Page 87 of Persephone's Curse
“Since when do you call himHen?” I asked.
“Just sometimes, late at night, when he used to watch me paint,” she said.
“Could you ever imagine…”
“Kissing him?” she guessed. “God no. How gross.”
“Yeah, I just don’t get it.”
“But love is weird like that. You know? It doesn’t make sense to question it.”
“I guess so.”
She wriggled closer to me, burrowing into the blankets.
Sometimes Clara was wise beyond her years and sometimes, now, she was exactly fourteen, younger, even, a little girl in a flannel nightgown who was, maybe, just as scared as I was.
“I think I might actually sleep tonight,” she said.
“I think I might actually go for a walk.”
“Are you sure? It’s getting late.”
“I’ll bring the pepper spray.”
“Are you going back to the crypts?”
“I think my crypt-dwelling days are behind me.”
“Good. It was creepy down there. Keep me posted?”
“I’ll text you every five blocks.”
Outside, the tear in the sky glowed and pulsed and spewed freezing air over our house.
I walked quickly, trying to get away from it, feeling its presence like a physical thing, like it had its own gravity, its own magnetic pull. I knew it had done something to Evelyn, taken her music away from her, and I was worried it would do something to me next, or to one of my sisters. I was worried it wouldn’t stop getting bigger. I was worried it would swallow all of us up.
I was on autopilot, not making any conscious decisions about where I was walking but also completely unsurprised when I ended up at Dark Magic, pulling the door open and letting myself inside, immediately calmed by its now-familiar scent of lavender and sage.
“Welcome to Dark Magic; we’re having a buy one, get one sale on pocket crystals,” said a girl with platinum-blond hair and an eyebrow piercing.
“What’s a pocket crystal?” I asked.
“It’s a crystal that can fit in your pocket,” she said, and managed to not make me feel silly for asking such an obvious question.
“It’s okay, Gillian, she’s not an actual customer,” Maybe said, coming around a corner. My stomach did a little flip-flop that I tried my best to ignore.
“I actually am, if you’ll remember,” I said. “I bought that Ouija board.”
“Ouija boards are fun,” Gillian announced. “I swear one time I talked to Elvis.”
“What brings you to our fine establishment on such a cold and blustery night?” Maybe asked me.
“I thought maybe you wanted to go for a walk?”
Maybe considered this, looked around the store for a moment, noting the number of customers (a young girl checking out said pocket crystals, two men browsing a table of books).
“Gillian, keep an eye on things?”
