was, even the borrowed magic flowing through me wasn’t enough to stop the yawns. After we made our tentative plans, I locked up, and Poppy and I walked home to our dogs.
I owed Jester extra snuggles.
I was surprised to find Aunt Belinda still up. Not only up, but on her feet, arms crossed, staring out into the street. But there was no time to ask questions, at first—not with Jester bouncing up and down like a furry spring, trying to lick my face on the fly.
“Jester! Sit, boy. Sit!” Cue more jumping. “Want a treat? You gotta sit, boy.” At last his butt hit the ground, although his tail was still wagging so hard his whole body vibrated, and I could tell that his willpower was already showing cracks. I grabbed a handful of freeze-dried liver treats from a nearby drawer. Doled them out one at a time, in exchange for sit, shake, and down, and my nutty poodle chilled out. A little.
Finally I was able to look up. Poppy and Georgiana had gone through to the kitchen.
Aunt Belinda was watching me. “You got him trained real good,” she said.
I laughed. “Not really. But he tries.” I looked around. “Where’s Jessica?”
“I sent her to your room to lie down. Hitting your forties all at once is rough on a body. Don’t worry, Crow’s there, too. Jessica can’t cause no trouble while Crow’s got eyes on her.” She looked at me speculatively. “You ain’t got a familiar yet, have you?”
“It’s complicated.”
Aunt Belinda shook her head. “Ain’t nothing that complicated.” She gestured toward the window. “See that big ol’ city out there? Lotta people are right scared of it. ‘Too big,’ they say. ‘Too many people.’ They don’t realize it’s just a bunch of little old small towns all smushed together, cozy-like. I ain’t scared of it.” She chuckled to herself. “But I do miss home. You know why?”
I picked up Jester and cradled him in my arms like a lamb. “The weather?”
“You ain’t wrong, but no, girl. Not the weather. Sit down. I gotta talk to you.”
When someone like Aunt Belinda says sit, you sit. I sat. Jester curled up on my lap.
“Back home I got friends and more friends. Witchy friends. Un-witchy friends. I got family, too. My daughter Luella. If I need help, all I gotta do is give the high sign and they all come running.” She plopped in a chair and looked at me with her ice-blue eyes. “I see you got your friend Poppy.” She nodded approvingly. “And that fellow who works for you. James. He seems all right. And those two gentleman callers—”
I accidentally inhaled my own spit and started coughing uncontrollably. Jester leaped up and barked at me, presumably because he thought I was barking too. “Daniel and Berron are not,” I choked out, “gentleman callers.”
“Whatever they are,” Aunt Belinda said. “They seem pretty all right, too. But”—here she scooted forward on the seat of the chair, as if to emphasize the importance of what she was about to say—“when I was growing into my powers, I had my witch friends, Hilda and Queenie, to help me. Luella has her friends Rose and Pepper. We may use different elements, but we all have the same magic.” She paused. “You’re on your own up here. You ain’t got nobody like you.”
“Have you been talking to my mother?”
“That ain’t neither here nor there.”
I raised one eyebrow. “Uh-huh. Well, as much as I would like to learn from someone just like me, the last person with that quality was Grandma.”
“Bless her soul,” Aunt Belinda said.
“Yes. And I try to do what I think she might have done, under the circumstances. It isn’t perfect, but it’s what I’ve got. Here’s the thing, though.” I shifted. Jester had jumped to the top of the couch behind me and draped himself around my shoulders like an old-fashioned fur stole. “Everyone I’m friends with here has a different talent. Poppy’s an elemental fire witch. My brother’s got air magic, like you. Daniel, James, and Victorine are Blessed. Berron’s one of the Gentry. All different. But they all teach me, in their own ways.”
Aunt Belinda nodded slowly, seeming to consider what I said. “I suppose you just need a water witch and an earth witch to round out the set.”
“Honestly, it would have been nice to have someone to show me how to use this mask.” I tapped my face, to show where the mask sat.
“Artifacts are tricky. My friend Hilda gave one to her sister—the Key of Shadows—and the sister used it to cause all kinds of trouble.” Aunt Belinda shook her head. “That woman popped in and out of reality like it was the 7-Eleven.”
“In and out of reality?”
“From some other dimension.”
My thoughts crashed like a line of taxis rear-ending each other at a sudden red light. “What other dimension?”
“Hilda said it was hush-hush. Not many people knew about it. Called it ‘The Shadows.’”
