We Set the Dark on Fire Read online

  A hundred shades of a girl . . . She’d never admit it to Sota, but it had a nice ring to it.

  In the entryway, she adjusted her dress, lingering for just long enough to register that she was looking for Carmen. Dani scoffed at the empty room. She only wanted her rival to see her dressed as a perfect Primera, she told herself. To replace the view of her sheepishly exiting the bushes on the heels of a gardener.

  But she wouldn’t get the chance tonight.

  “Good evening, Daniela,” said Mateo, standing beside the car with her door open wide. “You look . . . nice.”

  Dani dropped her hand at the sound of his voice. No fidgeting. No nerves. She belonged in this dress. With the strange weight of the watch he’d given her on her wrist. She belonged with this man, his pale linen suit cutting handsome lines against the night.

  Whether he believed it or not.

  “Good evening to you as well, señor.” She took his hand, allowing him to help her into the back seat. “The peach was a bold choice.”

  “I’m nothing if not bold,” he said, with a wink that made her want to cringe.

  She leaned against the back of her seat instead, focusing on the trees and the purple dusk of the sky beyond, thankful for the quiet.

  But too soon, they were pulling up the Reyeses’ drive, their house illuminating the jungle surrounding it. “Are you ready?” asked Mateo, and Dani paused for a moment, as if she were steeling herself. In reality, she was testing the coverage of tonight’s shade. Making sure nothing of the truth shone through.

  “Yes,” she said at last, her voice ringing.

  “Well, we’ll see about that,” he replied, smirking as though attending a dinner party was something far above her level of qualification.

  Remembering Señora Garcia’s words, Dani didn’t stay silent this time. “Señor, with all due respect, I deserve a lot more credit than you’re giving me. If you want me to waste away filing invitations for the rest of our lives, it’ll be your loss as well as mine.”

  Something gleamed in his eye, and in the dark of the car Dani couldn’t tell if he was impressed or furious. “Well,” he said, his voice inscrutable, “I guess we’ll see about that, too.”

  When he turned to climb out of the car, Dani allowed herself a small smile. She wasn’t sure why, but she felt she had gained some ground tonight.

  Inside, they were greeted by a maid, who took Dani’s handbag and escorted her and Mateo into the reception room, where the other guests were milling around with pre-dinner drinks. It was best to arrive slightly late, Mateo had said in the car: to make the room receive you, instead of the other way around.

  Dani could feel her training glinting on top of her skin like a set of armor. This was a world she knew how to navigate. Stay close to your husband until you’ve been introduced to everyone new. Make sure they see the two of you together. Break away just after, to show that you’re independent, self-motivated, educated on your husband’s positions politically, professionally, and socially, and ready to speak with his voice should the need arise.

  She had only heard about these parties. The ones where laws were unofficially passed, where deals were brokered over wine and appetizers and signed into being the next morning. Where the real currents of power flowed among people who had earned their places at the table.

  Together, Dani and Mateo became the crowd’s new center of gravity. He outranked everyone present, and Dani absorbed his status. He’d paid enough for the privilege of her company, after all.

  “Oh, what a delight it is to see you finally settled, Mateo!” said their hostess, Señora Reyes, when they approached the bar. “And with such a well-regarded Primera. You must be overjoyed.”

  Jasmín’s señora. Dani made a note of her dress—a dark red—and her hairstyle—a tasteful knot at the nape of her neck. She’d have to keep an eye on Señora Reyes and her daughter once Jasmín arrived. Whatever Sota had said of her, Dani knew better than to think a Primera would ever discuss something like this with a Segunda—even if the one in question happened to be her mama.

  “Daniela was the top of her class at the Medio School for Girls,” Mateo said to their hostess. “Highest marks in every subject. Her headmatron said she’d never seen someone so determined in all her years of teaching.” Dani smiled at him, accepting the compliment, though she knew it was meant more for himself than her.

  Once she’d been introduced around, Dani took her leave from her husband, approaching a pair of Primeras at the appetizer table to make some friendly small talk until the remaining guests arrived.

