Blood and Salt

by Kim Liggett

  Something about her words felt wrong—like putting pressure on a deep bruise.

  She dipped the needle into the vial, then started on the dot in the center of the circle. “To an outsider, Quivira looks like nothing more than unkempt fields, but really it’s a utopia, totally cut off from the world. Katia placed a protection spell over Quivira to keep it that way. It’s beautiful.”

  “It’s a cult,” Rhys said.

  “The land itself is sacred,” my mother said defensively. “Descendants of the families who came to Quivira with Katia remain to this day. The Mendozas, the Grimsbys, the Hanrattys . . . even Coronado’s children stayed behind. Generation after generation . . . waiting . . .” Her voice trailed off.

  “What are they waiting for?” I asked, taken aback by her strange tone.

  A bird soared above our skylight, sending a shadow across her face. “Crow,” she whispered as she dug the bone needle into my flesh. “And so it shall be . . .”

  I clutched the grass with my fingers. “Mom.” I winced, blood trickling down my chest, seeping into my camisole.

  Her eyes went wide and dark, like the Atlantic after a storm. “The day has come. Can you feel it? Can you feel her presence?”

  “What are you talking about? You’re hurting me.” I held her wrist.

  She blinked a few times and then gasped. “I’m so sorry.” As she pulled out the needle, she accidentally stabbed her thumb. Pressing her hand against my wound, she tried to slow the bleeding.

  “Is something wrong?” Rhys leapt to his feet, eyes still trained on the wall in front of him.

  “Everything’s fine,” I assured him as Mom scrambled for the first-aid kit.

  “I don’t know what came over me,” she whispered as she bandaged the wound.

  I felt uneasy as I put my blouse back on. She’d never been that careless with the needle before. The bird passing overhead had definitely spooked her. In alchemy, the crow had many meanings—including being the harbinger of death. I wanted to ask her about it, but not in front of Rhys—he’d had enough for one day.

  “You can look now,” I announced as I stepped off the grass onto the terra-cotta floor.

  Rhys searched my face for signs of trouble. He seemed satisfied until he caught sight of a piece of bloody gauze resting on the grass. His face turned an unnatural shade of gray. “We’re going to be late,” he said as he headed for the stairs.

  I started to follow, but my mother pulled me in for an unexpected hug. “Everything you’ll ever need is inside you.”

  “Ouch,” I whispered in her ear.

  “Oh, oh!” She laughed as she pulled away, taking the pressure off my chest. “I love you both very much.”

  “We know.” I smiled and squeezed her hand before I went downstairs.

  Rhys was holding the elevator, straightening his tie in the mirror.

  I slung my bag over my shoulder and stepped in next to him. “You’re the only person I know who actually likes his school uniform,” I said in an attempt to lighten the mood.

  He brushed his dark blond bangs from his forehead. “Yeah, Ash, we know, you’re so cool.”

  As the elevator door closed, I caught a glimpse of the chandelier. I could almost feel the rope scraping against my ankles—feel the slit in the palm of my hand, dripping blood.

  What if the dead girl was me?

  3

  AND SO IT SHALL BE

  IN THE SUBWAY, I swiped my MetroCard and went through the turnstile, while my brother swiped his card over and over again to no avail. People piled up behind him, grumbling and sighing.

  “I told you we should’ve taken a cab,” Rhys said.

  I reached over and swiped his card for him. As we made our way to the platform, I peered down the track to check on the train. I felt something graze the back of my neck. I whipped around, looking for the creeper who’d touched me, but there was no one there, just the nameless, faceless throng of commuters.

  I slipped my hair out of its messy bun, letting it fall over my shoulders and back. “Did Mom seem weird to you?”

  Rhys shook his head and laughed. “I don’t even know how to answer that.”

  I scanned the crowd. “Weirder than usual.”

  “Other than the fact she believes she’s part of an invisible cult where our five-hundred-year-old ancestor is performing corn rituals and Coronado from my eighth-grade history class is terrorizing the world in an attempt to keep his immortality . . . not really.”

