“Oh, last year was so good,” Ivy joined in with a laugh. “Remember that?” She turned to face Adora, her straight black hair slapping her cheek like a dark storm. Adora absentmindedly nodded as she draped another shirt over her arm. I hadn’t found one thing yet. “Those who don’t wear masks, you try to push them to defy superstitions. Fable …” she paused to calm her laughing fit, “By the end of the night, Fable was so drunk, she ended up toasting with a shot of water after I’d switched out her glass. And the worst part? It was with crazy Jasper Abbott.”
Monday, Adora, and Ivy all lurched forward with a loud cackle.
Fable did not.
“I’m so sorry, Jasper. It wasn’t me. I didn’t mean to,’” Ivy mocked Fable and what had happened the year before.
“And look at him now,” Fable pointed out, a finger pressing the air.
“Oh, stop. The man’s still alive,” Adora said.
“I don’t get it.”
“You don’tcheerssomeone with water unless you’re wishing death upon them,” Monday explained. “Just grab a mask. You’ll be better off. No one will mess with you.” She picked up a Greco Roman mask from the center table and handed it to me. “This one suits you.”
It was silver with a beaded design around the edges and eyes. “Guess I’m wearing a mask then.” If I’d told myself a year ago I would be in Weeping Hollow, taking care of my grandfather and picking out a mask for Defy Superstition Day, no way would I have believed it.
“Oh, wicked.” Adora gasped with a devious smile. Her long blonde hair piled over one shoulder as she shifted the clothes that were lining her arm. “I have the perfect dress to match that.”
Adora waited outside the curtain of the dressing room as I gazed at myself in the mirror with the black leather dress glued to my skin. It was a scoop neck, the hem hitting at my upper thigh, with capped sleeves. It was something I’d wear, but never to a small-town festival. I turned and reached for the zipper at my back.
“Won’t I be overdressed?” I called out from behind the curtain when Adora pushed it to the side and pulled it closed behind her. She walked behind me in the mirror and pulled my white hair off one shoulder and draped it onto the other when it cascaded down to my waist.
I felt the zipper tug at my back. “You know, Fallon,” she started, keeping her green eyes on me in the mirror. “I have a feeling you’re going to be trouble. Especially in this dress.” But there was no smile on her face, no humor in her tone. The zipper slowly slid up my back as her breath hit my neck.
“Hardly,” I tried to say, and I wanted to say more, but the air grew thicker in the room. It was too small for both of us, too enclosed. My lips pressed together when her pointed red nails dragged down the length of my arm.
A weak and unbelieving smile braced Adora’s pouty lips. “As much as I hate it, you have to become one of us.”
I swallowed. “Why do you hate it?” She didn’t know me. Out of the three sisters, Fable was the only one who took any interest in getting to know me. Adora hadn’t talked to me until today.
“Because I was supposed to be with Kane.”
“But I’m not Kane’s type, he said so himself.” I turned to face her. “You have nothing to worry about, Adora.” I didn’t have space in my mind for anyone else anyway when Julian Blackwell consumed most of my thoughts.
Okay, all of my thoughts.
I couldn’t shake the dream. It was so real—too real. And tonight, I was going back to Norse woods to prove it.
Adora’s fingers dug into my hips, pulling me back to the moment, and she pinned me forward as she stayed behind, pressing her chest to my back.
“It doesn’t matter. He’ll choose you. All I’m asking is for you to keep all the flirting and closeness away from me when he does. I don’t want to see it.” Her words were like an iceberg. Hard and cold, yet slowly melting under the waters of her emotions. She embodied the same kind of heartbreak I’d seen mar many faces of the ghosts who would come to me.
“Adora, you have the wrong idea about me,” I assured her.
“No, sweetheart.Youhave the wrong idea aboutus.”
And with that, Adora disappeared behind the curtain, leaving me alone in the dressing room.
I waited until after Gramps fell asleep in his recliner with Stephen King’sLisey’s Storyresting over his lap. It was a quarter after midnight as I quietly locked the door behind me and walked to the driveway before rolling the scooter to the street. I didn’t want to wake him.
If my gut was correct, the dead birds would still be piled somewhere in those woods, proving whatever happened the other night wasn’t a dream, and I couldn’t let this go until I knew the truth.
The streets were busy, and all the shops were open. Lamp posts gleamed a dim yellow over the square. Children played in the grass and high-schoolers sprawled out in the gazebo, watching as I drove past on the scooter. Through the diamond-paned window of The Bean, the Sullivan sisters, Monday, and the guys from their coven were gathered around a corner table, drinking from their mugs and smiling and laughing and … belonging.
I parked behind the funeral home and entered the woods, desperate and on a mission to find answers. To prove I wasn’t crazy.
An eerie hush fell over the woods and shadows contorted sluggishly, compelled by the wind. Leaves and pine needles crackled under my boots with every step into the dark, the only light the constellations in the black sky. I hadn’t been walking long, but as I drew deeper between the trees, the lights from inside the houses lining the Norse Words faded.
