Prologue:
June 23, 1991

Lexine stood dry-eyed by the side of her grandmother’s bed. She held Simone Melisenda’s soft, fragile hand between both of hers. She watched her grandmother speak slowly to Julia, her mother. Julia was leaving the hospital room now. She was going to get a soda. Lexine was going to stay in the room with Simone to wait for Tio Manny and Tia Rosa to arrive. When they got there Lexine would go downstairs to her mother. Lexine listened carefully to her mother and grandmother as they spoke. She liked to know what was going on. She did not, however, like what was going on.

Grandma was dying. It was a simple fact, and Lexine was aware of it. There was no fighting it at this point. Lexine knew there were some things that had to be accepted, some things that couldn’t be changed. That was the reality of life. Lexine understood this, even though she was only ten years old.

Julia Melisenda left the room, discreetly wiping at her eyelashes with the back of her hand. Lexine watched her go, then turned back to the small old woman in the bed beside her. The cancer had made her extremely thin, and she was very pale. Her dark brown hair was thinning, and Lexine was sure her skin looked slightly yellow.

Simone held her oldest granddaughter’s hand in a strong, tight grip. Her hands shook slightly. She looked Lexine in the eye. Lexine’s gaze remained level as her light brown eyes stared back, calm and composed. This one was strong. This one could handle the knowledge.

“Lexine,” Simone began in her thick Spanish accent, and then she coughed slightly. It was those damn tubes they kept sticking down her throat. She cleared it and continued speaking. “There is something I must tell you, which you cannot share with anyone else. You have to listen very carefully, and believe every word of it.”

Lexine nodded solemnly. She leaned forward a bit so her grandmother would not have to strain to speak so loudly.

“Lexine, my love, there is something more out there. I know you’ve always suspected that, but I’m telling you, it’s true. You are a witch, Lexine, a real one. It is in your blood. Julia is one, too, but she would not be able to accept it. She is too weak for something as important as this. I myself could never fully embrace it. But you can, Lexine. You have the power. Take this ring,” Simone said, reaching under her blanket and pulling out a simple silver ring with a black flower on it. She slipped it onto Lexine’s index finger. “Wear it. Find others who wear the black flowers, and ask them about it. And when you go back to my house, find the black leather book in the secret drawer I showed you in my desk. Read it. In there is everything I know about us. You see, Lexine, we are different from everyone else. And there are those out there who are even more different than we are. Some are bad, so be careful. The world is a scarier place than you ever thought it could be. Be good.”

Simone seemed to sink into the pillows after the effort of such a long monologue. Her grip on Lexine’s hand loosened, and her breathing became labored.

“This is it,” she whispered hoarsely. “I can’t hold on, Lexie.”

Lexine’s light brown eyes widened. “No, Grandma, Tio Manny and Tia Rosa aren’t even here yet to say goodbye.” She had known this time would be coming soon, but knowing something doesn’t exactly prepare you to experience it.

“They said it yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that,” Simone reminded her beautiful young granddaughter. She lifted a tired hand to stroke the girl’s long brown hair. “We always treated each goodbye as if it were the last. It’s time for it to actually end.”

“No, Grandma…please…” Lexine’s eyes filled with tears for the first time since her grandmother had gotten sick. She had always known she would eventually break down at the end, but…she had hoped – irrationally – that the end would never come. “You can’t go,” she ended pitifully. Her full lower lip poked out and curled a bit, and the tears fell freely, one after the other.

“My Lexie…” Her grandmother grasped her hand once more. “Tell everyone…I love them…” Her voice was just the barest of whispers now. Lexine remembered all the times that same voice had risen loudly to yell about the messes she and her cousins had created quite often.

“I love you, Grandma,” Lexine sobbed into the bed sheets. Her grandmother stroked her hair slowly.

