Page 72 of Persephone's Curse
“Pulsing?”
“Or shimmering. Orbreathing.”
“Breathing?”
“I don’t know,” Clara said, and pulled back from the window, shutting the curtain abruptly. “It’s creeping me out.”
“So what do wedo?” Bernadette asked. “Is it going to get bigger?”
“Let me just google what happened the last time we had a crack between worlds,” I said.
“Guys,” Clara said. “Shut up. Stop fighting. If there’s a tear in the world, if there’s this open doorway between our New York and thisotherNew York, thisundeadNew York…”
“Maybe it means other things can get through…” Bernadette said.
“It meanswho knowswhat’s about to happen,” Clara said. “But it doesn’t feel like anything good.”
VII
Of course, if you were descended from Persephone, you were also descended from her daughter, Melinoë, and if you were descended from Melinoë, you might find yourself blaming her for any ill fortune that befell you, such as madness, ghostly communication, nightmares… You might call any bad dreamsmessages;you might wonder what she was trying to tell you…
That night I dreamed about zombies.
A bit on the nose, sure, but it was fucking terrifying, and when I woke up, Clara was sitting on the edge of my bed, that book in her hands,Mythologyby Edith Hamilton. I checked my phone; it was four in the morning. She had a little book light attached to the hardcover and she didn’t look up when I moved.
“You were groaning,” she said.
“A step up from neighing,” I replied.
“A message from Melinoë?”
“You know, I’d really love being related to a nice goddess. A goddess of, like, bunnies. Or rainbows. Or hugs.”
“Hestia,” Clara said, turning pages in her book until she found what she was looking for, reading aloud: “‘Hestia, the goddess of hearth and home, known to be kind and forgiving, the perfect hostess and a protector for all of her followers.’”
“Yes, that’s what I want,” I said. “I want a protector. Not a harbinger of nightmares.”
“You said you had someone you could ask,” Clara said. “Someone who might know how to bring Henry back. She works in a store? What store?”
“You wouldn’t know it.”
“Dark Magic? That place on Columbus?”
“How do you know it?”
“Where else are you going to get a Ouija board at ten o’clock on a Saturday night? And who else would have told you to try scrying alone on the kitchen floor?”
“How did you know I tried to scry?”
“It’s dangerous. It’s not something you should mess around with. You could have—”
“Lost my way in the labyrinthine maze of the eternal abyss?” I guessed. “Yeah, I know. But here I am.”
“This is so messed up,” Clara said.
“I know.”
“It feels creepy that I painted it. Like it got inside my head or something.”
