Chapter 5
Ihad to pedal like I was being chased down by a horde of zombies, but I made it to the Marin house on time. Eva laughed at me as she opened the door.
“What the hell happened to you?” she asked.
“Running late,” I panted. My face felt flushed and sweaty.
Eva just shook her head, still chuckling, and stepped aside to let me in.
I took off my shoes and greeted Eva’s mom, Maricela, who was pulling a tray of something cinnamon-smelling out of the oven in the kitchen.
“Hello, Wren! Did Eva tell you? We’ve got a waterworker in the house!” she said, smiling broadly.
“I know!” I said, smiling back. “It’s so exciting, congratulations!”
Most teenagers probably would have rolled their eyes, but Eva just beamed.
This was one instance where family pride—or more specifically, coven pride—was gratifying rather than humiliating.
Eva would be glowing for days over this achievement—as well she should.
I wish my studies were going half as well.
Speaking of…
Xiomara appeared in the doorway to her back room, hands on her hips, looking put out about something.
Her expression summoned an apology to the tip of my tongue, but I could see from the clock over the stove that I wasn’t late, so I swallowed it down.
Whatever Xiomara was frustrated about, I didn’t think it had anything to do with me—at least, not yet.
“Hi, Xiomara,” I ventured.
She merely grunted, then pointed to the table, which looked like it might collapse under the amount of food laid out on it. “Have you eaten?”
I understood by now that this was a trick question.
Even if I had eaten, she would still tell me to make a plate, but in this particular instance, I was ravenous.
In all the excitement of the grimoire’s arrival, I hadn’t eaten dinner.
I descended on the table, and started loading my plate with beans, fried plantains, empanadas, and arroz con pollo. Xiomara grunted her approval.
“I’ll call you in,” she said, jerking her head back toward her room. “I need more time at my boveda.” Then she shuffled back through the wooden beaded curtain.
Maricela watched her go, frowning, as she joined me at the table. She traded a look with Eva that I didn’t miss.
“What’s up?” I asked, glancing between them.
“My mother is… troubled,” Maricela said, looking not at me, but at the still gently swinging strings of beads in the doorway. “She hasn’t shared what it is, but something is troubling her.”
“She’s spending more and more time back there, and I don’t mean with clients. By herself, at the boveda,” Eva added, picking up an empanada and biting into it.
“She’s searching for something,” Maricela said softly. “Something that is eluding her.”
Well, that sounded ominous. I swallowed a huge mouthful of food and cleared my throat. “I… do you think I should stay?” I asked. “If she’s really upset about something—”
“If she didn’t want you here, she would have told you so, honey,” Maricela said. “You just go ahead and eat, and she’ll be ready for you soon.”
I shrugged and started shoveling food into my mouth, examining the spread on the table as I did so. It was excessive, even for Xiomara. “Did you have company?” I asked.
Eva nodded. “Extended family was over all afternoon.”
“Celebrating,” Maricela added, smiling at Eva again.
At that moment, Bea trotted into the room. “Mama, are there any of those empanadas left that Tia Laura—oh! Hi, Wren!”
I couldn’t answer because I’d just crammed half of said empanada into my mouth, so I just waved as I chewed.
“Hurry up before Wren inhales them all,” Eva said.
Eva told me more about her waterworker tests while Bea and I ate.
I couldn’t help but notice how often Bea’s gaze drifted over to the door of Xiomara’s back room.
Her expression, like her mother’s, seemed troubled.
Finally, as I pushed a second helping of flan away, conceding defeat, Xiomara appeared again.
“We begin,” she snapped, and vanished once more.
“Come up to my room when you’re done,” Eva whispered, as I got up from the table. My stomach gave an anxious lurch, and I suddenly regretted eating so much. I waved goodbye to Bea and Maricela, and followed Xiomara.
Lessons with Xiomara had already turned into a source of anxiety, but now I was buzzing with nervous energy as I traced her steps through the curtain and into her backroom studio.