“I love you, Lexie…” Simone’s hand stilled on her granddaughter’s shoulder, then she ceased moving altogether. She took one last shuddering breath, and then…

Lexine looked up into her grandmother’s lifeless face. Her eyes widened in horror and shock. “No,” she whispered. Then she screamed the word. “No!” She jumped up, knocking over the plastic chair she had been sitting in. She kicked it away, and screamed again, a long, loud, wordless shriek. She’d been calm for the past eight months while her beloved grandmother had wasted away. No, come to think of it, she’d been calm for the past ten years. Even as an infant, her mother had always said she’d never cried. Well, that was over. To hell with being calm and quiet. Lexine was gonna make some noise.

She ran from the room, which suddenly seemed fifty degrees colder. She threw over a table as she left. In the hallway she ran – just ran – across the ugly orange linoleum tiles and all the way down to the elevator. She turned and veered down another hallway, almost knocking over a nurse in scrub pants. She grabbed a door handle and threw open the door to the stairs, racing into the stairwell and down three flights into the basement. When she reached the bottom the urge to run had fled, just like she had fled from the room. Calmly, she walked around the basement for a full twenty minutes. She worked at radiating an “I-know-exactly-where-I’m-going-so-don’t-bother- me” aura, and it seemed to work. Not one person had stopped her by the time she finally decided to return to her grandmother’s room. She stepped through the door and encountered chaos.

Relatives were draped all over each other. Her cousins were there, and so were all of her aunts and uncles. Her mother sat sobbing while her father held her hand. The doctor was talking to her great-uncle – Simone’s youngest brother.

Daniel Delgado looked up and saw his only daughter standing in the doorway. For a moment he was scared by the cold, hostile gaze she swept the room with, but he pushed back the irrational fear. She was only ten. Ten-year-olds couldn’t look as though they were filled with some sort of dark and evil power. Feeling guilty for his thoughts, he went to her when her passionless eyes rested on him.

He placed a hand on Lexine’s shoulder and felt it stiffen immediately. “She’s gone,” he gently informed her.

“I know,” she said curtly. “I was there. I left after she died.”

Daniel blinked. His daughter had been present when her grandmother had passed on? His mind reasoned that this was the cause for the icy exterior. His niece, Jessica, approached them, crying. She grabbed Lexine’s arm.

“She’s dead, Lexie.” The shorter girl sniffed.

Lexine shook off her cousin distastefully. Jessica was spoiled and as superficial as a nine-going-on-ten-year-old could be. They had once been the best of friends, but about a year ago Lexine had gone through a change where she had decided she wasn’t going to take shit from anyone. Seeing as Jessica had always been the one putting her down and making her feel inferior when she knew she wasn’t, Lexine had stopped associating with her cousin for the most part. Jess continued her old tricks, but now Lexine fought back. They often wound up silently watching TV in different rooms, since Lexine always removed herself from a situation before it got too big. She knew that if it came to it, she would end up physically hurting Jessica, and that would mean that she would end up in trouble. That wasn’t part of her plan.

Now her upper lip lifted slightly as she looked down on her teary-eyed relative. “What are you crying for,” she snapped. “You’re acting like you actually care. Doesn’t that go against your precious image, you spoiled little brat?”

“Lexine.” Daniel grabbed his daughter by the hand and pulled her into the hallway as Jessica’s dark eyes widened in disbelief. Once out of the room, he sat Lexine in a chair and gave an exasperated sigh. “Look,” he began, “I know you don’t like your cousins too much, but at the moment please try to be civil. You know how they get.”

“Yeah,” Lexine sneered. “Now I’ve hurt her feelings ‘cuz she’s just so sensitive.” Lexine’s voice dripped with sarcasm as she rolled her eyes.

“Well, Lexie, what you said back there was pretty—”

“Save it, Daddy,” Lexine interrupted. “I don’t want to hear it. I don’t care about her feelings. She deserves what she gets, and it’s too late to do anything about it now.” Lexine got to her feet and returned to the hospital room that now felt cold with death.