Luckily for us, I had Founder’s Day to keep us afloat. People still cared about the ball. People would always care about the ball, no matter what threat came upon us. But what would happen to my family if the town ever canceled the ball?
Beside me, Fable slowly flipped through my magazine, the scratchy sound of the waxy pages filling the awkward tension.
“Make a way,” Dad insisted. “There’s a meeting in the Sacred Sea chamber. Augustine, Viola, Cyrus, and Kane will be there, too. We’re all required to attend.”
Fable’s fingers paused. Her and Ivy’s expressions abandoned them.
The sound of Kane’s name struck a chord inside me, and I gripped the edge of the stool. The splinter in my finger rubbed against the wood, and a jolt of pain rushed through my hand. I pressed my finger into the stool to keep the ache there and lasting. It was a way to blanket the rage and focus on what Dad was saying.A meeting. Ah, yes, a meeting.
It was the first time any of us had heard about this meeting.
Could it be the reason for Dad’s bizarre behavior?
“Is it about the Shadows?” Fable asked, flipping another page in my magazine. “Did they take someone else?”
She didn’t look up when Dad said, “No, and you know I can’t talk about it.”
We already knew his response. It was the same each time. It was put out due to the heavy nature of the topic, like everything else that stirred up in the Sullivan cottage. Water over fire.
I thought about Mrs. Edwin. The last time we’d spoken was when I’d accused her of stealing fromOh My Stars. Hours before the Shadows took her life, we had a heated argument, and it didn’t end well. She’d accused me of lying, and I’d threatened to burn her rickety cabin down with her and her sick daughter inside it. A flatlander had called Officer Stoker shortly after, and he showed up outside my shop and escorted Mrs. Edwin out.
I hadn’t meant to say these things. I didn’t know where these words had come from.This isn’t me, I’d wanted to tell them. I’d been swept by cruelty like one was swept by illness, and I hated myself for it. I didn’t know when it started. As the years passed, this evil inside me had only worsened, and if I didn’t toss my letters into the ocean twice a month, was burning down their home something I would act upon?
“Watch, they’re going to confirm the Shadows took Freddy this time,” Ivy said, her voice disinterested as she tightly pulled another knot. “Weeping Hollow can’t function without Freddy in the Mourning. Ever since he went missing, it’s like no one knows what’s going on anymore.”
At my side, Fable tapped on an article that readThe Decline and Fall of Blondesand side-eyed me with a smirk, perhaps trying to lighten the mood. She was good at that.
I peeled the magazine from her jelly-smeared fingers, but the news of this meeting still twisted in my head, layering another worry.
Ivy went back to tying knots with the same worry in the creases of her eyes.
After the lastdish was clean, Ivy dried her hands over the sink and turned, coming face to face with Dad. He held a breakfast tray with crepes, fruit, and a glass of orange juice between them.
His expression softened. “Bring this to your mother?”
Their eyes met for a brief stand-off until Ivy turned away.
Dad always tried. Ivy always turned away.
His crestfallen eyes turned to me for help.
Mom’s bedroom was down the hall and to the right, just before the staircase. I balanced the tray in one hand and clutched the brass knob in the other, closed my eyes, and sucked in a full breath.
A four-poster bed with an ivory canopy and crisp-white lace trim greeted me. Tucked inside a made-up bed lay Mom, eyes closed with a steady beeping of her heart on the monitor at her side. Dad had pulled back the curtains, hoping for natural light to flood into the room. But the only color this morning was gray, much like Mom’s soul.
“Hi, Mom,” I set the plate on the nightstand, grabbed the breakfast tray, and pulled out each leg, humming the tune toYou Are My Sunshine. It was the same song Mom had sung to us every morning from room to room.
There was a crack in my pitch, my voice shaking from the memory.
But I didn’t stop, hoping she could hear me, hoping she could find comfort while trapped in her nightmare.
Mom hadn’t moved on her own in almost nine years. She hadn’t walked, she hadn’t spoken. She only lies behind the bedroom door, sleeping. Her blue eyes were always shut, but I still saw the same nostalgic color every time Ivy looked at me.
When the Panic first started, I lay beside her to protect her from the Shadows, but the Shadows never came for her. They never would. A more powerful form of torture had already taken precedence over Mom.
I didn’t know why Dad insisted on making her breakfast and delivering food to her room when she never awoke to eat it. He’d believed the routine, the scents, and the visits would bring her back. But after all this time, none of it ever did.
When I was fourteen, despite what the coven had done, Dr. Morley diagnosed her with an extreme case of catatonia—a depression so severe, it had put her into a catatonic state. It was just a formality. According to him, the only thing preventing her from living, loving, caring, and being a mother and wife was her.
