THERE WERE two things I learned from my family, and one I'd taught myself.

The first thing I learned was from Abuela, on the night I paid a tentative visit to her study.

It was a grand room on the first floor of her home. If you could call a stone mansion of turrets, mushrooming along Fifth Avenue behind a staunch iron fence, a home. To me, the Pérez Estate was an early internment. A musty tomb. And she—the deceased in decrepit lace and graying curls—suffered from what Mr. Poe called a premature burial. One day, the guests that circled her like money starved vultures would open the tall mahogany front doors to find her in a desiccated heap on the floor. Her fingernails splintered from scratching at the unforgiving lock. Finally, finally dead.

I hadn't been back to Lennox Hill since that night. The night the butler let me in to see her. Palms sweaty, I stood in my patent leathers rehearsing my request. Only her ballroom had electricity. And the flames from the gas lamps breathed, swelling and fading, making my head ache.

So many different shades of red surrounded me; it felt like intruding inside someone's heart. Cranberry colored damask covered the walls, and a deep Merlau wine paint caked the floorboards under my worn soles. The wing chairs and the curtains and even the pillows were red.

She made me wait, there. Alone. Well, alone except for Destino. He lay on his belly between the wing chairs, front paws big as my spread hand, clutching the raw joint bone of some dead deino. He chewed it with grace. His fat, white, canines drooped past his chin like an elderly man's mustache. I listened to the scrape scrape of his teeth—his tawny coat tugged over his muscles with each swipe.

As dogs go, he was sweeter than most. A prize pedigree canid with a perfect conformation: massive shoulders, small hips, crouched hind legs. And I waited with him until Abuela entered the study, pushing open a section of the sprawling bookcase behind her desk.

"Evening, Grandmother," I said. It was a good start until she looked at me.

"Carmen, unclench your fists and stand up straight. You look like a waif begging at the corner."

Destino lifted his square head, drooling.

If she'd used any other comparison, my confidence might have survived the encounter. But she chose her words like the first pull of a trigger in a duel. I was all of those things, and she knew I'd come for money. She'd hit her mark square. Blam.

Nevermind that I was coming for what she owed me.

I put myself together long enough to say, "Grandmother, I want to go to school. I want to go to Bellevue so I can learn to be a doctor. Like Marcos."

Her skirts hugged the arms of her desk chair as she sat. "Carmen. You've been through school. "

"I know," I said, softly. "But—"

"Your brother is a man now. He can make his own decisions, and it's right for him to have a trade," she waved her hand as if summoning her next words from somewhere far away, "an amusement. Once you come out properly, you, mi nieta, will be married."

"I've already had my quinceañera. My mother—"

Abuela shook her head, "A party in the street is muy común, and does not a woman make. No, you will meet society the right way if you want to secure a future in this household. Besides, you have no funds."

I half expected her to flick her hand again, this time toward the door. You can go now, Carmen.

Destino grunted, heaving himself off the floor to stand beside me. His height surpassed my waist, and I was marked five-foot-eight-inches tall on the kitchen wall back home.

In my real home.

Having a giant dog hug my side gave me courage to continue. "But there is money, I've come to ask you for my dowry."

Abuela nearly stabbed her ledger with her pen. She stopped writing mid-sentence, braising me across the tops of her chopped spectacles. She was all bones and paper skin. You couldn't hug her without slitting your throat on her shoulder.

She didn't approve of hugs, anyway. Not since I'd turned seven.

"And what good are a few birds and a horse to a school like that?" she said.

"Grandmother..."

"That money is none of your concern," she said, going back to the books on her desktop, "not until you marry. Then you can do with it what you wish."

"I can't wait that long."

"Even God took six days to create the world."

I curled my fingers, nails in my palms, making fists at my sides. "You promised father."

Her glance cut to me, quicker and more painful than a cane lash.

I swallowed, but there was nothing in my mouth but dust. "You promised father you would look after us, I was there."

She slammed the ledger shut. I jumped in my dark blue walking suit. All the dyed fabric and black trim in the world couldn't protect me from her ire. It scorched me through my sleeves.

"You had one favor," said Abuela opening a drawer and shoving it closed again. She slapped a brace of blank checks down and clawed her pen across the first page. With a loud rip, she tore the perforation. "Consider it used, mi nieta, and don't expect me to sponge up your mess. I will not help you. In fact, I will do everything I can to make you regret this grievous decision."

I opened my mouth to speak.

