Charlie Hernández & the Castle of Bones Read online

  Sighing, I pulled the sheets over my face, starting to feel a little overwhelmed. A lot overwhelmed, actually. We needed answers. Needed them badly… No, what we needed was help.

  My mind flashed to El Justo Juez, to El Cadejo—arguably two of the most powerful and legendary sombras of all time. El Justo Juez is, like, the king of Salvadoran folklore, the headless horseman who roams the night, hunting criminals and outlaws; and El Cadejo, who takes the form of a huge white dog, is literally the divinely appointed guardian of the human race. They’d each saved my life on multiple occasions and were two of the cleverest sombras I’d ever met; they would know what to do. They’d know how to help Joanna. But the question was, where were they? And what were they up to? I hadn’t seen either one in days.

  Definitely not the best time to go pulling a disappearing act, guys.…

  Honestly, I don’t think they could have picked a worse time. Rolling over, I buried my face in my pillow, trying to slow my racing mind. And surprisingly, I managed to fall asleep for a bit. Though it wasn’t long before a sound had me snapping awake.

  I lay perfectly still in the pitch-dark room, listening—and heard it again.

  A soft thump.

  Or was it—a footstep?

  With my heart slamming against my ribs with the force a jackhammer, I reached slowly out for the lamp on my bedside table—

  And that was when my bedroom window flew open!

  My breath stopped. My heart stopped. Every cell in my body went absolutely glacial as a figure appeared, silhouetted against the night sky. I was too terrified to run. Too terrified to even open my mouth to scream! But somehow my fingers found the light switch.

  The lamp snapped on, flooding the room with light—

  And what I saw next nearly sent me tumbling out of bed!

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  VIOLET, what the HECK?” I rasped. ¡Santo cielos! She’d scared the albóndigas out of me!

  “Were you sleeping?” she asked almost innocently, poking her head in through the window.

  Tossing my covers aside, I jumped to my feet. “Was I sleeping? Of course I was SLEEPING! That’s what people do in a bedroom!”

  She giggled, then waved her hand like she wanted to shut me up. “Shhhhhhh! You’re going to get us caught!”

  “Get you caught, you mean. I’m not doing anything where getting caught would be a problem!”

  “Not yet, you’re not.” Violet grinned at me. My stomach did some kind of weird fluttery thing. Then she pulled herself through the window and into my room in one smooth, practiced motion. If I had to guess, I’d say she’d done that exact same move a thousand or so times through a thousand or so windows all across Greater Miami-Dade County. It worried me, to say the least.

  “And how’d you unlock my window from the outside? Huh?” I’d literally watched my mom double-check the latch.

  “Skills, Charlie… mad skills.”

  My heart still a runaway locomotive in my chest, I rushed over to the window and looked down—no ladder. Which meant she’d scaled the side of my house using nothing but the flimsy old rain gutter and raw grip strength. Not bad.

  “What are you even doing here?” I whisper-shouted. Though maybe I shouldn’t have been so surprised; this was, after all, typical Violet, wasn’t it? For her, rules weren’t made to be broken—they were made to be ignored, trampled on, and, in most cases, simply obliterated.

  “I’m here to bust you out.”

  “Hey, in case you haven’t noticed, this isn’t a prison! I don’t need busting…” I trailed off, watching as she quietly dumped the contents of my book bag onto the floor, opened my dresser, and began rummaging through it for T-shirts and shorts, which she quickly stuffed into said book bag.

  Before I could ask what in the world she was doing, she said, in a breezy sort of way, “Why is there a hunk of bread glued to your ceiling?”

  I glanced up—and nearly passed out from embarrassment. My mom had apparently used an extra-large piece for my room. You could’ve made a Subway party sub out of that thing.

  Kill me now.

  “Get the midnight munchies much?” I heard Violet ask as she giggled to herself.

  “No, I don’t get the midnight munchies…,” I hissed. “And forget the bread! It’s not even bread. It’s art. You know, the modern kind? Anyway, the real question is, what are you doing now?”

