Chapter XVII #2
The door hit the wall. Alba flinched at the sound. She hadn’t meant to open it with such force; the hinges must be weak.
Elías startled. Lifted his head. Jumped again, this time back from the table and to his feet, the stool on which he sat clattering to the ground.
“I…I didn’t see you there.” He stuttered slightly; his hair had fallen into his face, for it was not bound back as it usually was.
Shame flickered over her skin, hot and prickling, when she realized that she had, after all, barged into his space without invitation. As if she were entitled to it. As if she were calling on a friend.
“I didn’t mean to surprise you,” she said. “Or interrupt. I’m sorry.”
They were not, in fact, friends. She barely knew him.
She thought about him enough that perhaps she had deluded herself into believing that they had spent more time together, that they would become friends, that they were already more than acquaintances, more than starched, distant in-laws-to-be, but that was not true.
“Thank you.” She could have flinched at how awkward she sounded. “For the other night, I mean.”
His stance had softened. He was no longer a deer braced for flight, but a man with both feet on the ground, watching her attentively.
This realization brought still more heat to her skin. She should leave.
“You helped me back, didn’t you?” he said. She had never liked peninsular speech. It was too slippery, too lispy. But his way of speaking was neither. It was without ornament. Direct. It had a grit to it that she liked. “With the priest.”
Perhaps she had been too obvious. Carlos had not exactly been warm toward her over the last day; whether this was preoccupation or prejudice for having assisted in clearing Elías’s name, she did not know.
“Thank you,” he said. “Whatever you did, it was clever. Everyone trusts Bartolomé.”
Not everyone. María Victoriana and the cook, Socorro, were dismissive of him at best; the townspeople, she deduced, had no love for his presence or his zeal.
And as for Alba? She did not know. He slipped through her judgment, evasive as a thin fish. The repulsion she felt at their first meeting was a taste that would not leave her mouth. But then, she sought him out to save Elías.
And Bartolomé had . Moreover, it seemed he had veiled her own part in the matter in secrecy, as she had requested. That made him worthy of at least some trust, did it not?
At least enough to not want him to die.
“But you didn’t come here just to say that,” Elías said. “Are you all right? Something is troubling you.”
She loved Mamá and Papá, she did, but the fact that Elías and Bartolomé—two near strangers—had been the only ones to notice this brought a stinging to her eyes. They noticed . That fact should make her feel less alone.
It had the opposite effect.
She could not stop the sharp intake of breath. She could only try and control the damage in its wake: bite the lip that threatened to tremble, stiffen the shoulders to prevent them from lifting.
Elías moved toward her like a reflex. He reached for her, stopped before her, and stayed there, his hands upturned, impotent. As if he had realized he had no way to comfort her.
“Would you like to come in?” he asked.
She nodded, sharp and jerky. It was foolish to linger in the doorway, in full sight of anyone who happened to pass by.
The workshop was warm and smelled of mesquite smoke from the fire that crackled in the hearth.
When he shut the door, she blurted out what she had to say before she lost the nerve.
“I fear Bartolomé is next,” she said.
He did not gasp in shock. He did not call her mad. Far from it. Instead, he found a stool—they seemed to grow around the workshop like wildflowers—and sat.
“What makes you say that?” he asked.
“I have been having horrible dreams,” she began, “since we arrived. I have often had bad dreams, since I was a child. The dreams and the sleepwalking…if they occur, they tend to come as a pair.”
It was easier to pace. If her feet were moving, she could be focused on the path before her and not how he was watching her. How he was waiting for her to speak. How he was listening.
He nodded slowly, his chin resting thoughtfully on one hand. A hint of his earring glinted through his dark hair.
“What happened in your dream?” Dryly, as if attempting thin humor, he added: “I think I should be prepared if I am going to be accused of the priest’s murder next.”
The floor was hard, packed dirt. The room was so small, even compared to Casa Calavera, and there wasn’t much room to pace. What if she were found here? She should leave at once and forget this ever happened.
“It doesn’t matter.” The words came out sharper than she intended. “I just know it’s him. He’s in danger. That’s all I came to say. I should leave.”
She made for the door.
His hand brushed her elbow—it was not enough to stop her; she could have pushed right past it.
She hesitated.
“Alba.”
Looking at him twisted time. At once, it was night, and they were in firelight. Her limbs were stiff with cold; his hands were warm.
He had been refuge from that nightmare. Why couldn’t he be again?
You don’t know him, you can’t trust him. You told him enough. Leave. Flee.
“Warn the priest,” she said.
“And what exactly will I tell him?”
His hand was still on her elbow—only fingertips, barely a weight. She could walk away, she could flee. Nothing was stopping her.
But Bartolomé was in danger. It felt as real as the dirt and gravel on the soles of her feet.
Remembering that sent a shudder down her spine. Her flesh went cold, as if a hand of ice had run its claws across her shoulders.
