Page 39 of The Sisters of Crimson House

“She’s dreaming, and she wants to wake up!” Miranda yelled out in the hallway. She could hear her mother and her father now outside her door.

It was her sister screaming outside her door. Her legs suddenly moving, Charley ran to the door and opened it, just in time to see her father wrestle a kitchen knife from Miranda’s hand. Miranda howled as she watched it fall, pushed against her father as he dragged her down the hallway. “She wants to wake up!” she insisted, words blending into tears as he carried her into her bedroom, shutting the door behind him.

“Oh honey,” her mom said, brushing Charley’s hair from her forehead. “She’s just having a nightmare. It’s nothing to worry about, okay? You go back to bed.” She nodded and smiled at Charley like this was entirely normal, like having one’s sister skulking the hallways after dark with a weapon was just what families did. Nicole kissed her before turning and making her way back down the hallway to Miranda’s room.

The next morning her father would remove her door from its hinges, setting it up on a seesaw outside and refinishing it by hand with a sander he kept in the garage. “Old houses, ill-fitting doors,” was his reply when asked about the random weekday task. She did not ask them about the letters she’d seen scratched into its surface, a message carved by a girl wielding a kitchen knife. By the time the door was back on its hinges and freshly stained, I AM AWAKE had disappeared like it had never been there at all.

Twenty-Two

October 12, 2008

“You are thinking of the number seven.”

“Close.”

“Six?”

“Okay, it was two.”

Charley opened her eyes and looked at Zavier, exasperated. He was sprawled in the booth opposite her, accidentally complementing the orange-brown interior in a threadbare Devo concert T-shirt and cords, looking genuinely crushed.

“How was that even close to seven?” Charley complained.

“I just wanted to give you some encouragement,” he said, taking a bite of his scrambled eggs. “Maybe you have to have the full Star to control it?”

“You’re the expert on my family history, Z.”

They were seated in the last booth at CK’s diner because they allowed smoking whereas Grace’s Lounge did not. Also CK’s had shitty hash browns and shittier coffee, but it paired better with the pack of Marlboros Miranda was demolishing while investigating the jukebox. Current selection on repeat: Big Star’s “Thirteen.” The unspoken agreement was that anywhere felt better than the overall crime scene vibe of Crimson House, especially now that a homicidal ghost could be on the hunt.

“Why, yes, I am.” He smirked. “And if I do recall, telepathy is not in the roster of Bryde family talents.”

Charley sighed. It wasn’t like she thought that she could hold out her hand and move furniture like Stephen King’s Carrie. Okay, maybe she thought that a little. With two lines magically appearing on her hand after legitimately traumatic encounters, surely she could have had a slight advantage in guessing the number between one and ten. If she was being hunted, it was time to figure out how, if anything, this target on her hand could help her.

“Eugenia channeled via painting. Her shit is freaky. She watches me in the entry,” said Zavier. Astrid nodded in agreement. “Leo is the wild card,” said Zavier, his mouth full. “They called her the matchmaker, but girlfriend had more abilities than she liked to advertise.”

“How do you know that?” asked Miranda, squeezing into the booth next to Charley. Since Sadie’s death, she’d been staying close, hovering. Like a ghost, Charley thought. It was nice if still just so weird to have her sister sitting next to her.

“When my Scout troop took us to Crimson House for a tour? Leo greeted us in the parlor,” he said with an uncharacteristically shy smile. “She told me that I matched the energy of the house, that I was a lighthouse for the spirits, as they had been following me since I got there.”

“I took Astrid and Z on a tour of the house not long after she passed,” said Charley, smiling at the memory. “He said he felt like Leo was welcoming them home.”

Zavier lifted his coffee, a toast. “To Leonore and to Sadie,” he said, clinking mugs with Charley before looking to Miranda. “And to the all the Brydes finding their way home.”

Miranda smiled but wouldn’t meet his eyes.

Astrid studied the V on Charley’s palm. “So, Eugenia painted,” she said, reeling off the official list. “Leo sensed energy? Sadie was clairvoyant. Your beautiful mom could heal. What about Celeste?”

Both Charley and Miranda shook their heads in unison.

“Okay, we don’t talk about Celeste. Noted,” she said briskly. “But she knew the future in glimpses. Miranda channels, sees the occasional ghost, maybe gets prophetic dreams?”

Miranda nodded. “Like a lot of family traits, the gifts could overlap. Stronger in some, nonexistent in others,” she said.

Astrid touched Charley’s hand, examining the lines. “So what will you inherit with a fully realized Star?”

Charley looked at the V, a letter, a Roman numeral, a world of possibilities contained in two lines.

“Right now it’s a magnet for creepers,” said Miranda.