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“Doesn’t mean it hurts any less,” Price says as the wound in his hand closes, leaving the faintest scar on his palm. “This is the power I’ll miss the most. Got me through some rough times in the Bounds.”
“And unless you want to go back there, you’ll drink up,” Bautista says, handing the potion back to Price.
“But it’s so disgusting. Can’t your woman make it tastier?”
“While I’m passing the feedback back to Sera, let’s hope your phoenix fire doesn’t burn you alive like the Blood Caster you replaced. Tell me, how is that pile of ashes doing?”
“All right, all right!”
Bautista’s attitude is not what I expected after watching him appear so respectful and heroic in his TV interviews. I never thought he’d be so taunting. I’m definitely not. It really goes to show how the only things we share are these powers and a history as the first specter.
Price stares at the potion. I can’t imagine it’s going to go smoothly down his throat. He drinks up, and when he begins gagging, Bautista slaps his hand against Price’s mouth and nose until he swallows. Price begins shaking, violently, and he sinks out of his chair. Bautista holds the back of his head as Price screams, “It’s burning me!”
“It’ll pass,” Bautista says.
I sense Bautista is lying. He’s sure Price is about to die. He’s actually sympathetic for this Blood Caster.
Price’s eyes go dark as an eclipse and Bautista steps back in self-preservation. Price lets out another yell that hurts my ears, like he’s shouting directly into them. White flames swallow his body whole, and it reminds me of Orton burning to death all over again. Bautista feels hopeless until the flames vanish and Price takes a deep breath.
“You okay?” Bautista asks.
Price sits up. He holds out his hand, as if he’s trying to cast fire, but nothing happens. Multiple attempts and nothing. “My powers are gone,” Price says.
“Stars,” Bautista says.
Hope shoots through both of us so powerfully that I can’t tell mine apart from his.
“My Caster days are over!” Price says with a high laugh.
“Everyone’s Caster days are over,” Bautista says as he gets up and grabs the journal, running out of the room and dragging me along like a shadow.
Forty-Three
Mother
MARIBELLE
There’s a chill in the darkness that feels like the wintry winds the day Mama and Papa were killed, and then Sera Córdova manifests out of nowhere. She’s stunning. She has my brown skin—I have her brown skin—and while my hair is usually braided behind my head, she wears hers fanned out and it trails to the middle of her back. She’s in a white blouse with a beautiful blue ring and silver bracelets. As the darkness shrinks around me, I can smell flowers and herbs, and hear a cauldron bubbling and a baby crying.
Sera picks me up out of a crib—baby Maribelle. I must be a couple months old. She’s softly singing me a song about a girl who makes a crown out of branches from her garden, and I’m so upset that I’ve never heard this before that rage builds in me so quickly that I might burn down this room that appears to be an alchemist’s lab. But serenity and an urge to comfort wash over me, even though those don’t jive with how I think I should be feeling. It’s as if I’m somehow tapped into Sera’s and baby Maribelle’s feelings too. The baby settles against Sera’s breasts, like a mother’s song and touch is all she needed.
“You want to help your mother, my sunflower?” Sera asks. I’ve never heard that nickname before, but I can feel how lovingly she uses it as much as I can see it in her warm brown eyes. She points at the steel cauldron and herb-loaded mortars on the polished counter. “I am making a potion for your tía Aurora to help her feel better. She’s been ill lately ever since losing a loved one. I can’t bring back her loss, or make her instantly happy, but I can make her body kinder to her during this sad time.”
“Aurora isn’t my aunt,” I say aloud, but Sera doesn’t hear me.
I want Sera to speak more about Mama’s loss and sadness. Is this around the time that her own mother passed?
The door bangs open, and I instinctively hold up my fists to fight, but I’m settled down by Sera’s cool composure. A man I quickly recognize as Bautista appears, looking pretty grimy, as if he’s been fixing up a car. I always remember him as the leader of the Spell Walkers, and I would salute him if he could see me, but wrapping my head around him being my father is a whole other matter. If I couldn’t clearly read the excitement in his face, I feel some triumph in his heart. I must be able to feel him as well because we’re all a family, and as Wyatt said, that’s one of the two lifelines phoenixes have. Juggling four sets of emotions at once is dizzying.
He steps fully inside, and Emil walks in after him. We see each other, and thank the stars I’m not feeling whatever he’s got going on inside. He’s muttering something to himself, eyes closed in concentration.
“It worked!” Bautista says.
Tears are brought to Sera’s eyes as glee and pride soar within. “The Starstifler worked?”
He puts down the journal on the counter. “You did it, my beautiful vision!”
Sera and Bautista kiss, love exploding so fiercely that I imagine my own family with Atlas as if he were still alive. This was going to be us in the future. Heroes and parents.
