Page 79 of A Game Cursed and Deadly

“Spelled, remember?” he says, and my mind flashes back to that day at Àvia’s house.

I press my hand to the stone wall of the mausoleum and take a deep breath in. “Tomb — this is my friend. Please let him in.” The height of the dome makes my voice echo.

The stone turns warm under my palm, and a rumbling shakes me all the way down to my toes. When I look up again, Tei is crossing the threshold, but his expression is far from satisfied.

“Your friend?” he spits out the word like it’s a capital offense.

Mei crosses her arms over her chest and huffs. “Now is really not the time for your hurt feelings, princeling.”

Hurt feelings? Because I called him a friend? Maybe partner, or collaborator, would’ve been better — something with less emotional connotation. But friend doesn’t feel so… wrong.

I change the subject. “So what is it exactly we look for, now?”

The smell of decaying flowers is heady enough to make my vision blur. Spinning slowly, I take inventory of the mausoleum’s interior. A circular room, tiled in alternating black and white marble. Niches dot the walls, marked by bronze plaques with the names of the deceased.

In the center of the room are four sarcophagi, each topped with the statue of a different woman reclining on a bed and covered in a blanket; their names are inscribed in the stone floor at their feet, and I take time to read them all.

Remei Parella Ossa, died in 1990.

Raquela Parella Clar, died in 1985.

Hortènsia Parella Soltero, died in 1958.

Ginebra Parella Hierro, died in 1930.

There’s three generations of Parella witches buried here. Mama didn’t get to be one of them. I run a finger along the ridges of cold stone on one of the statues. Based on their death years, either Remei or Raquela could be my great-grandmother.

“Any one of these four women was a matriarch at some point, so any one of them should’ve been buried with a copy of their grimoire,” Tei explains. “I’d avoid Remei — it looks like she was a spare.”

“A… spare?” I ask.

“A woman of the same generation as another matriarch, who outlived the first. When Raquela passed, Remei was next in line.”

My head is already spinning, but Tei isn’t done. “A witch’s power isn’t passed down to their offsprings equally — the first born will inherit the most, and each subsequent child will get substantially less. Which means spares aren’t necessarily the most powerful witches in the family, they’re just the second oldest.”

“That sounds…” I wrack my brain trying to think of an attribute, and come up short of anything other than: “complicated.”

Tei scoffs. He circles the sarcophagi until he’s standing by Raquela’s. “Ridiculous is what it is. Witches are servants of death, so they believe a certain advantage comes from being closer to it.”

I follow him, standing on the other side of the sarcophagus, and study Raquela’s statue, desperately trying to find familiar features. A full upper lip, with a barely pronounced cupid’s bow, or a wider, straight nose. Maybe I’m reaching with all of this, but I’m desperate enough for a connection that I don’t much care.

“In the Beyond,” Tei continues as his fingers look for a seam to pry the sarcophagus open. “Power is paramount. The strongest creature will always be the leader.”

I can’t really reconcile this idea of a cut-throat, ruthless Beyond, with the beautiful drawings of it in Tei’s book.

Mei floats by my side and leans over. “And then he wonders why I don’t want to go there.” She sounds like she’s joking, but there’s a tinge of sadness behind her snark.

“Don’t get started on that, you meddling ghost,” Tei huffs. He finally finds good leverage on the lid and pries it open, tips his head toward the content. “Search inside.”

I choke on a breath. “You want me to stick my hand in a grave?”

His forearms strain holding the lid up, veins pumping against his pale skin. “In this lifetime, little witch.”

I steady myself, fisting my hands against the stone, before fishing my hand inside. When it brushes against something hard and brittle, but that feels very much like a leg, I squeal. Against my better judgment I crouch down to take a peek inside; Raquela’s body is mostly decomposed, but not quite, looking more like a mummy than a skeleton. It makes a shiver run down my spine. Her cheeks are hollowed out and her empty eye sockets look like they’re watching me. I try to ignore the feeling as I continue to scan the coffin. A plethora of objects line the stone enclosure — mostly jewelry, some wooden trinkets that have seen better days. Her skeletal fingers are wrapped around a leather-bound black book. With a deep breath, I snake both hands inside to pry her fingers off as gently as I possibly can, sliding the book out.

“Of all the things I’ve done in my life, that takes the crown for most morbid.”

Then I open the book. It’s all in Catalan, but that’s not an issue. The thing that makes my stomach sink is that it looks a lot like my mother’s homemade spell book, with tons of handwriting and doodling.

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