"What's wrong with her?" Corny asked.
"She sees these boys all the time hanging around the park," the woman told Corny. "They're pretty but they're trouble. Not human. One day they bother Lala and she insults them. Then this. Nothing in the botánica is helping.”
"You should both go wait in the other room,”
Luis said, rolling up the sleeves of his coat. "This is about to get messy.”
"I'm good here," Corny said, trying to seem unimpressed. He had several different fantasies of himself that he liked to trot out when he was feeling miserable. In one, he was the scary lunatic— the guy who was going to snap one day, get a high-powered rifle, and bury the bodies of all the people who'd wronged him, in a mass grave in the backyard. Then there was the misunderstood genius, the person whom everyone discounted but who triumphed in the end through his superior competence. And the most pathetic fantasy of all—that he had some secret mutant power he was always on the verge of discovering.
"I need her to lie down on the floor." Luis walked over to the tiny kitchen and came back with a crude knife. The woman's eyes never left the blade. "Cold iron.”
Luis actually had a secret power and was competent. That pissed Corny off. All he had was cursed hands.
"What's that for?" Lala asked.
Luis shook his head. "I won't cut you. I promise.”
The woman narrowed her eyes, but the girl seemed reassured and sank down onto the floor.
The vines squirmed under her skin, rippling as they shifted. Lala winced and cried out.
Kaye looked up at Corny and raised her eyebrows.
Luis crouched over Lala, straddling her slender body.
"He knows what to do, yes?" the woman asked Corny.
Corny nodded. "Sure.”
Luis reached into his pocket and scattered a white substance—maybe salt—over the girl's body. She bucked, screaming. The vines crawled like snakes.
"He's hurting her!" Lala's mother gasped.
Luis didn't even glance up. He threw another handful, and Lala shrieked. Her skin stretched and rippled away from the salt, up into her neck, choking her.
Her mouth opened, but instead of a sound, thorn-covered branches burst out, winding toward Luis. He slashed at them with his knife. The iron cut through the vines easily, but more came, splitting and curling like tentacles, grabbing for him.
Corny yelled, pulling his legs up onto the couch. Kaye stared in horror. Lala's mother's cries had become one long teakettle scream.
One branch wrapped around Luis's wrist, while others crawled toward his waist and writhed along the floor. The long thorns sank into his skin. Lala's eyes rolled back in her head, and her body convulsed. Her lips shone with blood.
Luis dropped the knife and wrapped his hands around the stems, ripping the brambles even as they coiled around his hands.
Corny lunged forward, grabbing the knife and cutting at the thorns.
"No, you idiot," Luis yelled. A knot of branches suddenly ripped free of Lala's mouth, wormlike white roots sliding out of her throat, glistening with saliva. The great vine blackened and shriveled.
Lala started to cough. The woman knelt by her, weeping and smoothing back the girl's hair.
Luis's arms were striped with scratches. He stood up and looked away as if dazed.
Lala's mother helped the girl to her feet and began to lead her toward the door. "Gracias, gracias," she muttered.
"Wait," Luis said. "I need to talk to your daughter for a minute. Without you.”
"I don't want to," Lala said.
The woman nodded. "Just quick. She's very tired now." She closed the door separating the hall from the room.