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“Hail signifies that something bad is coming,” Luna declares sagely.

I snort. “No shit. Bad weather is coming.”

She selects a nickel-sized hailstone and flicks it at my shin.

“Look at the size of this one!” Trevor cries. “I could play golf with it. Anybody got a golf club? Morgan, go grab your violin stick thing.”

A window of Wafting Crescent slides open. “What are you still doing outside?” Bushra yells. “If you’re all pulverized in atornado blender, Gilda will turn your property into her overflow.”

“Gilda gets overflow?” I wonder aloud. “The costume shop doesn’t seem all that busy these days.”

“The costume shop is just a front,” Morgan explains, tossing up a hailstone and cracking it across the road with the bottom of his shoe, which he’s removed. Trevor’s on the other side of the street now, using his phone like it’s a Ping-Pong paddle to shoot hail back at Morgan. “She makes the big bucks conducting séances. Every Wednesday night, she buses in old folks from the YMCA.”

A roar rumbles across the sky. Bits of leaves, twigs, and cigarette butts spit from the wind like somebody’s emptying a litter bin into our yard.

“Hey, does that look like it’s going around in circles?” Trevor points at a rotating black cloud directly over The Clockery.

It’s a mad dash. Trevor somehow beats us all into the shop, even though he was the farthest away. I turn the knob, but the door won’t open. “Unlock this right now!”

“I don’t want the tornado getting in! Go hide under a bush.”

“Trevor, I’m going to kill you.” Luna scrambles for a key hidden in our fake rock, while Morgan scrambles for a real rock to bust a window with. Luckily, Romina made it inside with Trevor and she has the sense to let us in.

We take turns socking Trevor as we pour past.

“My baby!” Luna croons, reaching for one of her cats.

“I’m already downstairs.” Aisling’s voice drifts in from far away. Luna freezes in the act of scooping Jingle into her arms, kissing her forehead.

“Right. Good! Stay down there, Ash! Don’t come back up!”

“Where’s Snapdragon?” Morgan wheels his chair away from his desk with such velocity that it tips over. (Snapdragon likes to curl up beneath Morgan’s desk to sleep sometimes.) He scours the armchair, storeroom, windowsills. “Snapdragon! Here, kitty, kitty, kitty!”

Romina panics. “What if we die?”

Luna smacks our younger sister with her purse. “We’re not going to die. Get it together! Where is my purse?”

“You’re hitting me with it.”

Luna starts unplugging appliances. She shoves a printer at Trevor. “Here, take this and grab some candles, too.”

“Is this really what you need to be doing right now?” I try to tug her by the shirt, but she blocks me with a coffeemaker and forces it into my arms.

“I got this coffeemaker for sixty-nine dollars”—Trevor reliably yells “Nice!”—“on sale,” she replies fiercely. “Normal price is a hundred and thirty dollars. I am not putting up a hundred and thirty dollars for another coffeemaker, Zelda!”

Only when Luna’s rescued the cash register and Dottie’s crystal ball are we allowed to sprint for the Cavern of Paperback Gems. I breathe a heavy sigh of relief. “Oh good, Snapdragon’s safe.” He’s napping atop the Lost Bride trilogy. Aisling’s building a book fort to protect her mother’s most prized candles while shooting us all looks of dismay. I suspect the dismay is less about us acting irresponsibly outside and more about her not being allowed to also act irresponsibly.

The shop’s foundation quivers. Trevor throws himself onto the floor. “Shield my face with your hands, and I’ll cover yourhair,” he tells Morgan. “It’s the only way to save our best features from being struck by debris.”

“Why can’t we cover our heads with our own hands?” Morgan pauses, considering. “My face is just as good-looking as my hair, you know.”

“Now is not the time to lie to ourselves.”

A pen rolls off the Lost Bride trilogy, off the table, onto the floor. I cast around. “Where’d Snapdragon go? He was just right here.”

I examine the pen. It’s striped orange and black, and the nub is shimmery gold, the same gold as Snapdragon’s eyes. My knees nearly give out. I scream.

Romina screams, too. “What happened? What’s wrong?”