Page 10 of A Bond with the Dark

It scares me to see him like this. Even her voice in my head is uneasy and stiff.

She’s referring to our father. Like my mom, he wears an armor made of thicker steel than hers. The only time we see the softness in him is toward my mom. She seeps through the cracks in his armor like sunlight. As we noticed more and more grims popping up and truly threatening our existence, we saw more cracks appear in his shield. It’s like seeing a sunken battleship underwater. Something once fierce and threatening that’s now vulnerable and innocuous. It’s unsettling.

We’re going to get through this. Even if we have to leave. We’ll always have each other. Her green eyes soften and lift with an inner glow.

Scarlet carries herself with the grace and wit of an assassin princess. Her bold but flawless looks paint her as the immortal creature that she is, and she embraces it with every ounce of her villainous being. Scarlet has no soft side for anyone except for me.

“Oh, this is interesting,” Mom quips. “This says only a phoenix can stop a warlock.”

The room falls into questioning silence, feeling tight as though it is filled with something heavier than air.

“What the fuck is a phoenix?” Jasantha finally breaks it.

“A supernatural being with powers beyond the mundane. They are stronger than vampires, formweavers, sirens”—Jasantha scoffs—“and warlocks alike. But one only comes around every few hundred years—when . . . “ she trails off.

“When?” I press.

Her eyes collide with mine, and I see nothing but worry in that gaze. “When it’s bad enough it could cause a pandemic.”

5

THE CARTWRIGHT WITCHES

SAYAH

Guilt is creeping up my bones again, settling into my marrow and severing all everyday thoughts, making processing this absolutely fucking tragic event nearly impossible. All the things I should have said, should have done, should have . . . Should have . . .

Should have . . .

The days have passed by like seconds and like years all the same. They’ve simultaneously been the slowest days of my life, and yet I look back to that dreadful phone call, and it’s been a blur.

The aunts arrived last night, and while we’ve been processing and grieving and going over funeral plans for my parents, we’ve tried to look for light in the dark.

Hilda and Maggie are both in their seventies, shrinking violets and fading looks; their faces don deep-set wrinkles and missing teeth punctuate their smiles. The two women are short and stout, Hilda with strawberry-red hair streaked with silver that she wears with bangs and always in a pony and Maggie with boy-short white hair forever in disarray, as though she sticks her head out the window of a car after a shower.

We’re going through an old box of pictures my mom gave me when I had Gauge. Pictures and her grimoires and other magickal objects she’d passed down to me once she stopped practicing the craft as much.

“And there she was,” Hilda goes on through tears and laughter, “in that little red car, moving to Colorado, and she takes off with all her stuff in the back and stalls the car ’cause she didn’t know how to drive a stick!”

Peals of wheezing laughter erupt from Maggie, Hilda, and me as we continue our reveries and funny stories about Mama.

“I’ll never forget it! I ran to her window and asked, ‘Are you sure you want to move across the country without anyone?’ And she said she was sure. She started that car back up and drove off into the sunset.”

It feels good to keep Mama’s memory alive. It’s keeping that monstrous cloud of destruction from ripping my walls down and flooding me with grief.

I have to keep going like this. For Gauge.

“How long do you guys plan on staying?” I ask, sifting through the pictures.

Maggie lifts her glasses to wipe the tears from under her eyes with a tissue. “We’re probably going to leave Monday morning,” she says, cleaning her glasses off. “We have to get back soon to help with the kids.”

After Aunt Janet died, Maggie and Hilda looked after my cousin Francine, Janet’s daughter. Since Francine had children, they have helped her look after them as well. They are doing what they think Janet would have wanted.

The fact that they’re leaving so soon catches me off guard. “Well, I can’t plan a celebration of life in two days,” I mention.

“You don’t have to, honey,” Hilda replies, tipping the cup to her lips and chewing on some crushed ice. “You can plan it for a few months out, and we’ll make sure to return for it.”

“You guys would come back for it?” I ask as I inspect an old photo more closely, deciding if it’s good to show at my parents’ celebration.

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