The first thing I learned from my abuela was that every story begins with a breath. The second thing I learned was that some breaths are curses in disguise. Mine was a hot, humid Tampa sigh that fogged the window of my tiny studio, the one above the botanica I inherited from her. Outside, the neon sign for La Reina de las Flores flickered, painting the evening rain in strokes of sickly pink and electric blue. It was a breath that tasted of loneliness, of three years spent trying to stitch myself back together after Santiago Reyes walked out and took the sun with him.
And then I saw him.
My breath hitched, a sharp, painful thing in my chest. He was just a silhouette across the street, haloed by the mist rising from the hot asphalt, but I knew the shape of him like I knew the weight of my own soul. Santiago. He moved with the same lazy, predatory grace that had always made my knees weak, a rhythm borrowed from the jazz that pulsed in his blood. He was heading for El Callejón, the club where he played trumpet, where we'd first met, where he'd last told me he loved me before the silence set in.
Three years. A thousand nights of telling myself I was over him. A thousand days of tending to my herbs, my sound bowls, my clients' broken hearts, all while mine remained a locked room. I was María Valdés, santera, herbalist, healer. I mended what was shattered. But I was shattered, and the pieces were sharp.
My studio was my sanctuary, a place of order and intention. Drying bundles of sage, rosemary, and yerba buena hung from the ceiling, their scents a clean counterpoint to the city's wet-dog perfume of rain and salt. My collection of crystal singing bowls sat gleaming on a low velvet table, each one tuned to a different chakra, a different emotion. I used them to align energies, to soothe troubled spirits. But tonight, their silent, perfect curves felt like an accusation. They couldn't sing away this sudden, visceral ache.
I turned from the window, my hand going to the small, leather pouch I wore around my neck. Inside was a tiny, smooth river stone and a twist of Santiago's hair, snipped in a moment of foolish, lovesick hope a lifetime ago. A resguardo, a protection charm. Now it felt like a shackle.
This was why La Madrina Isidora, my mentor and the woman who'd taught me the deeper, darker currents of our faith, had warned me. "Cuidado con el orgullo, mi'ja," she'd said, her voice like the rustle of dry palm fronds. "Beware of pride. A broken heart is one thing. A heart that refuses to break, that seeks to command what is not its to command... that is a door for other things."
I had nodded, the dutiful student. But I hadn't understood. Not until this moment, watching him walk away from me all over again, even though he didn't know I was watching. The pain was a fresh wound, clean and deep. It wasn't the dull throb of memory; it was the sharp sting of present-tense loss.
My phone buzzed on the table, shattering the silence. A client. Elena, a woman whose husband had left her for a younger woman. Her desperation was a palpable thing, a static whine through the text messages. Can you make him see? Can you make him come back? I'll pay anything.
I used to feel pity for such requests. Now, staring at the screen, I felt a cold, sharp kinship. This was the unraveling. This was the moment the thread snagged and the whole tapestry of a carefully constructed life began to come apart.
I didn't text her back. Instead, I walked to my altar in the corner of the room. It was a beautiful thing, draped in white and blue satin for Yemayá, the Mother of the Sea. There were shells, a blue chalice of salt water, silver coins, and a single white rose. It was an altar of nurturing, of healing, of unconditional love. But my heart was not unconditional tonight. It was a fist, clenched tight around a single, selfish want.
My gaze drifted to the bottom drawer of the cabinet that held the altar, a drawer I hadn't opened in years. It was locked. The key was hidden inside a hollowed-out candle on my bookshelf. My fingers trembled as I retrieved it. The lock turned with a soft, definitive click.
Inside, wrapped in black silk, was my cuaderno de sombras—my shadow book. Abuela had called it that, not because it was evil, but because it held the knowledge that existed in the shadows of the main traditions, the edges where Santería brushed up against Palo Mayombe, where Espiritismo whispered to Hoodoo. It was her book, and her mother's before her. The pages were brittle, filled with her elegant, fading script—recipes for healing, prayers to the orishas, but also other things. Spells of binding. Spells of return.
And one spell in particular. El Lazo del Corazón Desesperado. The Bind of the Desperate Heart.
I had always turned past those pages, a frisson of fear and disapproval chilling my spine. To manipulate another's will was a violation of the highest order. It was to spit in the face of Eleggua, the keeper of the crossroads, who offered choices, not commands. It was to invite a karmic debt so profound it could stain a soul for lifetimes.
But as I sat there on the floor, the rain drumming a frantic rhythm on my roof, Santiago's silhouette burned onto the back of my eyelids, I didn't care about karma. I didn't care about divine law. I cared about the hollow, screaming emptiness in my chest. I cared about the three years of silence. Pride, as La Madrina said, was a dangerous thing.
I untied the silk and opened the book. The scent of old paper, dried blood, and grave dust rose to meet me. My eyes fell on the instructions. It required personal items from both parties. I had the lock of his hair. It required a night of a new moon, a time of beginnings and of darkness. Tonight was the new moon. It required a specific offering to Eleggua—three cents, a piece of coconut, a cigar. And it required blood. A single drop, to seal the petition with the essence of my own life force.
My heart was a wild drum against my ribs. This was the threshold. On one side was María the Healer, the woman of light and order. On the other was... something else. A woman capable of a terrible, beautiful darkness.
A crack of thunder shook the little studio, so loud it seemed to split the sky directly above me. The lights flickered, died, and for a moment, I was suspended in perfect blackness. Then the emergency lamp in the hallway clicked on, casting long, dancing shadows. One of them, cast by my coat rack, fell across the wall in a shape that was unmistakably human, but wrong—too tall, too thin, its head cocked at an inquisitive angle.
I froze, my blood turning to ice. The shadow did not move with the shifting light. It remained, a static stain of deeper darkness, watching me.
And then, as quickly as it had appeared, it was gone. The lights surged back on. The studio was just my studio again. The coat rack was just a coat rack.
My hands were shaking so badly I could barely turn the page. It was a trick of the light. A product of my guilt and my frayed nerves. It had to be.
But as I looked down at the open book, at the recipe for a forbidden love, a single, cold drop of sweat traced a path down my spine. The first knot in the Tampa Curse had been tied. And somewhere, at a crossroads drenched in rain, a spirit that was neither kind nor cruel, but endlessly hungry, had turned its head and smiled. It had heard the first, desperate whisper of my heart. And it was answering.