She did the same. Her expression melted, from bared teeth to parted lips, from eyes full of fury to full of tears.

“Tú has crecido,” she said, her voice trembling and high. She took a step closer to me and blinked, sending tears spilling down her face. “Oh oh oh. So … pretty.”

I took a step back, stomach twisting, skull caving in, vision sparking. “No.” I raised the knife. She flinched but kept moving, closing the distance between us with tiny, shuffling steps.

“Mija,” she crooned, reaching for me with those filthy, jagged nails grasping.

I couldn’t move. I was paralyzed with pain from inside and out, making me see red and black and soft hands and curly hair and sad smile and golden-brown eyes now dull with someone else’s soul.

“No, nononono,” I babbled, stumbling back.

“Lela,” the Mazikin whispered.

“No!” I screamed, leaping at her. “You don’t know me!”

I hit her hard, but I was desperate and off-balance. She shoved me to the side, and I crashed into the trunk of a tree, crying out as my broken arm caught my weight. The knife fell from my hands as my whole body spasmed with pain. Hunched over, I pivoted around to see her backing up quickly, looking behind her, toward her escape route.

She beckoned to me. “Come,” she said. “Come. Ven conmigo. Lela.”

A gust of wind lifted her hair from her face again, revealing hollow cheeks, skin wrinkled and sagging, tired and used. But those golden-brown eyes … I knew them.

I saw them every day. Whenever I looked in the mirror.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw another figure step onto the grass, lit up by the bright moon.

Henry raised his crossbow and took aim.

At my mother.

SIXTEEN

SIXTEEN

IT ALL HAPPENED SO fast, but it felt like forever. Set to an old movie in my head, memories dredged up from the well of time: She pressed a blue teddy bear to my chest and tucked a frayed blanket around me. She sang a song too raspy to make me sleep. She let tears fall down her face in the dark, and they landed hot on my cheeks and made me think it was raining.

I moved with instinct, all impulse and no thought, throwing myself in front of her. The Mazikin inside her watched with wide amber eyes, mouth open, hands flying up to shield herself. The bolt went through me like I was made of nothing, puncturing me like a balloon of skin. The ground caught me. In my sideways world, I watched her sprint away on two legs, and then pitch forward and dive into a four-legged gallop that carried her up a hill and out of sight.

I closed my eyes, drowning in the acid pain, inhaling sick lungfuls of it.

“Captain! Goddammit,” Henry blurted as he reached me. “Goddammit.”