The red bulbs overhead shuddered as he spoke, and the tenor reverberated in Ignacio’s bones.
Every instinct in his body told him something was terribly wrong.
He bolted through the rows of mirrors, hunting for Camila. But it was hard to track her with so many twists and turns.
Finally, Ignacio spotted her within the reflections. But where were the ratas?
As Camila spun in a slow circle, eyes searching the maze for Tezcán, a face appeared in the towering mirror behind her. Ignacio’s pulse pounded. The face was slender and human, but not. His skin looked like clay. The eyebrows were too high on his too long face. And his grin was spread too wide. Where eyes should have been sat glowing orbs.
“Turn around,” the man in the mirror said.
Camila whirled and gasped.
“What is this?” she asked, her voice raised to a horrifiedpitch. “Is this some sort of jest? Some trick the ringmaster plays on people who leave before their term is over?”
The man in the mirror gave a rumbling laugh. “There is no trick. I am the treasurer. I ensure each performer pays their fair dues.”
“Har. Har.” She turned away from the mirror. “You all can come out now! Enough with the razzing.”
“There is no one here to laugh with,” the thing called Tezcánsaid.
“This isn’t funny!” she yelled.
“I disagree.”
She faced the mirror. “Go to hell.”
“I’m already here. Care to join me?”
She stumbled back, ready to run, but the ratas jumped out from seemingly nowhere, clamping their hands around her arms.
Ignacio rushed forward but skidded to a stop when a billowing fog emanated from within the mirror itself.
Camila’s skin blanched of its color.
And then she screamed.
Chapter 35
Esmeralda
Sitting cross-legged on the floor in her wagon, Esmeralda flipped open the tin box she had taken from Ignacio and pulled out one of the rolled-up papers. Her cheeks warmed as she read the tiny note.
13th of April, 1919. D+P: Age 16
Dovie. What’s one thing you don’t like about me?
Esmeralda had always loved that he wrote her nickname with a period at the end of it. As if that one word was big and important enough to be an entire sentence. As if it encapsulated everything that she was and everything that he thought of her within five little letters.
She remembered thinking long and hard about the answer to this question.
Your ugly feet.
Truth was, there wasn’t anything she didn’t like about him back then. Because she understood him. Ignacio could be uptight and sometimes standoffish, he could be a bit huffy when plans changed or things weren’t in order, because that was how he was raised. That was who he had been taught to be. But in the very depths of his soul existed the kindest human alive. He was a walking cavity-maker—he was so sweet.
She chewed on her bottom lip and sighed heavily. She still didn’tnotlike anything about Ignacio Olivera. He was still very much that boy. But he was more now. He wasn’t the sheltered son of the comandante. He’d been out into the world. He’d seen all sorts of things.
And yet he still loved her.
