Page 38 of Cuervo's Carnival
“I’m not giving up on anything. I want you to let me go so I can get back to—”
“Your lovers,” she interrupts.
This is the second time she has referred to Pax and Cillian as that. Which, they are, but I’m surprised she picked up on it, given how oddly distant they were acting when she began our reading earlier.
She lets go of my hand, rising from her chair, and walks around the small table, standing right in front of me. “As I said, you don’t have much time. They love you and need you just as you need them. So, when the Reaper tries to collect you, fight, do you hear me?”
I shake my head in agreement, but I suddenly don’t know if she is talking about the Grim Reaper or the Reapers, the organization that has made my life feel like a death sentence.
Lifting her hand to my cheek, I feel the crinkled, marred skin against mine. “The Reaper doesn’t need to write your ending. You can rise above it,Morta. Now go.”
With both hands, she twists me around so I am now facing the small Dutch door I passed through to get into the wagon. I feel her hands push at my shoulders, the floorboards creaking with our footsteps, as she guides me to exit.
A shiver works its way from the base of my neck down my spine.
Morta, that’s what Pax and Cillian call me.
I feel her touch leave my body as I turn toward her. “How do you know they call me—” I begin, but when I turn around, she isn’t there.
The candles aren’t lit anymore. In fact, they are gone. The table I sat at with her, just moments before, is not a rich mahogany. Instead, it is a charred mess holding a statue of a woman’s face I’d recognize anywhere.
It is the same face on the small statue that was in myabuela’shome library growing up: the bust of the Pallas Athena. And on her shoulder beneath her armored helmet, resting but inches from her skin, is a raven. Except, this one is not made of stone. No, this one is real, and its onyx eyes are looking right at me.
“Purgatorio?” I ask in a petrified whisper.
And then, in a swift motion, the raven ascends over my head, leaving a cool breeze in its wake as it lets out an ear-screeching caw that ends in “Si.”
Fuck, this place isn’t haunted. I am.
* * *
The beautyI just witnessed from Madame Eronel’s wagon is now gone and fades into the bleak backdrop of The Night’s Plutonian.
It makes sense why Pax and Cillian didn’t sit down, why their faces looked so scared and saddened when I sat there. But I know what I saw, what I heard. I don’t understand why only I saw it, but I need to catch up with them and let them know I am okay.
Heading down the steps of the wagon, the lace of my right boot snags on a rusted nail lifted from one of the planks. I kneel to unloop it, when I hear a faint buzzing sound, almost like my phone vibrating. I reach for my back pocket, grabbing my cell, but there are no missed calls or new messages. Just as I am about to put it away again, I hear the faint buzz once more.
I lift the phone up again, but still, there is nothing new coming in. Frustrated, I put my phone away and go to see where the hell Paxton and Cillian ran off to.
I don’t have to walk far before I see Cillian standing there, in a trance, just staring in my direction. Judging from the pale hue of his usually olive skin and how his mouth is tensed shut, he isn’t looking at me; he is looking past me.
“Cillian!” I shout, moving my legs until I crash into him. His tall frame is like a brick wall, stopping me in my tracks as I bring my hands up and around his neck.
“Are you ok?” he asks, snapping out of whatever daze he was just in.
“Cil, it’s ok. I’m ok,” I reassure him.
He doesn’t say anything. Instead, he begins to kiss me.
I return his kiss, and with our lips still interlocked, he picks me up. I don’t pay attention to where we move to, but I feel his weight shift as he sits down on something.
“Cillian,” I breathe, trying to break our kiss, but the intensity with which his lips meld against mine only picks up.
This is what he does when he is scared. He needs either mine or Pax’s, if not both, touch to soothe him, to distract his mind, and to help ease his anxiety.
Breaking the seal of our kiss, his lips travel to my cleavage. He pulls the scoop neck fabric down, exposing my pierced nipple, which he brings to his mouth, sucking on my hardened peak.
He begins to flick the textured cap of his tongue piercing with the barbell that penetrates my nipple. The careful clashing of surgical steel mixed with the heat of his breath start to work its way to my core, taking away the angst I had just felt at Madame Eronel’s.
