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COLE CUT THE engine and stepped out, stretching his arms above his head. He started for the dilapidated house, and Willow quickly slipped on her sandals and followed, grabbing her backpack from the duct-taped seat.

A hanging basket on the front porch swung in the breeze.

It made a strange rattling sound, and when Willow peered closer, she saw that it was full of rusted keys.

Cole pried off his mud-caked boots, set them to the side, and rapped on the door—a quick, sharp pattern.

After a brief pause, the door swung open.

The woman on the other side wore a man’s flannel shirt over a thin cotton slip. She was small, sharp-boned, and silver-haired. She smiled warmly at Cole and opened her arms for a hug. It wasn’t until she’d fussed over him a bit and pulled back that she noticed Willow.

When she did, her warm demeanor cooled. Her eyes, pale as water, raked over Willow from head to toe.

“You’ve brought a guest,” she remarked.

“She’s asking after Amira Greer,” Cole said.

There was a shift in the air. Willow would have sworn to it. But the woman said simply, “Is she, now?”

She stepped back and swept her arm toward the house’s interior. “Come inside, then. Come on, come on.”

Inside, the air smelled of woodsmoke and cheap plastic flooring.

A wide table flanked by mismatched chairs sat in the middle of the room.

At the far end sat a second woman, her body large, her braid coiled neatly over one shoulder.

Her eyes were set deep in a face that might once have been beautiful.

In front of her was an open jar of mayonnaise and a spoon.

“Ruby, Brooxie, this is Willow,” Cole said.

The first woman closed the front door. “I’m Ruby,” she clarified. “Nice to meet you, Willow.”

“Nice to meet you, too,” Willow said. She nodded at the other woman. Brooxie.

“She’s looking for Amira,” Ruby told Brooxie.

“I am, yes,” Willow said. “I—I heard she lives here?”

The women exchanged a glance.

“You’re just a sliver of a thing,” Brooxie said, her voice hitting a lower register than Willow had been expecting—truck driver low and rough like gravel. “Why would a sliver like you be looking for a woman like Amira Greer?”

“Um,” Willow began. “Well...” These women didn’t feel like the sort you lied to, but she wasn’t ready to spill everything, either.

“I’m trying to find something,” she said. “Something important. I was told Amira might have it. Or know where it is.”

Brooxie arched an eyebrow. “What sort of thing?”

“A box?” Willow said hesitantly. She glanced from Brooxie to Ruby. “It’s called the Queen’s Box.”

This time, the air crackled.

“I see,” said Ruby.

“You’re not the first to come looking for the Box,” Brooxie said in her funny rasp. “And you won’t be the last.”

“I’m not trying to cause trouble,” Willow assured them. “I just want to find it.”

“Mmm,” Ruby murmured.

“Don’t they all?” said Brooxie.

“Suppose you do find it. What then?” Ruby inquired.

“I don’t know,” Willow replied. “I guess... I guess that depends on what I find.”

Wind rattled the windows. From the front porch, the keys in the hanging basket clanged.

Brooxie picked up the spoon from the warped pine table and plunged it into the jar of mayonnaise.

She didn’t stir so much as churn, like she meant to rouse something from the depths.

When she lifted the spoon, it came up piled high with a thick, glistening glop—mayonnaise, presumably, though it was a sickish yellow, like egg yolk left too long in the sun.

“The Box is full of locked-away things,” she said in a faraway tone. She slid the spoon between her lips and drew it out slowly. Half the mayonnaise was gone. The rest clung to the utensil, curled at the tip into a delicate peak. It looked like the toe of an elf’s boot—or a talon.

“They’ve been in there too long, the locked-away things,” Brooxie continued. Her eyes settled on Willow. “Things that should’ve flown or bloomed or died. But they didn’t. They lingered. And when something lingers too long in a place it was never meant to be...”

She set down the spoon. The dollop of mayonnaise listed to the side, and she regarded it sorrowfully.

Ruby went to Brooxie and placed her hand on Brooxie’s shoulder. “Now, Brooxie, shh.” To Willow, she said, “A soul, a memory, a creature... when it’s not allowed to blossom, it droops.”

Brooxie nodded. “Shrivels.”

“It’s the saddest of sadnesses,” Ruby said. “When something is stunted through no choice of its own.”

Cole toed the floor with his socked foot. “Right. I’m going to go shower.”

Brooxie raised her palms in a dramatic skyward sweep. “Oh, thank heavens. You stink so bad, you curdled my mayonnaise.”

“That’s mayonnaise?” Cole retorted. “Here I was thinking you’d cracked a few eggs in there and left them in the sun all day just to see what would happen.”

Brooxie threw back her head and laughed, and Cole grinned in delight.

