“Zelda!” She grabs me by the cheeks and yanks my head down so that she can plant a big red lip print on my forehead. “I was just saying how lovely you’re all looking these days! Except for Romina’s hair. Sweetheart.” She turns to my sister. “Did you and Alex break up?”
“Of course not,” Romina begins to reply, but Gilda already isn’t listening.
“Luna, it’s such a shame about those tattoos on your otherwise pretty face.”
Luna touches a finger to the side of her nose, absently rubbing it. She’s got a microscopic splash of colorful dots tattooed across her cheeks and the bridge of her nose, blending in with her many, many freckles. They’re dainty and cute, but Gilda Halifax comes from a generation in which tattooing your face is not the done thing. She insists on judging our choices with particular severity now that Grandma isn’t here to do so.
“And, Zelda!” Gilda tosses up her hands, accidentally smacking Morgan with the clipboard. “What has this cruel world done to you, for you to dress this way?” She clucks her tongue. “Like you’re a nineteenth-century widow. Learn to love again, dear! Throw on something green, your hair demands it. Or maybe a nice blue outfit. The three of you, you’ve got the loveliest blue eyes, I’m always saying you need to wear more blue—”
“Yes, thank you, Gilda,” Luna interrupts. “What’s with the clipboard and the compliments?”
“Arethey compliments?” I muse.
The woman smiles. “Yes, I am so glad you offered to help. As it happens, thereissomething you can do for Moonville.” Her penetrating stare slides from Luna to Romina to me. “Something youallcan do to help. And, who knows? You just might fall in love while you’re at it.”
Three
Hang your hat on an ancestor’s tombstone in the summertime and listen to crickets for the following minute. Count the chirps, then double them; that is how many years you’ve got left.
Local Legends and Superstitions,
Tempest Family Grimoire
“Festival budgets aren’twhat they used to be,” Gilda laments. “There should be a fair going on this very minute, as it always does in July, but as you can see it’s been canceled. A tragedy! But wehaveto uphold the Halloween festival. Midnight at Moonville is practically famous. We get folks by the thousands here every October for it!”
Luna, who has a few good inches on me in height and towers over Gilda, tries to peer at her clipboard and figure out what any of her spiel has to do with the price of beans. Gilda tugs it back, hitting Morgan again.
“Stand somewhere else, young man. You’re gonna get that pretty face bruised.”
Morgan is visibly split between the pain in his shoulder and the glow of having his face appreciated.
“I’m throwing an auction to make sure Midnight at Moonville doesn’t get guillotined by our fun-hating mayor,” Gilda goes on darkly.
“An auction?” Romina repeats. “We could donate gift baskets.” She looks at Luna to gauge agreement. “The same items we put in our subscription boxes, basically, but packaged prettier? Rose quartz, star anise—”
“Sounds fine, to start with.” Gilda smiles sweetly. “But what I’m really after is a slice of your time. In a tight-fitting dress.” She inspects me. “You got anything that shows cleavage? Blessed as you are, it’s a sin not to show what you’ve got, honey.”
“None of my clothes are able to show cleavage,” I deadpan. “I have a condition that makes all the flesh rot off my bones and if I were to unbutton my dress, you’d see the rattlesnake that lives in my chest cavity.”
She ignores this. “We’re going to auctiondates. Romina, sweetie, how serious are you about Alex? Has the passion worn itself down yet? Room for one more?”
Romina drops into a squashy armchair in front of the fireplace. In the summer months, we fill the hearth with battery-operated snow globe potion bottles, splashing the mantel and, atop it, Grandma’s crystal ball, with eerie emerald light. “Count me out. You’re welcome to auction off my floral services, though.”
Gilda huffs. “Fine, that leaves the rest of you.”
“Not me.” Trevor gestures to the dynamite stick design on his shirt:TnT, for Trevor and Teyonna. “I’m a taken man.” He steals a bite of pink popcorn drizzled with butterscotch icing and crushed Reese’s Pieces from Luna’s carton, which she bought from a corner stall. “Speaking of TNT, you’re all invited to a light show in the dollar store parking lot after dark.Please feel free to donate items you wouldn’t mind melting in a grill I found by the side of the road.”
Luna flicks him in the ear.
Gilda whirls on Luna. “I assume you’re single and desperate? My sources have not indicated otherwise.”
It is a testament to Luna’s people skills that her smile looks sincere. “Single, yes. Desperate, no. I’m waiting for the right—”
“Slap your signature here.” Gilda thrusts a sign-up sheet at her. “Auction’s next Friday, winning bidder gets a date. Mind, you can think of it as a lunch or hangout or what have you, but men will throw down more money if we call it a date.”
Luna shakes her head, bending to scrawl her name. “You’re shameless.”
“Wear one of your crop tops to the auction. I figure that’ll drive up interest at least fifty bucks.”