Xiomara had already seated herself at the table in her usual chair, the back of which was upholstered in faded green fabric that rose up behind her like a throne.
I took my usual seat in the chair opposite her, a slightly rickety wooden rocker with a little braided rug tied onto it in place of a cushion.
“Hi,” I said lamely as I settled into my seat.
Xiomara gave a strange sound in reply, something between a snort and a disgruntled grumble, as she tidied the tabletop between us. She paused in the stacking of her tarot cards, glaring at a few individual cards as she placed them back in the deck.
“How are you, Xiomara?” I asked. I felt like I was placing the words carefully, stacking them precariously one on top of the other into a teetering tower destined to topple over.
“I’ve been better, mija. I’ve been better,” she replied, so quietly that I couldn’t tell if I was meant to hear her reply or not.
“Are you… not feeling well? Because I don’t need to stay—” I was already tensing the muscles in my legs to rise from my seat again, but Xiomara held out a hand.
“Stay where you are, child. I am well in body. It’s my spirit that has me troubled,” Xiomara replied.
She looked up from her cards, caught my eye for just a moment—the usual laser focus of her gaze was clouded with confusion and frustration.
As much as Xiomara intimidated me sometimes, this was the first moment I remembered feeling actually afraid in her presence.
“What is it?” I whispered. “Can I help?”
Xiomara slipped her tarot cards back into their pouch and pulled the string tight before she answered. “I’m not sure. I’m not sure of anything.” She looked over at her boveda in the corner of the room, and sighed.
I’d been introduced to the boveda at my very first lesson.
It was an altar, draped in a white cloth, crowded with framed photographs of Xiomara’s relatives who had passed on—parents, cousins, a sister, as well as some much older photographs, daguerreotypes, and paintings of relatives from even earlier generations.
These images, propped up against each other as though the inhabitants were posing for a group photograph, were surrounded by offerings—fruit and treats baked in Xiomara’s Cafe, brought home and laid before these long-lost relatives as a sign of respect and also, I soon learned, as an invitation.
It was at this boveda that Xiomara would convene with her relatives, who acted as her spirit guides.
She described it as her own personal door to the spirit world.
“Not a door that I can open,” she hurried to clarify.
“No, mija, that door is locked. None of us have that key. There is no key. But with the help of my spirit guides, I can place my ear against the gap. I can press my eye to the keyhole. It is up to me to interpret the glimpses and whispers that they provide.”
This explanation had been a comfort at the time.
It made me feel better about how difficult I was finding even the simplest spirit communication.
If Xiomara, the most powerful spirit witch in Sedgwick Cove, could only achieve “glimpses” and “whispers,” then I could hardly expect my own powers to produce much at first. Months later, it was hard not to let the doubts creep in, even as Xiomara guided me with maddening calm, and a relaxed sense that she expected nothing better.
Now, however, it was her face that was crumpled with frustration, while I sat and tried to find the right soothing words to get her to talk to me.
“Are your spirit guides… whispering more quietly than usual?” I asked her.
Xiomara was silent for a moment, leveling me with a look that said she was carefully weighing her words, trying to decide how much to tell me, and how much to keep back.
I was used to this look—it had been leveled at me by Conclave members, my own mother and aunts, and many others in Sedgwick Cove since I’d arrived.
How much could I handle? What could they tell me without telling me everything?
I was beginning to hate that look—it made me feel infantile and untrustworthy.
But as I met it now from Xiomara, all I could do was hold my breath and hope that, after so many months, she might trust me enough to tell me the truth.
And then she did.
“Do not speak of this to anyone. Not Eva, not your mother or your aunts. No one.”
My pulse began to jump. “Of course.”
Xiomara rose to her feet suddenly, making me jump.
She moved swiftly to the doorway and peered through to the kitchen.
Maricela was no longer there. Assured no one would overhear us, Xiomara walked around the table until she stood right in front of her boveda.
“I have sat for many hours this last week, communing with my spirit guides,” she said.
Her voice was low, with none of its usual snappishness.
“I have used every method at my disposal.”
“And?”
“Silence.”