We Set the Dark on Fire Page 19

  “It’s beautiful,” Dani said, stopping for a moment, savoring the breeze that played across her face.

  Alex didn’t reply.

  “There’s a safe house just up here,” she said after a few more minutes. “That’s where he’s recovering. You’ll only have a few minutes.”

  “I understand,” Dani said. “And thank you.”

  Alex only rolled her eyes again, leading the way over a final rooftop and pulling back a tattered red curtain.

  Inside was a poorly furnished room with several empty beds, sheets over holes in the crumbling walls. Against the back wall was Sota, alone, pale and reclined and looking like he’d been waiting for her.

  “Look what the tides brought in,” Alex said, and the familiarity of the phrase settled with an ache in Dani’s chest. She hadn’t heard it since she left home.

  “I thought I might be seeing you today,” said Sota with a wan smile.

  “I’ll give you two a moment,” Alex said with yet another eye roll. Dani wondered if she ever got dizzy. “But only a moment,” she said with a pointed look at Dani.

  “Sundown. Cover intact,” Dani said with a salute.

  Sota laughed softly, and she walked toward him, careful, like even disturbing the air too much could hurt him.

  “So, you were there,” he said as Dani sat down on the bed beside his.

  “I was.”

  “And?”

  Dani took a deep breath and let it out slowly. All morning, she’d been trying to figure out what to say. How to explain why she hadn’t been ready before, and why she was now.

  “Your parents died,” she said after a beat. Sota opened his mouth to reply, but Dani held up a hand. “Your parents died, and ever since, you’ve been doing your duty to them. To their memory.”

  He nodded and this time he didn’t try to interrupt.

  “My parents didn’t die,” she continued. “I don’t know if that’s fair, if it’s right or wrong, if it’s the goddess of luck or just a big damn coincidence. I don’t know. But they lived, and they raised me to believe in the idea that my safety was the first priority. That no matter what I did, no matter how far it took me from them, it would be worth it if I could have a better life than they did.”

  “They love you,” Sota said simply.

  “Yes,” said Dani, taking another deep breath. “But that love made their world shrink. It began and ended with me, and with the hope that I would be safe and prosper. I’ve been trying to honor their sacrifices, and their hopes, and their dreams for me, just like you’ve been trying to honor the memory of your parents.”

  Sota nodded again, looking thoughtful.

  “It’s right for parents to prioritize their children’s lives. Their safety. Their happiness. But I’ve let their dreams for me become me. I’ve done everything they ever wanted, and it didn’t make me safe. It only made me selfish.”

  Sota’s eyes were bright now, some of the pain clearing from them. It was a mark of how far they’d both come, Dani thought, that he didn’t interrupt or try to explain her feelings to her. That he waited for her to find her own words, in her own time.

  “My parents wanted better for me, but I think the danger in that was that they believed the lies. That money and status and proximity make you better. That believing the Sun God chose you is better than hearing the whispers in the wind and feeling the pull of the million tiny divinities in everything. That being born with a certain name, and certain privileges, make you inherently higher quality.”

  Dani spoke slowly, haltingly, hearing the words as she spoke them, letting them warm her. Sota listened with patient eyes.

  “They tell us about the curse of the Salt God because it’s a simple story, but I don’t think it’s the real story. I think the real story is greed, and money, and politics. Privilege and prejudice. A system that was created thousands of years ago by people who wanted to reward those like them and punish everyone else.”

  “Yes,” Sota said, fierce, admiring.

  “I’m not one of them,” Dani said. “No matter how high I climb or how much I manage to grasp, I’m never going to be. And there’s nothing wrong with that. There’s nothing wrong with who I am.” The words felt heavy spilling out, suffused with the same glow as the scarlet-tinged sky beyond the window.

  Soon, the sun would set, and Dani would have to go.

  But not yet.

  “I know my parents love me,” she said, finally ready to let go of the last piece. “But I want to live in a world where love doesn’t mean fear. Where we can survive without forgetting who we are.”

