Cece Rios and the Desert of Souls by Kaela Rivera (online e book reading .txt) 📕

Coyote flinched.

I was stunned. “You can do that?”

Coyote’s cheeks flushed. “Well, no. I tried but couldn’t really remember how to finish.”

“But I didn’t know the Great Namer could Rename things,” I said. “What else would you turn a human into?”

Coyote looked away again. I waited for him to say something. But as I searched his soul for some kind of clue as to what was going on, his feelings retreated again, faster this time, and he didn’t speak up.

“What does it matter? You stopped him,” Little Lion snapped, and his face darkened as he looked at me. “You’re a pathetic excuse for a bruja.” He folded his arms. “You weren’t even willing to use Coyote to protect yourself. That’s the most basic principle of being a bruja!”

I frowned at him. “‘Thanks for saving my soul from that other bruja, Cece,’” I said sarcastically. “Oh, you’re welcome, Lion. You know I’d never let—”

Little Lion grabbed me by the shoulder and propelled me backward. I nearly toppled over. “If this is who you really are, then give up on this stupid fantasy! You can’t be our friend and our bruja. You can’t be both.” He kept pushing me, a little harder each time, until he shoved me so powerfully I stumbled to a stop nearly four feet away, in front of the puddle by the water tank. “So pick one already. Either betray us now or just forget the Bruja Fights and scuttle back into your small, weak human life.” Little Lion’s face had flushed deep, cherry red, his mouth torn somewhere between a scowl and a sob. His arms trembled at his side. “Nothing good ever comes out of joining El Cucuy and his Dark Saints.”

Not normally, no. Except when it came to saving Juana. Little Lion kept yelling at me, shouting at me, out of his own pain. But you know what?

I puffed out my chest. “First of all, yes, I am a fool who is risking her life to protect the people she loves—but I’m not a bloodthirsty bruja who pretends to love her criaturas and then betrays them, like your old bruja. So stop acting like I am!” I slammed my hands against Little Lion’s chest and thrust him back. “Second of all, I’m only trying to win the Bruja Fights so I can get my big sister back from El Sombrerón!” Lion stumbled backward again, his eyes wide with shock. “And I will win, Little Lion! No one’s going to stop me from saving her!”

I shoved him one last time. Little Lion stiffened, his face shocked and silent.

I turned from him, rage swelling. That wasn’t the way I wanted to tell him I knew about his last bruja. And I hadn’t planned on telling him I was faking being a bruja, especially when I wasn’t sure I could trust him. But I was tired of people telling me I was a fool. Ever since my encounter with Tzitzimitl, I’d been made to think caring was a weakness. I was sick of feeling like who I was—a fool, sure, and a crybaby, yeah, and a girl with a soul like water instead of fire—was somehow not acceptable. Because if I was doing the right thing, if I was following all the goodness I believed in, that was good enough.

I didn’t care how much Little Lion yelled at me or hated me, or how much I reminded him of his last bruja; I would treat him like a person. That’s what I believed in. That was who I was.

I wouldn’t let anything—pretending to be a bruja, my town’s disdain, or Little Lion’s anger—rob me of myself.

“Your . . . your sister is the Bride of El Sombrerón?” Little Lion’s voice came up behind me, low and soft.

I turned to him. We stood about five feet apart now, with Coyote between us and off to the side. He glanced at us, watching carefully. I straightened up and nodded.

“She is,” I said. “And I’m getting her back.”

The last remnants of anger drained from his face. And with it gone, I realized his face was soft and round, and his eyebrows weren’t always heavy and scary. He stared at me, eyes large and waiting.

“You look a lot like her,” Little Lion whispered. “My old bruja. Catrina Rios.”

My heart jerked in my chest. Silence pulsed over us.

“Little Lion . . . ,” I finally said, “You were my tía’s criatura?”

He rubbed his shoulder. “I trusted her. And she betrayed me.”

Something hot and aching bubbled up in Little Lion’s soul at the admission. Hesitantly, I wrapped my fingers around it. The instant I did, the last of the aching heat in his stone ever so slowly leeched out of the quartz and into my hand. It didn’t burn physically. It was a deeper fire—an old one. And for the first time, I tasted it.

He’d loved Catrina so much. Tears slid down my cheeks. I hiccupped as images and feelings flashed up my arm, panging in my heart. She’d laughed with him, cried with him, and worked alongside him. She’d promised to take care of him. She’d been his friend, and more than that—she’d become his world.

She was the one person he thought he was safe with.

And then she’d betrayed him.

My legs trembled in the shadows of the alley, holding Little Lion’s soul as the old, wounded heat drained away completely. All this time, I’d thought he was just angry. But he was also sad. And deeply hurt. He’d carefully wrapped his soul in burning anger to keep everyone away from the tears he needed to cry.

Finger by finger, I dropped Little Lion’s soul back onto my chest.

I wiped my cheeks. The tears kept coming, but I wasn’t ashamed of them, because they were Lion’s. Footsteps came closer. When I looked up, Little Lion stood there, watching me.

“I thought you were trying to trick me too. But you’re not like her,” he said, and offered his hand. “You . . . take care of the people you love.”

His eyes were red, muted, and