Page 22 of The Folklore of Forever (Moonville #2)

Twenty-Two

The sky is a thick green haze today, which Henriette takes as a good omen. The most powerful magics are almost always green—the oxidized particles produced by alchemy, the indole scent of live cultures in a spell jar, the flag of chrysolite gas that smokes up from the graves of those raised by necromancy.

The Heartbreak Vampire , Zelda Tempest

Let’s go , I command myself, straightening in my seat as if that will rearrange the contents of my brain and knock anything good toward the front where I can access it.

ETO

SGL ’

Book Proposal: Take Eight

Why is this so hard? I used to be a cauldron bubbling over with ideas no matter how many distractions were in play. Time became meaningless when I was writing or dreaming about writing; four hours felt like one. There were so many stories I wanted to tell, I was bursting, wishing I didn’t ever have to sleep so that I could get them all down on paper. I skim my meatless buffet of concepts and all of them are too embarrassing to show my editor.

“Come on, Zelda. You’ve got this.”

A flash of movement catches my attention, and my gaze slides to Morgan, walking through the door of The Magick Happens. He folds himself cross-legged into the deep window ledge where Snapdragon likes to rub his face against the glass. His eyes meet mine and a butterfly leaps into my throat.

He’s wearing glasses.

I return my stare to my screen, heart thumping. This is me typing , I type. I am typing typing typing. I am not noticing anything else but all these words.

“What’re you wearing those for?” Trevor pipes up.

Morgan’s reply is lazy and delayed. “Wearing what?”

“Glasses.”

“I’ve always worn reading glasses.”

I watch Trevor’s gears turn, wondering if Morgan has, in fact, always worn reading glasses. Luna walks in from the storeroom with three new candles and arranges them on a table display. “Your eyesight starting to go?” she asks.

“I’ve had these forever. None of you pay enough attention to me.”

“I have never seen you wear glasses,” she replies.

Trevor’s puzzlement turns to indignation. “Yeah! That’s what I thought, too.”

Morgan’s dark stare flickers to me. “I wear them all the time. My vision is highly impaired. Ask me to look at something.” He removes his glasses. There are red marks on the bridge of his nose from his ill-fitting nose pads, which must pinch.

Trevor holds a book aloft, The Encyclopedia of Elemental Witchery . “What’s this?”

Morgan squinches up his face. “A duck.”

Trevor examines the book, as if to make sure it hasn’t somehow become a duck. “Not even close. Your eyesight sucks, man.”

I have refused to speak to Morgan Angelopoulos for two weeks. Not for lack of him trying to rope me into conversations, though; everywhere I go, there he is, too. At Moonville Market, both of us hunting for taco seasoning. At the ATM. In the apartment bathroom upstairs, which he insists on using because Luna’s hand towels are softer than the ones in the shop bathroom. Wanna go check out this dead thing I found in a mousetrap and see if it might be a paranimal? Hey, do you have a safety pin on you, by any chance? Guess what? The toaster at Half Moon Mill is burning images of goldfish into slices of bread. I emailed Pepperidge Farm and Guinness World Records to come check it out.

But this, right here—he finally wins a reaction. “Why would there be a duck in our shop?”

Morgan lifts his nose, prodding his glasses back into place. “Oh, are we talking now? P.S., that’s offensive to say to somebody who’s visually impaired. When you’re at the mercy of weak eyes, like I am, everything looks like ducks.”

“ I’m visually impaired. I wear contacts.”

He gives me an injured look as he throws himself into his desk chair and spins twice before opening his laptop. Music pours through his headphones, so loud that I can hear every word. Soon he is playing the violin and belting out a song. “Nobody gonna slooow me dooowwwn. Oh no! I got. To. Keep. On. MOOOVIIING!”

Shaking my head disapprovingly, I refocus on my own computer.

A ridiculous human being , I type.

A ridiculous human being in a three-piece suit patterned to look like a brick wall. He takes a wind-up frog toy out of his desk and sets it in motion, watching the frog toddle off the edge of the desk, onto the floor. He and Trevor cheer when it lands on its feet and keeps walking.

