Page 14

I don’t have time to wonder about Kiara’s bad luck the next day and if it’s worse, like Radhika seemed so sure it would be.

After checking how Inky’s doing, today is a full day of avoiding Mom by doing my history essay at the library, even though I have the whole week off from school for the festival to get it done.

I run every imaginable errand just to keep out of the house so Mom doesn’t ask how I’m feeling .

I’m in front of the grocery store, teetering precariously on the seat of my bike as I balance both canvas bags on the handlebars.

Just as I’m about to push off, the shrill tinkle of a bell peals out, and a familiar figure comes out of Demeter’s Drinks.

Madame Aurora wears a long violet dress that accentuates her towering height and a black jacket that looks like a cloak.

The silver charms on her bracelets, worn halfway up her forearm, catch the last of the morning light as she tosses something in the air, only to snatch it a second later.

I bite my lip. Against my better judgment, I pedal across the street. “Aurora!”

If she’s surprised I’m willingly acknowledging her, she doesn’t show it. “Hello, Nova.”

Up close, it’s obvious the small object in her palm is a button, small and powder pink. I know where I’ve seen it before. My eyes shoot to Aurora’s startling green ones. “What are you doing with that?”

She seems bemused. “Your mother has surely told you.”

“Well, yeah. But what are you doing with hers? I mean, with that one specifically?”

Aurora hums. “You’ve never been interested in my work before.”

“I…” Faltering, I can’t come up with a single reason for my nosiness. “I recognize it. It’s a…friend’s.”

She cocks her head. “Kiara Mistry is your friend?”

“She’s my…yes. Yes, we’re friends.” I brave letting go of the handlebars to cross my arms, annoyed with the tiny smile playing on her lips and the obnoxious hum that implies she doesn’t believe me.

Okay, so friends might not be exactly what Kiara and I are, but now that I’ve said it, it doesn’t sound so bad.

In fact, it doesn’t sound bad at all.

“Your friend”—here Aurora pauses, checks my expression—“scheduled a consultation with me. She brought several of her friends with her as what I can only assume was backup, and the poor girl was most insistent that we meet in a public place.” The corners of her mouth tic up.

“I’ve never had a frightening reputation before.

It’s oddly flattering. Though…” She turns shrewd. “I suspect it’s someone else’s doing.”

I hear what she leaves unsaid. It’s obvious that she knows precisely who that someone is. It’s irritating to have to look up at her, an indignity that I’m sure she’s aware of, cutting as imposing a figure as she does.

“Come,” she says imperiously. “We must speak.”

She leads us to the gazebo in the town square.

Just a few weeks ago, the trees surrounding the diamond-shaped patch of grass were bright green, clover and dandelions clumped under the canopy of lush branches.

Now the grass is shorn low, dry and brown.

Most of the leaves are gone, too. White sheets sway ominously on skeletal branches, given ghostly shape with balloons and wire.

Suspended aloft, their arms join as if they’re playing ring-around-the-rosy.

I walk my bike over to the side of the gazebo where the white paint is recoiling in peeling curls. Inside the covered gazebo are benches engraved with names of the lost, and my gut tells me Aurora’s chosen the one with my dad’s name on it. When I join her, I’m proven correct.

“You shouldn’t mess with magic you don’t understand,” she says, far more gently than I would expect.

She knows, then. Everything, probably. It’s a relief in a way. “Did the spirits tell you?” I ask, half-morose, half jesting.

“Yes.” At the look on my face, she laughs. “No. And don’t joke about the spirits.”

The wooden bench is uncomfortable beneath me, and the proximity to Aurora doesn’t help. My stomach squirms as chattering golden leaves, clinging obstinately to the topmost branches, flutter overhead. They aren’t swept away, not yet. Like everything else in Prior’s End, they’ll pick their moment.

“Crystal ball?” I ask dubiously.

“Hmm, no again.” Her voice lilts in singsong, pleased and mischievous.

She’s playing with me. I cross and uncross my ankles, working my jaw. “Tea leaves?”

“Your guesses amuse me, incorrect as they are.” Aurora waves a hand, as if she’s a benevolent monarch bestowing her favor on an undeserving peasant. “You may continue.”

I hold back a hmph . Just barely. “You could just tell me.”

“I could,” she agrees with a flash of white teeth.

But she won’t.

My skin burns. With a touch of scorn, I ask, “Did the tarot cards tell you the future?”

She sighs. “Now you’re just being silly.”

“I was going for sarcastic.” Actually, I was aiming for plain disrespectful. I would never speak to an adult this way, but Aurora has one of those faces that doesn’t look much older than mine, coy and unlined. Unlike Mom, who’s been collecting worries in every crease ever since Dad left.

Aurora doesn’t even bat an eye. “You know perfectly well that the cards do not predict anything. They are a tool that tell us stories of all the possible things that could happen, and it’s our responsibility to read them and make of the outcomes what we will.”

