Page 68 of The Hacienda
Andrés was gone.
The woman with the corn silk hair sat where he had been, her chin resting in her palm as she watched me. A golden necklace glinted coyly beneath her lace collar.
María Catalina.
Dread washed over me. Had she been sitting there, watching me sleep, the whole night? Her skin gleamed like candle wax in the light; then she grinned, and whatever color her eyes had been before, now they turned red. In an instant, her skin transformed, dried and desiccated into leather, and her teeth grew long and needle sharp.
She sprang toward me, arms outstretched—
I woke with a strangled cry.Trulywoke this time. My heart hammered as I sucked breath in, in, in, my ribs straining from the effort.
Dawn paled the sky outside the windows. It was morning. Andrés was still at his post, his long legs stretched before him, his head leaning against the door. His chest rose and fell rhythmically.
The rosary had slipped from his fingers to the floor, the crucifix facedown on the floorboards.
The candles had burned down. The copal was not thick enough.
I rose with trembling hands and lit the censers and the candles. Yes, it was nearly dawn, another night was nearly over. But that did not mean I was safe.
When is nightfall? When is day?
I shook my head to clear it, and quietly scooped up Andrés’s rosary. Ikissed the crucifix, a reflexive apology for letting it touch the floor. I kept it curled in my palm as I put my back to the wall opposite Andrés.
He woke as I slid to the floor, drawing my knees to my chest.
“You all right?” Though his voice was rough with sleep, he was instantly alert, scanning the room for danger.
Did you not sleep well last night? Perhaps you dreamed it. I used to have terrible nightmares as a child.Juana’s voice twined through my head. Juana, who refused to believe me when I said someone was buried in the wall. Did she not know the grave in the capilla was empty?
All I could see was a golden necklace around a skeleton’s broken neck, glinting through clouds of dust and crumbling bricks.
I shook my head, pressing my back firmly against the wall as he approached and sat next to me.
I offered him the rosary. His knees were also drawn up to his chest, his shoulder so close to mine they touched when he took the beads.
The touch of hands can be an innocent thing. Andrés seizing my hand in the dark: that was the touch of human connection burned pure, a bastion against fear.
Then there wasthis.
The brush of Andrés’s fingertips against my palm sparked a flush of intimacy, a rush of heat deep in my chest.
It was a sin, and I knew it, and suddenly I realized that I didn’t care.
For if sin was all I had standing between myself and the darkness, I would take it.
***
THE SERVANTS LINED UPto greet Rodolfo, just as they had when I first arrived. I lingered in the doorway of the house’s courtyard, feeling oddly detached as I watched. The sky was cloudless, blazing lapis, the air crisp and fresh after the night’s hard rain. It was a perfect imitationof the first day I had set foot on San Isidro’s soil, the day I had unknowingly handed my soul over to the house and its demons. I half expected to see myself step from the carriage, a cloud of silks shadowed by a wide-brimmed hat, placing my delicate city shoes on the cursed earth.
You don’t belong here.
I leaped away from the doorframe.
No one was in the courtyard. I did not have to turn to know that. Paloma was with the others in a row next to José Mendoza; Andrés was in the capilla, avoiding sunlight while his head healed.
Cast it out, Andrés said.
But because I did, because I left my mind open for spirits to pry open, I knew who that voice belonged to.