I am never going to get any work done in here. He is intentionally disruptive! It is inconsiderate and unprofessional.

This is a story about an author who never starts her book because a man eats Funyuns loudly and brews coffee loudly and when he talks to you it’s like he’s trying to be heard over the din of a house party.

“I’d read that story,” Morgan says, his voice close (and loud) enough that my whole body jerks. He’s materialized behind my shoulder.

I slam my laptop shut. “Mind your business.”

“I can mind multiple businesses. Have you heard from our friend Bob?” He hops up onto the counter, gaze like an X-ray. His frames are tortoiseshell, and there’s a small scratch on one lens. It’s infuriating that this makes him even more attractive. He uses his powers for evil.

“What do you care?” I grumble.

“Tell Bob you’re through with him, and go out to dinner with me tonight. I know a fabulous place upstate. We’ll see some sights…get a hotel…”

A hotel with Morgan. My insubordinate stomach swoops. I remind myself that I do not like him anymore, and he doesn’t mean anything he says.

I cannot abide a liar.

“I wouldn’t develop feelings for you even if doing so gave me incredible powers,” I hiss. “Not even for telekinesis. Or the ability to fry an egg just by looking at it.”

He frowns. “Your sisters were right. You’re a heartbreaker.”

I gather up my laptop, then march from the room.

“Is it something I said?” he calls out.

The back door bangs shut to slice off his last word. In the courtyard behind The Magick Happens, I slam my laptop down onto a picnic table with more force than the poor thing deserves. This machine has been loyal to me throughout three and a half novels and much abuse of the backspace key. I should probably have a name for it, like Harvey or Dellatricia.

This is a story about a ridiculous man who got struck by lightning and fell off a wagon and was kicked by a cow and had all his pretty hair eaten by an iguana .

The sky is a thick green haze today. It isn’t raining, but there’s a film of moisture in the air, and no wind at all. I turn to study a window that peers into Candleland, but my view’s mostly blocked by Trevor’s back (the letters across his jersey spell T-Sizzle ). I fidget. Minimize my document to check my email, check the news, check my social media. I can’t possibly work when it’s this quiet.

Brrrrring! Brrrrring!

I reach for my phone: the screen flashes Cavern . “This is Zelda. What can I do for you?”

“You can do a lot for me, but we’ll start with a kiss and see where it goes.”

Ugh. “This line is for book recommendations.”

Morgan’s tragic sigh wears stage makeup and perspires in the heat of three spotlights. It dreams of a starring role in Hamlet . “Please recommend a book about forgiveness,” he warbles.

“Sorry, we don’t have anything like that in stock.” I hang up.

My phone rings again.

“Don’t hang up!” Morgan begs. “I’ve written you a song. It’s called ‘Let’s Be Friends Again. Or More, if You Want, I’m Not Picky.’ It took me a long time to come up with the bridge, so please listen.” There are some clumpy noises as he sets his phone down. Morgan then begins to serenade me with a piece that sounds questionably similar to “If You Leave” from Pretty in Pink .

I hang up.

He calls back twenty minutes later. “I’ve written another song. It’s called ‘Zelda Tempest Is Cold and Unforgiving.’?”

“Sounds accurate. Bye.”

After I cut him off, Morgan’s faraway, muffled voice shouts: “So mean!” and then he begins to play the violin as badly as he can muster. Now my concentration is broken. Thanks so much, Morgan! I might as well grab some brain fuel—a blueberry bun is all I need, and then I’ll be able to generate a brilliant book concept, no problem.

I slip through the back door but am cut off by my niece before I can leave for the bakery. Aisling drops to her knees in the doorway, flops onto her back, and piles her bookbag on top of her face. “Nobody speak to me. I’m decompressing.”