  I pulled my brother down the platform to get away from a drunk guy who reeked of urine and was belting out “The Star-Spangled Banner.” “He’s not terrorizing the world, just our family.”

  “Wait.” Rhys drew away from me. “You’re not starting to believe all that? It’s bad enough you still let her stick you with needles. It’s sick.”

  I smoothed my hand over my blouse, feeling the bandage underneath. “You’re not the one seeing a dead girl.”

  “Power of suggestion. Think about it.” Rhys slathered his hands in antibacterial gel. “If I’d been told since birth I was seeing a pink elephant, I’d see a pink elephant. It’s basic psychology. Mom’s paranoid. She always gets spooked around the summer solstice. June twenty-first will come and go, and everything will be normal again.” As the light from the approaching train came into view, the crowd pressed forward. “Well, you know, our normal.”

  The train screeched to a stop; I elbowed my way onto the already packed car. Rhys stood on the platform, letting everyone and their pet rat on before him. Classic. The doors started closing. He gave me that pathetic look, and I lunged forward, pushing a businessman out of the way and jamming my body between the heavy doors.

  “Come on, sweetheart,” someone bellowed from the other side of the car. “You’ll see your boyfriend at school.”

  I grabbed Rhys and pulled him into the car.

  “You didn’t need to do that,” Rhys said, his cheeks ruddy. “I would’ve been fine.”

  “You would’ve been late.”

  Rhys closed his eyes in resignation.

  He hated it when I got all alpha, but I couldn’t help it. Maybe it was a birth order thing. I was born four minutes before him, weighed a full pound more at birth. He claimed I tried to eat him in the womb.

  My brother was way too polite for this city. He was quiet, too, which created the perfect blank canvas for girls to project whatever they wanted onto him. I’d always felt that he belonged to a different era, a gentler time, like a character from a Jane Austen novel.

  As we got off the train, our paths merged with that of another girl who wore our school uniform. She tucked her shiny black bob behind her ear and smiled up at my brother with a shy, kittenish gaze. “Hey, Rhys,” she practically whispered.

  My brother pretended he didn’t see her, his eyes glued to the erectile dysfunction ads plastered on the walls.

  I watched her shrink back into the crowd.

  “What’s wrong with you?” I nudged him as we made our way up the steps toward the sunlight. “She’s cute.”

  He shook his head. “She got a sixty-four on her biochem final.”

  “So?” I steered him across the street to avoid a pack of stroller Nazis.

  Rhys bit the inside of his right cheek like he always did when he was trying to stifle a smile, and then a huge grin engulfed his face.

  My brother and I might have been polar opposites, but our love lives looked exactly the same: arctic.

  While Rhys was just incredibly picky, my aversion went well beyond that. I was interested in boys, very interested, but my body had a different idea. Every time I got close to a guy, in a romantic way, this overwhelming revulsion bubbled up inside of me. It wasn’t a boys-are-immature-and-sweaty kind of thing. It was more like an I’m-going-to-puke-all-over-your-shoes kind of thing.

  My mother said physical attr
action and mate selection all came down to scent. I’d never smelled anything remotely appealing on any of the guys in my school. Every now and then, a nice cologne caught my attention, but as soon as the top note burned off, all I could smell was clogged pores and desperation. I used to think I just hadn’t met the right guy, but I was losing hope.

  As we got closer to school, I yanked my blazer out of my bag, brushing unnaturally orange crumbs from the lapel.

  Rhys shook his head in disgust. “I can’t believe we’re related, let alone twins.”

  A jet-black bird jutted between his ankles to get at the crumbs. Rhys leapt out of the way, nearly crashing into a group of hipsters.

  “It’s just a bird,” I said, putting on the jacket.

  “Do you know how many diseases birds carry?” he said as he darted in front of me to enter the school gates. “Over sixty.”

