Page 75 of Tidal Creatures

Half her family had flown over from Puerto Rico for the wedding. Luis had paid for their tickets as a surprise to her, so she could be married with her Papa on her arm and her grandmother weeping in the front pew of the little church they’d rented for the occasion. She wasn’t going to pretend she’d gone chaste to her bridal bed, but she’d gone careful and well aware of the mathematics of the situation, and Luis had been born eleven months after the wedding, carefully timed so as to erase any chance of gossip.

He’d come into the world covered in blood and surrounded by spirits, wailing as the newly arrived always seemed to do, and she’d been exhausted and aching and instantly in love. Everything else had been forgotten in an instant, because now Luis was here, and Luis needed her to be a mother, and in those moments, she would have sworn she could give up her practice forever, could retire from being an hechicera and find absolute contentment in being a mother.

That stage had lasted for a little over a week before boredom had stolen in, between the feedings and the diaper changes, and she had found herself performing small cleansing rituals on the energy in the house, chasing out the negativity that had gathered in the corners, sweeping away the shades of fear for the uncertain future. Things were uncertain, sure. So what? Things were always uncertain. Being an hechicera didn’t give her the power to see the future, only the ability to occasionally ask the world to bend that future to her benefit.

Luis grew older every day, settling into his existence in the world. He had ceased to be a piece of her long before he left her body, and once he was out in the world, he had quickly established himself as his own person, capable of incredible kindness, unexpected flashes of brilliance, and a stubbornness she recognized from herself. He was as solidly ordinary as his father, and he was perfect, and she was doing her best to make a perfect world for him. If that meant using her natural gifts to nudge the universe, what of it?

All she’s done since the day her perfect son wailed his way into the world is work to make that world a better place for him, and now, through a simple act of kindness, she may have fucked it all up. Her thoughts are full of blood and worse as she hurries for home, crosses streets against the light, plows through crowds with little consideration for the people she bumps against and blunders into. She has always lived her American life by the immigrant’s credo: attract no unnecessary attention. What goes unseen goes unthreatened.

Well, they’ve been seen now. She let Kelpie into their lives and opened those lives to the eyes of people she never wanted anything to do with. She should have demanded they move as soon as she realized alchemists had purchased the other side of the courtyard, should have taken the approach of “the best place for an enemy is as far away from me as possible” rather than “keep them where you can see them.” “Keep them where you can see them” was the attitude of a younger hechicera, one with less to lose.

Luis is everything to lose.

She’s almost running by the time she reaches the corner of her street. When she turns that corner and sees her apartment building up ahead, looking exactly as it did when she left it this morning, she starts running, hell-bent for leather, feet pounding the pavement like an open assault, and she doesn’t care who stares, and she doesn’t care who sees. She’s running, racing for home like she’s never had any other destination in her heart or mind, running harder than she’s ever run for anything before.

The apartment door is locked. Whether that means anything is hard to say. Isabella fumbles for her keys, glancing constantly over her shoulder. Is that motion in the bushes the wind, or an alchemist crouched down and watching? Did that curtain just twitch? Is she being watched, is she alone? There are so many questions. It would almost be easier if it was dark, but no, it’s the middle of the afternoon, and the sounds of the city are complicating everything.

Bobby finally realizes there’s someone at the door and starts barking as Isabella slides her key into the keyhole, a sound that becomes a whine as she undoes the lock and lets herself inside. She’s never been afraid of the family dog. He’s a very good boy they got from the shelter as a leggy, rambunctious puppy, all lolling tongue and flopping ears, and he’s never had a mean bone in his body. But as she looks around the dark living room, she finds him backed into the corner behind the couch, pressed between the frame and the wall. His ears are flat, and his lips are drawn back from his teeth, which seem suddenly very sharp and very white.

A chill goes through her. Alchemists don’t like big, flashy magic. They think it’s beneath them. They think magic is beneath them: only their precious science is worth the honor of their attention. In that regard, they’re closer to hechiceras than they are to witches: Isabella may sneer at them a bit for staying shallow, because they do, but a witch is more likely to be able to do the sort of tricks that people will recognize as magical. Flowers pulled out of nothing, flames lit with the snapping of a finger.

Dogs that have never known anything but love moved inexorably and irrevocably to rage.

Bobby snarls, taking a shaking step toward her, and Isabella’s heart gives a lurch. She wants to turn and run into the kitchen, where the knives are, but turning her back on a dog that looks like that might be the last thing she ever does. So she stands her ground, trying to still the hammering of her heart, and breathes, slow and even.

