Page 2 of Thorn Season
I looked toward Marge’s door and swallowed. Houses were always locked up after a Hunting.
“Alissa, don’t,” Tari warned.
But the guards’ eyes would land on us soon.
So, committing my second treasonous act of the day, I reached for my specter.
It reeled out of me like a thread from an internal skein, and I exhaled as the ever-present tightness eased within me. Though invisible to everyone else, my specter looked to me like a mirage-shimmer rising off hot concrete or the eddy of air above a flame—rippling faster today on account of my rapid heartbeat.
I breathed deeply, settling the urge to feed out more than I needed. There was a reason I’d never knowingly met another Wielder: to Wield was to risk exposure.
One strand would have to be enough.
I poured the tendril through the keyhole, reshaping it to fill the cavity—one of the first tricks I’d ever taught myself—and the lock clicked open.
I shoved Tari inside and hustled after her. I relocked the door as gloom engulfed us, my specter lurching in protest when I yanked it back beside my bones. Our breaths puffed into the silence, dust spiraling past our lips like vapor on a snow-frosted night.
My vision adjusted... and my blood chilled.
I’d imagined broken glass and upturned furniture—evidence of Marge’s struggle before the Hunters had forced dullroot, the specter poison, into her veins to trap the power beneath her skin.
This scene was somehow more disturbing. Because the lounge was exactly as I remembered, with the paint-speckled table and four mismatched chairs—for Tari, Lidia, Marge, and me. Yet an unnatural layer of gray dust carpeted every surface, giving the impression of years of neglect. As though Marge was already long forgotten by the world.
“It’s only been one week,” I whispered.
Tari’s angular face tightened with concern. “Are you all right?” she asked. Because she must have known how this room would affect me.
She knew my horror flowed alongside the deep, aching guilt of survival.
I shakily set the bucket down and approached the table. Once a month, Marge would shuffle the cards here for Double Decks. Tari and Lidia would pretend not to cheat while Marge and I would roll our eyes, and we would all trade town gossip over hot lemonade.
Now only one mug occupied the surface. Mold feathered in its center, Marge’s burgundy kiss crusting the rim.
In a gut-wrenching flash, I imagined my own bedchamber deserted like this: a half-empty glass of pomegranate tea sweating onto my vanity, the dark strands of my hair straggling around a wide-tooth comb. The last pieces of me, outliving the whole.
“Remember last summer,” Tari murmured, “when we moved the table outside? Lidia hid a pair of queens up her shirtsleeves, and they flew off...”
“But there was no breeze,” I said softly. “I remember.”
“Do you think Marge...?”
I’d asked myself similar questions all week: Had Marge ever Wielded her specter around us undetected? Had she, like me, suffered under the strain of constant confinement?
“She always hated when Lidia cheated,” I said.
Sad laughter. “Only because she didn’t know how to cheat herself.”
My heart panged at the memory of Marge’s eye twitching with every bluff. Had she tried lying to the Hunters when they’d come, hoping the eye twitch wouldn’t give her away?
Tari shuffled closer, dust pluming under her boots. “Do you smell that?”
I inhaled. My wet blouse clung to my chest. “I smell only vinegar.”
She shook her head. “It smells bitter. Like something burning.”
I frowned at the hearth. The smell of a fire wouldn’t have lingered unless someone had sneaked in more recently.
“The door was locked,” I said.
