3. If Elizabeth did this, then revenge is necessary even though she is a megabadass witch from ye olden days and I am a high school senior with a shrieking-alarm key chain as my sole means of self-defense. So some planning time for said revenge is probably necessary.

Reasons Not to Visit My Parents’ Graves Soon

1. Not sure I’m ready to deal with that, at all.

2. Already working on stopping Elizabeth in her tracks, so revenge motivation is an unnecessary addition to my plans.

3. Also that’s probably the only way to make this apocalypse-averting thing even more stressful than it already is.

Verlaine stared at the lists on her laptop screen and groaned. Even though both lists were short, she knew she could keep adding items all night and still wind up with no clear conclusion.

She had made her usual nest behind the Guardian front desk for the Thursday night “late hours,” which was something the editor, Mrs. Chew, had come up with to help Verlaine burn more internship credits. Her coffee milk was in its usual glass at her side; the funky Bakelite bracelet she’d found seriously underpriced at the thrift store, the one that was too bulky to wear while typing, made a turquoise ring on the other side of her laptop. Since the newspaper wasn’t exactly a hotbed of activity even during regular hours, Verlaine usually found this a good time to update the Lightning Rod or get homework out of the way before the weekend.

Or, in this case, to sit around making useless lists that didn’t do anything to settle her chaotic mind.

Between two fingers, Verlaine caught the shorter strand of her hair—the one she’d cut the other day. Mateo had sworn he’d seen something, and she believed him. Somewhere, sometime, magic had been worked on her, and the taint of it lingered.

But that doesn’t mean it’s why Mom and Dad died. Your hair could have turned gray from the shock. That’s what Uncle Gary always said. You were alone in that house with them for a day, and it must have been scary as hell. Sometimes she had nightmares about it—not real memories, but her imagination running wild with what it would mean to be trapped in a house with two dead bodies.

If not her parents, though—then what was the magic about?

Sourly Verlaine thought, Maybe it’s all about making me the least popular kid in school. Yeah, I bet that’s it. Elizabeth uses her badass witch vibes to figure out who doesn’t get to be prom queen.

“Hello, Verlaine.”

She glanced up to see Elizabeth standing right in front of the desk.

About eighty thousand swear words ran through Verlaine’s mind all at the same second, which was maybe why none of them came out of her mouth. Instead she just gaped.

Elizabeth didn’t seem to notice. She seemed as calm and gentle as ever, a knit cardigan pulled over one of her white dresses. Her windswept chestnut hair fell over one shoulder, and she smiled, unbothered by Verlaine’s silence. “These evening hours are a good idea. I wanted to ask about the fee to place a classified ad?”