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  For all the separated families that will never be whole again.

  Y para Papá, mi inspiración, gracias por enseñarme a soñar.

  Tus ojos abiertos son la única luz que conozco de las constelaciones extintas.

  —PABLO NERUDA

  Your wide eyes are the only light I know from extinguished constellations.

  —PABLO NERUDA, TRANSLATED BY STEPHEN TAPSCOTT

  PHASE I

  1

  I inhale hints of Buenos Aires.

  We must be by the border. My heart catapults into my throat.

  The air has grown so dark that I can’t make out the portal’s rocky walls. I have no idea what happens when I reach the checkpoint and come face-to-face with a border agent.

  All I know is that Tiago, Saysa, and Cata walk beside me. After everything we’ve been through, the one thing I’m sure of is, I’ve found where I belong. With my friends.

  They’re my manada. My pack.

  Tiago’s fingers squeeze mine, like he can read my thoughts. The surrounding blackness has become so opaque that it obscures even the glow of our eyes.

  Countless Septimus march with us, our collective footfalls whispering across this passage that bridges two realms of reality. We’re returning to Earth from Lunaris, a land of magic and mist and monsters that’s the source of our power.

  By law—and bio-magical imperative—brujas and lobizones sojourn in that realm every full moon.

  We’re here, I think as I breathe in notes of coffee, leather, and paper. But when I’m hit with Ma’s almond scent, I know I’m not actually smelling my homeland. I’m inhaling Ma’s memory of it.

  That’s how she described Buenos Aires to me a month ago. A lifetime ago.

  The last day we ever shared together.

  I used to think I grew up in hiding in Miami because Ma and I were undocumented and on the run from my father’s crime family, who’d killed him for attempting to abscond with her. But the true story isn’t even in the same genre.

  Turns out, I’m not entirely human. I’m also part Septimus—a cursed species of Argentine witches and werewolves.

  And my father is very much alive.

  All these years, he’s been a teacher at a magical school just a couple of hours away.

  Ma’s almond scent has been teasing me since we left Lunaris, like she might be around every dark corner. Tiago warned me the portal crossing would jostle my senses, and the most powerful memories from the past moon could break through the surface.

  But I know Ma isn’t really here.

  She’s in a detention center in Miami, awaiting deportation.

  That’s why I’m traveling to Kerana, the Argentine city where most Septimus live. In such a populous place, my friends and I will have a better chance of avoiding discovery by the Cazadores. Law enforcement. And once I’m in Argentina, I’ll find a way to reunite with Ma.

  Light floods the tunnel, and the walls wilt into a massive underground station. I blink as Septimus swarm around us, rushing toward the checkpoints ahead, probably eager to get home and sleep.

  But my own legs grow leaden as I see the border agents in the distance, flipping through Huellas—Septimus documentation. And the old mantra runs through my mind: Don’t come here, don’t come here, don’t come here.

  In the human realm, discovery meant deportation.

  Here, a hybrid like me is subject to execution.

  Tiago’s hand squeezes mine, and I realize I’ve stopped walking.

  “You all right, Manu?”

  His voice is a song.

  I look up, and I’m enfolded in a blaze of sapphire. Tiago caresses my cheek with his thumb, and I hear the shakiness of my exhale.

  “We have to keep moving,” says Cata, her face wan. Beside her, Saysa’s blank expression is inscrutable, her presence unusually muted.

  I reach into my dress pocket and touch my forged Huella. Saysa’s friend Zaybet made the passport-like booklet for me in Lunaris. This will be its first test.

  Even though it’s a fake, just holding this paperwork makes me feel like less of a forgery myself. Growing up, there were no photographs of Ma and me around the apartment, no documents of any kind proving I exist. And while the details in this Huella may be falsified, at least it’s my face inside.

  Evidence I’m real.

  I exist.

  We keep wending through the throng, and it strikes me that no Septimus travels alone. They move around in clusters, and when I glimpse a pack of guys doing a double take of our group, I know I haven’t been imagining the looks we’re getting.

  It must be my eyes.

  My sun-like irises stand out in all my worlds. Even Septimus don’t have yellow eyes.

  I keep my gaze low, and I feel Tiago’s tension from the way he picks up his pace, pulling Cata and Saysa forward. Then he gives my shoulder a quick squeeze before walking away from us.

  I stare after him in speechless shock, until it registers that all the wolves are splitting off in the same direction. There are separate checkpoints for brujas and lobizones.

  I feel the urge to follow Tiago, but I’m back to pretending I’m a bruja. A lobizona would draw too much attention. And, as Ma likes to say: Attention breeds scrutiny.

  So I’m a secret again.

  “Come on,” says Saysa, leading me away from Cata.

  There are distinct zones for each of the four elements. The breezy area we’re cutting through is where the Invocadoras are—wind witches—and I watch Cata join their queue. The temperature drops a few degrees as we pass the Congeladoras—water witches—then Saysa and I line up in the toastier section designated for Jardineras. Earth witches.