What’s most annoying is that thanks to Mom, I do know that.

“Ugh. Fine. Whatever. I give up.”

For all the appearance of youth on her side, the look she gives me is undiluted Disappointed Adult. I shove my hands in my pockets. I’ve gotten away with all the rudeness I’m comfortable with, and now I’m oddly deflated.

Over the years, I’ve never quite managed to get a rise out of her, not even at our second meeting when I was an angry eleven-year-old who was full of big emotions during the one-year anniversary of my father’s disappearance when she told me not to blame myself and, in outrage, I blew out every single one of her candles and stormed out of her tent. That was six festivals ago.

Aurora wants Mom to declare Dad dead but still looks at me like she cares. I can’t reconcile that.

“That’s your problem,” she says now. Her pointer finger twitches like she wants to cross the distance and lay it on top of mine, but I flinch. She sighs. “You hold on to your fire yet forfeit other things too easily.”

You’re my problem , I want to say, but I’ve used up my quota of insolence as quickly as I ran through last month’s 2 GB of data on my phone plan.

She arches a dark brow, threaded bold and sharp like one of Kiara’s, as if she heard it anyway. “Security cam footage,” she says calmly.

“What?”

“I caught you hexing Kiara Mistry on video.”

It’s the last thing I expected to come out of her mouth. It’s also strangely anticlimactic and humiliating that I credited her abilities instead of thinking of the most obvious answer.

“You…you…” I sputter. “Is that even legal?”

Aurora hums. “I have a lot of valuables in my tent. There are other…ways I have of dissuading would-be thieves, of course, but law enforcement gets very twitchy about…well, let’s just say I’ve learned the hard way that they’d much prefer proof that comes from technology and not…other things.”

Okay, there are so many cryptic pauses in that sentence that my interest is piqued despite myself. I open my mouth to ask, but Aurora holds up a hand.

“No, I will not elaborate,” she says, as if that is that.

“But—”

“Don’t give me that look,” she scolds. “The more important question you should be asking me is what to do about the mess you’ve created with your”—keen peridot eyes peer into mine—“ friend .”

The hypocrisy isn’t lost on me that yesterday I was low-key fretting about my part in this, and today, faced with Aurora’s claim that I am, in fact, at fault, I want nothing more than to abdicate responsibility.

Summoning every scrap of conviction I have, I say, “Kiara will be fine. If you saw what happened, then you’ll also know there’s no way that it was my fault. I just, like, spouted some bullshit. It wasn’t that serious.”

Aurora tilts her head. “You think the power of your words isn’t serious?”

I can’t stand to look at her a second longer. It’s not a real question; she sounds like a teacher trying to lead me to the answer she wants to hear, when the truth is that the likeliest place I’ll end up if I listen to her drivel is astray and with a severe case of brain rot.

Turning away, I collect myself. “I didn’t do this.”

She tucks a glossy brown curl behind her ear. “That’s too bad, then. Because the person who invoked the hex would be the likeliest person to remedy the consequences, however unintended. From what Kiara told me, her misfortunes are escalating. And during this time of year, too…” She sighs.

“What does that mean?”

Somberly, she says, “The full moon is four days from now.”

Ah. Everything slots into place. While every phase of the moon has some influence on mortal matters, it’s undeniably the full moon that’s most potent.

Anyone who is even slightly spiritual prepares for its arrival in a frenzy of activity.

Full moons are a time of endings, which makes it the perfect time to shed things weighing you down, holding you back.

Caroline’s parents air out the house, decluttering and donating what they can.

I once overheard Kiara telling Evan that she only gets her hair trimmed on a full moon because an astrologer once told her Indian grandmother that it helps hair grow quicker, thicker, and stronger.

But another had given the exact opposite advice, claiming ill omens if you acted against the full moon’s abundance.

It’s also a convenient time to release any unwanted habits or people, too.

It’s not unheard of for Prior’s End couples to time their breakups at the zenith of the full moon, which people swear helps make the parting more amicable.

The only person I’ve ever broken up with is Austin, so I’ll take their word for it.

But the night of a full moon is also ripe for embracing fresh starts and setting new intentions. Everything is amplified, which means harnessing the energy of the moon powers up pretty much anything you set your mind to.

A case could be made either way. Basically, it’s all balderdash. Mysticism dressed in flowy skirts and doused in stinking patchouli.

My dad believed in the occasional magic of our town. He would have believed in this, too. And for just a moment, I yearn for his conviction to flow in my veins.

Aurora holds her hand up to her face and examines the gunmetal polish on her nails as though she’s utterly unaffected.

Her honking big diamond engagement ring twinkles.

“So you see, Nova,” she says, “if Kiara gets through this full moon unscathed without anything too dire befalling her, she should survive. But if not…”

Survive? For the span of several seconds, I hope I’ve misheard.

My pulse thuds loudly in my ears. “If not?”

Aurora quotes me back to me, “Then good luck with the impending doom.”