Elías dropped his hand.
She immediately wished he hadn’t. She was untethered, unmoored. A madwoman in a desolate place.
“I…I know you do not know me, and that perhaps you do not trust me, but I will listen, if you wish me to,” he said. “I want to listen. If you are troubled, I want to help.”
But what could be done to help? She covered her face with her hands. She spoke into her palms—it was so much easier if she was not looking at him, if she could pretend that she was speaking into an empty room.
“When I woke…” Her voice cracked. It came out as a whisper: “My feet were dirty.”
She peeked through her fingers to gauge his reaction. Realization, then horror, swept across his face. “Your door—”
“I locked it. But it had been unlocked.”
His shoulders stiffened. “That is not good.”
“You think I don’t know that?” Her voice pitched dangerously close to shrill again. “Why do you think I am here?”
A breath of silence.
“Desperation,” he said, drawing the syllables out. She resisted the urge to flinch away from the dryness in his voice. “That is the only reason you would risk dear Carlos’s wrath.”
But Carlos was not alone among her worries. “Think of my mother,” she said. “I am endangering my reputation.”
“That’s it,” Elías said, snapping his fingers. “Danger. You are in danger, not the priest. Well, perhaps the priest as well,” he revised quickly, “but foremost, you.”
It was passionate and sudden, a turn that made her want to step away from him.
Danger , the voice at her ear purred. Flee this place, never look back.
“When I found you outside, the other night,” he continued, “you were not yourself.”
His tone sent a trill of fear up her spine. She dismissed it.
“I was sleepwalking. Of course I was not myself,” she said.
He looked away from her. A muscle twitched in his jaw.
“You did not look like yourself,” he said.
“You were angry that I stopped you. So angry that I was afraid of you.” He paused, as if searching for words.
When he spoke again, the tone of his voice was careful, as if he were taking trembling steps along the edge of a precipice. “But—it wasn’t you .”
Claws of cold dug into the column of her neck, so forceful she was surprised they did not lift her as if she were a pup seized by the nape. When she had caught her breath, she said: “That does not make sense.”
“You were angry that I stopped you . I thought you were headed toward the mine, but that path also leads to the incorporadero. Where was the body found?”
Alba inhaled sharply through her nose.
“You were walking toward danger,” Elías continued. “What if you had come upon the murderer and Romero? What if you witnessed it, what would happen to you then? What if they hurt you instead?”
“I hadn’t thought of that,” Alba said.
“I never thought I would say this, but I agree with the priest. Something is wrong,” he said fervently. “Your dream troubles me, yes. But the facts trouble me more.”
He turned to the table, where the book he had been reading lay open. He began paging through it, eyes flicking across words as if he were searching for something.
The words themselves were alien to Alba—a language she could not place, crowded black letters ornamented with sharp gestures in red and blue ink.
“You walked as if led by something,” he said. “Animated by a will not your own.”
“That is the nature of sleepwalking,” Alba said, “is it not?”
“My mother would sleepwalk,” Elías said without looking up. “This was different .”
Bitter cold drove into Alba’s bones. She had a sensation that she was apart from herself, that she was watching the scene between them unfold from some high perch instead of through her own eyes.
“I don’t understand,” she said.
“And I am trying to,” he said. “I am trying to make sense of the facts and approach this logically, examining what evidence we have and drawing reasonable conclusions, but all I think is…”
His feverish turning through the book stilled; the pages settled and were silent.
A large block of glyphs graced the top of the page he looked down at. He took it in, the set of his mouth grim.
“Would you look at that,” he said softly, as if half to himself. “How helpful.”
“What is it?” Alba asked.
His finger fell to the page. “?‘An assessment,’?” he read aloud.
“Of?”
His eyes flicked up at her, wary. His shoulders were tight, his voice strained, as if afraid of how she might react to what he said next.
“?‘Of possession,’?” he finished.
Alba fell a step away from him. He thought she was mad. No, worse.
“You think I am possessed?” she cried.
“I…” He did not move from where he lingered over the book; his face shifted, as if he were searching for words and failing to find them. “I think it is worth considering. I once knew a man who suffered from—”
“?‘Worth considering?’?” she snapped, incredulous. “I came here to ask for help because I am worried about Padre Bartolomé, not to be accused of making deals with demons.”
Whispering gestures reached through her mind, weaving bridges through once-disparate moments. The thoughts that felt not her own. The feeling, in sleep, that something guided her.
Fear swept over her, encasing her in ice.
Elías was wrong.
“I should never have come here,” she said. “I will warn the priest myself.”
“By telling him what?” Elías wondered.
She shot him a hard look. Curled her hands into fists. Set her jaw.
He was right. What could she say that would not sound like a madwoman’s ravings?
She was unmoored, alone. She would find no help here.
Yessss , the voice at her ear hissed. Away from him. Away. Leave.
She turned on her heel and left the workshop.