"And before you ask me why, I will tell you myself. You choose tonight of all nights, Día de los Muertos, to remind me of my promises to my son. Do not think I am unaware of your disdain for this household—for this life. You are your mother's child. Disrespectful. Ungrateful. I never liked her, and I will not pay to raise her mistakes."

I shunted Destino aside and closed the length of the floor to her desk. Four carved feet, talons like a pterosaur, supported its solid weight.

"Ella nunca gustado usted ya sea," I said. She never liked you either.

I took the check. Anger made me brave, my own sense of morality made me smug. I forgot my fear. And staring into Abuela's eyes, into the swirled brown and gold—into the hate—I learned the difference between a threat and a lie. To ruin my life, Abuela would have crawled back from the grave. But Lenore—

I didn't have to see her face to know she was posturing. I could hear it in her scratchy voice. And in the way she held my hair, so careful not to hurt me. She'd even apologized for stealing my gun.

She wasn't a threat.

She was a lie.

The second thing I learned from my family, I'd learned from Marcos. No matter when or where, he always found a way to take control. That evening, in the garden, under the strung lanterns, he was the one who said: "visit Abuela and ask. She can't say no, not tonight. Not while the dead walk among us."

And he'd been right.

Now, it was my turn to take control.

I found my voice between memories and damp air, "Go ahead." I took a step forward, unhitching my braid from Lenore's half-hearted grasp. "But you'll have to shoot us both."

I turned on my heel, placing my body, once again, in front of a gun. In front of Hyo-su. "You can do it if you try. Two of us, one bullet. How good is your aim?"

Lenore grabbed the revolver in both hands to stop it shaking. "I-I don't need both of you."

"No, but you need me. I'm the doctor. And I will not go outside after dark."

Hyo-su touched the small of my back. I willed her to stay put, imagining her shoes turning to roots that buckled through the floor.

"You don't understand. You were supposed to—Charlie and me—I have to bring you home!"

There were two things I learned from my family, and one I taught myself. Abuela taught me conviction; Marcos, how to take charge; but I taught myself how to punch.

Dozens of evenings spent underground, watching men pound each other into beef patties along the abandoned platforms of the pneumatic, had not been wasted.

She didn't expect it. Too bewildered. Too tall. I punched her with my right fist, clipping her jaw at an angle. Her head turned and she crumpled, all elbows and knees, at my feet.

"Dios mío!" I snapped, vicious, and shook my stinging hand. The aftershock pierced my bones clear to my shoulder.

Hyo-su nodded, "She's got the hardest head."

Lenore lay on her back, eyes unfocused, stunned. I crouched down and retrieved my gun. Again. A man's boot sat discarded within reach. I started pulling the laces.

Once her wrists were secured, I took a second to catch my breath and lifted my shirt to check my stitches. I peeled up the edge of the scarf; Hyo-su's needlework pinched my bronze skin in a grim line. The double-thick thread was crusty. New blood grinning through the restraints.

"Doesss it hurt?" Lenore slurred, her teeth suddenly too big for her mouth.

I grabbed a fistful of her cloak. The fabric felt gritty, unwashed but damp, under my fingertips. "I'm beginning to think fifth floors are unlucky."

Hyo-su rolled her eyes and hooked her arms around Lenore's legs. Huffing a strand of dark hair off her forehead, she counted, slow,

"Hana, dhul, set..."

We both pulled on three. Lenore groaned as we jostled her, bending her in half. There's little dignity in carrying someone who weighed more dazed than cognizant, and even with Hyo-su's help, my body was too tired to hoist a sack of flour let alone a person.

My mind, though, was wide awake.

The room across the hall was exactly like the first only—without a brass cage and more pictures on the floor than the walls. We had to find a place clear of broken glass and splintered frames where we could safely set Lenore.

She was heavy.

"Easy, easy," I hissed, waddling backward. A hive of curls spilled into the crook of my elbow. On the floor, against the baseboard, seemed a good place. I tripped on my feet and skidded down the wall to the uneven wood planks. Lenore rested comfortably in my lap.

Hyo-su caught the matchbook I tossed her. I'd saved it in my pocket from the other room. There was an oil lamp on a dresser, and once there was light, Hyo-su went back outside for our dinner.

I shrugged my legs out from under Lenore's shoulders. She was coming back, little by little. I broke the wax foundation on candle melted to the floor—evidence. Someone else had been here since the end of the world. Lighting the candle's wick in the lamp flame, I kicked the shattered picture frames around, uncovering a hand mirror hidden under a canvas landscape.

