A Light with a Sharpened Edge

[maloscuridad]

He's left them all sitting on the grass outside of the new Mortiz house–outside of his new home too–with books open around them. Rose sits with The Kingdom of the Adas while Alex bends her heads over a massive tome with an unmarked cover. Seven months ago, he was squatting in abandoned apartments, convinced that Alejandra Mortiz would kill him on sight if she ever saw him again. Last night, she and her sisters and parents practically adopted him. And now he's going hunting for something to help anchor their father's memories and bring them back.

And he might get another Deathday. It's not every brujo that gets a do-over with a new family. One that's not too broken to give blessings. There's a risk that they might not accept him. He's not a Mortiz by blood and the Deos have always asked for blood. There's a chance, though, that his magic might not eat him alive.

In Los Lagos, Nova thought he was falling in love with Alex. It was more than her power that drew him to her. That's true now too but the love he feels for her, for all of the Mortizes, feels more real than the cautionary tale romance he once imagined. It's the kind of love he's never felt for his biological parents or siblings.

It's hard to concentrate on the search in front of him when all of those thoughts are swirling in his mind. Even with the heat on the back of his neck, all he can think about is this family. His family.

It's why he swears so loudly when a cat jumps on his lap and meows for attention. Nova stands up quickly and the cat leaps indignantly away but he doesn't notice. His skin prickles from the blowing AC as he glances around the building. This isn't where he was just a second ago. This probably isn't even Queens.

This definitely isn't Los Lagos either.

A door behind a counter full of decadent pastries (not as good as his grandmother's he thinks, immediately and defensively), advertises a Supernatural Private Investigation service. For a bleak second, Nova tries to convince himself he's just misread the THA's door for his entire life but that's a lie too big for him.

"What the fuck," he finally says.

Comments

[maloscuridad]

She's definitely something, if that's how she responds. No what are you talking about or that's not how you talk to a person, just a question for a question. Fine, he can do it that way. It's not like he has much choice but to play along when she's got all the cards.

"I'm a brujo," he says. Slowly, cop-asking-for-his-ID slowly, Nova raises one empty hand and conjures an orb of light. It shouldn't be all that bright compared to the effort he's putting it, but it pulses faintly and Nova can feel warmth coming from it.

[formicine]

"A witch," she says, feeling like she's parroting, and watches, both impressed and somehow not surprised enough as he summons light above his hand. It's a little like the orb that Ronan brought with them into the caves, only she doesn't think it can be held.

She can't help but reach out towards it anyway.

"I'm a witch, too," she says, "or that's what they tell me. Or half a tree-light, or a mirror." Blue shrugs one shoulder. "Big psychic battery, is what it all boils down to eventually. Not everyone can feel it, but it's like the signal gets clearer around me."

She smirks dryly. "And attracts weird shit, sometimes."

[maloscuridad]

"A brujo," he corrects, a little protective of that title. It means something to him, if only within that community. They might use magic but they are distinct from witches, their magic completely their own. "All brujos and brujas are witches but not all witches are brujas."

That she's a witch doesn't surprise him, though Nova wouldn't have gone for that term right away. A tree-light or a mirror. Those are less familiar terms but he can sort of see it, feel it in the way she reflects and amplifies the power in the room.

Slowly, Nova tips his palm forward so that the orb is within touching distance.

'Does that make me the weird shit?"

[formicine]

"A brujo," she corrects herself carefully, not sure what it means but understanding enough to know it's an important distinction to him, and one that she has no experience with and shouldn't argue about. It does, though, occur to Blue that she would have no idea how to repeat that same sentence in Spanish.

She can almost see the gears turning in his head, and she reaches to touch the edges of the light. Her smirk curls upward.

"I don't know you enough yet to know if you're weird shit," she says. "Probably not the weirdest, I can tell you that much."

[maloscuridad]

"That's fair," he says. "I'm not even the weirdest thing in my family." Not in his blood family and not among the Mortizes either, not when he'd been taken into a family that boasted an encantrix, a magical hacker, and a girl who loved so fiercely that she raised the dead. After all that, one measly light show was pretty boring.

"So you're making this stronger," he guesses, keeping his orb afloat. "Without it all coming out of me." Good, maybe if he sticks around her, he'll live longer.

[formicine]

"Me either," she says with an amused smile. "Well, unusual for my family, but not the weirdest." She's not sure how she would pit them against each other. Probably Persephone was the weirdest. Gwynllian, certainly, if she counts. If he means blood family, certainly Artemus is the weirdest, and she's only ever heard about his particular weird.

"Sort of," she says. "I'm making it easier for you to do it. It's not that you're not using your power, it's that you don't have to use as much as you would normally to do-- this. I can't do things like this on my own." There are things she can do, but they're all a little more esoteric. "It's like the way your phone charges faster plugged into the wall than your computer." The best table at Starbucks.

[maloscuridad]

"If you ever end up in Brooklyn, somehow, I either really wanna see you in a room with some of my friends. Or not at all." If this is what Blue can make with his weak-ass power, then he's pretty sure the Deos themselves would tremble if she got anywhere with the Mortiz clan.

"She's the most powerful bruja pretty much ever." He'd say it with pride but he doesn't get to lay claim to that, not when he's the one that almost killed her and her entire family.