Page 37 of The Sisters of Crimson House

“I come here a lot, just to talk to them. They never say anything back,” said Charley, hugging herself against the cold. It felt embarrassing to say it out loud, confess to that need.

Miranda smiled, looking out at the trees. In addition to Nicole’s scarf, she was wrapped up in a long gray wool coat that tied at the waist, a look that would scream bathrobe on anyone else. “They talk to you all the time. You just haven’t known how to hear them.”

Charley forced herself to turn and look directly into her sister’s eyes. “Is Sadie with them?”

“With who?” Miranda blinked back.

“Mom and Dad. Because I need to know it wasn’t my fault.”

Miranda stopped her pacing, looking at Charley as if she hadn’t quite heard her. “Her death wasn’t your fault, Charley.”

Charley held up her palm, revealing the V of the Seeker’s Star now plain on her palm. “This thing on my hand starts to fire up, and days later, Sadie dies after hers is cut out. You both warned me.” Charley felt physical pain throb in her chest, but she wouldn’t cry. She was so tired of crying. “Sadie told me I had to prepare for what was coming. But I didn’t listen.”

Miranda surprised her by taking her hand in hers. “It’s not your fault.” Her words were fierce, insistent. “Sadie died the way she lived: trying to protect you.”

“Protecting me by wasting away in the attic until you came home? By never talking to me and just whispering to shadows? By just closing up shop and leaving me to figure all this out on my own? How was that protection? I needed her. And now she’s gone.” The anger coursed through her, an excellent chaser to the bourbon. For a moment, it was a better companion than the grief.

Miranda sighed. “There’s a lot she didn’t tell you, or any of us, for that matter.”

Charley handed her the flask, nodded at it until her sister took a long pull. Time to rip off the Band-Aid.

“Who is she?” That thing in the theater, a darkness rising to swallow her. “Who is Caroline?” She wanted Miranda to lie to her. To tell her it had all been a bad dream, because then she wouldn’t have to see it. Blood on the wall, blood on the tile floor, Sadie’s blood, smeared across her field of vision. CAROLINE MAKES IT GO AWAY. Miranda’s screams as she’d knelt beside her at the bathtub, Charley’s cries hoarse before she’d gone silent, helped into bed by a devastated Astrid and Zavier. Before she had collapsed into a dreamless sleep, she’d peeled off wet clothes. Her last thought before she lost consciousness? They had been baptized by bathwater and Sadie’s blood.

Miranda sat down next to her, absently running her fingers through a patch of clover. “I don’t know who she is.”

Charley shook her head as if physically refusing the information to settle. “I don’t believe you.” Miranda’s terror. She is here.

Miranda sighed, impatient. “It’s not as simple as that. Our family was trained to work with good passengers and keep out the bad,” Miranda continued. “Some of those passengers could be more dangerous than others.” She plucked a clover from the patch, twirling the stem. A four-leaf clover. “I don’t know who she is, but I know what she wants.” She took a steadying breath. “To destroy us.”

Charley looked at her, stricken. “Why?” It came out as a whisper.

“I think the only person with that knowledge isn’t here anymore to tell us.”

The weight of that knowledge pressed on Charley’s chest, making it hard to breathe. Sadie. The terror in her eyes as she’d seen the Star developing on Charley’s hand. The warning to prepare her. Had she known this was coming?

“As long as we’ve been hosting the Spectacular, we have had to be careful,” continued Miranda, her voice quiet. “Darker entities are always going to be attracted to that level of energy on display. But she…” Miranda paused, visibly shuddering. “She has always been circling our family. And I don’t think she’ll stop trying to hurt us until we’re dead.”

Charley sat still, too overwhelmed to process. Miranda was hired to channel celebrities, loved ones who had passed on. Charley had witnessed with her own eyes how combative some of them could be, and those were the good ones. And now one was hunting them.

“Nobody told you why? Our family was performing for crowds while this thing wanted to hurt us?”

A real laugh this time. “We’re the Bryde family. What choice did I have?” Miranda said softly. “It’s part of the job, opening yourself up to the other side. You never know who’s going to want to say hello.”

“Did we wake her up?”

Miranda looked at her sharply. “Why do you say it like that?”

She’s awake. Miranda’s message from Sadie was an echo in Charley’s brain. It had been the whisper in her ear in the Luciann Theater.

“It’s what Sadie told me when you channeled her.”

Miranda processed this, holding her face with her hands. “Did she tell you anything else?” She sighed, an exhausted sound. “Any tips she could pass along would be helpful.”

“No,” Charley said, shaking her head to rid herself of the unsettling image of Sadie’s voice coming through her sister’s mouth. “Why is it trying to hurt us? Why would she kill Sadie? What does she want with our family?” A fresh horror thrummed in her chest.

A world-eating ghost in the bottom of a champagne glass.

Mom and Dad floating like fish in an aquarium.