  But she hadn’t made it halfway across the room when she heard it: that wind-chime voice so familiar from her first four years at school. The young Señor Flores had arrived, Jasmín beside him, and Dani was no longer a guest at this party, but an enemy.

  She’d only have to make sure no one knew it but her.

  “Daniela!” Jasmín exclaimed the moment she spotted her. “Oh, Rodolfo, this is my old friend and roommate from school, the one I told you about!”

  Dani smiled as warmly as was appropriate, greeting Jasmín with a kiss near her cheek and her husband with a deferential nod. “It’s lovely to see you,” she said when Rodolfo Flores had been swept away. “It’s only been a year, but it must seem like much longer to you.”

  “A lifetime,” agreed Jasmín, who couldn’t have been aware that Dani was searching her for tension around the eyes, a falseness in her tone, anything to indicate she had something to hide. “But then again, it’s like no time at all. You haven’t changed a bit, Dani!”

  “Neither have you,” she said with a smile, but she didn’t let her awareness falter. Did Jasmín’s eyes suspiciously dart toward her señora? Did she seem eager to end this conversation—perhaps sneak into an alcove for a secret confession?

  “Well, I should say hello to the others,” said Jasmín, when the silence stretched a beat too long. “So glad we’ll be seeing more of each other. And congrats on the catch.” She winked in Mateo’s direction before squeezing Dani’s shoulder and winding into the crowd.

  When Jasmín was gone, Dani realized her heart was racing, her palms sweating slightly against the slippery folds of her dress. Primera training had covered the repression and masking of emotion, but their exercises had never included a secret as big as this one.

  She needed to get it together, and soon. They would be sitting down to dinner in a few minutes, and there would be eyes on her. Judging her worthiness to occupy the seat beside Mateo.

  “Excuse me,” she asked a Primera whose name she’d uncharacteristically forgotten. “Can you point me toward a washroom?”

  “Through there, second door on the right,” said the older girl, pointing, and Dani smiled in genuine gratitude, slipping into the hallway before she could be stopped again, opening the washroom door with fingers that trembled on the handle.

  Get it together, Vargas, she told her reflection, the mirror set in a mosaic of glinting black stones and glittering tin pieces. Within the frame, Dani looked pale and frightened, moments from disappearing under the weight of all her lies.

  Beneath it all was a moment captured in her memory like a photograph: Jasmín, the night of her graduation just over a year ago, dizzy with drink from the Segundas’ legendary last-night party. She’d been loose and smiling, drunk on her own triumph as much as the rose wine. On the window seat, the full moon making a halo of her hair, she’d tipped back her head and laughed. A child’s laugh. A simple, joyful sound.

  This is it, she’d told Dani in a voice like silk and smoke. This is the moment my life begins.

  And now Dani was going to try to take it all away from her.

  The wine she’d had when she arrived tossed in her stomach like an angry sea. She couldn’t do this. What would spying on Jasmín really do for the children starving across the wall? This was Sota’s agenda, not hers. Did she even trust him to know what was right?

  She would tell him he’d been mistaken. That Jasmín had never been
alone with either woman. He wasn’t here himself; how would he ever know? If she wanted to make change, she would find her own way.

  Taking a fortifying breath that expanded her lungs to the point of bursting, Dani smiled at herself once in the mirror, just to make sure it looked natural. She was back to herself. Stone and ice. In control.

  Before she could fully open the door, however, Dani stopped. There were voices coming from the dimly lit hallway outside.

  “What is this about?” asked a gruff voice.

  A second voice. A whisper of wind chimes. One she recognized right away. “I’m sorry, but it can’t wait. Not anymore.”

  “Make it quick, then,” snapped Señora Reyes, and Dani thought she could feel the air in the hallway thin as Jasmín steeled herself for what was next.

  “I’m in trouble,” she said. “I need your help.”

  Another pause. No answer from her señora.

