We Set the Dark on Fire

by Tehlor Kay Mejia

  “I don’t want to stay in my cage,” Dani said, her voice still smoke-edged and strange in her throat.

  Sota smiled ruefully. “That lock was broken a long time ago.”

  And despite her sadness, Dani was glad. She knew now that she’d rather be free. Even when it hurt. “I’ll go back,” she said, determination in her voice. “To Mateo’s. Whatever it takes.”

  Sota bowed his head. “Thank you,” he said, then he raised a palm. This time, Dani knew what to do. When she pressed her own against it, it felt like a promise.

  Footsteps in the hall had Sota halfway to the window before anything else could be said. But before he hoisted himself out into the night, Sota turned to her with a strange look on his face.

  “Whatever happens next,” he said, “remember that you changed for you. Not for me. Not for La Voz. Not for anyone but you.”

  “What—” Dani began, but the doorknob turned, and he was gone before Dani could turn around.

  “Oh, thank the diosa you’re alright!” Carmen said, nudging the door closed behind her and running to Dani’s side. She seemed to want nothing more than to throw herself into Dani’s arms, but between the bruises and the burns, there was barely a safe inch of skin for her to attach to.

  For a moment, Dani was glad of the distance. Despite everything that had happened since, she hadn’t forgotten the strange feeling of distrust that had sprung up when she and Carmen had been separated. She couldn’t explain why, but she was on guard, and the feeling only intensified when she looked into Carmen’s eyes.

  Carmen stood beside the bed, wringing her hands, until Dani finally took pity on her, reaching out and gingerly squeezing one of them in her own. The contact warmed her, suspicion edging aside to make way for relief. They were both here, alive and whole and mostly well. The rest they would figure out when they got home.

  “I was so worried you didn’t get out,” Dani said, her voice heavy with tears she wouldn’t let herself shed.

  “You were worried!” Carmen said, her eyebrows disappearing into her hairline. “I was at the hospital five minutes after I lost track of you, waiting in the courtyard out back. I didn’t want to leave in case you showed up, but I was so scared when you didn’t. I didn’t even know there had been a demonstration until people started showing up with burns.” She said this in a rush, like she’d just been holding the words in her mouth since the moment she’d heard Dani was hurt. “Where does it hurt, querida?”

  Dani grunted, knowing laughter would only cause more pain. “Everywhere?” she said.

  Carmen glanced at the door for a moment before turning back, reaching out, letting her finger slide ever so lightly down Dani’s unmarred cheek. “I thought I lost you,” she said.

  Even in a hospital bed, with her cover story and her life hanging in the balance, with every inch of her skin burned or bruised or tender, Dani felt a familiar heat in her chest. It was so absurd she almost laughed.

  “How can you do this to me, even here?” she asked aloud, and Carmen smirked.

  The moment stretched and swelled, and Dani would have kissed her if she could have moved. But she couldn’t, and so it passed. Carmen glanced at the clock and turned back to Dani, guilt etched in every line of her face.

  “I know it hurts,” she said. “But they say nothing’s broken. . . .”

  “We have to go, don’t we?”

  Carmen bit her lip. “It’s just . . . most of the Garcias are still gone, but we don’t know for how long. If we make it home before he does, your cover stays intact.”

  “Kind of hard to hide all this,” Dani said, gesturing to her battered body.

  “You’ve hidden worse for longer than it’ll take to heal,” Carmen said, and the feeling was back. The prickling at the back of her mind that told Dani something was off.

  “Help me up,” she said anyway. “I can do it.”

  “Are you sure?” Carmen asked, and Dani laughed without humor.

  “It’s not like I have much of a choice.”

  The first few steps were agony, but Carmen kept an arm on her waist as she walked laps around the room, feeling the burn stretch and pull as she moved, feeling the thousand individual aches that made up her body. After a few minutes, she could hobble unassisted.

  “Ready?” Dani asked through gritted teeth.

  Carmen nodded, but her eyes were somewhere else. As they walked through the hospital’s hallways toward the street where they could hire a car, the prickling feeling intensified. The feeling that Carmen was keeping something from her. That her trust, so hard to come by, had been misplaced.

