After all these years away, all that single-minded effort to banish this town from my soul, and the best I could muster was still a flimsy I don’t know. At least I had enough wits about me to recognize that some of that uncertainty had to do with Talia Avramov herself.

And it wasn’t until I was in bed, the carriage house colder and darker without her there, that I realized Talia had never even held up her end of the deal.

I still didn’t know why she had no tattoos of her own.

19

Anomalous Artifacts

I woke up wishing Talia was there.

As I stumbled from bed to let Jasper out, I inspected the feeling, turning it around in my mind like some anomalous artifact I’d stumbled across by accident, analyzing it from every perplexing angle. I wasn’t one to long for company in my own space; quiet mornings in my own bed, with a book in hand and the ambient noise of Jasper’s whistling snores, tended to be my happy place.

But this morning I felt listless, even a little sad. Worse than that, it was almost like I missed her. Even replaying some of last night’s choicer moments didn’t help put me in a better mood.

I was still ruminating as I stepped out into the chilly morning, in schlumpy sweatpants with a cardigan slung over my shoulders to ward off the cold. I had no Gauntlet-related plans today, so I was hoping to catch up on work email after I scrounged up breakfast at the main house. Outside, the day was overcast, all heaped-up drifts of leaden cloud. Mist clung to the garden in little clumps, wreathing damply around my ankles as I stepped onto the pavers. I’d missed it last night in the dark, swept up by Talia and the magic in the air, but my mother had apparently found the time to decorate. Dad would have missed the spooky season altogether if it weren’t for the tourists and Samhain Eve itself to tip him off, but my mom caught the bug hard each year. Crooked tombstones protruded from between her flowers like an infestation—“By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes!,” “Here Lies Beryl E. Dedd”—and there were jack-o’-lanterns everywhere, along with a blood-spattered ghoul clawing itself out of the ground between the rose bushes. She’d even looped fake spiderweb all over the garden, whole yards of it, and the sequined dewdrops caught in its strands glittered with incongruous prettiness.

“What do you think, darling? Have I done the season justice this year?”

I looked up to see my mother on the ancient porch swing on the back deck, snug in a cozy bathrobe and fleece slippers, a mug of something steaming in her hand. It was almost eleven, but my mom was a big fan of stretching her mornings as far as they could go.