”
Grandmother reached out toward Adriana and Luz just as Luz tripped. Adriana clung to her, and Luz fought not to get washed back.
Maldonado shook his hand at Asher. Asher refused him, shaking his head, slowly. So painfully slow.
Lightning flashed nearby, and thunder clapped. A
A rush of anger at being used fueled Ti now—he kept pressing forward against Maldonado’s magic front, making incremental gains. I passed Grandmother helping Luz back up. I wasn’t sure what I could do against Maldonado, but someone had to help Asher. He couldn’t go insane alone. I couldn’t just leave him there. As I walked toward him, he stood up and started moving away from me. Slow step after slow step, ever closer to his father’s outstretched hand.
I took dangerous steps and let the current carry me, splashing down to my knees twice. “Asher, no!” I fought back up, coughing out foul mouthfuls of runoff.
Asher turned, and a lightning bolt showed me his face. There was little of the man I knew left behind—he was like a golem, made of clay. “Wait for me!” I yelled. “Remember! You said you wouldn’t go without me!”
“Shut up, woman, before he is lost to us both,” Maldonado commanded. I tried to yell back at him but he stole my voice.
I rushed through the water before his magic could shove me away like Ti. I reached Asher and blocked him with my body.
“Don’t go.” I could only mouth the words, but I took him in my arms and held him. “Just don’t go.”
He struggled with me, and I wasn’t sure if I was making the right decision or not—he would go insane here, and lose all memory of me, but I couldn’t let Maldonado win. The Asher I knew would not have wanted that.
His form rippled beneath me, changing through all the people he could be. I felt my hands down his arms to find his hands, pressed against the ditch’s cement floor, and wove my frozen fingers through his. My chin was barely above water, and I pressed my cold cheek to his back. I called his name in a voiceless whisper, like I was summoning the dead.
The electric feeling in the air faded, and Ti ran for Maldonado. The
The lightning didn’t leave Maldonado. The connection it made with his chest pinned him back against the ditch’s cement wall. It bore into him, lasting longer than a lightning bolt should. The first things to go were his clothes; they burned away as if maybe they’d never been there, been magic all the time anyhow. Then it burned through his skin—like some terrible acid, the lightning kept eating things away. Maldonado shed form after form, like a peeling snake, each one appearing for a second, and then being vaporized. I realized they were faces of everyone he’d ever been—the lightning was forcing him to ripple through them all, and all of them were screaming.
“Don’t look!” I told Asher, though I didn’t know who he was now anymore. No matter how you felt about your parents, no one should see that. Rising up to a whine, the screams finally stopped. Ti hadn’t moved from where he’d landed, and Grandmother—now incontrovertibly Santa Muerte—was turning from orange to white.
Beneath the water, Asher’s hands gripped mine back. He’d stopped twitching, going through his forms. I wasn’t sure what that meant, but I took comfort in his fingers wound with mine. He rose up, pushing me back.
He didn’t look like anyone I’d ever seen him be. But he was one person now—hopefully whole.
“Edie—” I heard my name, but Asher’s lips didn’t move. I turned as I realized it was coming from behind me, from Ti.
“Hang on, okay?” I told Asher as his hands rose to feel his unfamiliar face. He nodded silently.
I waded through the freezing water to Ti, who was holding himself up. Santa Muerte’s light was barely enough to see by—and what I could see wasn’t good. Ti had been hit by the same blast that’d tortured Maldonado.
“Let me see.” I turned him toward the light and pulled his hand away from his side. A chunk had been torn out of him, which shouldn’t matter, because Ti was a zombie. And yet—he held his hand up, mystified. He was dripping red. “Ti—”
The sternness that had always haunted his face disappeared. “Can it be?”
“Oh God—oh God—” There was visible bone, rib cage, I could see it, and more pink underneath. He didn’t smell like he’d smelled all the other times he’d been shot. There was no stink of ancient death here, just the rain, running through his wound, washing his blood away. “Oh God.”
Ti reached out and seized me. “This is not your fault, Edie.”
“Oh, no, Ti—” I whispered in a squeak.
He held me tight, forced me to look at him. “This is what I’ve wanted for so long. I’m okay.”
“Ti—” I was racked with guilt. I should have never shut him out. My whole body was numb from the freezing water—every part of it except for my heart, which was cracking in two.
“This was what I wanted. She did it. She just knew.” His expression was beatific. Soft. “You remember. I explained this to you. I meant it.”
“If you don’t go to heaven now, I’m going to go up there myself and kick someone.”
Ti laughed aloud, until it ended in a cough. I reached forward and held him, and he held me back until he couldn’t anymore. When I let go of him, he would be gone. I would never get to see him again. It was one thing knowing he was just gone, away from me, and another to know this was final, that he was dead. We sank into the water together, and I let his greater weight pin me down until it covered me entirely, baptized by my sorrow, anchored by what I’d lost.
Hands reached down from above and pulled me up. “Let me go—” I fought them as I resurfaced. “I belong with him.”
“No you don’t.” It was the man I’d never seen before again. I knew it was Asher, but I didn’t know how many more changes I could take tonight.
“Are you … still you?” I asked him.
He nodded and pulled me to him. “And I need you to stay here with me.”
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
I wrapped my arms around Asher and sobbed as he held me close. I heard his voice rumble in his chest as he addressed Santa Muerte. “Explain yourself.”
I pulled back, still crying, to see.
Grandmother pointed at Olympio and began speaking. He translated instantly.
“You shall be my voice, young one. And I owe no one explanations, nor apologies.” Olympio translated her words, but there was no mistaking her tone. The hospital gowns were gone now, covered instead by a translucent flowing light, but her hands and skull were visible, all bones. “I was trapped by the creatures below the ground, and the
There was nothing left of Maldonado but a charred mark against the cement. Everything that had been him
