Charlie Hernández & the League of Shadows by Ryan Calejo

Author:Ryan Calejo [Calejo, Ryan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781534426580
Amazon: 1534426582
Publisher: Aladdin
Published: 2018-10-23T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

It took us fifteen minutes to ride over to the little park by Vizcaya, and by the time we got there it was so dark I couldn’t see the swing set, the slide, or even the gazebos and pine trees by the seawall. We leaned the bike up against one of the concrete benches and got to work.

“All right, let’s do this,” Violet said, bringing the jar out of her purse. The wooden cork made a nice, satisfying POP! as she yanked it out of the bottle. I didn’t smell any noxious fumes, which I figured was a pretty good start. “Ready?”

“Yeah, but how do you think it works?”

“Well, La Llorona said that her tears lead people to where the universe wants to take them, right? But I don’t think she meant that in the literal sense.” She held up the jar. “I mean, tears can’t lead people. . . . They’re just tears. So, what I’m thinking is that they might give you a vision or something.”

I wasn’t quite sure where she was going with this. “So you’re saying I should . . . ?”

“Splash them in your eyes.”

“Splash them in my eyes?”

She nodded and offered me the jar.

“Kinda gross, no?”

“Sure, but you got any better ideas?”

I sighed. I didn’t. “Perfecto.” Slipping off the oven mitt, I traded it to Violet for the jar. Then I dipped a couple fingers into the cold, murky liquid (hoping to still have them when I pulled them back out—which, thankfully, I did), tipped my head back, and hovered my now dripping fingers over my eyes, trying to score a hit.

The first few drops were total air balls. (I got myself on the bridge of the nose once and sent the others streaking down my temples.) But the fifth one splashed directly onto my pupil—and with it came a burst of stinging pain.

I flinched, hard, rubbing at my eye with the back of my hand, and the stupid jar slipped right out of my claw. I didn’t need to see what happened next because I heard it shatter as it hit the sidewalk and felt the splash against my sneakers.

“You okay?” I heard Violet ask.

“No.”

A second later, I realized it wasn’t the tear that had stung me; it was some kind of bug. A gnat, probably. I could feel it in there—the hump of its tiny exoskeleton stuck to the underside of my eyelid. The little sucker must’ve flown into my eye at the exact same moment the tear had gone in.

“Got a bug in there,” I said, still rubbing.

“Hopefully, you got a tear in there too,” she said, “because we’re going to have to make another visit to the Crying Shack to get any more.”

My heart sank as I glanced down to see the puddle of La Llorona’s tears glittering dully on the gray cement.

“Well, did you?” she asked.

“Yeah, I got one.”

“And does anything look different to you?”

I closed my other eye to check. “Everything looks a bit—watery. . . .”

“Maybe we need to give it a sec,” she said.

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