“The Shadows,” I repeated. Memories of the silent, black-and-white museum nearly blinded me to what was actually in front of me. I reached back to pat Jester’s fuzzy fur, because it was the only thing soothing enough to pull me out of memories that sucked the air from my chest. “What did the Shadows look like? Did you ever see it?”
“My daughter’s friend Pepper did. She talked all about it. Cold. No colors. No electricity. Real quiet, spooky even.”
“Black and white?”
Aunt Belinda nodded.
“No lights?”
Aunt Belinda shook her head.
I cursed.
“New York ain’t doing your vocabulary no good,” she observed mildly.
“Who has the Key of Shadows now?”
“I didn’t bring it with me, if that’s what you’re asking. It’s back in Sparkle Beach, with Hilda. Or Miami, with her sister.” Aunt Belinda tapped her chin thoughtfully, as if this would cause the Key to suddenly resolve itself in one location or another. “Why do you ask?”
“I think I may have been in the Shadows. Through there.” I nodded toward the Mirror.
“Doesn’t it go to fairy land?”
“It did—but there’s something wrong with it. It’s malfunctioning. Or booby-trapped. Or something. I don’t know. It’s complicated.”
When Aunt Belinda smirked, her wrinkles went deep. “Ain’t nothing that complicated.”
I stopped myself from saying, Wanna bet? Instead I explained everything she hadn’t heard, up to Jessica’s arrival.
Aunt Belinda listened. When I finished, she said, “So you think someone sent you into the Shadows. On purpose.”
I nodded.
“I’m right curious as to what Jessica would have to say about all this.”
“I thought she was lying down.”
Aunt Belinda stood. “She ain’t gonna be. Y’all need answers.”
Jester, always alert to something fun about to happen, jumped down to the floor and looked up at Aunt Belinda with shining brown eyes. When we headed for the stairs he streaked ahead, his tiny claws scrabbling on the wooden steps.
I knocked on the door as Aunt Belinda hovered behind me. “Jessica?” I said. “I’m coming in.” The heavy wooden door opened on my own familiar bedroom—except instead of me, tucked in bed like I should have been, there was an unfamiliar lump buried under my covers, and a crow sitting on the headboard like a prop from a Vincent Price movie. “Hey. Jessica. Wake up.”
A loud groan came from deep within the heap of pillow and blankets. My pillows and blankets. “Go away.”
“Time to face the day. Well, the night,” I amended.
Jessica buried herself deeper. “What are you, my mother?”
“If I were your mother I’d slap that sass right out o’ your mouth,” Aunt Belinda piped up.
“Aunt Belinda, you’d have died before you even thought of laying a hand on Luella. Don’t be ridiculous.”
Aunt Belinda landed a sharp elbow in my side. “Don’t ruin the act,” she muttered.
I rubbed my side and turned my attention back to the vampiress in my bed. “You can’t stay here. There’s no room.”
“You can sleep on the couch, can’t you?” Pouty and demanding. How charming.
“This is my room, princess. And it’s where my aunt is sleeping. I’m already on the couch.”
Another epic groan, as if she had been betrayed by the entire world.
“Dramatic, ain’t she,” said Aunt Belinda.
“Right.” I dusted my hands, then strode forward. I seized the topmost edges of the blankets and hauled them downward in one big pull. “Up.”
Exposed, Jessica curled tighter and kept her eyes squeezed shut, her straight black bob spread out like a mohawk on my pillow.
“Up!” I repeated, yanking my pillow out from under her head.
That got a growl instead of a groan. Progress. “Come on. You’re getting out of my bed and going somewhere there’s actually space for you. I’m taking you to Victorine’s.”
“She’ll murder me,” Jessica said, sounding more grumpy than afraid.
“Great. There’ll be one less Blessed who tried to kill my ex-boyfriend.”
That got her eyes open. She glared at me with something like… respect? Then it melted into a self-satisfied smile, the cat who not only ate the canary but tipped over the baby’s milk bottle to wash it down. “Daniel and I were just playing.”
I had to remind myself that we had taken her from Prospero’s in order to have the advantage, and strangling her with my own two hands would remove that advantage. Instead, I seized her arm and pulled her upright.
“Hey, hey! Don’t touch me, freak.”
“Calm down. I don’t steal powers, I just copy them. And why would I want yours, anyway?” It was an instinctive comeback, not even thought out, but it hit Jessica like a thrown stiletto. She stiffened, pulled away.
Don’t feel sorry for her. Don’t feel sorry for her.
Damn it, I felt sorry for her.