“Bobby,” she says, voice soft. “It’s me.”

He keeps snarling.

“Where is Luis? Where’s our boy? Bobby, where is Luis?”

He stops advancing, cocking his head to the side, a puzzled light coming into his eyes. His ears prick forward slightly—not all the way, but enough for her to be reasonably sure he hears her. She slips a hand into her pocket, where the blend of herbs and salt she used to close the circle this morning still clings to the fabric. Rolling her fingers together, she scrapes up a pinch of the mixture, which is meant to encourage peace and harmony. Right now, a little peace and harmony can’t hurt.

The wards are down. She feels it in her bones, would have realized it faster if she hadn’t been distracted by fear and the barking dog, but the wards are down and the apartment is dark and Bobby is growling and it’s reasonable that she’s still too distracted to go investigating the reason. She can’t exactly ask the dog to hold on a moment with his growls and clear agitation. That wouldn’t work. So she tosses the pinch of salt and simples into the air, murmuring a quick plea to the spirits she’s coaxed into watching over this house to come and attend upon her. She needs them. She needs them as she has never needed them before.

Much like an alchemist, she has never focused her talents on the big or the flashy. Those things can be faked with all manner of tricks and tools, and they tend to be the hallmark of an amateur, someone just dabbling in the invisible arts. Her focus has always been on protection and connection. She knows the small gods of this apartment complex as well as she knows her more physical neighbors. They’re half the reason she didn’t move out when the alchemists moved in. Yes, staying this close to an alchemical research station was a risk, but it was at least slightly balanced out by knowing that the local universal energies were inclined to like her and give her a hand when she asked.

Please, she thinks, as hard as she can, into the space where the quiet call of the universe has always existed for her. Please, for the love of my son, whatever they’ve done, brush it aside. Calm this space. Calm this space, and I will reward you with sweet smoke and fresh cream, and all the offerings my hands can carry. Remove their influences here. Give me back my companion.

There is a brief, intangible brightness in the air, indescribable but present, like the feeling of waking in the morning in a room already filled with sunlight. Not the light itself, but the sensations that accompany it, the golden brilliance of a day being born, of potential and possibility. A shadow flits through the air and is gone, burned out by that brightness, which fades as quickly as it came. Bobby stops growling. His ears come all the way up, and his tail thumps, once, before he’s lunging at her.

This isn’t the lunge she feared, the one that ends in teeth and tearing. This is the enthusiastic greeting of a dog who loves his people, who hasn’t seen her in too many hours and missed her company. His tail wags wildly as he slams into her shins, and she bends forward, almost sick with relief, to run her hand along the bony crest of his skull, the silken fur of his ears.

“Where’s Luis, buddy?” she asks. “Where’s our boy?”

Bobby looks at her with infinite trust in his eyes, tail still wagging, and barks, once, then dances away in that playful way of dogs in familiar spaces, his wild bouncing bringing him coincidentally close to his food dish, which is, at this hour of the day, empty.

There are spirits among those she called upon to calm the air who take their offerings from the things she puts into Bobby’s bowl, and so she lets him lead her to the kitchen, where she gives him a scoop of dry kibble and tops it with two slices of bacon left over from breakfast and a raw egg from the co-op. People who say you shouldn’t give your dogs raw egg are worried about salmonella, and she avoids the risk by buying eggs from healthy chickens who can’t pass the infection along. She gives the bowl’s contents a rough stir before she sets it down and Bobby falls to crunching, ears going flat once more, this time with the blissful single-mindedness of a dog doing the hard work of eating.

Isabella leaves him.

The apartment isn’t large; it’s not like Luis can hide for long, even if he’s actively hiding, which she hopes he isn’t. Whatever ripped down the wards and antagonized the dog is gone now; she can feel it. So as she works her way down the hall toward the bedrooms, she calls, softly, “Luis? Are you home?”

A sniffling sound from the closet where she keeps the vacuum cleaner. Luis has never been a boy to seek safety in small spaces, but then, his dog has never turned mean for no clear reason; if he were afraid enough, he might well have chosen the securest place he could think of.

“Luis? Sweetheart? I’m going to open the closet door now.”

She doesn’t want this to be a gotcha or a scare loaded atop the scares he’s clearly already experienced today; she wants this to be a gentle reminder that the world is still here, the world is still his to love and live in, and she’s still here, ready to help him do both those things. So she eases the door open, unsurprised but relieved to find him tangled in the coats at the back of the closet, tear streaks on his cheeks and blood on his lips, chin, and hand.