“You’re one to talk,” Ruby scolded Brooxie. “How long has it been since you’ve had a bath—and I mean a real one—in the tub with soap and a washcloth?”

“A whore’s bath suits me fine, sister.” Brooxie threw Willow a wink. “Tits, pits, and lady bits, and I’m good to go.”

Ruby turned her attention to Cole. “As for you, I’m not sure you could crack an egg if you tried, although I suppose Brooxie and I are to blame for that. We spoil you, that’s what we do.”

Cole leaned back and spread his arms. “What can I say? It’s good to be king.”

Willow smiled along with the rest of them, but their banter made her feel lonely. How long had it been since she’d joked around like that? Been loved like that?

Once Cole had left the room, the sisters grew serious. Ruby took a seat at the table and gestured for Willow to do the same. Willow obliged, the legs of her chair scraping the floor as she sat and scooted in.

“The Queen’s Box,” Ruby said. “Are you sure you wish to find it?”

If finding the Box meant finding Serrin, then of course she was sure. “I am.”

Ruby looked at Brooxie, who nodded. She turned back to Willow, catching Willow’s gaze and holding it.

“Well, then,” she said. “Let us begin.”

Willow’s stomach fizzed.

“You have the Fade,” Brooxie pronounced.

“I do?” said Willow. “The . . . what?”

“You know what we’re talking about,” Ruby said.

“I really don’t,” Willow replied.

“In Hemridge, with Deacon Cotter and Deacon Moore,” Brooxie said. “They wanted you to go with them, but you slipped through their fingers.” She snapped. “Gone, just like that.”

Willow’s eyebrows flew sky-high. “You know about that?”

Ruby chuckled. “I would have liked to see their expressions. Bet they were mighty surprised.”

“I was, too,” Willow confessed. “I didn’t mean to disappear, if that’s even what I did.” She glanced from Ruby to Brooxie. “Is it? Because... that’s impossible, after all.”

“But you, Willow,” Brooxie said. “You believe in impossible things, isn’t that right?”

“‘The Fade’ is what folks around here call it,” Brooxie said. “It’s a certain power passed down from generation to generation, but only in certain families.”

“Only in certain bloodlines,” Ruby said.

“Some call it the Gift of Orrin, an attempt to help those who’ve suffered as he did.”

“Who’s Orrin? How did he suffer?”

“Hard to say,” Brooxie said.

“Who really knows?” Ruby chimed in.

“You slip into a crack between worlds,” Brooxie explained. “I’ve never seen it happen, nor Ruby, either. Was nearly convinced it was just a story—until now.”

“That’s right—because you did it. You got away from those deacons.” Ruby leaned in, eyes bright. “What did it feel like? Could you see them not see you? Could you feel yourself... slip away?”

“I don’t know. It all happened so fast,” Willow said, deciding there was no reason to hold back. The sisters already knew, and their excitement was contagious. “I was there, and they were coming for me. Those men. I felt trapped.”

Ruby nodded. “Trapped. Yes.”

“And then?” Brooxie asked.

“And then...” Willow shrugged. “I don’t know. It was strange. I heard a creak—”

“A creak ?” Brooxie interrupted. “Did you hear that, sister?”

“Shh, let the girl talk,” said Ruby. “You heard a creak... and then what?”

Willow bit her lip, trying to remember. Trying to find the words to describe what she remembered. “It was as if something opened, but only I could see it. But ‘see’ isn’t right. I didn’t see it. I didn’t see any thing. And yet...”

She propped her elbows on the table and rested her forehead on her fingertips.

She stared at the grain of the wood, knowing that what she was about to say was too fragile to survive scrutiny.

If she saw doubt in the sisters’ expressions—and she would if she looked; she knew she would—then her attempt at explaining would die in her throat.

“Have you ever stared at yourself in the mirror for a very long time?” she asked, but it wasn’t a question, and she didn’t wait for an answer.

“ Really stared, right into your own eyes. Stared until you got lost. Stared until the air shimmered, and everything around you fell away, and somehow you became two people at once—the you gazing into the mirror and the you gazing back?”

She overlapped her hands and positioned them above her eyes like a visor, making it doubly hard to succumb to temptation and check the sisters’ reactions.

“It was like that. In Hemridge, with the deacons, it was like a reflection of the world appeared in front of me. Like someone had taken a great big pair of scissors and cut a rectangle out of reality, but only one layer of reality, and only for me. It was just my size.”

She frowned. “I didn’t choose to step inside it. Or I don’t think I did. But I suppose I must have—and then it sealed shut around me, and I was safe. Unseeable and untouchable. There and not there, like the girl in the mirror.”

She stopped because those were all the words she had. She let her hands fall to her lap. Queasy with nerves, she lifted her head.