Page 16 of Castle of the Cursed
I feel the stab of pain I was expecting from the needle, only it’s from hearing that nickname. As long as I can remember, my parents called me Stela. And yet something stirs within me on hearing Tela, and I know it was my name once.
Beatríz seals the glass with my blood but doesn’t remove the needle from my arm. She reaches for another empty vial—
I yank my arm free.
“What are you doing?!” she shrieks as the needle slides out of my skin, along with some drops of blood.
I get up and back away, until I have a direct line to the front door. If she comes after me, I can beat her to the street.
“You need to calm down!” she says, staring at me through eyes rounded with outrage. “I’m going to store your blood, then you can get to work.”
I cross my arms in response.
She takes the vial to the storage room, and when she comes back out, her face is emotionless. “You will be digitizing patient files at that computer.”
I follow her gaze to a desk in the middle of the office. The computer is an older model than the sleek-monitored Macs we had at the center, but it still seems more modern than the rest of this town.
She walks to a cabinet and yanks open the first drawer. It’s stuffed with colorful folders. “Begin with Ángel, Alberto Castaño Cruz.” She pulls out a thick blue file and sits down at the terminal. “The program is already open,” she says, and the black monitor brightens with colors. “Click here to start a new patient file, then fill in the fields using the information in the forms.”
She types in the first few sections, until I get the hang of it, and then I take her place. I work until early evening, when Beatríz comes out of her office and says, “Time to go.” She sets a security alarm using a special key that she taps against a sensor before locking up the clínica, and we walk back to the castle in silence.
Dinner tonight is gambas al ajillo. The aromatic garlic shrimp is served in a ceramic orange bowl. The scent makes my mouth water, and I realize I haven’t eaten since the pan con tomate this morning.
I used to love food.
When my parents were alive, I would ask for seconds and thirds, sometimes even fourths. Yet I only eat six shrimp, and my stomach feels bloated. I may still be breathing, but most of me died on that subway—including my appetite.
When Beatríz finishes eating, she stands up, and I rise, too.
“This silence of yours concerns me,” she says, holding out the black pill. She watches me chase it with a drink of water.
Then I turn on my heel and head to my room, where I spit out the seed, and it joins its twin from yesterday in my bag’s pocket.
Tonight I set off in a new direction.
Wearing socks but no shoes again, I climb down the grand staircase to the main level, then I pad past the dining hall and into the crimson corridor I was too afraid to enter this morning.
The wiring seems weaker here, the candle-like lights producing a duller reddish flame. Why are they on at all? Doesn’t Beatríz turn off the lights at night?
The passage bifurcates. I stare at the Y-shaped choice before me, and I choose left.
The corridor is long and narrow, lacking in rooms or décor, and the ground feels like it’s tilting up as the hallway spills into a spectacular silver chamber. Moonlight pours in through parallel walls featuring identical rows of stained glass windows, and a sprawling chandelier hangs over a floor that sparkles like it’s made of stars.
I can’t look down from the chandelier. It hangs at an unnerving angle, its crystal arms reaching for the room’s walls like a giant glittering octopus. The whole thing seems dangerously close to plummeting, so I edge toward the windowed wall to avoid getting speared with a tentacle—and I see another girl.
My heart stalls.
She stiffens, too, spotting me at the same time.
My reflection and I spin around slowly in perfect sync, and I realize only one wall is windowed—the other one is mirrored. The looking glass runs the length of the chamber, cracked in places and blackened in others. Some corners have even chipped off.
Something flickers in my peripheral vision, and I look up in time to see a crystal teardrop fall from the chandelier. It shatters on the floor, exploding in a starburst of sparkles. I crouch down and look closer at the ground.
The base of the floor is polished stone, but it’s been dusted with debris from fallen crystals—and I’m not wearing shoes.
I just have to avoid the pointy pieces.
Moonlight rebounds on the mirror, giving the room enough illumination that I think I can make it across without hurting myself. There’s a door at the other end of the chamber, and I want to know where it leads.
