“Hey, Laurita, why don’t you take Gaspar here to play with you a while. You want to go play with her, Gaspar? We’ll call you in for dinner later.”

It took a moment for the kids to warm to each other, but then Laurita told Gaspar about her new puppy and asked if he wanted to see it, and they left. Tali noticed Juan biting his lip as he watched them go.

“It’s okay, Laurita is from here, she knows the place, she’ll take better care of him than you. What you’re feeling is normal.”

“Nothing is normal. I can’t talk to her.”

“To Rosario? Juan, you have a Ceremonial in a few days. You need to focus on that.”

Juan looked at her, his eyes mercurial in the deck’s dim light. He took the bandage from his hand and showed her the wound. Tali looked at it closely: it wasn’t swollen, wasn’t infected.

“I can’t get her to come even with the midnight sign. If I can’t communicate with her using that rite, it means someone is keeping me from reaching her.”

“Can anyone do that?”

“Someone powerful could, or several people working together. I think it’s multiple people.”

“Sometimes we can’t reach our dead, you know that.”

“I don’t think that’s it this time.”

“Do you sense her anywhere?”

Juan looked at Tali and brushed a lock of hair away from his face.

“I feel nothing.”

Now that not even the kids’ voices could be heard, Tali came close to Juan and reached out her hand. Come on, I’ll give you a bath and clean that hand, she said. I bought a giant tub. It’s like I knew I was going to need it. He got up slowly, lazily, and in the hallway that led to the bathroom Tali stood on tiptoes and kissed him and pushed him to her bedroom and closed the door with her back. It was always a little rough with Juan, even when he was trying to be gentle, and now he wasn’t trying; it hurt Tali to open her legs to receive his broad body, it had hurt to fall on to the floor of her room, the wood hurt her back. There was always a moment of loving and delicate breakage, too, a push, a vertiginous slippage when she recognized the hands that grasped her hair and he was moving inside her. And there was always a dangerous moment when she had to somehow ask him to stop what began as a pleasant sensation, one of tremor and fever, and that ended up feeling like the fast advance of a tide, a wave that was warm and too deep and didn’t seem at all like pleasure. He always heard her and stopped: this time he sat up, pushed her away with one hand, and made her look him in the eyes.