  “Thrive, even,” Sota said with a smile.

  “Thrive,” Dani agreed. “And . . .” She hesitated, but only for a moment. “I want to help build that world. Even if they don’t understand. Even if it means I’m not safe or special. Even if I don’t . . . survive. I want to fight it. Fight Mateo and everyone who believes him. Fight the men who framed you for those explosions.”

  “You saw that, too?”

  “I’m a spy,” Dani said with a smirk. “I see everything.”

  Sota laughed, but it quickly became a wince of pain.

  “They shot you?” she asked, solemn now.

  “Just a scratch,” he said, but a complicated web of bandages spread across his chest and down his left arm, telling a more sinister story. “I’ll be back at it in no time.”

  Dani’s eyes stayed trained on the blood. She wanted to remember. Back in the rose stone house. Surrounded by vipers, just as Señora Garcia had told her during her first week. She wanted to remember the people who had died. Everything it had cost.

  There was more, but Dani hesitated, letting Sota breathe through his pain. This was the part where she was supposed to confess Mama Garcia’s suspicions. The letter. The strange way the Segunda had interrogated her over breakfast. It was the second piece. Total honesty.

  But Sota trusted her. She could see it in his eyes. He believed she was one of them. And right then, with the glow of it still warm in her chest, she couldn’t bring herself to break the spell. She could handle Mama Garcia, and she would. She would prove she was everything La Voz needed her to be.

  “We knew it wouldn’t be pretty,” Sota said, gently bringing her back to the present. “And we were all willing to take the risk. We needed them to know we aren’t going to stay in the shadows forever, that they’re not safe behind the walls they build to keep us out.”

  “But now?” Dani asked, thinking of all the people they’d lost, the eloquent activists in chains who would never live to see the change they had given their lives for.

  “Nothing has changed,” Sota said without hesitation, though his eyes were sad. “That’s what it means to fight. It means believing in the movement, and doing whatever it takes to further it, no matter what the consequences may be.”

  For once, Dani’s determination was louder than her fear. She didn’t want to dwell on the half-formed dangers of her past. She wanted to move forward. Now. As part of it all.

  “So, what’s next?” she asked, and Sota smiled, the brightness in his eyes kindling to a blaze.

  “Listen,” he said, shifting into a seated position as a mild breeze fluttered the curtains around them, showing off slices of the city and the orange sky. “This most recent scuffle isn’t the worst thing the government has done to us by far. That’s the first thing you need to understand.”

  “Please,” Dani said, “I’ve been living in the belly of the beast for weeks.” She thought of Jasmín, and Mateo. His commitment to creating a world free of protest, ruled by himself alone. “Whatever the worst thing is, it won’t hold a candle to what’s coming.”

  “Down on the lower parts of the island, even the people on the right side of the wall are getting restless,” Sota said. “The curse they trapped us with isn’t supposed to extend beyond the wall, but they don’t live much better in the shadow of it. They’re fed up with the excess, the gloating.”

  “Who can blame them?” Dani asked,
before she realized what she was saying and smiled. She had blamed them herself, only a few short weeks ago.

  But everything was different now.

  “Mateo and his cronies won’t stop until every last one of their dissenters has been silenced,” he said. “And the more threatened the privileged feel, the more drastic the measures they’ll be able to justify in the name of ‘safety.’” Whether it was his injuries, or the shadows growing longer, Sota looked suddenly weary. “I don’t know what they’re capable of anymore. This new generation doesn’t seem to play by any of the rules we’ve learned to fight against.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Dani. “I thought you said they’d done worse than the scene at the protest.”

  Sota looked at her now, appraising in the same way Carmen seemed to be sometimes. Like he was looking for a sign. Whatever it was, he seemed to have found it, because he went on after a minute.

  “There’s something else, Dani. The reaction to the protests is public, but this is something different. It’s the thing we’ve been working to stop since I contacted you.”

