Page 3 of The Folklore of Forever (Moonville #2)

Three

Hang your hat on an ancestor’s tombstone in the summertime and listen to crickets for the following minute. Count the chirps, then double them; that is how many years you’ve got left.

Local Legends and Superstitions, Tempest Family Grimoire

“Festival budgets aren’t what they used to be,” Gilda laments. “There should be a fair going on this very minute, as it always does in July, but as you can see it’s been canceled. A tragedy! But we have to uphold the Halloween festival. Midnight at Moonville is practically famous. We get folks by the thousands here every October for it!”

Luna, who has a few good inches on me in height and towers over Gilda, tries to peer at her clipboard and figure out what any of her spiel has to do with the price of beans. Gilda tugs it back, hitting Morgan again.

“Stand somewhere else, young man. You’re gonna get that pretty face bruised.”

Morgan is visibly split between the pain in his shoulder and the glow of having his face appreciated.

“I’m throwing an auction to make sure Midnight at Moonville doesn’t get guillotined by our fun-hating mayor,” Gilda goes on darkly.

“An auction?” Romina repeats. “We could donate gift baskets.” She looks at Luna to gauge agreement. “The same items we put in our subscription boxes, basically, but packaged prettier? Rose quartz, star anise—”

“Sounds fine, to start with.” Gilda smiles sweetly. “But what I’m really after is a slice of your time. In a tight-fitting dress.” She inspects me. “You got anything that shows cleavage? Blessed as you are, it’s a sin not to show what you’ve got, honey.”

“None of my clothes are able to show cleavage,” I deadpan. “I have a condition that makes all the flesh rot off my bones and if I were to unbutton my dress, you’d see the rattlesnake that lives in my chest cavity.”

She ignores this. “We’re going to auction dates . Romina, sweetie, how serious are you about Alex? Has the passion worn itself down yet? Room for one more?”

Romina drops into a squashy armchair in front of the fireplace. In the summer months, we fill the hearth with battery-operated snow globe potion bottles, splashing the mantel and, atop it, Grandma’s crystal ball, with eerie emerald light. “Count me out. You’re welcome to auction off my floral services, though.”

Gilda huffs. “Fine, that leaves the rest of you.”

“Not me.” Trevor gestures to the dynamite stick design on his shirt: TnT , for Trevor and Teyonna. “I’m a taken man.” He steals a bite of pink popcorn drizzled with butterscotch icing and crushed Reese’s Pieces from Luna’s carton, which she bought from a corner stall. “Speaking of TNT, you’re all invited to a light show in the dollar store parking lot after dark. Please feel free to donate items you wouldn’t mind melting in a grill I found by the side of the road.”

Luna flicks him in the ear.

Gilda whirls on Luna. “I assume you’re single and desperate? My sources have not indicated otherwise.”

It is a testament to Luna’s people skills that her smile looks sincere. “Single, yes. Desperate, no. I’m waiting for the right—”

“Slap your signature here.” Gilda thrusts a sign-up sheet at her. “Auction’s next Friday, winning bidder gets a date. Mind, you can think of it as a lunch or hangout or what have you, but men will throw down more money if we call it a date.”

Luna shakes her head, bending to scrawl her name. “You’re shameless.”

“Wear one of your crop tops to the auction. I figure that’ll drive up interest at least fifty bucks.”

She turns to me.

I brace myself. “Thanks for the offer, but I’m—”

“You’ve ignored Moonville for the past fourteen years so that you could sleep in your van in overpriced cities,” she interrupts. “Which I’m sure is more glamorous than it sounds, but you can make it up to us now by giving our town’s children the festival they deserve.”

“All right, all right. You’re getting your way.” There truly is no arguing with Gilda.

She beams. “Splendid. There’s a lid for every pot, as they say. Somebody out there, I’m sure, won’t mind that you dress as if it’s Halloween every day.”

I would give Gilda my kidney if she needed it, but there are times I’d like for her to retire in Florida. She can’t know how it stings to think about my love life, how ardently I do hope there is somebody out there who will be the perfect lid to my pot. I chance a sidelong look at Morgan.

Right as I’m poised to add my name with the rest of Ursula’s stolen souls, Romina gasps. “This is how it happens!” she loud-whispers, seizing my wrist. “For Zelda!”

I frown. “How what happens?”

Her eyes are enormous and dreamy. “The moth .”

Curses.

“Oh, not the moth thing again.”