  The heat isn’t coming from us. To our other side, and at the far end of the space, are the Encendedoras. I don’t need to look at the fire witches to feel their presence.

  I’m afraid if I turn my head, I’ll meet Yamila’s bloodred eyes.

  Ever since the ambitious Cazadora discovered my existence, she’s been intent on hunting me down. My arrest would be career-making. My friends and I just barely got away from her in Lunaris, right before entering the portal. It’s only thanks to Saysa we made it out.

  But some magic comes at a higher cost.

  I clutch the forged Huella in my pocket. I wish Saysa would say something reassuring, but she’s haunted by what she did. Her already tiny figure seems even smaller, and her deep brown skin has lost its warmth, shadows encroaching on her face.

  As our line moves forward, I begin to feel a familiar alarm. And I flash back to crawling under Perla’s bed, while ICE agents pounded on our neighbor’s door.

  Perla is my ninety-year-old surrogate grandmother. She took Ma and me in years ago, homeschooling me and letting us live rent-free in exchange for looking after her.

  Memories of El Retiro accelerate my panic, and I lock my jaw to keep my teeth from chattering. I can’t stray too close to thoughts of everything I’ve lost, or I’ll lose all my
resolve.

  I have to think more encouraging things.

  Like discovering El Laberinto, an ancient city of crumbling stone structures that looks like it was swallowed by the Everglades. That’s where I made my first friends. They saw the real me and accepted me. It was also there that, after trying on and discarding too many identities, I found the right one.

  Not human.

  Not bruja.

  But lobizona.

  As if the word summons the shift, a shiver trails down my belly. There’s only one small group in front of us, then it’s Saysa’s and my turn.

  I feel the twist in my uterus, and I bite down to keep from gasping.

  I’m going to transform.

  Yet the heat of the shift is countered by another sensation, a cold sweat that reminds me of the day the Cazadores popped into Señora Lupe’s class for a surprise inspection of our Huellas. I’m having a panic attack.

  Only now that I’m a lobizona, my anxiety seems to trigger the transformation.

  I want to say something to Saysa, but she’s still not looking at me. As the group of Jardineras ahead of us steps forward, I want to beg her to calm me down, distract me, but she might as well not be here.

  There’s a rush of conversations going on around us, and I’m still getting a lot of stares. I wish I could slip on my sunglasses, like I used to do as a human in Miami, but Septimus must always show their eyes.

  Particularly brujas, as each element is associated with a pair of colors: Purples and pinks for Invocadoras, blues and grays for Congeladoras, browns and greens for Jardineras, and reds and blacks for Encendedoras. My only hope is that my yellow eyes pass off as a very light shade of amber.

  My fingertips tingle, like my claws are struggling to come out.

  I can’t stop this from happening.

  I need help.

  “H-hey,” I manage to say to Saysa. It feels hard to use my voice, and the word sounds strangled.

  She stares at me, startled. Like I’m already in wolf form. And something seems to dawn on her because her lime-like eyes grow round, and she whispers, “Oh no.”

  I want to ask, but I’m afraid if I open my mouth, my fangs will slide out.

  She keeps scanning me, like she’s trying to find a solution in my dress. Then she mumbles something too low for any of the brujas to hear. “You bathed in La Fuente de Flores Feroces.”

  The Fountain of Fierce Flowers, I translate. What the fuck does that mean?

  She doesn’t repeat herself because the agent calls, “¡Próxima!”

  Next!

  I’m either going to transform or throw up. If I move, I’ll implode.

  Sweat pools along my hairline, making my scalp itchy. Saysa steps up, and I know I need to go with her, but I’m primed to shift.

  I suck in an inhale, my bones buzzing as I fight to contain them, and I drag my feet forward.

  When I’ve made it over, Saysa has already handed the agent her light green Huella. The Cazadora compares the likeness to Saysa, then she flips through the pages.

  “Estás estudiando en El Laberinto,” says the agent, studying her. “¿Qué hacés acá?”

  You’re a student at El Laberinto. What are you doing here?

  “Lunación.” Saysa summons a carefree demeanor from some other universe and flashes the Jardinera her winningest smile. I’ve never heard the term, but it sounds like a mix between the Spanish words for moon and vacation.

  The agent returns Saysa’s Huella, and at last she looks at me. I’m sure I must be a sweaty, wide-eyed mess.

  She doesn’t hold out a hand for my Huella.

  She just frowns.

  My pulse echoes in my head, and I feel the rush of blood as my skeleton begins to crack—

  “By law,” she says in Spanish, narrowing her gaze, “brujas must match their clothes to their eye color in Kerana. Or have you forgotten?”

  I’m not even breathing as she examines my dress.

  “Why is your garment gray?”

  I blink, unsure how to answer. I’d forgotten I traded dresses with Bibi in Lunaris to get past the Cazadores guarding the Citadel. My golden dress was too conspicuous. This is what Saysa must’ve noticed.

  “I bathed in La Fuente de Flores Feroces,” I hear myself say.

  The agent surveys me a moment longer, examining my eyes, and I hold my breath, not daring to make a sound.

