Page 13 of The Sisters of Crimson House

“What did Celeste mean? ‘Impossible,’” Charley asked, afraid of the question as she asked it.

“Sadie is shutting down the Spectacular. No more readings. No more using our abilities,” Miranda said simply, her voice betraying no emotion. “She said she’s done.” The answer took a sledgehammer to her last remaining attempt at normalcy. Charley flashed back to the moment Celeste had exited the kitchen, her anger a dark thing threatening to erupt. Impossible. It was impossible. Her family was made up of disparate parts, finely tuned instruments made orchestral at the annual Spectacular. And now it was all over, like her parents were over.

“But how do you know this?” Charley said, balling the comforter under her fists as a wave of vertigo hit.

“I can make myself invisible when I need to,” Miranda said to the ceiling. She had a point. Her sister disappeared for a living.

“Wait, no more readings? It’s not like you can turn off your abilities.” How would this even work? The logistics of this hurt her brain. Charley knew her grandmother was surely breaking from the extreme stress, but this was insane. Their abilities weren’t just innate talents; they were the family business. It’s what put the Cristal in champagne flutes, Charley’s favorite caramel apple spiders on the good china.

“Psychics not being able to save their own probably doesn’t look good for business,” Miranda said quietly.

The two of them fell into a troubled silence. Charley felt half-feral, sick from grief and crying like it was her job. The growing unrest between the adults and their adult problems downstairs would have to stay there, her poor heart too waterlogged to take on any more pain.

“I know I haven’t been a good sister to you.” Miranda said this so quietly that it took a moment for Charley to process she’d said anything.

She narrowed her eyes at Miranda in confusion. “You’re not wrong,” she said without thinking, thrilled when she got a ghost of a smile in return from Miranda. Finally something that seemed normal. “But why would you say that?”

“I just know things have been …” Miranda sighed, unable to find any words that would make sense, and they automatically looked away from each other.

“You know it wasn’t your fault, Miranda.”

“You don’t know anything.” Miranda drew her knees up to her chest, her dark hair nearly hiding her entire face.

“It was an accident. How can it be your fault?”

No response.

“If it was your fault, then it’s my fault, too.” Charley lay down across from her sister so that she could stare into Miranda’s one visible eye. “Will you please talk to me?”

Please.

The word that Miranda had screamed and sobbed the night their parents died, a word that made her feel sick with guilt and shame. Charley needed to talk. She needed to confess. She needed to tell her sister about what she’d felt that night, the jealousy, the fury that she’d now convinced herself had summoned a darkness too terrible to comprehend. She didn’t have any magic; she couldn’t go a day in this family without that cruel reminder. But had abandoning her post that night—abandoning her sister and blowing out a candle out of spite—brought about an apocalypse?

Miranda gave a deep sigh. She closed her eyes. A minute later, Charley heard her breath change, the Valium pulling her under. She did not appear to be dreaming. At least she wasn’t whispering about it.

***

Dawn found Charley halfway between sleep and waking, nightmares of being swallowed up by her own bed making the endeavor all the more difficult. She cracked one swollen eye open, the Rose Room coming into focus. The bedroom was a ridiculous explosion of old-lady floral pastels and heavy brocade curtains, all in various shades of red. She was buried in scarlet-red sheets inside a large four-poster bed with braided columns, a bed that had often made her feel she was trapped inside one of the Anne Rice novels she’d snuck from her mother’s bedside table. Now it just made her feel small and claustrophobic. Something had awakened her. A noise? She was going to try to fall back asleep when—

Bang.

Had that been the front door? Now voices. Definitely outside the house.

Charley jumped from the bed, pulling on a matching floral robe on her way out the door. She walked barefoot down the hall before stopping in front of Miranda’s room. She knocked softly, pressing her ear to the door.

“Miranda?” Charley hated to wake her, knowing that her sister needed whatever sleep she could manage, but she had a sudden, urgent desire to lay eyes on Miranda, sensing that something was off. She opened the door and eased into the room. Dust swirled inside a spiral of morning light from the bedroom window, but otherwise the room was still. Charley looked at the bed, neatly made, and then at the tidy room. Miranda was gone.

A car door slamming jolted her into action. Charley sprinted down the hall, the ridiculous flowery robe billowing behind her, and as she raced down the grand staircase, she said the words over and over in her head.

Please, please, please.

Somewhere deep in her brain, she knew what was happening, and then the words in her head were overpowering, and she was yelling them.

“Please, please, please!” She reached the massive front door and pulled it open.

Celeste’s gray Volvo screeched away from the curb, and Charley could just see her sister’s pale silhouette through the window of the back seat.

“Miranda!” she screamed, running into the street.