  Her heart picked up speed. He was about to tell her something real. He was trusting her. Remembering Mama Garcia’s note and the things she hadn’t said, Dani felt a pang of guilt. But it didn’t last long.

  “It used to be that we knew what would happen when one of ours got arrested,” he said. “It wasn’t ideal, obviously, but it was predictable. Sometimes we could get them out, turn a guard on the inside, bribe the right people, take a transport van on the road. But when we couldn’t, we could find some . . . closure. In knowing.” He swallowed once, hard. How many had they already lost? How much closure had this boy who was barely a man needed to find in his life?

  “But now?” Dani asked, unable to bear the silence any longer.

  Sota looked her in the eye. The pain there was unmistakable, but his gaze was steady. “They’re disappearing,” he said. “Fifteen arrested La Voz members and suspected sympathizers in the past year. They’re arrested in high-profile scenarios, but we have a source inside who’s telling us they never arrive in the cells designated for them, and no one says a word.” He hesitated, then steeled himself and pushed on. “The most recent disappearance was Jasmín Flores.”

  Dani’s heart sank as fast as it had swelled at the thought that he trusted her to fight. “But Jasmín didn’t even get a chance to tell you anything,” she said. “What would they want with her?”

  Sota smiled, shrugging with his good shoulder. “Who knows why they do what they do?”

  But his tone was off, and Dani could tell. There was more to the story. A silence stretched between them, Dani waiting to see if he would offer more information, Sota acknowledging her distrust and refusing to placate her.

  “So what do we do?” she asked, an edge to her tone that her maestras would have corrected in a heartbeat.

  Sota adjusted his position again, trying to hide the pain. “We have things in motion that I can’t tell you the details of.”

  Dani opened her mouth to argue, but he held up a hand to stop her.

  “It’s not personal,” he assured her. “But you’re in a precarious position. Behind enemy lines. If things go south, it’s best that you know only what you need to know.”

  Dani clenched her jaw against the spike of fear and nodded her agreement.

  “Just trust that we’re working on it. For now, you’ve been asking a lot of questions at home, disappearing under strange circumstances. You need to go back. Lie low. Act natural. But watch everything. We’re fairly certain the Garcias are the key to this whole thing, and we need to know all their pressure points. Anything we can use against them if it comes to that. We need to know schedules, times, the layout of the house, windows that open, entrances and exits. Even things that don’t seem important, keep track of them.”

  Dani hesitated. She had come down here to pledge her allegiance. To make her choice, once and for all. She wanted to do more than attend dinner parties and keep her eyes open. She wanted to do something big and risky and heroic.

  “Trust me,” Sota said again, as if he could hear her reckless thoughts. “It’s important. We have plenty of people willing to run around causing chaos, but none of them can waltz into the government complex and right into Mateo Garcia’s mansion without arousing suspicion.”

  “I understand,” Dani said, standing reluctantly, the sky deepening to red outside as the sun kissed the horizon. “And it starts with being back at the hospital by sundown, so how will I get the information to you?”

  “We’ll be in touch. Notes, cards, same as before. When it’s safe to rendezvous, we’ll let you know. Until then, just collect whatever you can.”

  Dani nodded, but she could feel the thrill of the visit starting to wane as the sun sank. It was almost time to go back.

  “Look, Dani,” Sota said, sitting up, his knot of hair backlit by the rooftop sunset. “This is a pivotal time. We need people we can trust on our side, otherwise it all falls apart. If there’s still any part of you that’s thinking of this as blackmail . . . or wants out . . .”

  The unspoken end of his sentence hung between them, like a fruit to be plucked, or left to rot.

  “If we’re not all free,” she said, holding out a palm, like she’d seen the protesters do in their chains, “none of us are free.”

  With a smile that dazzled, Sota pressed his palm against hers.

  “I’m glad,” he said simply.

  “Me too.”