  “Helping you pack. I bought us two tickets to Brazil. Used my mom’s traveler’s rewards card, so I scored a pretty sweet deal. Our ride is waiting for us in the driveway.”

  My eyes bugged. “Are you insane? My mom clearly told me not to leave this room. Which, in other words, means I can’t leave my room! ”

  “Charlie, you defeated one of the scariest, most evil witches in the entire world, and you’re scared of your mommy?”

  “Scared? More like terrified. Have you ever watched a Dolphins game with that woman? Especially one where they blow a big lead?”

  Rolling her eyes, she continued rummaging around in my dresser.” You still wearing cartoon underwear, huh?”

  “What? Those aren’t mine.” I felt my ears turning pink.

  “Charlie, they’re in your drawer.…” Then, digging a little deeper: “Oh my gosh, you have the complete Power Rangers set!” She glanced back at me with eyes so blue they seemed to sparkle in the glow of my night lamp.

  “I don’t wear those, okay? They’re collectibles! Now put them back!”

  She pulled out another pair. My favorite pair too. “You even have Tommy the Green Ranger! I had such a crush on him,” she said with her trademark million-megawatt smile. I tried not to look directly at it.

  “Would you please stay out of there?” I snatched at my underwear, but she was too quick, so I gave up and just shut my dresser drawer instead.

  V’s playful expression faded, and she turned serious. “Charlie, we have to find Joanna. And we have to find her now. You know this. So why are you wasting time?”

  “Look, of course I know that, but you heard my mom. She said no. In fact, I have a feeling she might not let me leave the house. Like, ever again.”

  “Charlie, if we don’t help Joanna, pretty soon you might not have a house. No one might. La Mano Peluda is up to something. I mean, you saw that thing in Portugal. We have to save the queen!” She paused. “Listen to me—I sound like I’m British, but you know what I mean.”

  The worst part about this conversation was that I knew she was right.… Violet usually was.

  I sighed. “Then give me my lucky pair of Green Ranger underwear, ’cause we’re gonna need it.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  I couldn’t believe it, but there was a very blue, very familiar minivan parked in my driveway. I slid open the side door, and big surprise, there were Alvin Campbell and Sam Rodriguez, my two best and, besides Violet, only friends. Alvin, Sam, and me had started our own Latin rock band—we called ourselves Los Chicharrones—and about a week ago we’d even almost gotten to play in front of a huge television audience on a Spanish talent show. It would’ve definitely been our biggest gig to date (we usually played “solo gigs,” meaning we only played in front of one person—that being Sam’s uncle, and mostly because he happened to live smack-dab in the middle of our jam studio—i.e., Sam’s garage), but I’d kind of messed that all up for us while running around Miami with Violet trying to figure out why I was sprouting feathers and horns and what had happened to my parents. The guys both claimed they’d forgiven me, but I wasn’t sure I bought it—sometimes I still caught them flinging corn kernels at me during lunch.

  “Your carriage awaits, my good sir,” Alvin said, jerking his head so that his mop of curly orange hair flipped back out of his eyes. His Dwyane Wade bobblehead doll grinned at me from the dashboard.

  “So glad we got to meet one last time before your funeral,” I told him. “ ’Cause your mom’s gonna kill you when she finds out.…”

  “I know,” he said, “but Violet calls me up, and I’m al
l, OMG it’s Violet Rey, and she’s, like, calling me! I mean, how do you turn down Violet Rey? She’s Violet Rey!”

  “If that’s going to be your excuse, you might as well save your mom the trouble.”

  “Dude, no girl has ever called me before. What was I supposed to do?”

  “Dang, good point,” I said, rolling my eyes. “What about you, Sam?”

  “No girl’s ever called me, either, hermano.” He grinned at me.

  Nice. Dumb and dumber. “Great going, guys.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  To say Alvin was a bad driver would be an insult to bad drivers everywhere. Fortunately, this was Miami, and no one followed the traffic laws, so we didn’t really stick out as we ran red lights and stop signs, swerved in and out of our lane without signaling, almost hit a light post, and threw in the occasional illegal U-turn. I had no idea how we made it to Miami Beach alive (or without being stopped by a cop), but twenty minutes later we’d pulled into the dark, tree-lined parking lot in front of the Provencia. The digital clock on the dash read 3:55 a.m.