  Stop them, Dani beseeched the goddess of secrets and shadows. Move them into another room where I can’t follow.

  “It was months ago when it happened. Someone approached me, a girl from across the border. She asked me to . . .” Jasmín swallowed, hard. “She asked me to take Rodolfo’s schedule. Copy it. Bring it back to her.”

  “You didn’t!” gasped the señora, and Dani was all too familiar with the weight of her fear. The military boots. The windowless sympathizer cells.

  “Of course not,” Jasmín snapped. “But they’ve been back. They’re very . . . persistent.”

  “We’ll turn them in,” said Señora Reyes. “We’ll go out and tell young Señor Garcia this instant. He’s heading the initiative to . . .”

  “Stop,” said Jasmín. “That’s not all.” Another deep breath.

  Dani wished again that they’d go. Be interrupted. Save her from the choice she was about to have to make. But when had she ever gotten what she wished for?

  “They . . . know something. About me,” Jasmín said. “Something I’m not proud of, from back in school. Something that calls my Primera qualifications into question.”

  Dani felt the señora’s heart sink along with her own. Apparently, blackmail was La Voz’s preferred mode of operation.

  “They say if I don’t help them, they’ll tell Rodolfo about Juan Felipe. The affair while I was at school. They’ll tell the whole family. They’ll ruin me.”

  She sounded close to tears, but her mother shushed her quickly. “Can you go to Rodolfo?” her mother asked. “Surely after a year he’s invested enough not to throw you over for a youthful mistake.”

  Jasmín said nothing, but her expression must have spoken for her.

  “Niña, I need you to listen to me carefully,” said Señora Reyes, and for a moment Dani was stunned by the force of her envy. To have the woman who raised you nearby to turn to when things got difficult? Dani’s mama wouldn’t have known the first thing about what she was going through. Yet another way in which legacy upper-class wives held the advantage. Absurdly, she recalled Señora Garcia’s viper’s nest. She was certainly the most venomous one here, though the señora would likely be less than thrilled to find out why.

  “Do not do anything,” said Señora Reyes. “Do not speak of this to anyone. I will discuss it with your father, and we will find a solution. Until then, you will act as if this never happened. You will avoid these people, run from them if they approach you again. Do you understand?”

  “Yes.” Jasmín sniffed. “Thank you, Mother.”

  “Don’t thank me yet,” she answered darkly. “Now go clean yourself up. Dinner is starting in a few minutes, and people whispering about your puffy eyes is the last thing we want.”

  Jasmín’s footsteps were immediately audible. There was no time for Dani to escape. She could only ease the door closed, turn the faucet on full blast, and pray no one suspected she’d been listening.

  A minute later, there came a tap on the door, and Dani layered every shadow she had into a new lie.

  Dani took a deep breath.

  “Oh, Jasmín!” she said when she opened the door, pretending not to notice the slight widening of the other girl’s eyes, the fear like an aura around her. “I’m so sorry to hold you up, I just . . .” She sighed. “I needed a moment. It’s a lot, in there.”

  The fear in her face thawed by degrees. “I remember,” she said cautiously. “I spent half my first fund-raising event as a Primera hyperventilating in an upstairs coat closet.”

  Dani chuckled, as though this were helpful. “Thank you,” she said. “I needed that. I’ll get out of your way.”

  Jasmín ducked into the now empty doorway. “Hey,” she said, before closing the door. “Give me just a minute to clean up. I’ll head back with you, be your wingwoman in there.”

  Plus, you’ll give yourself a solid alibi. “You wouldn’t mind?” she asked instead.

  “Not a bit,” said Jasmín, a hint of that carefree, midnight smile on her lips.

  9

  Though a new wife’s roots will always inform her, the moment the marriage contract is signed, her loyalty belongs to her new family. To her husband, her household, and someday, her children.

  —Medio School for Girls Handbook, 14th edition

  IN THE DAYS FOLLOWING THE party, Dani’s life felt like the careful defusing of a bomb. There were no instructions, and if she cut the wrong wire, the whole thing would explode.

