Our Crooked Hearts(30)

“Sure,” Sharon replied after a pause. “For sure I do.”

Marion was nodding. “Yeah. So. Sharon’s shop is kind of a meeting place for … for practitioners. I came in to buy supplies the other day and we ended up talking for, what, two hours?”

“That’s right,” Sharon said, looking at me.

Marion cradled the book, her voice dropping into a reverent register. “Something happened the night after I met Sharon. The book gave me a spell for four workers. It’s never done that before.” She looked at us solemnly. “I think Astrid wants us to work with Sharon.”

I scoffed. “What, is she our pimp? I’m not working with someone I don’t know.”

“I like this one.” Sharon’s eyes were hard with liking’s opposite. “I like you, honey.”

“Your admiration and a nickel, honey.”

Sharon pursed her lips and breathed out. An impossibly long whoosh that filled my nose with licorice and made the lights flicker and broke the room’s tension into mosaic pieces. Fee’s eyes widened, fingertips pressed to the place her crucifix had scarred her.

“We’ve got time.” Sharon seemed happier now that she’d impressed us. “Let’s talk. Let’s drink some tea. I’ll send somebody out for Jimmy John’s.”

I got one of my occasional flashes of clarity then. A glimpse of Sharon’s aura. It was ultraviolet and an orange that was hard to look at, striated like a tiger’s fur. The only dual-toned aura I’d ever seen. I had no idea what it meant.

I looked at Fee. She raised a brow.

“Yeah, all right. We can talk.”





CHAPTER SIXTEEN



The suburbs

Right now

I walked back to my haunted house, holding my haunted head. When I saw Hank’s car in the drive I broke into a run. I flew up the stairs and into his room, breathing out when I found him asleep. His face was slack, bathed in the light of the movie playing on his open laptop.

I closed it and jostled his shoulder. “Hank. Hanky Hank Hank. Henry.”

He woke up as he always did, complete unconsciousness to loud confusion, like an old man who fell asleep on a roller coaster. “Ivy? What time is it? Why are you in here? Where’d my computer go? Did it fall on the floor?”

“Settle,” I said. “Breathe.”

He fell back dramatically. “Oh, my god. It’s the middle of the night!”

“Did you just get home?”

“I don’t know. I was sleeping.”

“Did you see anything weird when you came in?”

“Weird like what? Never mind, I don’t care. No. Go to bed.”

My breathing slowed a little. “I will. In a minute. But, Hank. What did you mean earlier, when you said that thing about Billy? That thing about, what happened with you guys?”

“This is why you woke me up?” He caterpillared up his headboard, squinting at me through one eye. “I just meant that you used to be friends. Till you dropped him.”

“No,” I said firmly. “That never happened.”

“It did, though.”

“Listen to me. I barely know Billy Paxton. Aside from his being our neighbor. I’ve never had a full conversation with him before tonight.”

My brother blinked at me, the moon carving his face into the high angles of an Anonymous mask. Then he threw back his sheets. “Get the light.”

When Hank was a kid, Aunt Fee gave him her old Polaroid camera. He was immediately obsessed, and started keeping a photo record of every person who entered his room. Eight years later the wall between closet and door was given over entirely to photo squares in various stages of fade. He stood before them in sleep hair and pajama pants, searching.

I was there, of course, at different ages. The one where I had a triangular haircut, freshly grown-in beaver teeth, and crooked red glasses was suspiciously prominent. There were boys in baseball jerseys and girls caught with their eyes closed, holding phones and jackets and joints, bleached with flash. The photos were stuck up with pushpins, collaging over each other, some of the older ones perforated multiple times along their rims.

“Here.” Hank detached one that hung at the level of our knees, mostly hidden behind a picture of him and his friend Jada dressed as Magenta and Riff Raff, and pushed it into my hand.

I looked, but for a moment I didn’t see.

In the photo Billy and I stood side by side, aged about nine and ten. It must’ve been summer because we were both wearing shorts, and, for some reason, oversized sport coats. Billy was talking, this expression on his face like he was in the middle of telling me a joke, and my eyes were squeezed shut with laughter. It was a silly, happy photo. I started to smile. Then the unreality of it hit.

I shoved it against Hank’s chest with trembling fingers. “I don’t remember this.”

“Ivy.” His voice was almost pleading. “How could you not?”

“I’m telling you, this never happened. How are we … what even is this?”

He swallowed. “It’s that dorky game you used to play, where you dressed up in Dad’s work clothes and spied on people. You called yourselves the Detective Twins.”

I put a hand to my neck. “The Detector Twins?” It was the name of a cheesy kids’ mystery series I used to love.