Luna delivers a plate of French toast sticks to her daughter. Ever since we were kids, my sisters and I have celebrated special occasions (and cheered ourselves up on sad days) with frozen French toast sticks sprinkled liberally with powdered sugar. It tastes like funnel cake that way, and this treat is a fixture of Aisling’s first day of school every year.

Ash lets out a frustrated groan, chewing one. “Seventh grade is going to be awful, you guys. They don’t have strawberry milk in the cafeteria anymore. They say we’re too old for recess. It’s scientifically proven that kids learn better when school doesn’t start until nine a.m., but of course they make us go at seven thirty because they don’t actually care about our well-being and the only thing they do care about are test scores! Anyway, can I have ten dollars? Cannon and I wanna go to the arcade.”

“Have you fed the—” Luna starts to reply, but a fist of wind punches the front door, glass rattling, and we all turn to look outside. Vallis Boulevard is glazed emerald, and in the direction of Hope Furnace, the sky is apocalyptic. “You’re staying home.”

“Whaaat!”

Luna points at the incoming storm. “Do you want a house to fall on you?”

“We’ll walk fast.”

Tornado sirens split the air.

“We’ll walk real fast,” Ash persists, hands steepled beneath her chin.

“Sorry, but I want you in one safe piece, un-barbecued.”

“So unfair.” Ash slumps into my arms. “Aunt Zelda, everyone’s against me. Even the weather.”

I pat her head. “I’ll give you twenty bucks for the arcade tomorrow.”

“Yay!” She ponders this. “How about twenty-five?”

Despite trapping Ash at home, my sisters don’t take tornado warnings seriously until radar indicates there is rotation in Moonville and not simply anywhere in the county, so they do the hilljack thing and drag lawn chairs out front to storm-watch. Romina’s somehow acquired a giant slushie from Pit Stop Soda Shop and popcorn. I snatch up our sandwich board before it can fly away, then secure the food and water bowls we leave out for stray cats in our neighborhood.

“Hypocrites!” Aisling shouts at us from the other side of the door. Luna won’t let her outside until she’s finished cleaning her room (which she said she did yesterday but did not).

“Hey, look, it’s raining,” says Trevor, standing on the sidewalk. He holds out his hands, collecting what is clearly hail in his palms. “It hurts.”

“Hail signifies that something bad is coming,” Luna declares sagely.

I snort. “No shit. Bad weather is coming.”

She selects a nickel-sized hailstone and flicks it at my shin.

“Look at the size of this one!” Trevor cries. “I could play golf with it. Anybody got a golf club? Morgan, go grab your violin stick thing.”

A window of Wafting Crescent slides open. “What are you still doing outside?” Bushra yells. “If you’re all pulverized in a tornado blender, Gilda will turn your property into her overflow.”

“Gilda gets overflow?” I wonder aloud. “The costume shop doesn’t seem all that busy these days.”

“The costume shop is just a front,” Morgan explains, tossing up a hailstone and cracking it across the road with the bottom of his shoe, which he’s removed. Trevor’s on the other side of the street now, using his phone like it’s a Ping-Pong paddle to shoot hail back at Morgan. “She makes the big bucks conducting séances. Every Wednesday night, she buses in old folks from the YMCA.”

A roar rumbles across the sky. Bits of leaves, twigs, and cigarette butts spit from the wind like somebody’s emptying a litter bin into our yard.

“Hey, does that look like it’s going around in circles?” Trevor points at a rotating black cloud directly over The Clockery.

It’s a mad dash. Trevor somehow beats us all into the shop, even though he was the farthest away. I turn the knob, but the door won’t open. “Unlock this right now!”

“I don’t want the tornado getting in! Go hide under a bush.”

“Trevor, I’m going to kill you.” Luna scrambles for a key hidden in our fake rock, while Morgan scrambles for a real rock to bust a window with. Luckily, Romina made it inside with Trevor and she has the sense to let us in.

We take turns socking Trevor as we pour past.

“My baby!” Luna croons, reaching for one of her cats.

“I’m already downstairs.” Aisling’s voice drifts in from far away. Luna freezes in the act of scooping Jingle into her arms, kissing her forehead.

