When Alba returned toPiedras Quebradas her mother and her uncle had yet to come back. She told the maids that she did not feel well and would be napping and taking her supper in her room. Then she rushed up the stairs and threw herself on the bed, burying her face in the pillows.
She could not sit at the dinner table with Arturo and the others. Her blood rushed wild and discordant through her body. She feared she’d faint if she walked into the dining room. She closed the curtains and lay under the bedsheets with her back to the door. Later, her mother came.
“What is wrong?” she asked.
“A cold,” Alba said.
Her mother pressed a hand against Alba’s forehead. “I told you you’d make yourself sick.”
“It’s nothing. I’ll be fine tomorrow.”
Her mother was quiet. Alba felt her hand sliding against her hair, smoothing down a lock.
“Don’t forget your prayers before you fall asleep.”
“I won’t.”
There she lay until the house grew quiet and still. Midnight fastapproached; they’d all gone to bed. She threw a robe over her nightgown and went down in search of the white pot in which the carnations bloomed. She cut a single crimson flower and walked up the stairs.
The hallway that led to Arturo’s bedroom was vast and dark, so dark that with the dim light of a single candle to show the way it became cavernous, black and soft as velure. She moved quickly and when her hand fell upon her uncle’s door, she hoped it would be locked and she would not be able to enter.
But the door gave way to her, it was unbarred, and she hesitated at the threshold before plunging inside. She knew the room; she knew the house. The furniture and the paintings and the mirror on the wall were all familiar and she charted her course toward the bed with ease. Yet his presence had turned the chamber alien. On a chair he’d draped a coat as thick as the pelt of a beast, and before the mirror there was a table with his shaving implements—the razor, the brush, the soap cake—and the bottle of cologne. The room had changed, had become his.
The hallway and the room had morphed, they were unrecognizable, but in the light of the candle his face was the same handsome face she knew. She let out a sigh of relief. Perhaps the witch was mistaken, or she had lied. Alba had felt her honesty, but it might have been a ruse. There was her uncle, his head peaceful against the pillow, his eyes closed, his breath gentle, and he was no monster with vicious teeth that could gnaw hearts and pierce the skin.
For a moment she thought to step out and let him be, but in her left hand she held the freshly cut carnation. She leaned over him and held the flower close to his lips.
The carnation wilted between her fingers, each petal curling and shrinking and blackening.
She sprang back in horror, and before she could even think to scream she was shoved against the armoire. She dropped the candle and it rolled upon the floor and was extinguished.
In the dimness of the room, she felt more than saw his eyes, now open wide, boring into her own. His hand pressed against her mouth. He pulled her away from the armoire and shoved her intoan armchair at the other end of the room. At once she stood up and dashed to the door. The door slammed shut in her face, as if a gust of wind had rolled through the room.
“Come here,” he said, and even though he was many paces from her, something dragged her back, pulled her as easily as a rag doll, and she was shoved back into the armchair with such force that she was left breathless.
He picked up the candle she’d dropped, lit it again, and set it atop a table.
“If you try to scream, I’ll bind your tongue. It is not as if anyone would be able to hear you while you’re in here anyway. I could shoot an elephant in this room and they wouldn’t know. So let us be civilized.”
She shrank back into the armchair, grasping it tight. His face, it seemed different. Not uglier or more handsome; the features were not altered, yet it was as if he’d removed a veil. There was the arrogance he’d always possessed, but now she saw something else. Power. Raw, heady. She could almost taste the magic upon her tongue.
She swallowed. “It’s true. You’re a sorcerer and you killed my brother and you killed Valentín.”
“No, Tadeo killed Valentín andyouin turn killed your brother,” he said wryly.
“I didn’t know it was him. You transformed him into a vicious animal. How could you learn dark magic and these evil things?”
He sat in an armchair directly across from her. His eyes were alert and fixed on her, unblinking. “You’ve been learning a few spells of your own. Tying knots and making talismans.”
“To protect myself.”
“Long before that.”
She ignored his words and shook her head. “Why would you hurt us, frighten us?”
“Tadeo wouldn’t sell the farm. With him out of the way, I thought it’d be easier to convince your mother. All those animals dying, all that bad luck…eventually, even the most stubborn ofpeople will yield if everything goes wrong. Incidentally, I think very soon we’ll be accepting an offer from the Molinas.”
“You want my father’s money. That’s what this is all about?”
