Page 80 of Tidal Creatures

Hysterical laughter bubbles up in Isabella’s throat as her tears finally begin to fall. “She wasn’t my friend. She was just … she was someone I knew. Juan, is he…?”

“You don’t want to see what she did to him.” Artemis moves, putting herself between Isabella and Juan’s body. “Get your son and a suitcase. We can’t stay here.”

“You don’t understand,” says Isabella, looking at Artemis, pleading with the younger woman to see what she’s trying to say. “My husband—”

“Your husband is gone,” says Artemis gently. “All you do now is harm yourself by trying to see the manner of his passage. Let him go, let him be gone, and save what can be saved.”

“Mama?”

Isabella whips around, eyes seeking Luis. He’s in the kitchen doorway, clutching Bobby’s collar with one hand, staring at her in dazed bewilderment. The Catrina-thing is a product of the alchemical world, twisted and distorted away from anything that should be truly possible. He may not be able to see her. Whether he can see the body of his father is a question for greater minds than hers. He isn’t screaming, which is either a good sign—he can’t see what’s really happening—or a terrible one—he’s in shock. There is no middle ground.

Maybe there’s never a middle ground. Maybe the middle ground is a pretty fiction people tell themselves to make the world seem a little bit less hostile.

“Baby.” She rushes across the room, sweeping him into her arms. Bobby, released, trots over to sniff at Artemis before he wuffs a greeting, tail beginning to wave.

“Dogs like me,” says Artemis. “Almost as much as deer do.” She caresses Bobby’s head and he stands up tall and proud, looking every inch the hunting hound, looking like he’s ready to bring down the stars if it will please this woman he’s just met. “If not for the Old Man, they would probably have given me a dog. Do you need me to help you pack?”

“Pack?” asks Luis. “Are we going somewhere, Mama? Will Papa be there?”

Isabella gasps a small, choking laugh that turns halfway into a sob before she can swallow it back. Being unable to see the situation isn’t entirely a blessing. Sure, he may avoid nightmares, but how is she supposed to make him understand?

“You’re going to come stay with some friends of ours,” says Artemis. “They’re nice, but weird. They have too many cookies. You’ll have to help us eat them all.”

“I’m good at eating cookies,” says Luis.

“I thought you might be. Go pack for a sleepover.”

Luis looks to Isabella, waiting for her to tell him it’s all right. When she nods, he grins, the afternoon’s fears apparently forgotten, and runs down the hall to get his overnight bag. Isabella looks to Artemis, scowling.

“You better not go around bewitching my boy,” she says. “I don’t want you to do that.”

“I’m not,” says Artemis. “I’m just pumping as much moonlight as I can into the room, and hoping that between that and the alchemical nature of these deaths, he’ll be able to make it out of here with his psyche in one piece. This isn’t the sort of thing a child should see. Hell, this isn’t the sort of thing an adult should see. I wish you hadn’t seen it.”

“Where did that bow go?”

“It went where the moonlight goes when the moon’s behind a cloud. I couldn’t have pulled it at all if I’d been outside; there’s too much sunlight for the Moon to make her wishes known. Get your things. We’re not coming back here.”

Isabella knows enough about this sort of situation to know that the bodies will be moved or covered while she’s out of the room packing a bag, adding one more layer of deniability to protect her and Luis. Just one more service the magical world has to offer when it’s busy destroying your entire life. Her chest is too tight, and she’s breathing too fast; she’ll pass out soon if she doesn’t get this under control. And yet …

That might be a mercy.

Juan was the man she chose to spend her life with. It’s not possible for him to be gone, just like that. It’s not something she can accept. He certainly can’t be gone because their son wanted to help a strange girl he found sleeping in the garden. This is all too much, too fast, and she can’t endure it.

She looks to Artemis and finds the other woman—the goddess—the girl watching her with open sympathy. Artemis doesn’t say a word, only bows her head, then gestures toward the hall. The message couldn’t be clearer.

Isabella scowls, then follows her son’s path deeper into the apartment.

He’s in his room when she glances through the open door, shoving clothes into a duffel bag almost mechanically. His teddy bear is missing from the bed, where it has remained stubbornly keeping watch even as its plushy peers were outgrown and pushed aside. She can’t see anything else that isn’t where it ought to be. Briefly, she considers going in and making sure he’s bringing enough underwear, the necessities like his hairbrush and deodorant, but in the end, she continues onward. Those are things that can be replaced, and they may not return here. He’s younger than she is; he has less to lose. Let him pack the things he’d miss if they were gone.

The bedroom she shares—shared—with Juan is dark, curtains drawn to keep nosy neighbors from “just looking” as they walk by outside. This is their private space, always has been, and even Luis asks before he comes inside, into the cocoon of his parents’ presence. The air smells of candle wax and sweat, the blood from the living room not yet having drifted this far back. Isabella stops and breathes in deeply, unable to fight a feeling of unreality. This smell will fade, soon enough, and one more piece of Juan will be lost forever.

But the most essential part—his son—will remain, and she has to protect Luis. She holds to that thought as she moves toward the closet, taking out the suitcase she uses when she flies back to Puerto Rico to see her family. For the first time, she wishes it were bigger, that she hadn’t consciously chosen something small to keep the weight down and prevent her parents from sending her home with too many unwanted gifts every time she came to visit. She’ll be able to save so little of the life she’s just lost.

First, her jewelry box, and Juan’s small selection of precious things—his father’s watch, his mother’s earrings, the things he kept in his nightstand. The money from the cookie jar on top of the dresser, her small makeup case, and finally clothing to fill the gaps. Her wedding dress she leaves behind, too large and awkward to waste space on packing; their wedding album, she takes, and the precious family photo album that contains the best pictures of their life together. That’s what Luis will have to remember his father by, more than anything else.

Finally, the basket that keeps her working tools, the accessories of her art; she hates it right now, that art and practice, wishes she had never flirted with the spirit world or heard the universe speaking to her. If she had been as unattuned as most people, she would have looked at the gangly woman her son brought in from the garden and seen nothing worth sheltering, nothing worth being curious about. Kelpie would have been sent on her way, and Juan would be alive. More than that, she would never have formed a coven to help her with her practice, and Catrina would never have come to the alchemist’s attention. Two lives would have been saved, if she weren’t an hechicera.

Oh, how she loathes the things she has gathered with such loving care, the things that allow her to perform the small wonders and necessary miracles she was made for! And still she takes them, granting them their share of the scant space inside her suitcase, because leaving them behind is not an option.