  “You two wait here,” Violet said to the guys. “We’ll be in and out.”

  Alvin grabbed my arm. “Dude, hold up. I was going to give you this when we got to the airport, but I don’t wanna forget.” He dug around in the glove compartment and brought out what looked like—a pink dog collar?

  I frowned. “What is that?”

  “Sort of like a good-luck charm.”

  “Isn’t that your dog’s collar?”

  “Not anymore, dude. Sissy’s been dead for almost a year now.”

  I gave him an annoyed look. “I know that, Al. Thank you. So you’re giving me your dead dog’s collar…?”

  “Damn straight I am,” he said with a proud grin. “Sissy was a champ! Plus, it’s waterproof, fireproof, shock resistant. It’s even got GPS tracking. It’s basically a G-Shock for dogs.”

  Was he for real? “Al, I don’t bark. I’m not wearing that.”

  “Dude, why not? It’s a choker. It’s totally punk. Punk is in nowadays.”

  Sam was nodding his head. “Punk is in, hermano.…”

  “They’re right,” Violet agreed half-heartedly. “Punk’s definitely trending.”

  Trending? Seriously? “Fine. Then you guys wear it.”

  “C’mon, man,” Alvin said. “Put it on. For me.”

  “What? No. Why do you want me to wear that?”

  “Because I gotta know you’re gonna be safe, man!” Alvin’s expression suddenly turned serious, earnest. His voice was low as he said, “Look, I know there’s a whole lot of freaky stuff going on in the world, and I don’t ask you to tell me about it or whatever—you know I already get panic attacks just thinking about putting a demo together—but you’re my best friend, and I don’t want to have to sit around wondering if you’re safe or not, man. God forbid anything bad happens, at least I’ll know I gave you something that maybe could’ve helped. The police can track this thing, dude.” He turned the collar around. “And see this button? You press it, and it’s like an emergency signal. Help will be on its way before you know it.”

  “That’s almost touching,” Violet said. “Weird, but touching.”

  Alvin held the collar out to me. “Do it for me, dude?”

  I sniffed it. “Smells like flea-and-tick shampoo.”

  “Oh, gimme a break.…” Violet snatched the collar, attached it to one of her necklaces, then slung it around my neck. “There. Everyone happy?”

  I gave it another sniff. “Not really,” I admitted.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Not so surprisingly, Joanna’s study still looked like a war zone when we walked in. In fact, it looked even worse now that the smoke had mostly cleared from the air, and this huge, twelve-foot-tall, cobbled-together sculpture of a grinning minairon doing a sort of Superman pose—chest out, hands on hips—now dominated the room. Guess that last one was my fault, though.

  “What are we doing here, anyway?” I asked Violet.

  “Saw a few things last time that we should probably take with us.…” She went behind Joanna’s desk, kicked aside some papers, and picked up an old-looking map. Its edges had been charred a little and there were few pencil-size holes in the middle, but otherwise it was in good shape. “It’s a map of Brazil,” she said, blowing off some of the ash. “Might come in handy.”

  “Smart,” I said. Hey, I’d never been to Brazil, so anything that was going to help us get around was more than welcome. “You’re almost starting to make me feel better about this. Almost. Anything else?”

  “Yeah, I saw this awesome steel compass somewhere around here, and one of those old-school navigational thingamajigs with the…” Her voice trailed off, her gaze moving toward the hallway with the golden archway. “Wait, wait, wait.”

  “What? What’s wrong?”

  “Those tracks…”

  Glancing around, I said, “You mean the ones that are literally everywhere…?” And they were. I didn’t think there was a single patch of floor that didn’t have prints on it.

  “The ones leading to the mirror,” she said.

  I shook my head. To El Espejo? I was pretty sure those had been there yesterday. “What about them?”