  At the center, the ticking clock was the fact that Sota had been right. Jasmín had given up La Voz. Her señora was looking for a way to undo the damage she’d done by daring to have a secret. Dani was supposed to be the obstacle in her path, but she still had a choice. She could say she hadn’t seen anything, lie to the boy she was supposed to be lying for.

  But what then? He’d find another contrived way to get them in the same room. He’d make her try again. And if Señora Reyes found a way to get back at La Voz for targeting her daughter, Sota would know she’d failed. He’d have every reason to turn her in. Endanger her family.

  His inevitable return hung over Dani’s life like a storm cloud. When the flowering vines outside her bedroom whipped against the window, she was up all night. When a new kitchen boy kept his back to her during dinner, she didn’t stop staring until he turned around, revealing a stranger’s face.

  When Carmen watched her from across the dinner table, those dark eyes inscrutable, Dani sometimes imagined she’d given it all away. That Carmen knew she’d betrayed her family and her country, betrayed them all.

  But Carmen never said a word, and Sota didn’t return.

  By the third day, it had become a kind of torture. There had been no word. No sight of him. All the glimpses she’d gotten had been her own mind inventing enemies where there were none, and she was left wondering if she’d dreamed the whole encounter.

  But then, on the fourth night, when she turned down her sheets, there it was. Right in the place he’d left his first note. A card, looking completely foreign amid the pristine order of her room. It took her a moment to realize what it was, but when she did at last, tears sprang unbidden to her eyes.

  This was no ordinary playing card. Not this far inland, anyway. Here, the playing cards sat unused in lacquered boxes, simple shapes and numbers inlaid on their surfaces in gold foil. They came out when the men at a party got too deep in their expensive liquor and one of them had something to prove.

  But the card in Dani’s hand was worn at the corners, its colors slightly faded from use. It spoke of the fine grit of the dirt near the border. The kind that stained more things than it grew.

  As she took in the image of a tall, commanding robed man—blue cape tossed over his shoulder with the carelessness afforded to the powerful, sword held loosely in one hand—the meaning came back as if the past ten years had folded into an hour. A minute.

  This is El Rey de Espadas, she heard in her mama’s deep, even voice. A person of strength, intellect, and ambition. A person who got things accomplished, who didn’t hesitate. Two tears fell, making dark splotch
es on the dusky purple of Dani’s dress. One and then the other before she got them in check.

  In Polvo, the only work available was for the men. Hard, manual labor that left their backs stooped and their joints aching far too young. Women stayed at home. Cared for the children. Prepared the meager meals. But Dani’s mother hadn’t been content to sit and wait for her husband to arrive home. She had wanted to do her part. So she carried the cards, wrapped in a rough cotton scarf she said still smelled like her own mother. With her apron pocket bulging around the deck, she took Dani on social calls, where the children would play while her mother laid the cards out patiently in long rows, their beautiful pictures enchanting Dani before she even knew what they meant.

  Her mama told the women of the town of small illnesses that were coming: a jealous eye on a child; a husband growing too fond of the fermented pineapple rind most families brewed in the dirt patches beside their houses.

  She brought good news, too, like a new baby coming or a letter from home. She gave the women of the town a feeling that they were ready for what came. When she whistled for Dani at the end of a session, her pockets were always a little heavier than when she arrived. Two speckled, blue eggs from the Moreno’s small coop; a chunk of honeycomb wrapped in wax paper; strips of dried meat pried from beneath Tía Elisa’s floorboard, where they’d been stored for hard times.

  Dani’s favorite was always the candy. Coarse brown sugar melted and hardened again and again into a flat, round disk that stayed sweet on Dani’s tongue for an hour.

  When she was old enough, she’d asked her mama to tell her how the cards worked, and they’d sat on the floor in the long evening hours while beans cooked on the little stove. The squat clubs of the Bastos, the round, golden coins of the Oros. By the time she was eight she knew their meanings by heart.