  “You okay?” Carmen asked, but before Dani could answer a car pulled up to the curb. Carmen stepped toward it a little too quickly. “Government complex?” she asked, already pulling the back door open. The driver must have assented, because the next thing she knew Dani was being helped into the back seat, her thoughts swirling as Carmen closed the door and climbed in the other side.

  “Garcia residence,” Dani said, almost relieved when the driver put up the partition.

  Carmen didn’t seem to share the sentiment. She didn’t meet Dani’s eyes, shifting back and forth on her seat.

  The gods only knew what was waiting for them at home. If Dani wanted the truth, it was now or never. But the minutes stretched on, the city uncharacteristically muted out the windows. Fear had cast a strange spell over the capital tonight, and Dani felt like it was inside her, too.

  They were pulling onto the dark, windy road leading to the complex gate when Dani found the words at last. What good would an accusation do, when she really only wanted to know one thing?

  Her eyes were soft when she turned to Carmen.

  “Sota came to see me in the hospital,” she said softly.

  Carmen didn’t look at her, but she nodded once, tersely. Dani took a deep breath.

  “He asked me to go back to the house, keep things up for a little while since my cover is still intact, see what else I can find out, but it won’t be forever.”

  “I know,” Carmen said, her voice resigned as if she’d had years and not seconds to process this. But Dani went on. She didn’t have time to stop and wonder.

  “Carmen . . . ,” she said, pausing until Carmen met her eyes at last. The little jolt in her stomach told her she was doing the right thing. That no matter how scared she was, it was okay to trust her. That Carmen could be good, even if she had secrets. That they both could. “I don’t want this to end.”

  There. She’d said it. And like a miracle, Carmen smiled, reaching for her hand across the seat and tangling their fingers under the cover of darkness. “I don’t, either,” she said.

  “Can we be careful?” Dani asked. “Figure it out?” She was impatient now; she didn’t wait for an answer before plowing forward, caution to the wind. “And when it’s time for me to go . . . will you come with me?”

  Carmen turned the rest of the way toward her, drawing her leg up under her on the seat. Her face was joyful, her smile twice as wide until that all-too-familiar shadow passed over it again. “I want to,” she said. “Dani, of course I want to. But . . .” Now it was Carmen’s turn to take a steadying breath. “There’s something I have to tell you first.”

  The car wound up the mountain, climbing higher toward the center of the island, leaving Dani’s stomach behind as it went. The look on Carmen’s face said this wasn’t a casual admission.

  “Of course,” Dani said, trying to keep the panic out of her voice. “Anything.”

  Carmen nodded, her face determined, then faltered and chewed at her lip. Dani waited as patiently as she could, as each second crawled by and each mile raced.

  “Look,” she said at last. “I haven’t been completely honest with you. But I want to be.”

  Another endless pause, but Carmen didn’t let go of her hand, and Dani took it as a good sign.

  “It started before I even went to school,” she began again, haltingly. “You have to know that. It was before I even knew you
existed. And by the time there was an us to consider, it was just . . . it was too late to change anything.”

  Carmen turned to look out the window again, worrying her lip so hard Dani was afraid she’d draw blood. But this time, she didn’t continue. Instead, her eyes widened in shock. “Salt and sea,” she said, and Dani followed her gaze, not sure how many more surprises she could take tonight.

  “Is that Mateo’s car?”

  Dani’s heart was racing for a much different reason now. Carmen’s aborted confession forgotten for the moment, she looked past her and up the hill. There was no mistaking the sleek car, even at a distance, even in the dark. Mateo prided himself on having the only one in the complex, after all.

  She didn’t panic when she saw José at the wheel, but then she saw who was beside him.

  Mama Garcia.

  And just like that, Dani knew: They had Jasmín. La Voz hadn’t gotten to them in time.

  23

  Even the smallest secret cannot be kept forever.

  —Medio School for Girls Handbook, 14th edition

  THE CARS WERE GOING TO pass each other in just a few minutes. Dani drew blank after blank. There was no way for her to get to them, get to Jasmín. She had done all she could, and it hadn’t been enough.