  Violet thought for a sec. “Do you remember how the minairon told us that it heard a door open before the talking started?”

  “Yeah, so?”

  “Do you also remember how it never mentioned hearing a door open again when all the talking stopped and everyone left?”

  I sort of did. But hold up— “Are you saying that whoever kidnapped Joanna is still… in here?”

  Violet rolled her eyes. “Of course not. What I’m saying is that they must’ve used the mirror to leave! That’s why the minairon never heard another door.”

  Huh. I hadn’t thought of that. But it did make sense. I mean, what faster way to leave the scene of a crime than through a magical teleporting mirror?

  “We’re going to have to do the same thing,” V said. She had that look on her face now—the one that said she was going to try to make me do something we both knew we shouldn’t.

  “Come again?”

  “Charlie, we have to use El Espejo! We have to stay right on their heels. It’s our best chance of tracking them. Maybe our only chance.”

  “But, V, we don’t even know how to operate that thing!”

  She hesitated, then said, “Maybe we don’t have to,” and hustled over to the mirror.

  When I came up beside her, she pointed at the designs along its hammered silver edges. Last time we’d used it, the designs had looked like a series of interconnected rooster heads and little three-towered castles. Now the polished silver showed an intricate alternating pattern of full-bodied jaguars and stars.

  “See?” Violet said. “The images are different. The mirror’s already been prepared. It probably keeps the last destination until someone changes it, and since they were the last ones through it, the destination hasn’t changed.” When I didn’t say anything, she gripped my shoulders, looking me right in the eyes. “Charlie, we have to risk it. It’s our best shot!”

  I sighed, and apparently she took that as me agreeing, because she said, “Gimme thirty secs,” and in exactly thirty secs returned with our backpacks and a big mischievous grin on her face. Tossing me my backpack, she said, “Told the guys we found alternative means of transportation.”

  Alternative. Yeah, that was one way of putting it. “But hold on! What if it’s a trap, huh? What if—what if the mirror drops us in the middle of… of the Sahara desert? Or in the center of an exploding star in a galaxy far, far away?” Okay, so that last one was a bit far-fetched, but didn’t she realize how dangerous this was?

  “That’s a lot of what-ifs, Charlie.”

  “You do realize we’ve never done this without witch supervision before, right?”

  “That’s what makes it so exciting!” she said, practically bouncing up and down on her toes. She folded up the map of Brazil and tucked it
into her backpack alongside the golden egg we’d found and all her spare clothes.

  “You’re certifiable,” I said.

  Ignoring me, Violet turned to El Espejo and, in a sort of singsong voice, chanted, “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the scarediest of them all?” and then smirked at me.

  I glared back. “That’s not funny. And that’s also not at all how that thing works.”

  Her smirk stretched into a full-blown grin. “I know. Just always wanted to say something like that to a magical mirror.…” And then she started toward El Espejo. I saw its shiny, flawless surface begin to ripple and glisten at her touch. A dazzling reddish-golden light shone out, washing all the color out of Violet’s face and hair, and a moment later, the mirror’s glow had become so fierce it seemed to throw the rest of the room into deep shadow.

  I could feel an icy breeze blowing off of it and heard myself swallow.

  “Ladies first,” V said, beaming.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  The instant we stepped through the rectangle of shimmering light, the world around us changed: The polished marble floors and tall arched ceilings suddenly vanished, replaced by blue sky, rocky red earth, and a thick canopy of leafy green trees. Birds chirped, and colorful flower vines wound their way around branches thicker than telephone poles, while peat and moss grew over the dark roots that jutted out of the jungle floor. The air was thick—I mean, like, sauna thick—and alive with the low, constant hum of jungle sounds. As I looked around, a snort of laughter just bubbled out of me. I mean, this was incredible! A second ago we had been standing inside a monastery in North Miami Beach, and the next we were in the middle of the deepest, densest, most wild jungle I’d ever seen!

  “Toto, I’ve got a feeling we’re not in So-Fla anymore,” Violet said.

  I blinked around, grinning like a maniac. “I’m sooooo gonna get grounded.”