“Right. Good! Stay down there, Ash! Don’t come back up!”

“Where’s Snapdragon?” Morgan wheels his chair away from his desk with such velocity that it tips over. (Snapdragon likes to curl up beneath Morgan’s desk to sleep sometimes.) He scours the armchair, storeroom, windowsills. “Snapdragon! Here, kitty, kitty, kitty!”

Romina panics. “What if we die?”

Luna smacks our younger sister with her purse. “We’re not going to die. Get it together! Where is my purse?”

“You’re hitting me with it.”

Luna starts unplugging appliances. She shoves a printer at Trevor. “Here, take this and grab some candles, too.”

“Is this really what you need to be doing right now?” I try to tug her by the shirt, but she blocks me with a coffeemaker and forces it into my arms.

“I got this coffeemaker for sixty-nine dollars”—Trevor reliably yells “ Nice !”—“on sale,” she replies fiercely. “Normal price is a hundred and thirty dollars. I am not putting up a hundred and thirty dollars for another coffeemaker, Zelda!”

Only when Luna’s rescued the cash register and Dottie’s crystal ball are we allowed to sprint for the Cavern of Paperback Gems. I breathe a heavy sigh of relief. “Oh good, Snapdragon’s safe.” He’s napping atop the Lost Bride trilogy. Aisling’s building a book fort to protect her mother’s most prized candles while shooting us all looks of dismay. I suspect the dismay is less about us acting irresponsibly outside and more about her not being allowed to also act irresponsibly.

The shop’s foundation quivers. Trevor throws himself onto the floor. “Shield my face with your hands, and I’ll cover your hair,” he tells Morgan. “It’s the only way to save our best features from being struck by debris.”

“Why can’t we cover our heads with our own hands?” Morgan pauses, considering. “My face is just as good-looking as my hair, you know.”

“Now is not the time to lie to ourselves.”

A pen rolls off the Lost Bride trilogy, off the table, onto the floor. I cast around. “Where’d Snapdragon go? He was just right here.”

I examine the pen. It’s striped orange and black, and the nub is shimmery gold, the same gold as Snapdragon’s eyes. My knees nearly give out. I scream.

Romina screams, too. “What happened? What’s wrong?”

I brandish the object. “It’s a pen! It’s a friggin’ pen !” And a weirdly gummy one, like those sticky-hand toys from quarter machines that within five minutes have attracted every crumb and cat hair in a five-mile radius. I return it to the table.

Luna looks at the pen, confused. “So?”

“Is it ballpoint?” Trevor asks. “Z, you should start using Paper Mate Flair Scented Felt Tips. They’ll never give you this kind of problem.”

I stare at it. “I’ve seen this pen before.” Lying around the house recently—on top of the toilet tank, on Luna’s kitchen counter, in empty cardboard boxes, and, several times, my bed. I thought it belonged to Ash and that she kept leaving it everywhere.

“My garden’s going to be ruined,” Romina moans. “And my lunch is doomed. Poor DoorDasher won’t want to come out in this weather. Or he will, but he’ll die in the name of chili cheese fries. I can’t live with that on my conscience.”

Trevor scuttles over. “Did you put in the order already? I’ll take pretzel sticks with zesty queso.”

The lights buzz, guttering, and darkness sweeps across us. Everybody screams again.

“Please do not,” Luna pleads. “I’m getting a headache.”

We’re all quiet for a few moments. Then Trevor says: “This would be the perfect time to rob somebody.”

“Hang on.” Morgan feels his way through the room, accidentally patting my left eye as he navigates. Seconds later, a door upstairs closes.

“Where’s he going?” I straighten. “To rob someone? Trevor, look what you’ve done.”

In the darkness, all of us cowering in fear for our lives, I hear Aisling whisper to Romina, “I want chili cheese fries, too. The food here on earth tastes so bland after being spoiled by fairy treats for the last ten years in Fairyland, but I could always go for chili cheese fries.”