Chapter XXI
XXI
Alba
Any other day, siesta’s thick, harsh slants of light would send Alba collapsing into bed, her leaden eyelids falling shut at last. Her every bone ached for it. Instead, she crept out of the house, tripping over the toes of her lace boots with exhaustion and scuffing their polished points.
She entered Elías’s workshop without announcing herself and found him crouched on the ground, his book open before him. One hand tracing a line, the other following it with charcoal.
His shirtsleeves were pushed up his forearms. These were muscled and tanned by the sun; the sight of them sent a flush of heat down her throat.
She hastened to remind herself that they were arms, nothing worth noting.
Arms smudged with dirt and charcoal, for what he drew on the ground arced around him in a circle.
“What is this?”
He looked up with a start. “An experiment.” Hair fell into his face; he brushed it away quickly, leaving a smudge of charcoal along one cheekbone. “How are you feeling?”
She had not eaten enough. She spent the morning numb, nauseous, Padre Bartolomé’s sermon a dull buzz as she sat in Mass next to Mamá.
As if a pickaxe were breaking a new tunnel through the side of her skull, above one temple.
As if sand filled the hollows beneath her eyes, weighing them down with itchy grit.
Mercury undulated through her mind, formless, heavy, reflecting light at deceitful angles.
Elías wiped his hands on his trousers and stood, his brows drawing together as he studied her.
Her heart raced as if she had run here from Casa Calavera; she could break out in cold sweat any moment now, and sweating was not a comely state.
And, despite everything, she was shocked to realize that she cared about appearing comely before him.
Had she not checked her face in the silver hand mirror before leaving her room?
She found it wan, yes, but she cared enough to pinch the skin above her cheekbones and adjust her hair.
If someone had asked her weeks ago which would be more shocking to her, the fact that her sleepwalking was driven by demonic forces or that she would be sent into a girlish fluster by a rough-hewn peninsular with a sordid history…
Well.
Naturally she would have been more shocked by the notion of demonic possession.
That did not make the warmth that rose in her cheeks as Elías studied her less unsettling.
She did not blush before men. She never had.
As a child, at twelve or thirteen, she entertained vivid fantasies of gilded strangers on horseback, riding into the courtyard of their house to spirit her away to some castle.
But then she was forced to speak to men, and the fantasies dissolved like sugar in hot water, leaving a fading sweetness that quickly turned stale between teeth.
He was waiting for an answer to his question. What on earth was she supposed to say? Oh, feeling awful, but much better now that I’m in your presence. Still exhausted, but don’t worry, I won’t give in. Wouldn’t want to murder you in my sleep.
She shrugged, feigning nonchalance.
“It is what it is.” She approached the circle and walked its perimeter, studying the black glyphs.
They studied her back.
Or perhaps she imagined it.
“We’re going to do this,” she said. She meant for it to sound determined, but when she heard her own voice, it warbled with doubt.
“If you want,” he said. “If you’re ready.”
She nodded, once and curtly.
“All right,” he said, and resumed his work on the floor.
She clasped her hands as she watched in silence. They were clammy.
An experiment , he had said.
She would never be ready for what lay before her: marks that seemed blacker than the charcoal they were sketched in, their foreignness sending alarms ringing through her.
Would the Devil himself appear in the circle when it was completed?
Perhaps he would give a cordial bow and ask for her hand in marriage or perhaps for some of her blood to sign the bottom of a contract like in the plays from Spain she had read.
Perhaps the Devil was already inside her.
A shudder unspooled up her back. She crossed her arms over her chest and hugged herself as Elías muttered at the floor.
She did not want to do this. It was wrong, yes, but worse, it frightened her.
At the other end of the scale: A knife glinted in the dark of her memory.
The scratch marks on Elías’s neck had reddened since last night.
Her wrists ached; bruises had bloomed across them over the course of the last few hours, causing her to tug at the wrists of her sleeves to ensure they were covered.
There would be no explaining such marks to Mamá.
She could have killed him. He was strong and had fought back, but what if…what if she had tried to harm someone else? Romero was gone. The thought of him filled her with loathing, but what if it had been someone she cared about?
