Page 52 of The Queen's Box

“Would you lie?”

“I’m not dishonest. I just want the Box.”

“But the Box has to want you back, you see,” Amira said. She moved her fingers, and the coin winked. Willow couldn’t drag her eyes from it.

“The Box has its own price, one not measured in money. If I told you the price was blood—would you bleed for it, Willow?”

“Don’t answer that,” Cole said. “You don’t have to play her games.”

“Cole,” Amira chided. The coin flipped from finger to finger. “Willow is hardly a child. She can speak for herself. Can’t you, Willow?”

Willow nodded as if in a trance.

“Then tell me this. The Queen’s Box, which you crave, would you sell your very soul for it?”

Willow’s lips parted, but before she could answer, pain exploded in her foot.

“Ow!” she cried, ripping her gaze from Amira’s twinkling coin. Cole took his time removing his boot from her own. He’d stomped on her sore foot, of course—the one Willow had kicked the rock with. She glowered at him. He held her gaze and raised his eyebrows.

Amira flipped the coin one final time before making it disappear. She crossed to a nearby shelf and retrieved a shallow bowl. “Let’s find out if we can come to an agreement, you and I.”

The bowl was lovely, made of silver and etched with flowering vines. Amira placed it on the counter and filled it with water from a jug. She set the jug aside and gestured to the bowl.

“This is a scrying basin,” she said.

“A what?”

“Give me your hand,” Amira commanded.

Willow placed her hand in Amira’s, and Amira pricked her index finger with a needle pulled seemingly from thin air.

“Ow!” Willow cried.

Amira positioned Willow’s finger over the bowl and squeezed. A single drop of blood hung suspended for an instant, then fell and hit the water.

“Water tells stories that voices cannot,” Amira said. She peered into the bowl, and Willow did, too, while at the same time drawing her hurt finger to her mouth and sucking on it.

Within the bowl, the drop of blood was behaving strangely. Instead of dispersing into the water, it appeared to be calling thewater into it. It grew larger and larger, and yet its deep red hue didn’t fade. Willow thought of horseflies and fat-bellied spiders, of ticks burrowing into flesh. She pictured a mosquito on her arm—Atlanta was rife with them in the hot summer months—and how, if she slapped it as it drank from her, it was her own blood that spurted out onto her skin.

She had always found blood fascinating.

“Yes, Willow, you have the Old Blood,” Amira said, sounding pleased. “Look into the bowl and tell me what you see.”

“Why? What does this have to do with the Queen’s Box?”

“Look into the bowl and tell me what you see,” Amira repeated. “In return, I’ll speak to you of the Box. That is my price. Do you find it too steep?”

The condescension in Amira’s tone reminded Willow of Ash’s taunts.Is life too hard? Is reality too cruel? Go, then. Go to your imaginary dream boy with the pointed ears and live happily ever after.

Willow gathered herself and leaned over the basin. She saw nothing but her own reflection—eyes too wide, lips pressed tight.

She was about to pull back when a spray of water leaped up, just a flicker, then splashed back down and vanished, leaving the surface smooth again.

Willow’s breath hitched. Had that really happened?

She stared into the bowl. She calmed her racing thoughts.

Slowly, very slowly, the water began to move.

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