Page 85 of The Familiar

“You’re seeing something that isn’t there. Gracia was almost killed, and someone is responsible.”

“The Holy Child.”

“Do you truly believe that?” She watched his face closely. It might serve Fortún Donadei to blame Teoda for what had happened. Or maybe Luzia was a fool for wanting to absolve Teoda for a crime she had as good as confessed to.

“No,” he admitted.

Some honesty at last. “Then what do you believe happened? Who is to blame?”

“That isn’t for me to say.”

“Then whom?” Luzia glanced over her shoulder, but there was no one to hear. “You tell me we are to be soldiers together, holy servants of the king, but you won’t speak the name of someone who may wish us both dead?”

“Not us both.” She knew what he would say next, and still the name sounded with a hollow clang. “Santángel.”

Luzia turned her back on him and began to stride toward Valentina. Fortún jogged past her and cut off her path.

“Think, Luzia … Señorita Cotado, think of what is to be lost and gained.”

“That shadow … I was almost killed.”

“But you weren’t. Those demons frightened Gracia out of the competition. Now Teoda is gone too. Santángel murdered Gracia’s guard. If he could have dispensed with me as quickly, do you doubt he would have?”

“You’re making dangerous accusations.”

“But you don’t deny them. Because you know what he is. Cursed.”

Now Luzia paused. How did Fortún know of the curse? Or was he trying to lure her into revealing Santángel’s secrets? “What curse?”

“Surely we’re past dissembling. He used magic to obtain immortality and lost his soul in the bargain. My mistress told me so.”

“She has proof of this?”

“The proof is in his long life. His demon’s eyes.”

Luzia made herself laugh. “So no proof at all.”

“I didn’t think you were such a child. A creature like that can’t be trusted.”

“And you can?”

“All curses require sacrifice. In the making and the breaking. Have you never wondered what part you might play in it? You are not the first milagrera he and his master have pursued.”

He is your rival, she reminded herself. He is a tactician. “Speak plainly. Do you know something real or are you just spinning gossip to scare me?”

“They had spies roaming the cities and countryside, seeking out seers and milagreros. Why do you think I ran so quickly to Doña Beatriz?”

“Doña Beatriz whom you loathe?”

“Yes,” he said without hesitating. “I seduced her because I’d heard rumors of Víctor de Paredes and his creature. People who gain their attention do not share in Don Víctor’s good fortune.”

When Águeda had muttered her warnings in the kitchen of Casa Ordoño, Luzia had dismissed them as rumor, superstition. People who cross paths with that man come to bad ends.

She knew she needed to be careful now. Anything she said against Don Víctor could be used by Donadei. “All I hear is speculation.”

“The alumbrada Isabel de la Cruz was approached by Santángel. Where did she end up? The Inquisition’s cells. Piedrola met the same fate. Santángel was among those who visited Lucrecia de León when Don Alonzo de Mendoza began recording her dreams, and you know how that ended.”

Luzia made herself focus on the neat rows of hedges, the branches of the apple tree, bare of fruit. I could make them grow, she thought. I could fill a whole orchard. “Still you offer no proof.”