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He goes to explain when a loud explosion of gunfire shatters the calm of the estate, lifting the birds from the trees and rattling the glass in the windows.
We both freeze. “Did you just—”
The gunfire sounds again, this time in rapid,very realbursts, and I whimper in fear.
Bad men.
The bad men are here.
2
ELLA
“It’s comingfrom the front gates. Run, Ella,run!”
Grabbing my wrist, he yanks me to my feet. As he does, his sketchpad slips from his lap and lands in the water with a splash. He doesn’t seem to notice it, while I can’t look away—watching in horror as the paper swells and the magic sinks.
“Edier, your drawings!”
“Leave them. They’re not worth dying over!”
But I refuse to budge. It feels like something else is drowning here, and I can’t stand by and let it happen.
Meanwhile, the gun fight is a near-constantrat-a-tat-tatto our left.
“¡Dios mío!Ella!” he explodes, shaking me by the shoulders so hard his fingers burn my skin. “I can’t let anything bad happen to you. Do you hear me? Do you understand?”
Can’t?
I’m spellbound by his expression… That word… The fear in his voice.
‘Can’t’ means so much more than ‘won’t’.
In the background, there are men shouting now.Papá’svoice is rising louder above the rest, issuing orders and threats.
“I’ll draw more for you,Mi Cielo,I swear.” He finally lets go of my shoulders, but it’s like his fingers never left. He’s never touched me before—not even to hug me—and I know he doesn’t like people touching him.TíaAnna says it’s a quirk and we all have them, whether we want them or not. “Right now, you need to come with me, okay?”
“Okay,” I whisper.
The second I say it, he’s grabbing my hand, and run-dragging me all the way back to the house. We’re nearly at the back door when a strange voice calls out to him.
“Edier Hurtados.Es hora de temer tu sangre, muchacho.” It is time to fear your blood, boy. “Es hora de temerle a la verdad.” It is time to fear the truth.
Hurtados?But Edier’s last name is Grayson.
I turn so fast my dark hair gets trapped in the web of my eyelashes. Scraping it away, I see an old woman standing in the shadows of the path we just ran down, with deep lines on her face like claw marks and wispy white strands framing her hollow cheeks. One shriveled hand is pressed tight to a red stain on the front of her dirty dress, and the other is reaching out to us as she lurches forward with jerky steps.
Her finger is pointing in accusation, the same way Thalia’s does when she thinks I’ve cheated her out of rent money inMonopoly.
“Who are you?” demands Edier, stepping in front of me to protect me. “How did you get into this estate?”
A blast of cold air rushes up my skin as the heat of the day vanishes. The bushes and trees around us feel like thick walls closing in, trapping us in place with this woman with her unblinking, beetle-black eyes.
“I know what you promised, niño estupido.” stupid boy.She trails off with a cough that wets her lips the same color as the stain on her dress. “I know how red your hands really are.”
I wait for Edier to tell her she’s mistaken. That he’s only seventeen, and that his hands are mostly covered in paint not blood.
Instead, he pulls out a knife from his back pocket and slashes at the air with a hiss and a threat. “Stay away from her,bruja,or you’ll be finding out for yourself.”
