Page 19 of The Sisters of Crimson House

Miranda came to her room one afternoon, and Charley was immediately wary of her smile. She looked like a jackal.

“What do you want?” Charley said, scanning Miranda for threats. Now that they were teenagers, they rarely shared the same territory on purpose. Miranda closed herself off in her room most days; the Cure or Depeche Mode murmuring through the walls provided the only indicator she was inside. By default, Charley had been ceded the entire park outside their front door. Having outgrown the bike, Charley logged many miles walking the trails that summer, often heading back out into the forest when she saw that Miranda’s door was still closed. She would take the blisters forming on her heels rather than be in close proximity to whatever her sister was plotting. So she was stunned when she felt Miranda take her hand in hers, the warmth of her skin such a kindness that it moved Charley to unexpected tears.

And then Miranda began to squeeze. “What are you doing?” Charley insisted, trying to step away from her sister, who, at three years older, wasn’t necessarily stronger. It was her cruelty that seemed to give her so much power. Miranda squeezed her hand until Charley’s tears switched from surprise to pain.

“There,” Miranda announced after another moment, releasing Charley’s hand.

Charley staggered back, gripping her hand and staring at her sister in shock.

“I thought you might like it,” Miranda said with a satisfied grin, prompting Charley to look at her own hand. On her palm, a star had been stamped into her flesh with Sharpie. Miranda held up her own hand, the Seeker’s Star outlined in black from the marker she had painted onto her skin.

“I thought you could pretend like you were me.” That smile again as Miranda watched the pain bloom in Charley’s eyes like a bruise. Satisfied, she left Charley limply holding her own hand, vowing that she might pretend to be many things, but she would never, ever be Miranda Bryde.

Ten

October 1, 2008

I’m awake!

Charley jolted awake at the command, more of a declaration really, the sound of it fading back into the dream it belonged to. Had she been talking in her sleep? She couldn’t believe she’d actually managed to sleep at all. Her sister was home. Miranda Bryde was sleeping under the same roof. She glanced at the clock on her nightstand, a plastic pink artifact she’d insisted on keeping from her childhood bedroom. It was 2:00 p.m. She sat up, dazed and more than a little stunned that she’d been hibernating for the better part of the day.

She rubbed at her face, then frowned at the wrongness of it. She lowered her hands, a smear of red catching her eye. Her stomach tightened. Her vision blackened at the edges as she worked to control her breath. She fought to keep her finger steady as she traced the fresh line carved on the diagonal into her palm, red and puffy like a recent wound.

She vaulted from the bed, staggering as her legs turned to Jell-O from the adrenaline coursing through her. She stared at her hand, heart like a hummingbird in her throat. The night before returned to her in a series of strobes, the jagged limbs of a tree seared onto her retina, now black snakes hissing before they coiled to strike. An irritating stranger who’d grabbed her hand before her brain felt cleaved in two. What the hell had happened to her? She looked at the line again, a bloody slash like a sideways smile.

Like the angle of a star.

Miranda. Miranda would know. The thrill this sent through her was immediately met with an equally fierce force. She doesn’t deserve to know. The certainty with which she felt this stopped her in her tracks. One of the world’s foremost experts on impossible supernatural events was down the hall, and Charley didn’t even know how to talk to her. Didn’t know who she was. Certainly couldn’t trust her. But that wasn’t going to stop her from going to see her.

She crept down the hallway to the Emerald Room to check on her sister, just like she had all those years ago. She cracked open the door, half expecting to see the bed made and Miranda vanished like a dream. But there she was, curled up in the same position Charley had left her in when she’d helped her up the stairs and deposited her into the bed as if she were a child.

Charley moved into the room, easing herself into a chair opposite the bed. Miranda slept a very convincing sleep of the dead. Charley fought the urge to hold a mirror over her sister’s mouth and check for her breath. Or smother her. Jury was out. Charley watched her sleep, studying the face she’d seen in countless articles and interviews over the years but never so closely. In sleep, Miranda looked at peace. She looked like their mother, and that hurt Charley’s heart in a way she hadn’t realized was still possible.

Miranda was pale, her wavy black hair piled into a messy bun that looked infuriatingly chic, just like their mother when she’d affixed her hair on top of her head with nothing but a ballpoint pen. Miranda had fallen asleep with her makeup still on, black mascara flakes dotting her cheeks like freckles. Her cheekbones were too pronounced, her face almost gaunt, and Charley worried that her sister wasn’t eating enough before she admonished herself for caring. A line of black tattoos traced its way from her shoulders down her forearms. Charley was too far away to make them out clearly, but she thought one looked like a flower. Another was a dagger. They were paragraphs in a story she’d never been told. Somehow at twenty-six, Miranda was even more beautiful than Charley remembered.

A sharp snap of the blinds, then sunshine flooding into the darkened bedroom. Miranda fairly leaped from the bed, a hand over her heart.

“Rise and shine,” called Charley as she moved around the bedroom to open more curtains, relishing the way Miranda shielded her eyes against the onslaught.

“You could have knocked?” said Miranda, her voice thick with sleep.

“I knocked. Whatever magic pills you took did the trick. You’ve been asleep for the last fifteen hours.”

Miranda yawned and stretched, her hair falling loose around her shoulders. “It’s jet lag. I just flew in from Paris.”

“Huh. You couldn’t have called ahead? Asked for a ride from the airport?” Charley stopped fiddling with the blinds and stared at her sister. “But then that would have ruined the dramatic entrance.”

Miranda regarded her quietly. “I thought you might be expecting me.”

“I stopped expecting you a long time ago.”

The women stared at each other as the silence festered between them.

“I understand that you might be angry,” Miranda said finally.

“Angry?” Charley felt her face flush. “I don’t even know what to do with that. Angry?” she said. “I wish this were just anger.” She took a deep, steadying breath. “Let’s try this again. Where have you been?”

“I told you. France,” she said.