Our Crooked Hearts(32)

“Mourning ring,” she said, catching me looking. “I cut it from my half-brother’s head when he was lying in his casket. I spent most of my teens on a compound out in Arizona. He saved me when nobody else could be fucked to try.”

“Compound?” Fee said.

“Cult. Went in when I was fifteen, came out again at twenty. I’ve got lots of souvenirs, though.” She shook her bracelets away to reveal a row of pale hatch scars, the marks of someone counting off the days on a prison wall. “These are mine. Not these, though.” Three circular burn scars clustered in the hollow of her elbow. “The C-section scar is even better. I should’ve died. But the midwife snuck me off the ranch and got me to a hospital. The ranch—that’s what we called his compound.”

Just like that, Sharon clicked into focus. She was one of those people who wielded her own history like a knife. Spend enough time with career alcoholics and you can spot this kind from an avenue block away: threading their conversation with terrible, intimate revelations, designed to make you believe they’re telling you their secrets. Making you think you had to pay them back in kind. Sharon was magically gifted, but I’d bet her true talent was an eye for damage.

Well, mine wasn’t the right kind. I glared at her. Freshly sixteen, a virgin in an X T-shirt and combat boots. “Why are you telling us this?”

“Because it’s not a costume.” Her smoked voice hardened and she planted her legs wide, daring us to look at her. The Robert Smith hair, the jailhouse tattoos. “My body is a battery. I will never burn through everything that’s been done to me. Where does your power come from? Watching The Craft?”

My eyelid spasmed. Last night my dad couldn’t sleep for the grinding agony in his back. Last night he found the pain-relief charm I’d kicked under his bed and made me flush it. What hairball voodoo shit are you onto. His words damp with vomit because pills make a bad mixer. Fee came over and we stayed up until dawn cobbling together something to numb him, something to make him quiet, and I must’ve brewed my resentment into it too, because all morning I was fragile with blowback.

“There it is,” Sharon said softly. “Let your blood up, honey, it’s good for you. Anger is good for you. Hurt lets you work. Can we work together? I want to.”

“What about me?” Fee said. “I’m here, too.”

Fee was prettier than me. Taller, thicker. But even across those messed-up months there was a bedrock solidity to her that I never had. It allowed people to feel safe enough to look away.

With a finger hovering just shy of touch Sharon traced a lowercase t over Fee’s shirt, above the place where its fabric hid her cross-shaped scar. “Lost faith is a powerful engine. Frustrated faith is even better. I want to work with you, too.”

Marion just sat there sipping her tea, the cat with the cream.

I took a swig from my cup. It had been sitting a while but it was still wicked hot. “What’s the spell?”

Marion’s real smiles had become rare. Nothing with her seemed spontaneous anymore, you could always see her thinking, sense the ticking behind her eyes. But she smiled now, bright and tremulous. “It’s a power-up.”

“A what?”

“Listen to this.” Marion pinned the page with her finger and read aloud. “‘A blessing of power, for those bold enough to take it. That my gifts may not stagnate. That I may not die but live in you. A spell for eight hands.’” Her cheeks were flushed, her voice unsteady. “Increased magical force. That’s the spell.”

“‘For those bold enough,’” I repeated. “It sounds like a dare. Like she’s calling us chicken.”

“Have some respect,” Marion hissed. “This spell is a promise. A reward. A piece of Astrid’s power.”

“A reward for what, though?”

She brushed the question away. “We knew she was teaching us with the book. But all along she’s been testing us, too. Making sure we’re worthy. And we’ve proven ourselves.” Her eyes shone. “She’s chosen us.”

“How long does it last?” I asked.

“Forever.”

“No way,” I said dismissively. Fee frowned.

“Forever? Plus, what, we die of blowback?”

Marion’s mouth twisted. “This isn’t about give and take and balance and whatever you’re on about. This is a gift. Could you seriously say no to this?”

“Hey, come on.” Fee took her hand. “It just … Mar, doesn’t it seem a little too good to be true?”

Marion squeezed back, face softening. “Don’t we deserve something good?”

Sharon was looking between Fee and me with mild eyes. “I thought you two were workers,” she said. “But it sounds like you don’t want to work.”

“Nobody’s talking to you,” I snapped.

“Stop,” said Marion. “Listen.”

The word had weight to it. Texture. I almost wondered if it was a spell. When we met Marion, she’d been soft and ruddy, no grace to her but gravity. Now her color was rinsed out, her curves filed down to bone. The changes gave her the unsettling authority of an ascetic.

“I’ve done my homework. Since I found Astrid’s book I’ve read everything I could find about practitioners, occultists, witchcraft, all of it. No one could do what Astrid Washington could do. If we had just a sliver of her power, just a crumb…” She closed her eyes, as if the idea was a light too bright to look at.