1

jack-o’-lantern smiles

Present Day

Lark

It’s 2:45 a.m. when I peer through the front window of Uncle Thatch’s beloved bakery, watching flames lap at the back walls. Positioned safely outside, I’m slammed by three harsh realities: one, the irony that this is the first time I’m viewing this place with my own eyes instead of through my sister Nix’s dreams; two, the next time she sees it through mine, nothing will be left but embers and ash; and three, how I wish I could be sorry for the helplessness she’ll feel.

Sinking into the pitch-black shadows provided by the awning overhead, I exhale and watch my breath catch on a gust that’s unexpectedly frigid for the second day of November. The cloud of condensation abandons my lips and marries the smoky fingers seeping from the doorframe and eaves—an unholy alliance of gray and white, of fire and ice.

As the smoke spins upward, a sooty residue smudges the prismatic paint and neon lights that have for three years, in my absence, set this store apart as an enchanting and unique local eatery. I can’t help but wonder, when all this is done, if the lights will still work once the switch is flipped. Or will they pop and crackle, fizzing out puffs of sulfur, like rotten eggs polluting the air? It would be a fitting end, considering how all the bakery’s patrons walked blindly through these doors with no idea of the spells being cast on them by the tainted fruits stirred into the pastries . . . ​of the eldritch poison that was drawing on their emotions, siphoning their humanness into candlewicks and wax—to be feasted upon by faeries and goblins in a hidden realm few people know exist.

Inside, sparks catch on the wooden tables and chairs before spreading to the display cases. Several loud swooshes follow as rafters and beams crack and fall. Within minutes, the icing piled on cupcakes and sandwiched between macarons burbles then smudges and liquifies like marshmallows held too long over a bonfire. The colorful cakes and cookies are next, simmering to a black crispation of almond flour and roasted paper-liners. Before I can even imagine the fallout taking place in the back rooms—both the storeroom and the kitchen, where the fire began—the view is lost to me. Every accursed color of the goblin-fruit rainbow—that brazen spectacle of decor and tempting confectioneries both corrupted and purified by a Goblin King’s blood, fades—outshone by flames of orange, yellow, and black.

The nauseating stench of burnt sugar, broiling fruit peels, charred wood, melting plastic, and blistered paint singes my nostrils. Pulling my scarf over my lips and nose, I glance down at the phone in my gloved hand and autodial 911; when the operator answers, I hurriedly relay the information needed to dispatch the firefighters.

I wait in the shadows, listening for sirens, refusing to leave until they’re here to stop the sparks from igniting Wisteria Rising. Those beautiful flowers and plants don’t deserve to suffocate and suffer. Bad enough Clarey was dragged into our family’s disastrous history with All Hallows’ Eve. I won’t allow his aunt to be pulled into this final chapter through her flower boutique.

As of now, the fire’s beginning to catch on the building between Uncle’s corner bakery and Clarey’s aunt’s place. No big loss since the donut shop that was once there has already gone out of business. The deserted building provides the perfect cushion without endangering any innocent shop owners.

Sirens sound in the distance. Another icy gust licks my face, and I realize my cheeks are wet. I swipe away the tears. They’re not for me or for Nix. They’re for Uncle and all his creations going up in a blaze of gory-glory . . . ​and for the fact that my twin and I are once again the cause of his despair.

At least now, my sister’s role has been rectified.

Just desserts.

The pun feels obscene from my current perspective, standing here outside the blazing ruins of pastries and dreams and otherworldly schemes.

Smoke and heat swirl around me, blurring my eyes as the sirens keen closer and closer. I wait until the trucks are a couple of blocks away, then, with one last glance at Wisteria Rising, I duck into the alley at the far end of the block. Refusing to look again at Eveningside Enchanted Delights, I toss the burner phone into the closest dumpster. Although I’m wearing gloves, I took care to wipe away any possible prints . . . ​to delete the app used to disguise my voice on the call.

I hop onto Nix’s bike and coast down the alley, maneuvering through a narrow opening between two buildings, taking the opposite direction from where the fire trucks start to pour into Eveningside Street. Turning the corner, I slip away moments before the blaring sirens and brakes screech to a halt in front of the bakery.

Shouts and clunks of metal accompany the powerful force of water unleashed. The sounds fracture the silence of the cold, clear night. Pedaling from street to street, I avoid the post-Halloween decor along sidewalks and curbs: decomposing pumpkins with crumpled jack-o’-lantern smiles, shredded cheesecloth ghosts, and toppled haunted house signs. I count myself lucky not to see any discarded masks; I’ve had enough of those and all they represent to last a lifetime.

The shadowy hush that blankets Astoria—until dawn arrives and shops open their doors—presents a serene backdrop to the chaos at the bakery, an idyllic bubble in which to reacquaint myself with my hometown.