Her parents?
Someone innocent, like María Victoriana?
Or perhaps Padre Bartolomé?
A shift in the back of her skull, like a cat stretching and resettling on a sunny windowsill.
An image, bright as the memory of the knife, of Bartolomé splayed at the bottom of a ravine: arms akimbo, the cross around his neck shattered.
His skull broken like an egg, his hair wet with blood and pale pink splatter—
She shook her head sharply to clear it.
Elías leaned back on his heels to inspect his work, cross-referencing the pages of the book with the markings on the floor.
“In the study of alchemy, we follow the laws of science,” he said. “If you and I don’t know what matter of force we are dealing with, then we cannot pick our tools appropriately.”
He flipped the pages of the book back; then he rose and stepped over to Alba to show her, taking care to avoid any of the markings he had made.
“Here, there is a list of different classes of demons,” he said, pointing to a line of writing in red—a heading, perhaps, luridly set apart from the rest of the black on the page and the slanting handwriting in the margins.
“According to San Cipriano, each class has a different method of eradication. Say, for example…”
His finger moved down the page; his eyes skipped back and forth over the words, as if he were reading and translating at the same time.
He bit his lip as he did so, then released it slowly.
Elías was worried about the Inquisition if she spoke to Padre Bartolomé. What concerned her the most: the prospect of saying the phrase sinful thoughts aloud in confession for a second time. She wanted to cringe with her whole body at the thought.
“Imagine a weed with roots that go deep into the ground,” Elías said. She steered her imagination away from his mouth and in the direction he suggested. “If you try to eradicate the weed by simply chopping off the blossoms, or even cutting it down to the earth, it will grow back.”
“Because the roots are still there,” she said.
“Exactly.”
The thought of roots spreading through her bones, pushing through soil, curling around her joints and pulling tight, tight, tight…it made her want to yank her skin off and rip the roots out with her bare hands.
“So we need to try and determine what kind of… thing we are dealing with?” she asked.
“Yes,” Elías said. “I’m going to translate precisely what the book says as we do so. You must know and understand everything that is happening.”
“That will take too much time,” she said with a dismissive wave of the hand. “Just get it over with.”
“Alba.” He lowered the book and turned so that he stood directly before her. Her eyes came to the level of his chest; she kept her gaze there, shyness preventing them from rising.
“Look at me,” he said. “Please.”
She lifted her eyes slowly, tracing the buttons of his work shirt, skipping over stray threads from buttonholes that needed mending.
The rise of his chest and the opening of his shirt; the suggestion, faintly, of dark hair beneath.
His throat. The scratches she had left there last night.
The stubble on his chin, the faint scar on his upper lip.
Meeting his gaze was not a sin. It should not feel like one.
“If we do this, when we do this, I want you to understand every single step,” he said softly. “I will not do anything without knowing that you are ready, you are willing, and you understand what is about to happen.”
“As you wish,” she said. She could taste the indifference in the words. Perhaps he could hear it, for he continued.
“If you ever feel uncomfortable, or if you do not understand what is happening and do not want it, tell me to stop. I will stop. Immediately. I swear it,” he added, low and passionate. “This is your life. Your fate. You are in control.”
A frisson passed through her shoulders—not a shudder, but a pleasant sensation. Control made her feel safe, and he had sensed that. He was giving her a gift.
She accepted it. “I will.”
“Do you promise?” he said, and when she nodded, he put the book down on the worktable next to her. “Do you want to practice saying no?”
She tilted her head to the side, considering what he meant.
“I was never taught how to say no,” he said. “I simply did what I knew people expected of me, sometimes before they asked. To please them. To be less of a burden. I ended up in regrettable situations. You don’t strike me as someone who was taught to say no either.”
He took her hand. Her heart leaped to her throat as he held it up against his, palm to palm. Then, he pushed gently against her.
“Tell me to stop,” he said.
“Stop.”
He did.
Then he pressed again, harder this time, a gentle force that could bring him closer to Alba if she let him, close enough that they might breathe the same air, close enough that she might feel the warmth of his body.
“Don’t stop,” she said.
This surprised him enough that the weight of his hand lifted.