  “Those flowers have a mind of their own,” she says at last. “But they usually dye fabrics in brighter shades.”

  I don’t say anything as she holds up her palm, and I hand over my golden Huella. She takes her time examining every page, like she finds my story a little too interesting. Then she looks up, and from the way she’s staring at me, I know she has questions.

  What if she grills me about La Mancha, the manada I’m claiming to be from? I don’t know anything about it—

  Shouting breaks out at the other end of the station, where the wolves are. The agent looks over, along with the other officials, to see what’s happening. Since brujas don’t have heightened senses, none of them can make out what’s going on.

  I squint in the direction of the wolves, honing my hearing, until I make out that it’s more of a howl-cheer. They’re celebrating something. Or someone.

  “Take it,” says the Jardinera, stuffing my Huella back in my hand. Then instead of calling up the next group, she leans back to listen to the update that a Cazador is bringing over to her and the other brujas.

  Saysa and I join the crowd headed to the exit, toward the city beyond. As we climb uphill, I inhale a stream of fresh air.

  It’s still dark out, and tendrils of silver reach down like the moon is guiding us home. I’m aware that Saysa and I are avoiding each other’s gazes. It feels like we just pulled off a major heist, and we’re waiting to celebrate until we’re in the clear.

  I’m free.

  In my ancestral homeland.

  With my pack.

  Yet as I bite back a grin, high off my newfound freedom, I know it’s only illusory. Even if Yamila rests today, she’ll still strike tomorrow.

  We both know I can’t run for long. In four weeks, on the next full moon, we’ll have to take a portal back to Lunaris. She could mobilize the entire force of Cazadores by then, and I won’t have anywhere to hide.

  It’s not a question of if the Cazadora will catch up with me …

  It’s a matter of when.

  2

  Kerana is a woman and a land.

  The first time I heard her name was in the history of the Guaraní, people indigenous to South America who were massacred when Europeans colonized the continent. In their stories, Kerana is the granddaughter of the first man and woman created.

  According to Septimus lore, a demon broke out of Lunaris and impregnated Kerana, forcing her to birth a line of cursed children. From then on, all seventh sons were born lobizones, and all seventh daughters were born brujas.

  When the earliest Septimus banded together to form the first manada, they traced their magic to las Cataratas de Iguazú. The largest waterfalls in the world.

  Iguazú also comes from the Guaraní. Legend has it a deity wanted to marry a woman named Naipí, and when she fled with her mortal lover in a canoe, the deity sliced the river, creating the waterfalls and separating the lovers for eternity.

  Within Iguazú, the Septimus found a hybrid realm that exists between Earth and Lunaris. This border world saved the species from human persecution.

  It became their motherland.

  So they named it Kerana.

  * * *

  We just traded the giant dandelion fields and mountainous rock formations of Aires for a manada named Belgrano, a bustling city built into the leafless trunks of colossal purple tree-buildings. Bald branches break off from every story, operating as landing docks for hot-air balloons, which seem to be this community’s preferred mode of transportation.

  Lining the streets, and in the crevices between tree-buildings, are clusters of spindly blu
e-gray organisms that every now and then disappear and reappear.

  Don’t step on the mushrooms.

  It’s the number one rule for traveling through the manadas of Kerana—and if Tiago, Cata, or Saysa reminds me one more time, I will strangle them. I already got the message loud and clear when I watched a girl step on a white button-cap and get sucked through the ground.

  Gaping at the spot where she vanished, I tugged on Cata’s arm to ask where she went, and she just said, “El Hongo.”

  The Mushroom.

  Then she hissed at me to keep my ignorance to myself until we’re alone. But privacy is hard to come by these days.

  The four of us slow down by an opening in a purple trunk, where an enticing aroma lures us in for closer inspection. We study the menu posted outside a place called Parrillada Paraíso.

  “They have lomitos,” I say, my voice low with longing.

  Tiago’s stomach growls his assent. We’ve run through almost all our semillas—Septimus currency—so this could be our last good meal for a while.

  Semillas are seeds collected in Lunaris that grow into plants whose leaves produce powerful potions. The rarer the seed, the higher its value.

  It’s been three days since we crossed the border into Kerana, and I’ve learned that manadas cover their residents’ basic needs—housing, food, clothing, education—and in turn, residents contribute most of the semillas they earn to their manada. Households that earn above their contribution can afford things like vacations, nicer clothes, fancier homes.

  Basically, one’s manada funds their life, and one’s savings funds their lifestyle.

  “We’ll go in. You two wait here.” Saysa’s terse tone is indistinguishable from Cata’s these days.

  Tiago and I only nod. Since there are werewolf ears everywhere, we’ve adopted a minimal speech regimen.

  There’s a flash of light on a bough above us, and I watch an Invocadora land a sun-yellow balloon. She springs out from the basket right as a pack of transformed wolves bounds past, scaling the branches to reach higher stories. There are no leaves obscuring the view—just smatterings of colorful balloons—and I can see all the way to where the purple treetops tickle the blue sky.