Page 26

A LAZY RIPPLE expanded outward from the center of the bowl. Then the motion deepened—something pulling, pulling—and the reflection staring back at Willow began to change.

Somewhere at the edge of her awareness, she registered Amira’s rapt attention. Cole’s, too, though he was more on guard.

Willow barely noticed because—quite suddenly—Willow was no longer in Amira’s house at all. The scent of Amira’s perfume vanished, replaced by the smell of grass and warm earth. Sunlight stretched long across a green lawn, its rosy fingers deepening to violet as dusk approached.

She knew this place.

A croquet mallet thudded lightly against a ball—once, twice—a lazy rhythm. Not a game. Just a girl idly knocking the ball around, working on her technique.

It was Ash, wearing cutoffs and a T-shirt Willow knew well, the one with an atom on it. “SCIENCE DOESN’T CARE WHAT YOU BELIEVE,” read the words below.

Willow—or rather, the Willow in the vision—sat cross-legged on a picnic blanket. She was younger than her current age. Maybe seventeen? Across from her, nine-year-old Juniper mirrored Willow’s posture, eager to impress.

A single egg rested in Willow’s palm. A second egg waited beside her. Willow gently bounced the egg she held. “The shell keeps the egg nice and safe, right?”

Ash knocked the croquet ball closer so that she had an excuse to sidle up next to them.

Willow lifted the egg over the rim of a glass. “But when you crack it—”

A tiny fault line zigzagged up the shell.

CRICK.

Willow pulled the shell apart, and the raw egg slipped free, stretching thick and mucus-like before plopping into the glass.

“The egg slides out!” she pronounced. “See?”

The croquet ball rolled to a stop beside the picnic blanket. Ash trapped it with her foot. She didn’t speak, but she was listening.

“Now you,” Willow said, picking up the second egg and handing it to Juniper. “Crack yours.”

“Oh boy,” Ash muttered. “Here we go.”

The sun sank lower. Shadows stretched longer.

Juniper cracked her egg and watched, wide-eyed, as its gloopy innards sloshed into her glass. She went a little pale.

Ash leaned on her mallet like a walking cane, interested despite her protestations.

“The broken shell represents all the rules we’re supposed to accept,” Willow told Juniper. “The rules about what’s real and what’s not.”

“Like physics?” Ash interjected. “Those rules?”

“But here’s the thing, Juniper,” Willow continued. “There are other worlds than this one. Older worlds, where time works differently and where magic still exists.”

“Really?” Juniper said.

“Yes, really.” Willow leaned forward. “But the magic can only be perceived by people who believe in it. Same for rituals. For a ritual to work—and yes, I’m talking about the ritual we’re about to do—you have to believe it will work.”

“This ritual,” Ash drawled, “what’s it for? To make Juniper throw up?”

Juniper flicked a nervous glance at Ash.

Willow snapped her fingers in front of Juniper’s face. “Hey. Juniper. Eyes on me.”

She lifted her glass.

Juniper lifted hers as well, hands trembling.

“On three,” Willow said. “One . . .”

Ash cleared her throat. “Juniper, Willow is not the boss of you.”

“Two . . .”

“You don’t have to swallow a dead baby chick. You really, really don’t.”

Willow’s voice rang out—sharp and urgent and commanding: “Three!”

Both sisters tilted their glasses, and the yolks slid into their open mouths.

Willow swallowed hers and slammed her glass down. “Yes!”

Juniper wasn’t as lucky. Her cheeks bulged, and a tremor rippled through her. Her hands grabbed and squeezed the picnic blanket.

Willow rubbed her back. “Hey. You’ve got this.”

Juniper fought valiantly—face straining, throat convulsing—and finally, miraculously, she swallowed. Woozy but proud, she looked to Willow for approval.

“You did it!” Willow exclaimed. “Juniper, you just changed the fabric of reality!”

Ash scoffed. “Yeah, sure. By giving yourself salmonella.”

A firefly blinked to life above Willow and Juniper, its golden light flickering once before vanishing into the dusk.

Then another. And another.

One by one, dozens more appeared, their tiny lights pulsing in the warm night air.

Juniper glanced up at them in awe. “Are they here because of me? Am I... magic now?”

The vision fractured, the fireflies burning too bright. The world rippled, and Willow was ripped from the yard of her childhood home, tugged too violently back to Amira’s house.

She jerked away from the scrying bowl, her pulse hammering in her ears. For a moment, she just sat there, stunned and aching. She missed her sisters. Even Ash.

“Willow?” Cole said. He gently shook her shoulder. “Are you all right?”

Her surroundings came back to her in fragments—the polished wooden counter, the shelves lined with stoppered bottles, the curl of Amira’s heavy perfume.