  I glanced up at him, ready to dish out something snarky when I stopped dead in my tracks.

  Blood.

  A pool of crimson, followed by a wide swath leading from the gates, through the open courtyard, as if someone had been dragged.

  People jostled me from behind, maneuvering around me to get inside.

  “What’s your problem?” Rhys asked.

  “Don’t look down,” I warned.

  “Did I step in something?” He groaned and looked at the bottoms of his shoes.

  He didn’t see it.

  I watched a group of girls trudge through the blood, kicking up tiny drops of spatter, which dotted their crisp white ankle socks.

  A shudder ran through me like cold acid in my veins. Was it the dead girl?

  “Ash! Are you even listening to me?”

  “Go to class,” I murmured as first bell rang.

  “I’m going in the same direction as—”

  “Just go,” I said a little too forcefully, and then took a deep breath. “I have to stop by the admin building first—they gave me the wrong size cap and gown.”

  “Okay?” He raised a brow as he backed away, giving me a low wave as he disappeared into the sea of blue blazers.

  As the last of the stragglers rushed off to class, I followed the trail of blood to the library, which used to be the chapel when the school was a monastery.

  My bag vibrated, making me jump.

  I dug the phone out. It was my mom. I knew I should pick up, but I had the strangest feeling . . . like everything I needed to know was on the other side of that door.

  A chill swept over my skin as I pressed down on the heavy iron door handle. It was unlocked.

  I turned off the phone and stepped inside.

  4

  BLACK SILK RIBBON

  “HELLO?” I CALLED OUT, my voice reverberating around the vast space.

  I didn’t expect an answer. The library was closed on Fridays. No one really came in here anyway—they got what they needed from bookstores or Amazon. It was a beautiful library, as long as you didn’t look at the giant stained-glass window of a bleeding Jesus glaring down from the cross. Normally, I liked the library; the scent of old books with millions of fingerprints on them. Some had coffee stains; others had stains you didn’t even want to think about, but they all had history.

  It was harder to see the blood against the dark hardwood floors, but I could just make out the glistening streak that led into the stacks.

  A faint creaking sound penetrated the silence. My body went rigid. Anyone else would think it was the ancient floorboards, but that particular sound was etched into my consciousness. Rope. Not just any rope—the dead girl was bound by a papery material that crinkled like old skin.

  But it wasn’t the thought of seeing the dead girl that made me catch my breath. There was a hush of footsteps—and a slow and metered breath, not my own—accompanied by a light dragging sound, as if someone were skimming a finger along the spines of the books in the next aisle.

  Carefully, I shimmied a few books from the shelf and peeked through.

  That’s when I saw her.

  Long, lustrous black hair grazing the waist of a simple white sundress. High cheekbones, wide-set eyes. Her only adornment was a long black silk ribbon tied around her throat. Her feet were bare.

  She moved in a feline way, with a fluidity that seemed to have no beginning and no end, but I knew she was real. Alive. I could even smell her perfume . . . it was heady and sweet.

  “I’ve been waiting for you,” she said, glancing up at me as she passed my hiding spot.

  My skin exploded in goose bumps. Pressing my back against the shelf, I squeezed my eyes shut, wishing I could make myself disappear. My heart was beating so hard, I was sure she could hear it. I held my hands over the top of the bandage as if I could dampen the sound of my heart thrumming in the tattoo.

  Swallowing hard, I forced myself to open my eyes. There were probably less than twenty steps to the door, but I couldn’t make myself move. It felt like there was an invisible thread connecting us—every beat of my heart drawing me closer—as if I’d been waiting for her, too.

  I stepped out from the safety of the stacks to face her. She was so arresting, I hardly noticed the dead girl swinging gently behind her.

  The mysterious woman took in a tiny gasp of air, as if she was just as stunned to see me up close as I was to see her. Her eyes grazed the length of my body, lingering on the exposed skin of my neckline.

  Self-consciously, I buttoned my blouse all the way to the top.

