As it turned out, I hadn’t needed it.
That was a tough day — new student orientation for Penn State Harrisburg. I’d walked downstairs to Dad raising his fist high in the air, punching upwards and cheering, “U-Penn! U-Penn!”
Not for the first time, I’d had to break it to him. I wasn’t going to Penn.
Harrisburg was cheaper — and wasn’t where Gray was applying for medical school. And Penn was just too hard to justify when I could go somewhere closer to home.
Dad hadn’t left the house since his accident, and if I wasn’t living here, I didn’t know who would go to the store, mow the lawn, check the mail. His accident had been so bad, his car had looked like a crushed soda can when they found it. Miraculously, he was fine, but everyone agreed it should have killed him.
I didn’t remember much about that night, other than it happened on my birthday, while I was at Gray’s, after I’d accidentally fallen asleep. I remembered I’d lied. I remembered that every day.
I swallowed tightly and pushed the memory away. I got up, threw a sweatshirt over the sports bra I’d slept in, then padded down to the kitchen. Dad’s favorite dark roast coffee was just finishing brewing.
He was in his usual spot, sitting in the living room recliner in front of the television. His sandy hair was ruffled the way it always was when he slept there. We had the same hair, along with the same tanned, white skin, broad shoulders, and — as everyone liked to point out — similar facial expressions. Reserved. Distant. The only trait I might’ve inherited from my mother was my eye color, but if my gold eyeshadcome from one of Helen’s ancestors, I couldn’t be certain.
I poured a mug of coffee and nodded to Dad, who wasn’t shy about studying my washed-out appearance. He shifted in the recliner, the leather groaning as he frowned at my hair, still damp and tangled from the sweat that had poured out of me earlier. I never told Dad what the nightmare was about — that it was about that night, about him.
“Something came for you,” he said.
I furrowed my brow, knowing he wouldn’t have brought in a package.
Dad jerked his head toward an area of the kitchen I generally had no reason to pay attention to. “A letter in the letterbox. There’s a dragonfly on the wax seal.”
My breath hitched. I felt a flicker of hope for a second, but I’d been let down too many times before, so I forced myself to squash it.
I exhaled slowly, and, with lowered expectations, set my red Penn mug on the table andcalmlywalked to the cabinet with the letterbox on it.
Ash used to stamp her letters with a dragonfly, but it had to be a coincidence. She hadn’t written in three years.
The copper letterbox, the only magical object in our house, wasused to send small items between here and Everden. It was the size of a toaster oven and had one small drawer big enough to fit a large book, which was the only reason I knew as much about magic as I did. Helen once used the letterbox to send letters and textbooks to Ash.
I wasn’t allowed to read them, but that didn’t stop me from sneaking into Ash’s bedroom, stealing her books and digging her letters out of the trash. At first, after Ash went to Everden, she regularly wrote to us, until three years ago, when, with no explanation, she stopped. The last thing she sent wasn’t even a letter. It was a children’s book about Counterparts.
I didn’t even know if Helen would tell us if Ash was in trouble. Helen, who didn’t respond after Dad wrote to her about my appendix bursting.
I slowly pulled open the letterbox’s ancient copper drawer. Dad wouldn’t joke about Ash, but I still couldn’t help my surprise — or the way my heart jolted — when I saw crisp parchment the color of light tea, folded and sealed with a wax dragonfly.
I paused, vaguely hearing the sound of the footrest drawing in, followed by Dad’s footsteps crossing the hardwood. It wasn’t until he pushed a letter opener toward me that I realized I’d been frozen, not ready to read whatever my sister had written.
Ash wouldn’t be the one to say my time in the human realm was up, would she? It would have been an Echelon, someone in the government.
“Go on,” Dad said, shifting his weight. “I want to know how she is.”
I read the letter, and any hope I hadn’t managed to kill quickly flattened to disappointment. I turned the parchment over in my hands, inspecting the now broken seal.
At first glance, it looked like Ash had signed and sealed the letter, but after reading it, I knew it wasn’t from her. It mighthave been her dragonfly, but — smudged and stamped off-center — it wasn’t put there by my sister. The letter lacked her voice and elegance. The writing was sharply slanted, every letter crushed.
Ash was composed and articulate. She didn’t scrawl. She was a perfectionist whose lettering belonged in a calligraphy guide. This wasn’t how she would break this news.
Apparently, the witchesdidremember my existence. In three days, they were coming to get me. That much had been hastily penned in purple. No further details were provided.
I paced to the trash and tossed the letter on top of yesterday’s coffee grounds. Dad looked like he wanted to say something, his mouth struggling to decide what shape to form.
“I’m not going,” I said, avoiding his long look. My life was here. College was here. Dad needed me here. We both knew if I went to Everden, I wouldn’t return to the human realm.
“I think you have to,” he said, then plodded back to his chair and kicked out the footrest as I remained in the kitchen.
“If that was the case,” I said, bracing my hands on the smooth granite counter, “they would’ve come eight months ago like they were supposed to.”
