“I’m not listening to this anymore,” I announced, bending to grab the box of amethyst, then whipping around and walking the length of the display case, toward the back of the shop. Madame Zelda’s space was dark, her curtain pulled wide with a braided gold rope, seeing as the fortune teller had not yet arrived for the day. (This was not inherently strange — she made her own hours, came and went as she pleased — but later, when I looked back, would be the first clue that something was amiss in the small empire over which I ruled with, if not an iron fist, then at least an impeccably accessorized one.)
Two doors were embedded in the mossy green walls on either side of Zelda’s space — one led to a small bathroom for customers, the other to our storage room. I headed for the latter, tilting the box of crystals against my chest as I fumbled one-handed for the knob.
“Goodbye, Graves,” I called, just before I stepped inside, letting the door swing shut behind me.
Except, it didn’t swing shut. A large hand shot out and caught hold of it before it could click into the latch. I whipped around to see Graham hot on my heels, a mere pace behind me. How he moved such a hulking frame in total silence across my creaky, historical hardwood, I could not begin to fathom. Especially not when he shoved the door wide and followed me inside.
He followed me inside!
“What are you doing?” I half-screeched.
“Talking to you somewhere private,” he said, like it should be obvious.
Hellfire!
I backpedaled away from him, feeling my pulse spike as he stalked me deeper into the storeroom. As he did this, his eyes never left my face. In the dark, they seemed to glitter with emotion — what sort of emotion, I didn’t know. I didn’twantto know.
Unfortunately for me…
I was pretty certain I was about to find out.
Chapter Three
If he’s such a crafty devil, why doesn’t he own a hot glue gun?
- Gwen Goode, attempting at-home DIY
The thing you have to understand about Graham and me is… it wasn’t always this way between us. I didn’t always hate him. In fact, there was a time when the things I felt for him were something more akin to the sensation you get when you haven’t eaten all day and you see the waiter coming toward your table with your entree held aloft.
Pure, unadulterated, mouthwateringhunger.
So how, you ask, did we get here? To the land of verbal sparring and icy smalltalk and mocking nicknames? Well, it’s kind of a long story. And to properly tell it, I have to take you back. Way back. As in,fourteen years back,to the summer I turned ten.
It was school break and, as usual, I was staying in Salem with Aunt Colette — a much-needed hiatus from the existence Mom and I were eking out in a colorless town just off the New Jersey turnpike, where the closest thing to ethnic food for twenty miles in any direction was an understaffed Taco Bell.
Thankfully, Aunt Colette’s house in Salem was nothing like our trailer. And Aunt Colette was nothing like Mom. She didn’t ignore me or stare at me with ill-concealed resentment just for having the audacity to exist. In fact, Aunt Colette actually seemed to enjoy having me around — taking me to restaurants, cooking me dinners, letting me shadow her at The Gallows during business hours. I spent more rainy days curled up in the stacks flipping through occult texts than I could count.
Sunny days, however, were a different story.
When the skies were clear and the temperatures were soaring toward triple digits, I’d ride my bike across town to Winter Island, the small peninsula that jutted out into the Atlantic on the east side of town, as fast as my feet could work the pedals. By the time I got there, I’d be a sweaty mess — panting for air, windswept auburn curls blown out totherearound my head with odd indentations at the crown courtesy of my sparkly pink helmet, my bathing suit in a serious wedgie from the narrow bike seat.
At ten, this did not particularly faze me. I was still trapped in that lovely un-self-conscious state of late childhood, just before puberty hits and saddles you with several excruciating teenage years of body dysmorphia, hormonal acne, PMS, and boy troubles. But even if I’d been old enough to realize my hair was out tothereand my over-exerted face was a beet-red hue that seriously clashed with my messy locks, I probably wouldn’t have cared. Because my attentions were fixed, with absolute focus, on the boy lazing in the lifeguard tower.
I’d told Aunt Colette I wanted to expand my growing seashell collection. The truth is, I didn’t give two dingbats about seashells. Not since my first visit to the beach, anyway. Because as soon as I clapped eyes on that earthbound angel wearing a bright red bathing suit with white lettering, my bike rides to the beach had a far different motivation driving them.
He was, quite simply, the most beautiful boy my ten-year-old eyes had ever beheld. Several years older than me, at least fifteen or sixteen, with a head of dark, lush, slightly wavy hair that was just a shade too long, curling around his ears, nearly brushing his broad, sun-bronzed shoulders. His eyes were concealed behind a pair of shades when he was on duty, but even through his dark lenses I could tell they were always scanning the sand, watching the water for trouble. His chest was bare, displaying a rippled wall of abdominal muscle that tapered in the shape of the letter “V” at his chiseled hipbones. (That v-cut frame would go on to become the subject of much female interest by the time summer slipped away.)
But at the very beginning, he was all mine. My little secret. In early June, the weather wasn’t quite warm enough to draw in the crowds, camping season wasn’t yet in full-swing, leaving most of the sites at the water’s edge empty, and I was often the only beachgoer on weekday afternoons. I’d scan for seashells, looking for sand dollars, determined to find a perfect one without any chips or cracks, and bring it home to Mom in September. Maybe, if I brought a gift, she’d actually be excited to see me for once.
I walked near the shallows, where the waves kissed the shore, eyes downcast, searching for that elusive specimen. Such was my determination, I didn’t notice the urchin hidden in a clump of seaweed until it was too late. I stepped down on it with bare feet and the spines shot straight through my sole, piercing my skin like a dozen razor-sharp needles.
I yowled at the top of my lungs, falling to the sand and clutching my foot as tears leaked from my eyes in an unstoppable torrent. It hurt,hellfire, it hurt more than anything I’d ever experienced in my whole, entire life, including the time Mom’s idiot boyfriend slammed my fingers in the car door and the other time Mom’sotheridiot boyfriend dropped a frying pan on my toe. And as I sat there in the sand, sobbing myself ragged, trying to work up the courage to pull those spines out of my foot or, at the very least, hop my way back to my bicycle and figure out how to pedal home one-footed… that’s when I first heard it.
That voice.
Hisvoice.
“Hey! Are you all right?”