  “You’ve become a very beautiful young woman.” Her voice had a gravelly edge that didn’t match her dewy face and bright gaze.

  What did she mean I’d become? “Do I know you?” My voice was so faint I hardly recognized it. I had the distinct feeling that I’d seen her before, but I couldn’t imagine where. Maybe in a dream.

  “You’re strong, too. It’s all in the eyes. We have the same eyes, you see. The color of the Sargasso Sea, with the black ring. Quite unusual.” She was right. She had a thick black ring around the deep blue iris—just like mine.

  My mother said Katia and I had the same eyes. Could it be possible?

  “You’re Katia.” I exhaled a shaky breath.

  She gave a nearly imperceptible nod as she stepped toward me.

  “Your mother, Nina, will be fulfilling her destiny soon. It’s time to come home . . . to Quivira. You and your brother will be welcomed. I can protect you there.”

  The hanging girl’s naked body twisted behind Katia to reveal her face . . . my face, contorted in agony.

  Katia stepped into my line of sight. “What is it? What do you see?”

  “There’s a dead girl hanging behind you,” I whispered. “She looks like you and exactly like me.”

  Katia’s jaw clenched. A shroud of sorrow seemed to wash over her face, but she never looked behind her. “Of course,” she murmured softly. “You’re tied to her. Because of your gift.”

  “To who?” The words caught in my throat. “And what do you mean tied?”

  She pulled the edge of the ribbon from her neck, freeing it from the tidy bow. I cringed in anticipation of the ribbon revealing some hideous scar, but her skin was flawlessly aglow, as if bathed in candlelight.

  “A young woman like yourself needs a beautiful ribbon. Something to hold her in place.” She coiled the black strand around my wrist.

  The glossy sheen, the slick sound, the feel of it creeping across my skin. It was the same feeling I had in the subway when something grazed the back of my neck, the same feeling that came over me when my mother dug the bone needle into my flesh.

  “No. That’s okay . . . really . . . I . . . I d-don’t . . . want it . . . ,” I stammered, trying to slip my hand free.

  Violently, she twisted the ribbon, jerking my hand toward her.

  A glint of gold in her hand.

  A metallic whisper.

  Seari
ng pain, followed by numbing warmth.

  The musky copper smell snaked its way into my senses.

  I looked down in terrified awe to see that in one swift movement she’d cut both of our hands open with a golden blade, and entwined our fingers.

  My knees buckled as I felt her warm blood press up against mine.

  5

  FIRST BLOOD

  I STRUGGLED TO BREAK free of her, clawing at nothing but air.

  The world tilted; flashes, images, and sensations burned beneath my eyelids like overexposed film. I felt her presence rise inside me like a fever, burning away my will to fight, to live, to feel anything other than what she wanted me to feel.

  “Uhurahak a u’ a.” I heard her whisper to me from some deep sacred place, the same phrase my mother always said to me. “Let go and let yourself fall.”

  Her words filled me, and with them came images from another life.

  • • •

  Remnants of charred flesh linger in the air. The faint roar of the crowd chanting my name—Katia. The heavy scrape of armor thunders in my ears as the guards pull me from my prison cell. Instead of leading me outside to the savage pack, they take me to the depths of the prison, to the watergate where a small vessel awaits. Coronado steps forward to meet me, his dark brown eyes smoldering in the lamplight. “I understand you seek passage to the New World.”

  “Please, I’ll do anything you—”

  Coronado plunges his sword through my chest. My bodice blooms crimson like a rose opening to meet the sun. I’m gasping for air, but my lungs only fill with blood. I’m drowning in it when a tingling spreads across the surface of my skin, settling deep inside of me. The air comes back all at once, flooding my body with relentless life. Coronado shoves his fingers inside the tear of my bodice, feeling my newly healed flesh. He knows what I am.

  “What do you want from me?” I recoil from his touch.

  He smiles, beautiful and cruel. “Immortality.”

  • • •