The wall Lenore slumped against was painted blue—a robin's egg blue, like all the others—wan and greenish in the lamplight. Plaster showed in places, as subtle as a flash of drawers in public. Aside from a bed, dresser, and a washstand and basin, the only other furniture in the crowded room was an occupied rocking chair in the corner.

A very dead, very dried up woman sat upright on the caned seat. She reminded me of the apple dolls my mother made for me each fall when the fruit came into season. My mother liked to save the special ones from eating; sliding the lacquered skins off in an unbroken peel, carving pretty faces into the soft, white flesh underneath.

After a week or two in the cupboard, the faces weren't so pretty anymore. They were haggard and shriveled into ugly, sunken old women—Two gouged eyes, a sliced nose, and pinched mouth. Madré stitched together bodies for the heads on sticks. Rag dresses stuffed with wood shavings.

That's what the woman in the corner looked like. Except, the metal brace caging her leg also made her look like Madré—the last time I'd seen her.

"Hey, hey...focus on my face," I said to Lenore. Kneeling in front of her, I used the mirror and stubby candle and reflected a spot of light into each grist-gray pupil. "Good. Dilation is normal." I blew out the flame. "What's the date?"

Her brow scrunched. "October? I don't know the day."

To be fair, I didn't either.

"The year?"

"Ninty-six."

"Your name?"

"Lenore."

"And how old are you?"

She paused, thoughtful, "Eighteen and some months."

I heard Hyo-su shut the door. Her footsteps vibrated along the floorboards as she stomped in from the apartment's short hall. For a slight thing, she had the power of twin thunderstorms in her feet.

"I stuffed the quilt against the gap. Here, pluck this." She dropped the dead raptor beside me and went to move the delftware pitcher and bowl off the washstand. "Did she answer any useful questions yet? Like why she and Charlie were surveying us?"

"Surveying?" I said. Lenore closed her eyes. Head tipped back, lips drawn.

Hyo-su disemboweled a book, wading the pages into balls and dropping them into the bowl. "I walked the hall outside. This floor has been cleared, Carmen. Any cads I found—they've been dead dead for weeks. Someone killed them."

"Was that you?" I asked, backhanding Lenore's crossed ankles. Her lips scrunched tighter.

No answer.

I wasn't in the mood to fight. Taking up a seat beside her, I eased the pressure on my spine and tucked the raptor between my knees, gripping a fistful of olive-colored plumage. "Don't fall asleep," I muttered under my breath. "You could die."

She stirred enough to let me know she'd heard me. I jerked my arm. Coarse feathers ripped loose, clinging to my pants.

Hyo-su made a fire in the basin, catching a flame on the paper and feeding it parts of a walking stick she'd found and snapped into usable pieces. It took patience. Dicing the raptor and blackening the cubes of stringy meat. But soon enough, we were eating.

Food, no matter how gamey, made the world better.

"It seems we got a new Fresh," I said, shedding my tattered half gloves and using the cleanest parts to wipe my greasy fingers. I tossed them into the shadows under the bed and crossed my legs to rest my elbows on my knees. A stray feather stuck to the inside of my cheek. I swept it out with a forefinger. My skin tasted like blood and ash with a hint of smokey-sweet whiskey.

Whiskey.

Hyo-su eyed the quiet Lenore, who'd managed to ignore my warning and actually fall asleep. I made a mental notation to wake her up, soon. I was sure she didn't have a concussion, but I almost killed her once today...

"Oh, you want to take her with us now?"

I wiped my mouth on my shirt sleeve. "She put a gun to your head—my head. I was upset. Besides, I thought you disagreed with leaving people behind."

"That was before she tried to kidnap us—ai!" Hyo-su grimaced as she forgot herself, leaning on her bruised hand.

I motioned for her to let me examine it. The food in her belly made her congenial and she allowed me to feel; probing for broken bones, testing her dexterity in the simmering light from the basin bowl. Shadows cocooned us—loose veils hung from the ceiling, slender silhouettes ghosted the walls.

"What if you're right," I loosened the ratty cravat looped insensibly around my neck and started wrapping her knuckles, "what if...what if they were waiting for us? Surveying us." I tucked the tails on the knot and asked her if the bandage was too tight.

"It's fine," said Hyo-su, wriggling her fingers without wincing, her eyes on the sleeping Lenore. "So what if they were? They aren't now."