Amira lifted her eyebrows and smiled, her expression that of a well-fed cat. “You want more,” she remarked.

Willow sensed danger lurking in Amira’s insinuation, but Amira was right. She did want more.

“So what now?” she said.

Amira laughed. “Nothing!”

Willow frowned. “But . . .”

“Magic has its own timeline,” Amira said, running a fingernail along the rim of the scrying bowl.

The soft scrape of it made Willow’s skin crawl.

“Move too fast, and it will rip right through you.” She flicked her gaze at Willow.

“It does that sometimes, you know. It rips. It tears. It turns a person inside out.”

For a split second, the egg was back in Willow’s throat, thick and gelid, like something trying to crawl out of her. She clamped her hand over her mouth.

“Take Orrin,” Amira mused. “Did his lover kill him—or was it the magic that took his life?” She lifted both hand, palms up, two empty scales weighing invisible lives.

“I don’t know who Orrin is,” Willow said impatiently.

Amira looked surprised. “No?”

“No, and it would be great if someone would tell me.”

Amira’s features resettled, but Willow sensed a new calculus playing through her mind. “It doesn’t matter. Dead is dead, and we’ve done enough for today.”

Willow shook her head. “No. Please. I—”

“You can come back tomorrow,” Amira said, coming around the counter and ushering Willow and Cole to the door. “And bring him, too,” she added, nodding at Cole. “I think he’s quite taken with you. It’s cute.”

Willow tried to protest, but Amira had already pushed them out of the house.

~

They left the holler in silence. Willow was half inside the memories the scrying bowl had summoned, half watching the path to keep from tripping. The sun had shifted, and late afternoon shadows stretched over the path.

The little boy from the house made out of drawers didn’t make an appearance. Willow hoped he was somewhere with his sister, high on sugar and toys.

Cole, too, seemed thoughtful. Willow wondered what memories and thoughts he was examining in his head, turning them this way and that.

Finally, he shot her a sideways glance. “You know, the sisters tell me you’re Wrenna Bratton’s kin.”

Willow was surprised but realized she shouldn’t have been. People everywhere talked. People in Hemridge? People in Lost Souls? Just look at how quickly the news of Willow’s escape from the deacons had traveled. Of course Cole would know she was Wrenna’s granddaughter.

“I am,” she said proudly. Wrenna Bratton had faced down the monster who’d raped her. She’d defeated him. Wrenna Bratton had been a badass.

“Yeah, I can see it,” Cole said. “You’re tougher than you look, Willow Braselton.”

“What is that supposed to mean? That I look like a weakling?”

He laughed. “Well, now that you mention it—”

She shoved him. He stumbled, still chuckling.

“I’m saying that any other girl as pretty as you would expect her looks to do her heavy lifting. But you—you marched into Amira’s house with your head held high. You let her prick your finger for that scrying bowl shit, and you didn’t even wince.”

Willow blushed, and her fingers went to her hair, which she was sure was a tangled mess. “I winced.”

“Sure, but you kept going.” He kicked a stone, and it went bouncing down the trail. “Here’s what I don’t get. How do you not know about Orrin if you’re Wrenna Bratton’s granddaughter?”

Willow huffed. “Because no one will tell me . Will you? Please?”

Cole shrugged. “He was Wrenna’s sweetheart.”

“Okaaay,” Willow said. “Was this before or after the pastor?”

“So you do know about the pastor.”

Her insides tightened. “Yes. I know about the pastor.”

Cole nodded and blew out a breath. The light filtered green and gold through the canopy of branches above.

“After she had the baby—you know about the baby?”

“The baby was my mother,” Willow said. “So, yes, I know about the baby. But the way my mom told it... she says Wrenna hanged herself. That’s why the Whitmires adopted her. She had no other family. But she never mentioned any sweetheart .”

“The story where Wrenna hanged herself? That’s one version,” Cole allowed.

“In that version, Wrenna abandoned her baby—your mom—by... well, by killing herself. She was depressed. Overwhelmed. And in that version, the Whitmires rushed in like good Christians and raised the baby she left behind as their own. Said it was the right thing to do.”

“What’s the other version?” Willow asked.

“That the Whitmires pulled strings with social services and made Wrenna hand over the baby. Said she was an unfit mother.”

“They took my mom away from her, you’re saying.”

He shrugged.

“And that’s why she hanged herself? Because she no longer had anything to live for?”

“Here’s the thing,” Cole said. “Official word was that she hanged herself, like you said. But no one ever found a body. No note, no clothes left behind. Nothing.”

Willow’s heart gave a little leap. “Is this where Orrin comes in?”

“Yeah, I guess it is. They say that Orrin loved Wrenna something fierce, even after the scandal. And when the baby came along, he loved the baby, too. Through thick and thin, he never stopped loving either one of them.”