  “As adorable as this all is,” Alex said from the doorway, “it’s time to go.”

  She disappeared back into the purpling night, and Dani turned to face Sota one last time.

  “Goodbye,” she said.

  “It’s not goodbye,” Sota said. “It’s ‘get to work.’”

  Dani cracked a smile, but it didn’t stop the feeling that she was a butterfly about to climb back into her cocoon.

  “Get to work,” she whispered.

  “Get to work.”

  “And don’t die, okay?”

  Sota chuckled weakly. “You either. And here.” He reached out as far as he was able, and Dani met him there, taking a card from his hand.

  The Cuatro de Bastos. Strength.

  She pressed it to her chest for a brief moment, fighting with something heavy and warm and prickling inside her.

  “Go,” he said gently, and she did. Carmen was waiting, and there was work to be done.

  When Dani pushed the crimson curtain aside, the city sky was on fire. From the rooftop, the dancing, shifting light bouncing off every reflective surface below, it was breathtaking. She whispered a thank-you to the gods in the light and the clouds for delivering such a good omen.

  Alex led her back to the hospital in silence. Across ladders laid over gaps and steps set haphazardly into steep inclines. They were two shadows against the vivid sunset, moving toward home.

  “Down these stairs,” the other girl said, stopping after a few long minutes. “You’ll be in the alley on the east side of the hospital. There should be an unlocked door in the back courtyard where no one will see you go in.”

  “I know it,” Dani said quietly. “And thank you.”

  “You won’t be thanking me if you take any more unauthorized trips into the city,” she said, then turned back the way they’d come, moving much more quickly across the uneven terrain than she had with Dani in tow.

  She watched her go for a minute, feeling like the last traces of some strange magic were bleeding out through her fingertips. She had been a bright, certain-edged thing for an hour, but it was time to be a hundred shades again. There was more than her own survival riding on it now.

  Back inside the hospital, Dani made her way to the front entrance, the last of the sun’s rays staining the window above the door. The waiting area was empty, save for Carmen, who was asleep in a chair. For a moment Dani just looked at her, the soft lines of her sleeping body, the restless tangle of her hair.

  “Your cousin is a loy
al one,” the woman at the reception desk said. “Stayed in that chair for hours, watching the door.” She gestured toward the door Dani had disappeared through hours before.

  “And my uncle?” Dani asked, seeing no sign of José.

  “Visiting the restroom,” she said, her eyes darting around in fear.

  “And she didn’t go anywhere?” Dani asked, gesturing toward Carmen, unable to help herself. “Talk to anyone?”

  “I’ve been at this desk the whole time, just sorting through these donations,” the woman said. “Never saw her move.”

  “I guess I’ll have to thank her,” Dani said in a low voice, the hint of a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. Carmen hadn’t sniffed around for information on Dani’s father. She’d just waited. Like a friend would.

  It wasn’t proof of anything—not yet. But for now, it was enough.

  She woke Carmen gently, and in the moment between her eyes opening and her mind catching up, she smiled at the sight of Dani’s face. “Hi,” she said, and Dani couldn’t help it; she smiled back.

  “Hi.”

  “How’s your father?”

  “He’s going to be okay,” Dani said, sinking into the chair beside her.

  “Listen,” they both said together, and then they laughed, soft sounds that wound around each other in the spaces between their lips. “Go ahead,” Dani said.

  “I shouldn’t have pushed it today,” Carmen said. “You were obviously upset, and just because we’ve grown closer doesn’t mean you have to trust me with something like this. I’m sorry.”

  Dani had been trained in the art of reading people, in discerning their motives, but there didn’t seem to be anything at all lurking beneath Carmen’s apology. “I’m sorry, too,” she said. “I was scared, and I’m so used to hiding my parents. Where I come from . . .”

  “I know the feeling,” Carmen said, but this time it was there, a sharp glint at the edge of her confession that sent Dani’s instincts into overdrive.