Chapter 5 Smoke and Mirrors #3
I grabbed another chip, crunching down hard.
The sunburst symbol on Amy’s bracelet caught the light, and something cold prickled in my chest. I pushed the unease away and let the conversation drift—Leo’s weird roommate’s experiment with mushrooms, and Luz’s most recent dating disasters.
I soaked in the sunlight and the easy banter.
The dorm room smelled of rosemary and rue. Luz sat cross-legged on her bed, a brass bowl glowing faintly with embers in her lap. She moved her hands through the smoke with a steady rhythm.
I sat across from her, a rose quartz pressed into my palm.
“Brujería clears space,” she explained. “It lets the truth surface. But truth doesn’t always comfort.” She looked at me seriously. “Are you sure you want this?”
The dreams had been getting worse, and I was desperate for answers.
“I need to know,” I whispered.
Her nod was solemn.
She began to murmur prayers, words rolling over me like water over stone. “Protégenos. Límpianos. Muéstranos la verdad.”
The smoke curled around me in slow spirals, wrapping me in something that smelled like earth and summer and my grandmother’s hands. The air thickened like the dorm itself was holding its breath.
“Breathe,” Luz instructed from somewhere beyond the veil of smoke. “Let go. Let the smoke carry what doesn’t serve you.”
I inhaled deeply, pulling the sage-scent into my lungs—
And the floor dropped out from under me.
Mud. Blood. The scream of artillery overhead.
My ears rang. I staggered forward in a trench slick with rain and rot, hands pressed against a boy’s chest.
He was so young. Sixteen? Seventeen? His eyes were the color of a winter sky, rolling back as the light left them.
So much blood, hot and copper-bright, soaking through his uniform, through mine, pooling in the mud.
“Stay with me,” I begged, but the voice wasn’t mine. The hands pressing against his chest weren’t mine either. My bandages were gone. My hands shook, slipping in his blood.
His chest stilled.
No. No, please—
I stumbled back, choking on air that smelled like sulfur and death. The sky cracked open with fire, shells exploding, earth raining down, the world tearing itself apart.
“Melanie.” Luz’s voice came from far away, trying to pull me back.
But I couldn’t reach it.
A shell hit nearby. The shockwave ripped through me, and the force knocked me off my feet, air leaving my lungs.
And then, at the edge of the trench, the shadow appeared.
It stood on the precipice, utterly still, and its presence pressed into me, heavier than death itself.
It leaned closer, and the air shifted. The way the hairs at my nape rose. Beneath the roar of gunfire, I swore I heard it breathe. The sound was familiar—I knew that rhythm. But that’s impossible. I don’t know anyone who breathes like—
But I did, once. Somehow.
Terror and recognition warred inside me, pulling in opposite directions.
The shadow leaned closer still, as if it meant to step into the mud beside me.
And then—
Another presence.
A second shadow, further back, was watching from the ruined landscape beyond the trench. This one didn’t breathe. Didn’t move like something alive. It waited, patient and hungry.
And I knew, with sickening certainty, that it was waiting for me to die.
“Melanie!” Luz’s voice cracked like thunder. “Come back! Now!”
The battlefield shattered like a broken mirror, and then I was falling.
I jolted awake on the dorm floor, shaking and drenched in sweat. The rose quartz had left a mark on my palm, and I half-expected to see blood.
Luz gripped my shoulders, her face pale and frightened. The herb bowl had tipped, scattering embers across her bedspread, but she didn’t seem to notice.
“That never happens,” she whispered. “Mel, I’ve done a hundred cleansings. That has never happened before.”
“What did you see?” I managed, throat raw.
“Nothing. That’s what scares me.” Her eyes were wide. “You were just… gone. Your body was here, but you weren’t. And the smoke—” She gestured at the dissipating trails. “It turned black like it was pulling something out of you. Or pushing something in.”
I wrapped my arms around myself, shivering despite the lingering heat.
“I was in a war,” I whispered. “World War One, maybe? There was a boy… he died in my arms. And then…” I swallowed hard. “There were two shadows. One felt protective. The other…” I couldn’t finish.
Luz’s grip tightened on my shoulders. “You’ve got layers, amiga. Lives that don’t want to stay buried.” Her voice dropped. “You should be careful. Sometimes the past pulls harder than the present. If you’re not careful, you might not come back.”
The warning sent ice through my veins.
Alone in the dark, I sat on my bed and tried to make sense of it.
I could still feel that boy’s blood on my hands, still smell sulfur and death.
But the protective shadow’s breathing—that impossibly familiar rhythm—had felt like safety, like being found instead of hunted.
The other shadow was different. Hungry. Dangerous.
Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the trench, that boy’s face, and the two shadows waiting at opposite ends of the battlefield.