My lovely, caring, sweet liar of a grandmother used to pretend she had psychic dreams, and when my sisters and I were younger, she informed us that one day we would all fall in love with the men we’re meant to spend the rest of our lives with, all within the same year. She said we would know it was the year when we saw a silver luna moth, and at the time that we saw it, one of us would be running from love, one would be waiting for it, and the third would already be in over her head. (Silver luna moths do not exist, by the way.) A couple days ago, just after Romina finally admitted to herself that she’s madly in love with her high school sweetheart, she saw a metal butterfly decoration or something like that and has declared it to be The Moth. Which means that this is Our Year.

Gilda’s face is pitying. “My poor na?ve girl, that was a fabrication. I am sorry to tell you that your grandmother did not possess True Sight.” I nod, but then she adds, “ I possess True Sight, and have not Seen any prophecies relating to moths, whether they be silver or luna or any other. Unlike Dottie, rest her fraudulent soul, I am an actual psychic, and my crystal ball has foretold that at least one of you girls shall find love at this auction.”

I scribble my name, phone number, and email address. Will Morgan bid on me? I’d say yes to a date even without an auction, which he likely guesses, so maybe he won’t bid. Why fork over cash when you can have what you like for free?

“It’s about time you found yourself somebody special, Miss Zelda,” Gilda says. I bite my lip, trying to restrain a smile.

“Zelda’s found a lot of special somebodies.” Luna laughs.

My smile dies.

Romina points a pink kernel of popcorn at me. “Our Zelda’s a heartbreaker. Don’t get your hopes up, Gilda.”

I smirk as though this is funny, because that is the expected reaction, but acid coats my throat. “Yes, she’s quite persnickety,” Luna adds.

Persnickety, persnickety.

E R T Y I P

S K

CN

Frequently, a word will get jammed in my systems and I have no choice but to repeat it three or four times, liking the way the sound rolls around in my mouth; then I visualize where each letter of the word would be located on my laptop’s keyboard. In my mind’s eye, I find the necessary buttons and tap down each one. I once told Grandma that I did this, to which she said, How unusual! I find the buttons for those words, too, humming in satisfaction after they’ve been typed out.

W U O

A SH L

N

Gilda collects Morgan’s signature, helps herself to six bookmarks and a handful of whatever’s in the candy dish at the checkout counter, and smiles roundly. “Your grandmother’s ghost would like to express her gratitude to you, for supporting our town’s economy.”

The incomprehensible brass of this woman.

“She didn’t say any of that,” my eleven-year-old niece replies, socked feet appearing before the rest of her does as she slicks down the banister rail from the upstairs apartment. Our knotty pine staircase is well-polished to assist in quick sliding. Aisling’s gaze is baleful. “Grandma’s in the attic reading Aunt Zelda’s notes for her next book. Says Zel should try writing bodice rippers.”

Gilda looks a tad unnerved. “What a charming imagination you have.”

My face colors. “You’re not supposed to be in my room without permission.” She has a penchant for “borrowing” clothes. “Or know what bodice rippers are.”

“I only went up there because I heard Grandma. She was talking to herself.”

It’s a flash up my spine, the horrible, wonderful, too-good-to-be-true imagery of my grandmother lingering, watching over us. “Aisling, it is wrong to make up stories like that.”

Her face crumples. “I’m not making it up! She wanted me to tell you, uhh…” Ash squints, pretending to recall something. “ Remember what I told you. ”

“That is a step too far,” I say sharply.

“All right, everybody settle down.” Luna throws me a severe look.

I exhale through my nose. Damn this family and their delusions of magic and prophecies and ghosts. It is painfully clear why I stayed away for so long. Whenever I’ve gone on vacations with my sisters and niece, they’ve still behaved peculiarly, but it wasn’t the full-blown charlatan experience like it is here, in this building, where our town’s cumulative idiosyncrasies embolden them to live their best lies.

“ And you’re wearing my shirt,” I add. My biggest, comfiest black sweater, with the faded outline of a pirate ship. She’s paired it with one of her mother’s tie-dye scarves, pinning back her straight brown hair. She looks adorable, though, so I soften. “Just don’t spill anything on it, all right?”

“I would never,” she declares dramatically.

Romina pffft s. “You would always . My clothes come back from you stained so badly, they look like old-world maps.”

The bell chimes as Gilda swans out the door, and, consumed by my thoughts, I drift from room to room.

