“I’m boredforyou,” he returns. “Where’s your sense of adventure? Where’s your curiosity? Have a little faith.”
“Faith? Ha! Says the man who pretended to like me because he thought I could give him special powers.”
He makes a face. “When you say it likethat, it doesn’t sound nice. Say it a different way.”
I turn around, pretending he isn’t there. Accidentally step in a puddle. “Curses,” I mutter. Deeply irritated now, I shout at him, “If ghosts were real, there would be ghost actors! Ghost politicians! Imagine never being able to get rid of eternally eighty-year-old Senator Barry, who keeps vetoing all the bills to fight climate change because he doesn’t have any skin and can’t feel how hot the earth is getting.”
He crosses his arms on the windowsill and rests his chin atop them, smiling. “You’ve been thinking about this.”
“It is anycuriousmind’s responsibility to fully examine all sides of a theory before you are qualified to dismantle it.” I square my shoulders, boots filling with water. “There would be ghost shops and ghost holidays and clear recordings of them,realones, and ghost legislation, ghost rights movements, ghost prisoners, and living people trying to marry dead people—”
“Actually,” he interrupts. “There’s a woman from Oxfordshire—”
“If it were real,” I continue firmly, “it could be proven.” Voicing the words is cathartic. I can’t say any of this to my sisters, or they’ll get mad at me. Morgan is a convenient pair of ears.
He sighs, probably loud enough for the night shift to hear him from all the way down the corner at our new twenty-four-hour diner, Dark Side of the Spoon. His smooth face is white as the moon in contrast to the shadowed building he occupies, hair a tousled mess from combing it back with his fingers. From my perspective, light and darkness trace him in an uncanny way, making the bony sockets that his eyes are set in appear bigger, and the eyes themselves like black tourmaline. “You’re so above it all. You don’t believe in ghosts, you don’t believe in witches, you think your niece is a pathological liar and that I’m annoying.”
My hair is damp with a light drizzle, strands sticking to my neck and shoulders. “Not just annoying. I think you’re dishonest, too.”
He draws the bow from his violin downward in one quickmotion, extending it toward me like an accusing finger. Its tip is haloed in the streetlight, the softly falling rain that encircles Morgan like a faint, shimmering aura. From somewhere behind us, lifting like a fog from the earth, I hear a dreamy song twirling along the strings of a harp. “That’s mean,” he tells me.
The sound amplifies, but I cannot detect its source. Music seems to be falling from the sky, hidden behind each drop of rain. Then, abruptly, the song collapses and we’re left in silence.
“It’s what you deserve.” I return to my search, walking until he’s out of earshot.
“There would be ghost restaurants, with living volunteers who let their energy be fed on because they get off on the experience sexually,” I mutter, dragging a wet snake of hair out of my eyes. It slaps right back into place. “There would be ghost federal agents. Musicians. Beauty parlors. Are you trying to tell me our government would pass up the opportunity to keep taxing people after rigor mortis sets in, if they could get away with it?” I gesture my hands as if swatting flies, flashlight jerking. It’s maddening that I can’t prove ghostsdon’texist, either. All things should be either provable or disprovable, yes or no. “Unlikely!”
On and on I mutter.
Fourteen
The first of August is not called the Sturgeon Moon in our household, but rather the Wishing Moon. On Aisling’s birthday, she makes a wish, and it comes true, because her coven makes it so.
Family Traditions,
Tempest Family Grimoire
An hour anda quarter before the clock is set to strike midnight, ushering in August the first, Aisling’s twelfth trip around the sun coinciding with the Gaelic festival Lughnasadh, Romina and I tiptoe down the hallway toward Aisling’s bedroom door. Bells are tied to the bracelets on our wrists and ankles, their music a light, sweet glimmer. In Luna’s room, I can hear the quiet murmurings of3rd Rock from the Sun. She used to bemoan recordings of that show always playing during our weekend stays at Grandma’s house when we were kids. I think that if I were to ask her about it, she’d say she left it for Dottie’s ghost to watch, but I think she likes having the comforting noise around to make it feel as if our grandmother’s still around, too.
We push Ash’s door open, which protests on its slanted frame, and sneak toward the sleeping child. Her head is at the foot of the bed, library books scattered across the comforter.Bare mattress—the sheets have been wadded up and thrown on the floor.
“Happy birthday, little imp,” we say in low singsong. It’s what Great-Aunt Misty calls her. Imps are clever, free-spirited creatures known for their ability to talk their way out of trouble. While playful, they are also emotional, sensitive, quick-to-love beings. We generally see Aunt Misty only on our birthdays, so everything about her is sort of ingrained in the occasion.
Ash scrunches her face, eyes still closed. “Mm?”
Only a few hours ago, she was up in arms for being made to go to bed early (“But it’s almost my birthday! People who stay up late have higher brain activity! I’m on school vacation! If this is what twelve is going to be like, I want to stay eleven!”). Judging by the dying glow of her booklight, I don’t think she’s been asleep for long.
“Up, up.” I drape a scarlet linen dress over the back of her desk chair. “Put this on.”
“Right now?”
Ash stumbles out of bed, rubbing her eyes, and flicks on a table lamp. She’s got a red welt across her right cheek from falling asleep on a book. “Aunt Zel’s not wearing black!”
My cloak is flowing linen just like Ash’s dress, except mine has a deep purple hood attached. The hood of Romina’s cloak is butter lettuce green.
“Hurry! Get dressed.” We step into the hall, closing her door. When she emerges, Romina blubbers and exclaims over how cute she looks, all dressed up in red like a little house finch.
I braid Aisling’s hair, tying a thin cord strung with bells to the end.