But why would they be? My gaze strayed to Lenore's wounded thigh. She hadn't wanted me to look. She'd pushed my hands away. Something about her clothing—the cloak and the breeches and the ladies high-collared shirtwaist all in black—reminded me of someone else.

The shock of red, like blood.

I shifted onto my knees.

There were people you wanted to see again, desperately, and then there were people you hoped had died in a wave of torturous anguish because their mother or brother or closest friend resurrected to chew their face off.

Hyo-su questioned me, but I was too busy pulling the fabric off Lenore's leg to tell her why.

Lenore woke with a sharp breath, raising her bound hands, defensive. Like I might hit her, and then, like she might hit me. "What the hell are you doing?!"

Hyo-su whistled between her teeth. It startled me too—until I realized she'd taken up my gun and was pointing it at Lenore.

The stiff edges of the slashed breeches tore easily. Lenore's jaw worked a muscle, clenched in anger as I leaned back on my heels and stared.

A worn dressing cinched her upper thigh. A square of folded cloth covered the worst of it and threads stuck to the wound as I tugged gently to have a look.

There it was. On the outside of her thigh. Two angry cuts—one vertical, one horizontal intersecting in the way of a holy cross. The cuts were healing, rough, but when they finally closed over, there'd be a distinct scar.

A brand.

"Who did this to you?"

He brought them, cold dead and naked, every second Wednesday. At night in the alley, where the streetlamps and the coppers couldn't see.

"Who? Him? He saved my life."

Eyes and mouth stitched shut. Tied up and marked. Always marked. On the right leg like an animal's haunch. Twenty dollars a piece. Forty, for one fresh dug.

"Who?!" I tried to control my voice, but it cracked when I shouted. Calm, Meza.

Lenore rocked her head into the plaster, resigned. "Mr. Morte."

Her accent—flat—hashed the rolled R and the delicate -teh. Making it ugly. I laughed, but nothing was funny. "That, is not his real name."

"You know this man?" Hyo-su asked.

Of course, I knew him. He was my mess.

✣ ✣ ✣

Lenore took her dinner off the textured cover of a Charles Dickens novel while I took the first watch. We never slept outside of the hotel unless one of us stayed awake. And I was too disturbed to even try and snag my already elusive hours. All I'd gotten from Lenore was her errand: to bring Hyo-su, Jennie, and me back to Mr. Morte. Unharmed, if possible. Still alive if not. She and Charlie had watched Carron's for weeks, waiting for their moment. Easy. Like eating pie.

Until Jennie died and the cads got Charlie whole.

"I'm not sorry he's gone," she said, staring far away, beyond the blue walls and into the dark. Charlie, it seemed, had a penchant for violent outcomes and Lenore had been sent along to balance this personality...Her height was imposing, I guess. "But Mr. Morte, he'll be upset when he finds out I've failed. I don't know what he'll do."

"He can't hurt you if he can't find you," I said.

Lenore sniffed and shook her head. "You don't know him."

No. I really did.

But I borrowed from Lenore and kept my answers vague. All I said was, I have to speak with Seth—which was true—but mostly, I didn't want to talk about the things rattling around inside my brain.

After a while, Hyo-su gave up her questions and went to bed.

Mostly, I just didn't want to talk about Wade Simon—Mr. Morte. Or whatever he was known as these days.

"Bastard."

Hyo-su rolled over on the dusty mattress. The bed's joints squeaked and with my back against the washstand, I could see her, watching me. Her cheek pillowed on her arm.

"How bad is this man?" she asked, her voice sleep-laced and foggy.

Lenore snored, soft. I'd redressed her wounds, but I couldn't unsee the purposeful gashes in her freckled skin. She snuggled on the floor, hidden under her cloak the way little Rosita liked to sleep in her crib under her blanket.

I stroked my thumb over Marcos's watch, smudging my oily fingerprints across the polished lid.

"He's a ghoul," I said.

When I finally slept—eyes closing to the sight of charcoal lamp-smoke writhing to stain the ceiling—I was back where I usually was when my mind closed and my unconscious ran rampant like typhoid in the lower districts.

I was on an island.

The air smelled like dry hay and stale fruit. Sweet decay and rotten things, swelling exponentially in the heat, and bursting open like a bloated corpse under a well-placed stick. But this time,

Wade was there, all in black, with two red hands.

☛ A/N: For anyone who is interested, don't forget to check out my Pinterest board for Bonedead (link in bio). Thank you for the read! If you liked it, please don't forget to ★ vote ★