Page 47 of Cuervo's Carnival
“Abuela, am I—”
“Oh, my sweet Lola,” she interrupts, squeezing my hand like I did hers when I sat at her bedside as she drew her last breath. My ears shudder as I feel a well of tears surging forward, but they do not pass through my eyes. I want to cry, but my body won’t allow me to feel anything other than the warmth of her touch on my hand.
I gaze at her in awe of how she looks exactly how I remembered her. Her short, white hair perfectly styled. Her deep-set eyes are full of life. She looks the way I remembered her before she got sick. A sight I have waited so long to see again. A vision I have prayed to a god I never believed in to bring back a life that took part of my heart when she passed. I’ve wanted this, but not yet.
“Abuela, am I dead?” I ask. “I–I don’t understand,” I stammer, conflicted between the comfort of existing again near her but also feeling a gut-wrenching pain at the thought of not seeingmis alasagain.
I’m not ready. I need to live. They need me to live.
Still cupped in hers, she lifts my hand to her thin, frail lips. Placing a kiss on the top of my hand before bringing it back to what I assume is the bedside, but from my vantage point, it looks and feels like a cloud.
“My sweet Lola, how I have missed you so.” She rubs my hand as if bracing herself for what she is going to tell me next. Fear begins to trickle back as she still has not answered my question.
My chest heaves as I am about to ask her once more, but she continues. “I trust you saw what happened,” she said cryptically. “That monster, what he did to her, to my sweet Lenore.”
My gut twists at hearingAbuelasay that name—my mother’s name. Lenore. I can only imagine the jumbled expression on my face as my mind soars, trying to put the pieces together.
“My dream,” I say out loud, still transfixed in my thoughts.
“No, my sweet Lola, your intuition,” she says plainly, as if she is waiting for me to work this jigsaw puzzle out. She clears her throat. “I don’t have much time, but what you saw before you met me here, that was the truth. Your mother, Lenore, did not abandon you. She ran away to save you and your brother.” She pauses, swallowing hard on her words.
“My brother, oh my gods, did he know this?” I ask, uncertain as to why I would assume Zeke would sit on this information and not tell me.
Abuela’schest heaves, hesitation ripe on her brow.
“He got to your brother. Given where we are now, I would say he holds more Grimmrose in his blood than Cuervo. Our family’s gifts, while predominantly given to women, there is a chance that all born from a Cuervo woman have the potential for premonition. But your father, well, that is one wicked seed.”
I squeeze her hand, unsure of what she is implying about Zeke as she continues.
“Your father couldn’t accept that he married someone he could not control. Ironic as it may seem, Donato Grimmrose, leader of the infamous Reaper clan, fancied himself a man of god.” She stops, and a deep chuckle reverberates through the air we seemingly float on.
“Ah, isn’t that rich,” she lets out an exaggerated sigh. “He saw for himself the gift your mother had and knew she was not happy with him. He feared her strength and what her abilities were capable of. He also knew that if he kept your mother alive, you and Zeke would realize the true monster he was, the supposed holy man. So, he followed her to work one evening and ended her,” her voice cracks with pain and anger intermixed.
“Oh, my gods. Mama was the woman murdered at The Night’s Plutonian,” I gasp.
Madame Eronel.
Lenore…spelled backwards.
“Sí,”Abuelasays, her voice trembling. “It has taken everything in me not to kill your father for what he did to my daughter, but I refused to stoop to his deplorable level. But, Lola, you need to know something before I go,” she begins.
But before she can finish her sentence, I shift my hand from beneath hers to above it, squeezing it. “Please, don’t go,” I beg, again feeling tears coming on, but they won’t come.
“Lola, that coldness that you have felt, it’s a gift.”
“What?” I ask, confused as ever. “That’s what she said—” I begin, but she interrupts.
“Let me rephrase that. It is a gift of premonition. Do you know what that means?”
My brow furrows. I know what the word premonition means, but I never thought much about it.
“Yes, it means you can sense things that are going to happen.”
“Exactamente.”Abuelaclaps. “And that feeling comes from here.” She lifts her hand and points to my chest. “Some women in our family have called it a curse, but, Lola, don’t be fooled. It is a gift. One that should be listened to, honored, and respected. I felt the same chill the day my mother passed and the day your mother was stolen from me, and I felt it every time their souls needed to communicate with me.”
“Wait, so that feeling I have had was—”
“Me,” she interrupts. “Think of me as your old, feisty guardian angel.” She laughs. “Or fallen angel. I don’t know, the jury is still out on that one,” she says, with a playful wink.
