“No, no me entiendes,” she said, and her speech was sloppy, the words slurred as they came out of her mouth. She wiped at her face, and her eyes were red, blurring and glassy with tears, and she wouldn’t stop moving. She shifted from one leg to the other. “I can sense it.”
“What are you talking about, Emilia? Sense what?”
She stepped closer finally, and the tears were now spilling over. “We don’t have time, and I wish I could tell you my story, but—”
“But you already did!” I said.
“I lied!”
It was as if she had slapped me. She might as well have.
I grabbed her hand, intending to guide her from this place, to hide her in Obregán, where Julio could not find her—but it all rushed into me the moment I touched her.
No ritual, no prayer. I cried out, and fear and regret bolted up my arm and—
It was impossible.
And yet—
Emilia had watched me run off from her the morning before, saw me far in the distance, but she did not follow me. Not at first, not as she had told me the night before.
She went back.
She had seen my pack and realized what she forgot; she did not want to venture out into the desert without supplies, without food or water or clothing. So she rushed back to the place Julio had stolen from someone in Empalme. Most of her life had been spent underground, and she had not learned much from being with her father aboveground. But she knew that without food and water, she would die.
There was little left, but she found a burlap sack in a corner of the home, some dried fruit, and a canvas canteen. It was enough. Enough to get her to wherever I was going, enough to allow her to follow me and the foolish plan that she’d assembled only minutes before. She grabbed a small hunting axe off the wall, stuffed everything into the bag, and as she made for the door, she felt a hand in her hair, pressure on her scalp, and she screamed, shattering the terrible silence of that place.
“Did you think you could leave me?” Julio shrieked, and he flung her down on the ground, and she looked up at his towering form. He teetered in front of her, his body a mass of rage and tesgüino. He fell briefly himself, used the wall to push to his feet, and she scrambled away from him, farther into the house.
“No, Papi,” she whimpered. “I was afraid, and I was going to find you and—”
“Don’t lie to me, mija,” he slurred. “Where were you going?” She said nothing, paralyzed with terror, and he shrieked at her. “Where were you going?”
“Away!” she yelled back. She had never before raised her voice at this man, had never dared to risk facing his wrath, but she was so tired, Solís. She was tired of cowering in fear. Of keeping to herself. Of believing that she was the problem. “Anywhere but here! Anywhere without you!”
He swayed again, blinked, wiped at his mouth. “Then go,” he said after a silence. He waved at her as if she were a stray animal. “Leave.”
There was no longer any emotion in what he said. She stared at him, could not believe that he had given up on her, but it wore off quickly. She lifted herself from the ground and moved forward, one step after another, her eyes locked on him, and she stepped past him, to the door, to her freedom and—
His other hand whipped out, and there was a puncture on the underside of her left arm as cool metal bit into her skin.
She strained as hard as she could.
It ended.
He let go of her, and she spun around.
Glass. Metal. A vial. He held it up in the low light of the morning, and he examined it. “I’ll give you a day,” he said. “You’re free to leave now.”
Horror swirled through her. “What have you done, Papi? ¡Soy tu hija!”
Julio ignored this. His old smile came back—sinister and raw—and he directed it at her. “There’s something you don’t know about los sabuesos, about their magic,” he said, his tone informational, as if this were something she’d find interesting and entertaining. “I have wanted one for so very long, but los pálidos … they had very few of them left. But now I know how to make them.”
A malicious grin lit up his face. “Something happens when they are created and corrupted. They have a pull on their prey. When they get close, their victim feels like they cannot resist. They run toward los sabuesos.”
He chuckled. “I wonder if Manolito met his fate with open arms.”
He sealed the vial, turned away from his daughter. “You have one day, Emilia. Goodbye.”
She sobbed loudly, but she couldn’t stay any longer. She ran out the door and did not look back.
She lied to me.
I lied to her.
That’s all this was: nothing but lies.
Emilia let go of me, gasped for air, and then she just moved, brushing past me, and she thrummed with energy. “Now you know,” she said, ignoring the look of confusion on my face. “And I feel it right now, Xochitl. It’s beckoning to me.”
I followed. I followed because I had no time to think through a plan, to consider that it was dangerous to be anywhere near Emilia. All I could see in my mind was Julio. I began to frantically look around the crowd for his sinister form, his twisted mouth, the sound of el sabueso. But there were too many people. How did people ever locate anyone in this place? My gaze jumped from one person to another, from odd headwear to flowing cloaks, from dark skin to light, from thick curly hair to straight black cascades like my own. No Julio. No sabueso.
How did she do that? How did she give me her story without the ritual?
“They’re closer!” Emilia sobbed out.
