Page 89 of Persephone's Curse
“Of course. But I’m not counting this as a date, just so you know.”
“Oh, I wasn’t… I mean I didn’t…”
“A walk around the block is nice, and I’m down for it pretty much any time, but if I’m clocked in at work, I can’talsobe on a date. That defies the logical rules of space and time.”
“No, no, you don’t have to—”
“Catch you later!”
Maybe walked back in the store without waiting for me to finish my sentence (which was probably a good thing, since I had no idea what the end of my sentence would have been).
My phone buzzed in my pocket again. The most recent of seven texts from Clara readDate over already?Judging from the other six messages, she had been closely tracking my walk around the block and obviously figured out that it both started and ended at Dark Magic.
I typed a quick response and started walking home:It wasn’t a date and aren’t you supposed to be sleeping?
We can sleep when we’re dead,she wrote, and then, a few minutes later, when I hadn’t responded:which might be sooner rather than later!!!
She included an assortment of goofy-faced emojis and I couldn’t help—even as I got closer to home and the black mark in the sky grew heavier and heavier—but smile.
When I got home, everyone was up and sitting around the attic, waiting for me.
“Clara’s had a feeling,” Bernadette said, yawning.
“Remember when I said I thought I might actually sleep tonight?” Clara said. “Well, I was clearly wrong about that. Because I wasaboutto go to sleep and then my brain started whirring, and I kept thinking, I mean I kept having this feeling, well, really I’ve been having it the last few days, and right now specifically—”
“Spit it out, Clara,” Bernie said gently.
“My painting came to me in a dream, right?” Clara continued. “In anightmare. So many of my paintings do… And Melinöe is the goddess of nightmares. And we’ve always said, right, I mean maybe we were mostly joking but we’ve alwayssaidour nightmares were a message from her. And maybe that’s actually true? And maybe if you’re a god, or you’re related to a god, those things you do, like painting, like music, they become kind of magic? Because they’re sort offromthe gods or messages from gods, maybe? Orgiftsfrom them.”
“What are you getting at?” I asked.
Clara turned to Evelyn and said, “You said you used the piano to open the doorway, right? That you played some song, and that’s how you got in?”
“Yes…” Evelyn said. “I don’t know how I knew what to play, it just came to me…”
“Like a message,” Clara said excitedly. “That’s your gift, Evie,music,and it’s magical.”
“But now you can’t play anything,” I said.
“It feels like something wastakenfrom me,” Evelyn whispered. “Like this black mark, this tear… like it’s doing something to us…”
“I’ve felt really tired,” Bernadette said, thinking. “And like…almost like…nothing. I’ve felt nothing. I tried to write in my journal last night before bed, and I just kept staring at the empty page. Like before I had all thisangerand theseemotionsand now I’m just… empty.”
Sometimes Clara just knew things; she had always, always just known things.
“You think you can use your painting to open the doorway,” I said slowly, processing, trying to understand.
“Like maybe we were given these gifts, or… or…inheritedthese gifts,” Clara said, getting more animated as she struggled to find the right words. “Gifts handed down to us right from Persephone, from Melinöe. Gifts that candothings. Open a doorway. Like Evelyn’s music, like my painting…”
“I’m worried our family has jumped right off the deep end,” Bernadette said, mostly to herself, but I saw Evelyn almost crack a smile in response (and these days, Evelynalmostcracking a smile was a little bit of a miracle).
“But it makes sense, too, right?” Clara said.
“It does, Cece. It really does.”
And it did make sense.
It did.