  Beside her, Carmen’s eyes were wide with nerves, but her jaw was tight, determined. She looked just like Jasmín had looked moments before her arrest.

  What had she been about to say?

  “Dani, look,” Carmen whispered, pointing, drawing her out of her thoughts.

  At first, Dani saw nothing but the car and the dark road, but as the seconds passed, a shadow distinguished itself from the rest. Slim, low, darker than the tree-lined road behind it.

  “Is that a motorcycle?” Dani asked.

  Carmen didn’t need to answer. The next moment the bike pulled right up behind Mateo’s car, and it didn’t stop. Dani gasped as it nudged the back of the car with its front wheel, swerving on impact but correcting and returning to position.

  “They’re trying to push them off the road,” Dani whispered into her hands, still over her mouth in shock. Was this what Sota had meant when he’d said they were handling the Jasmín situation?

  Another nudge, this time just behind the rear tire, sent the car perilously close to the rock face the road hugged on the left side.

  The next time, the rider’s aim was true. José clipped the wall, sending the car swerving wildly into the middle of the road. Dani thought he’d make it, but he overcorrected then, slamming into the wall with an ominous crunching sound she could hear even from the insulated back seat. Dust billowed in the glare of a single functioning headlight, and it was the last thing Dani noticed before the hired driver swerved, too, avoiding the spraying gravel and the ruined car blocking the road ahead.

  Carmen and Dani pitched sideways, landing in a painful tangle of limbs that had Dani’s burns and bruises screaming again. She bit back a cry of pain as Carmen scrambled to relieve the pressure on her arm, avoiding her worried gaze, the secret she hadn’t had time to tell sitting awkwardly between them even now.

  Out the window, the billowing dust had swallowed the motorcycle.

  Dani swore just as the driver lowered the partition.

  “Something going on up ahead,” he said, already slowing down, pulling off to the opposite side of the road. “No matter what happens, you two stay in this car, understand? This looks like a resistance attack.”

  Dani didn’t bother to tell him it wasn’t an attack.

  It was a rescue.

  The driver staggered toward the smoking car, drawing a gun as he drew closer. Dani shifted restlessly in her seat, wanting to do something to help, not having enough information to act. Could she even walk? And where was Jasmín?

  Beside her, Carmen pushed herself into the window. They watched arm to arm as the dust began to clear and the motorcycle came into view for the first time since the crash.

  A slim, hooded figure was leaping off the bike, darting toward the wreck. No one could see it, but from this side of the hired car’s headlights, Dani’s view was clear. Was this La Voz? she wondered. Come to rescue Jasmín?

  Could she take the chance that it wasn’t?

  “I have to go,” she said, more to herself than Carmen. “I have to make sure she’s safe.”

  She reached for the door handle, but Carmen’s hand closed over hers, her grip surprisingly strong. “You can’t,” she said quietly.

  “Carmen, I know it’s dangerous, but I can’t let anything happen to Jasmín! I promised Sota . . .”

  “Jasmín is fine,” she said, her voice still eerily calm, like she was reading from an instructional booklet and not guessing in the aftermath of a car crash.

  “You can’t possibly know that!” Dani said, wrenching her hand away, not even feeling the pain as her anger flared.

  At the back end of Mateo’s car, unseen by the armed driver, the slender silhouette was fiddling with something. The trunk sprang open. Dani tried to push past Carmen but again met with resistance.

  “What are you doing?” she asked. “Let me go!” There was no time to wonder about Carmen’s secret, about the reason she was currently holding Dani hostage when she had claimed to be on her side.

  “I can’t,” Carmen said again, the shadow back in her eyes. “You have to trust me, okay?”

  From the trunk of the car, the figure drew a body, limp and bound.

  Jasmín, Dani thought, relief and terror beating beside each other in her chest. Still, Carmen kept the door blocked.

  Three things happened in quick succession:

  Dani lunged for the opposite door.

  Carmen went after her, pressing her painfully against it.

  And a gunshot rang out in the street.