As if memory is a ghost, I can fixate on any spot in this shop and see myself and my two sisters, many years ago, when Grandma still ran it all. There weren’t any books or flowers then—she sold only candles—and dementia hadn’t begun to take her from us piece by piece. She was strong, whimsical, bejeweled; dragonflies in her long white hair; wrapped in a purple, gold, and green apron; a folk saying for any occasion ready at her lips. Stories galore, which watered my creative spirit, shaping me into the storyteller that I am today. Did you know there’s magic in Moonville? she’d whisper, swishing across the creaky floor in her long skirts with bells at the hem, humming to old Celtic songs playing from our bulky CD player. It’s in our trees. It’s in our waters. In your very bones. Can’t you feel it?

Dottie would place my hand against her ear, like a child listening to the ocean in a seashell. I can certainly hear it. Runs all through you like music in a wind tunnel.

She made magic seem…not merely real , but as if it were alive with a beating heart, like it belonged with our family, and we were its guardians. I idolized her, gobbling up this belief that I was part of something bigger. I believed there was magic in my bones.

Dottie’s favored music still plays, although not from a CD player anymore. I meander through the sunroom porch, called the Garden, where Romina is at work braiding a floral crown for a customer who wants to get over their ex-girlfriend. Their past lover has already moved on, and loving them is a torment. “ To let love go ,” Romina says softly, piling plants together. “Cyclamen. Blue iris. Snowdrops.” She pauses, hand hovering over a pot of drooping white flowers. “Not snowdrops, it seems. The magic wants…honeysuckle. Yes. This is the combination that will help you. Wear the crown while you sleep tonight, and you’ll wake with a lifted heart. Tomorrow, spread the flowers out to dry. Then crush their petals and keep them in your pocket until you feel the heartache easing.”

I shake my head, passing all the way back around into the Candleland section of our shop, high shelves crammed with wax artworks: pumpkins, acorns, trees, blooms; meltable mages and knights and dragons inspired by Luna’s favorite fantasy series, Tributales. The competing scents of coffee, patchouli, caramel black tea, amber, sea salt, and raspberry should be migraine-inducing, but they calm me instead, evoking the strange feeling that I am standing at the center of the universe, where everything started. Exactly where I need to be.

Ahead, a man leans against a hallway wall papered with torn-out book pages, lit by electric torches. This corridor curves down to a landing of sorts, then ramps steeply down again, leading to the Cavern of Paperback Gems. The Cavern was my idea, as I wanted a way to imprint a little of my own personality into the shop. Luna had candles, Romina had flowers, and the obvious choice for me was books. If I’m not writing a book of my own, then I’ve got my nose in somebody else’s. Even when I didn’t live here, I still operated the Cavern, ordering stock and making myself available to customers for recommendations. There’s an old-fashioned telephone on the wall downstairs, and if you dial 3, my cell rings.

The man sees me coming and straightens, slipping his hands out of his pockets. He looks to be in his late twenties or early thirties, with soft brown hair that curls at the nape of his neck, light gray eyes, and my biggest weakness: glasses. It’s dishonorable, how fast I can go to pieces over a man in glasses.

“Hi,” he says, clearing his throat.

I glance at his shopping basket, a plastic gold cauldron with a wire handle, which contains one copy of Cave of a Thousand Crystal Wings , the third book in my There’s Magic in Villamoon series. He sees me looking at it and picks up the book, flipping to read the synopsis on the back. A receipt is sticking out of the pages like a bookmark; I wonder how long he’s been lingering after he made his purchase. “Vampires, huh?”

“Among other monsters. If you’re new to the series, it might help to start with the first book, though. That one is number three.”

“Ah, but this is the one that you forgot to sign.” He smiles, a wry sparkle in his eyes, and I can’t help but smile back. “I had to search through thirty books before I found a copy you skipped.”

“You wanted one I hadn’t signed?”

He holds my gaze. We’re close enough to the basement entrance to hear my playlist, which is separate from the music that plays in the rest of the shop. Down in the Cavern, I like to knit the atmosphere with stormy midnights and spooky film scores. At this moment, “The Incantation” from Beetlejuice is creeping around the landing.

“I wanted you to know who you were signing it for.” He opens to the title page and uncaps a pen, handing both the pen and the book to me. “Dylan.”

I give him an assessing look as I Zorro a great big Z across the page. “You a fan of paranormal mysteries, Dylan?”

He shrugs. “We’ll see.” A mock frown pulls at his lips. “Couldn’t have added your phone number?”

At that, I have to laugh.

He takes the book from me, then begins to turn. “By the way, I overheard you talking to Miss Halifax. An auction sounds fun.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah.” He opens the front door. “I’m looking forward to our date.”