Our Crooked Hearts(37)

Marion’s flat blue eyes came alive with rage. “You bitch,” she said to Fee, and charged her.

But Fee and I were two bodies with one heart, and one fighter with eight limbs, and her dad had taught us how to throw a punch and mine taught us how to make it dirty. I pulled Marion off my best friend by her hair. She twisted like a cat, sinking her teeth into my upper arm. Fee socked her in the gut to make her let go. Marion went at her again and I caught her around the stomach, hauling her down and pressing an arm to her throat the way I’d seen my dad do, breaking up fights on the block. By then the will had gone out of her. I scrambled back, sickened and ashamed, as she started to cry.

“That was her,” Marion said, her voice bitter with broken hope, her face red and naked. The circle’s heat had fizzed her eyebrows down and her lashes away. “That was her.”

“You lied.” Fee sat ramrod-straight, looking at the mirror. Her mother’s cross had bled into the cracks, sealing them with gold. “You lied to us.”

“I didn’t.”

Fee’s cheeks flushed hotter. “That was a summoning! We were dragging Astrid Washington out of, what, Hell? Mother of God, Marion!”

Sharon stirred. She’d watched in silence as we fought; now she pushed herself off the wall. “Are you three done? Because we have bigger problems.”

Sharon was not okay. Her fingers quivered as she pulled out a squashed pack of Camel Reds, patting manically at her pockets until Marion tossed her lighter across. The room felt flammable with enchantment, but nothing blew when she lit up.

“You broke a prime fucking rule here,” Sharon said. “You lied to your fellow workers. You withheld some crucial information. I don’t know how you pulled that off, how far it would’ve gone…” She trailed off. “But at least she was contained. Until you”—she nodded at Fee—“let her out of the circle.”

“Hey,” I said sharply. “Marion did this. Fee was trying to stop her.”

“That’s great. Magic definitely gives a red shit what you meant to do.”

I felt dizzy, my temples burbling like a kettle with the approach of blowback. “But she did. She did stop her. And you stopped the magic. So now what? We clean up. We bury the rabbit.”

“How are you bitches not dead yet?” Sharon said scornfully. “She didn’t stop shit. She broke the circle mid-summoning. Yeah, okay, Marion’s girlfriend isn’t embodied, but she’s not tucked up safe in witches’ Valhalla either. You let her out. She’s, oh, man. Having some fun. Or maybe she’s right here. Waiting for us to find another rabbit.”

I cast my eyes around the room, searching for places where the moonlight hung funny. I didn’t see or sense anything amiss.

Marion had stopped sniveling. Her lashless eyes were wide. “Wait. Are you saying it worked?”

Sharon stared at her. Then she flicked her smoldering butt in Marion’s face, lip curling as she skittered back, her ass drawing a contrail through the blood.

“My fault for working with schoolgirls,” Sharon said. “If I end up dying because of you I’ll haunt you in Hell.”



* * *



We crept down the ladder, through the halls, beneath the picnicking foxes. It seemed a year had passed since I’d first seen them. I was aching and terrified and thirsty as a desert wanderer for the sky, the garden, the world outside the nightmare. I hadn’t grasped yet that the nightmare was us, that it clung like wet denim to our skin.

Through the years I’d find myself back there, retracing our path through the library’s nighttime corridors. Walking the hall in the middle of the night, past the bedrooms where my children lay asleep, my foot would rise off bland suburban carpet and come down on age-stained parquet. My heart would seize, my blood burn with warning. Then I’d close my eyes and stand very still, waiting for the flashback to pass.

Here, now, back in the garden. Marion locked the door behind us and nudged the key through the crack. Sharon had done something to take care of the mess in the attic.

“What now?” It was Sharon I looked at when I asked it. She was older, her body scarred with bad knowledge. I thought she would be the one to save us.

She shrugged, thumb zip-zipping over the wheel of Marion’s lighter. “I don’t know what you’re gonna do, but I have to get home to my kid.”

“You have a kid?”

“Yeah,” she said shortly. “Look, come to the shop tomorrow morning, we’ll start trying to fix this. Till then, you know. Stay alive.”

She disappeared into the tunnel, leaving the three of us alone. Fee watching Marion, Marion watching the garden, fingertips pressing white indents into her scalded skin.

“You completely fucked us,” I told her.

She twitched her head. “Okay.”

I took a step closer. “Were we ever even friends? Were you always just planning to use us?”

“Oh, stop it,” she said raggedly, looking up. “If you’d let me finish we’d all have what we want. I wasn’t lying. She would have increased our power.”

“You’ve seen that spell before.” Fee spoke with cold certainty. “Before you met us, even. That’s why you pulled us in. You’ve been hating us, haven’t you? Because magic makes us happy, and you’re still fucking miserable.”