  Dani managed to get the door open at last, leaping from the car, turning around just in time to see the hired driver on the ground, lifeless, a pool of blood spreading under him. The silhouette, now encumbered by Jasmín’s unconscious body, staggered toward the motorcycle.

  “Hey!” Dani screamed. “Stop!”

  The screeching noise of metal on metal drowned her out. The motorcycle revved to life as José and Mama Gacia stumbled from the smoking car, dazed and blinking in the headlight beam.

  Dani was furious at the sight of the elder Segunda, and this time she let her rage take over, burning in her veins. This woman had been ready to murder a young Primera just to keep her privileged lifestyle intact. Just to see her son in a position of power he hadn’t earned and didn’t deserve.

  Before Carmen could object again, Dani was running. She didn’t know what she’d do when she reached Mama Garcia, but she knew she needed to get to her, and fast.

  The older woman’s eyes widened in shock when she saw Dani, whose rage must have reached a fever pitch, because a high, thin whining began to sound in her ears.

  She was almost there. Every muscle was screaming, but she wouldn’t let that monster get away. Even if Jasmín was safe, what about the next person who got in Mateo’s way? And the next? It had to end. Tonight.

  The whining reached an almost unbearable frequency. From behind Mama Garcia, José was shouting something wildly, waving his arms. But Dani couldn’t hear him.

  She was almost there.

  Just before she could reach Mama Garcia and put a stop to this, Carmen slammed into her from behind, knocking the wind out of her. She didn’t say a word as she scooped Dani up into her arms and flat-out ran back to the car.

  The whining was deafening now. Above them, the air seemed to grow thinner, the stars too bright. Carmen threw her painfully to the ground behind the hired car, barely covering Dani’s ears with her hands before the darkness exploded all around them.

  Dani thrashed against Carmen, her screams lost in the sonic boom of Mateo’s car being rent to pieces against the rock face. Flames licked the sky. Carmen didn’t let go. Eventually, they collapsed on the street, breathing heavily, the ringing in their ears the only thing rem
inding them they were alive. And though she didn’t understand anything, though there were more secrets than truths between them, Dani clung to Carmen with every singed, bruised, wounded part of her and sobbed.

  It had been minutes.

  It had been an hour.

  It had been a hundred years.

  Dani didn’t know anymore. She only knew that the moment she stood up, the moment Carmen let go, she would have to face what had just happened, and she wasn’t ready.

  But as usual, La Voz didn’t care if she was ready.

  “Hey,” said a gruff voice from above them. “Get up.”

  Dani opened her swollen eyes a crack to see a black-clad figure standing above them. Carmen loosened her arms automatically. Together, slowly, they got to their feet.

  Beside the hired car was the motorcycle, unharmed, Jasmín, unconscious but still alive, curled up in a small cargo trailer behind it. In front of them was Alex, her mask dangling from one ear.

  And she was drawing a gun from her waistband.

  Instinctively, Dani stepped in front of Carmen. “It’s okay,” she said. “She’s with me; she knows everything. We can trust her.”

  “Dani,” Carmen said, and her voice was pained. “It’s okay, I . . .”

  But before she could finish, Alex pointed the gun. Right at Dani’s temple.

  Her mind went blank. She looked from the unconscious Jasmín to Alex’s cold, lifeless eyes over the barrel of her gun, and finally to Carmen, who looked like she’d rather be anywhere else.

  Carmen, who didn’t look surprised or afraid.

  “Alex,” she said now, in a low, warning voice. “Put the gun down.”

  And then, at last, Dani knew. The reason her suspicion had flickered to life in the marketplace. Carmen had called Alex by name then, too. But Dani had never mentioned her name. She was sure of it.

  “How . . . ,” Dani began, but she trailed off at the look on Alex’s face. The pleading on Carmen’s. Her life was in the balance here. Was she going to die? Without ever knowing who Carmen really was? Without ever understanding why?

  “Alex!” Carmen repeated, sharper this time.

  The silver-eyed girl looked at her at last, but she didn’t drop the pistol. “You know what you told me,” she said to Carmen. “If she’s a liability, she has to go. She just saw everything.”