Page 124 of Castle of the Cursed
I keep moving around the pool, shoving my hand into each fracture, but I don’t find anything. I’m just about to look up at Gloria for another clue, when my fingers close on something hard and thin. I pull it out into the late afternoon light.
The Book.
It’s real.
I open the red cover that bears the castle’s crest, and I find a wispy, withering piece of paper with a note written in ink too faded to make out anymore. But I remember what it says from Lala’s entry. This is the note that told her to take the Book far from the castle and entrust it to someone not of Brálaga blood. It’s the reason Felipe’s family became the Book’s keepers.
I flip through the ancient, stiff pages, but they’re all blank. I turn them faster, expecting the paper to cut my skin and my blood to unlock a coded message, but nothing happens.
This isn’t magic. It’s an ordinary book.
My heart plunges with disappointment as I leaf through empty page after page—until at last, I strike ink.
The message is one sentence long:
Para atrapar un espíritu. To trap a spirit.
I turn the page and find a diagram made of three stacked boxes:
The first contains a small round portrait of a person’s face.
The second features two elements, side by side. On the left are five black seeds from the jardín de sangre, and on the right are three red drops that look like they’re meant to be blood.
The third box shows two figures with an air bubble above them that says in perfect calligraphy: No hay luz en Oscuro.
I stare at the diagram for as long as I dare, until the sun hangs too low in the sky. Then I carefully place the Book back in its hiding place.
“Gracias,” I say to Gloria.
“Que Brálaga la bendiga,” she says, tears still rolling down her cheeks as she stares in la Sombra’s direction.
May Brálaga bless you.
CHAPTER 29
WHEN I GET BACK TO la Sombra, I relay the spell to Sebastián by re- creating the diagram in my journal.
“I think the first drawing represents a picture of who we’re trying to trap,” I say, seated at my desk. “Then I have to eat a bunch of seeds and sprinkle my blood on the photo.” I point to each drawing as I list off the steps. “Finally, we have to resurrect my aunt so she and Teo can chant No hay luz en Oscuro.”
“Was there any indication of the spell’s location?” asks Sebastián, either ignoring or not picking up on my sarcasm.
“Isn’t it just the castle?” I ask.
“A trapping spell needs anchoring to an object or a room,” he says, standing over my shoulder. “A photograph alone will not possess that power.”
Great. Another riddle.
I think back to Lala’s journal entry. She wrote that the being who gave her the Book came up from the ground, but where was she…?
On her way to the jardín de sangre. I don’t think she’d made it to the cathedral yet. Which means she was right above—
“The purple room,” I say out loud. “That has to be where la Sombra’s gateway to other worlds is located. It’s where my sister crossed over, and it’s where the being with the Book burst into the castle.”
“It’s the first space I remember,” says Sebastián faintly, like he’s deep in thought. “The crossing to this dimension is hazy, but that room stands out to me as the gateway.”
“Its power must be why the purple room is hidden in the first place,” I say. “I need to lure Antonela there so I can use the Book’s spell to trap her.”
That’s where all this started, and it’s where it has to finish.