I haven’t felt this relaxed in what feels like an eternity. I choose the long route to our house to absorb it all, and a wave of wonder and affection washes over me. I’m back home in Oregon, and I’m never leaving again. When an unwanted pang of disappointment follows that thought, I shove it down. I refuse to think about the hole that Mystiquiel gouged into my heart. Things I lost that were never meant to be mine. Instead, I revel in what I’m reclaiming: the only two relationships left that matter now. I just have to make sure Uncle and Clarey never realize what I’ve done.

Right now, they’re both asleep, believing I’m in my own bed, drowsy with pain meds I spit out when Uncle wasn’t looking. They think I’m enfeebled after being physically connected to Mystiquiel for so long. They think my muscles are too atrophied for me to walk without aid yet, much less ride a bike.

I managed to convince our family doctor of the same during her house call yesterday—my first full day back from Mystiquiel. Her diagnosis? Even with extensive physical therapy, it will be Christmas before I’m back to full capacity again. Uncle has rented me a wheelchair to use temporarily, until I regain strength. Upon hearing Uncle’s tall tale of my near drowning at Cannon Beach, the doctor said it was a miracle I survived. She said most people would be paralyzed had they done as I did, diving in at a shallow point and slamming my head on a sandbar.

Since Uncle can continue to spin his lies, I can, too. I haven’t let on that when Nix took my place in Mystiquiel, when she held me in her arms, she healed me completely. Better no one should know, in case the firefighters discover someone altered the wiring in the commercial refrigerators so they’d spark a flame. My physical limitations are the best alibi against arson.

Clarey’s and Uncle’s plan to go back and rescue Nix—by using the remainder of the Goblin King’s blood bottled up in vials disguised as squid ink and kept under lock and key in the bakery’s storeroom—was too risky. The gateway to Mystiquiel has to remain closed now that the contract has been fulfilled and my twin is at the Goblin King’s right hand.

I chew my inner cheek at the thought of Perish . . . ​how I last saw him becoming flesh before my eyes, looking even more beautiful and enchanting than he did when he was first crowned after my arrival in Mystiquiel, when he grew from an adolescent to a man in what seemed a split second. Even once my metal and mechanisms began to rot his kingdom, he was no less appealing and captivating. I tried so hard to be what his world needed. But my gifts weren’t enough. It was Nix he wanted from the beginning, and she let me be snatched away in the night. She allowed me to lose myself to another world, and in my absence, staked claim on everything that belonged to me here. Isn’t it only fair I do the same to her?

Unfortunately, so far, the payback’s been anything but satisfying.

I bite my lip, still sore from the fresh labret that matches the piercings on my eyebrow and nostril. My scalp itches under my helmet where my long black waves have been shorn to mirror Nix’s hairstyle, although we left my bangs long enough to cover my lack of a widow’s peak. Since the mortal world believes Lark Loring died in her sleep at the age of fourteen, I’m now forced to pretend I’m my twin, to take the name Phoenix Loring—just to be accepted. Which means my true identity will never be fully within my grasp again.

That’s the rub; even though I found my way back into this world—after Perish’s elaborate scheme to lure Nix into Mystiquiel worked—I didn’t win my life. I won hers. A bittersweet victory.

My tongue traces the gap between my incisors. I told Uncle Thatch I won’t change my smile permanently. The shape of my front teeth was self-induced, just like my lack of a widow’s peak. I’m the one who tried to shave off the point centered at the top of my forehead when I was nine, to straighten it out. After the razor sliced my hairline, scar tissue grew in the peak’s place, and though mostly invisible to the eye, it disrupted the follicles so the triangle of hair never returned. In the case of my teeth, I sucked my thumb until I was six. I’ve always embraced these differences because without them, Nix and I would’ve been cookie-cutter twins, with no discernible way to tell us apart. It’s why I never wanted braces.

To help me maintain at least that small aspect of individuality, Clarey is crafting an SFX equivalent—using thermoplastic beads that he’ll heat and mold to fit my existing teeth and hide the space for day-to-day. At least at night, or when I’m tucked away at home, I can take the veneers out and have one part of myself preserved.

Although if Clarey ever learns the truth, he won’t like any piece of me, much less want to preserve it.

Growling, I smother unwelcome sparks of remorse, allowing the wounded pride and righteous indignation I’ve stoked for three years to fully ignite into a searing blaze so ungovernable a city block filled with firefighters using the entire ocean could never snuff it out. I glance back one last time at the orange glow several streets away, tinging the sky like a premature dawn. Then I snap my attention forward and head home to sneak into bed before Uncle finds me missing.

My part is done. There’s no way back. And it’s my secret alone to bear: that the girl who returned from Mystiquiel—Uncle’s sweet songbird and Clarey’s little gearhead—is every bit as monstrous as the creatures from which she escaped.

That in fact, I’ve always been.