Page 94 of Persephone's Curse
“I just know, I guess.”
This was interesting. This was something none of us had considered.
Would he be able to… stay here now? Go to college with Evelyn? She would become the weird loner kid who actively refused to make any friends, join any study groups, trudge across campus with anyone to the school cafeteria. People would whisper about her.What’s with that girl who always looks like she’d holding hands with the air?
Would he age now, too? Or would Evelyn celebrate birthday after birthday, blooming, blossoming. She’d graduate college and Henry would still be seventeen. She’d turn thirty, thirty-five, forty. And Henry would still be a teenager, still invisible, still as dead then as he was now, even if he didn’t really look dead, not to us, not at all. There was even color in his cheeks, as if somewhere in the Underworld, he had found a good supply of blood to inject into his veins.
He looked in my direction now. He had a shy smile on his face. “You’re staring at me, Winnie.”
“What? No? I wasn’t?”
“You were,” my sisters said at the exact same time. A chorus of annoyance.
“Well, Iwasn’t.”
“I think maybe we should talk?” Henry said. “Alone?”
“Whatever. Not now. Sure. I don’t care.”
“Who is Maybe? I heard her come through very strongly during the séance. Very funny, by the way, that you all had a séance. Well—sort of funny, sort of dangerous. You could have summoned a demon.”
“There are reallydemons?” Clara said, picking up a pencil and scribbling more questions on her list.
“There was already a hole in the sky at that point,” Bernadette pointed out. “Can’t get much worse than that.”
“And now you’re back, so we can get everything sorted out,” Clara said. “Fix the tear in the sky, repair whatever’s going on between you and Winnie, get back to life.”
“There’s nothing going on between us,” I said, trying to keep my voice light and airy but managing, I was sure, the exact opposite.
“Maybe’s a cute girl who works at a magic shop,” Clara said.
“Not, like, card tricks,” Bernie clarified.
“They probably do have card tricks,” Clara said. “It’s a really big store.”
“I think I hear my phone ringing,” I said, leaving the kitchen even as Clara said, “I don’t hear anything.”
I was already dressed, so I pulled on a pair of Bernadette’s boots (closest to the door), a jacket, a hat, and pushed out into the cold air before I (or my sisters) could change my mind.
The tear in the sky was—I couldn’t think of a better way to describe it—writhing. Pulsating. No longer just shimmering around the edges but actually moving, the black perimeter changing shape, coming together then wriggling apart again. It was about the size of a plane on its descent, taking up a fair amount of sky over our brownstone, looking exactly like it might land on top of us.
I tried not to look at it.
I needed to walk, and I kept my head down as I set off toward Central Park, letting my feet lead the way while trying to keep every and any thought from entering my consciousness.
The farther I got from the brownstone, the better I felt. I hadn’t realized howheavymy body had become until that heaviness dissipated. To get out from underneath the black tear was like breaking through the surface of a great body of water, taking a breath after years of not breathing, feeling the pressure on my skin lessen and lessen until I felt so light I might float away.
With my head mostly down (just aware enough to avoid crashing into anything), I didn’t realize where I was going until I got there, out of breath and slightly sweaty even in the frigid winter air.
The reservoir.
Of course.
I had maybe seen enough of the reservoir to last me a good lifetime or two, but my directional subconscious apparently had other ideas.
It was gray, very cold, and when the wind blew it felt like a personal attack. I pulled the collar of my coat as high as it would go and sat down on a bench that, I quickly realized, was covered in a thin sheet of ice.
The reservoir was frozen over.
