Page 6 of Silver in the Bone

We would be waiting forever. I felt the truth of it down to my bones. Nash had finally unloaded his hangers-on. He was never coming back. The only mercy was that he hadn’t taken Cabell with him.

“We’re okay,” I whispered. “We’re okay. We’re all we need. We’re okay ...”

Nash said that some spells had to be spoken three times to take hold, but I wasn’t stupid enough to believe that, either. I wasn’t one of the girls from the gilded pages of storybooks. I had no magic.

I only had Cabell.

The dark bristles were spreading across his skin again, and I felt the bones of his spine shifting, threatening to realign. I held him tighter. Fear swirled in the pit of my stomach. Nash had always been the one to pull Cabell back to himself, even when he fully shifted.

Now Cabell only had me.

I swallowed, shielding him from the driving rain and wind. And then I started to speak: “In ages past, in a kingdom lost to time, a king named Arthur ruled man and Fair Folk alike ...”

No matter what they say, or how much they lie to themselves, people don’t want the truth.

They want the story already living inside them, buried deep as marrow in the bone. The hope written across their faces in a subtle language few know how to read.

Luckily for me, I did.

The trick, of course, was to make them feel like I hadn’t seen anything at all. That I couldn’t guess who was heartsick for a lost love or desperate for a windfall of money, or who wanted to break free from an illness they’d never escape. It all came down to a simple desire, as predictable as it was achingly human: to hear their wish spoken by someone outside themselves—as if that somehow had the power to make it all come true.

Magic.

But wishes were nothing more than wasted breath fading into the air, and magic always took more than it gave.

No one wanted to hear the truth, and that was fine by me. The lies paid better; the bald-faced realities, as my boss Myrtle—the Mystic Maven of Mystic Maven Tarot—once pointed out, only got me raging internet reviews.

I rubbed my arms beneath Myrtle’s crochet shawl, eyes darting to the digital timer to my right: 0:30 ... 0:29 ... 0:28 ...

“I’m sensing ... yes, I’m sensing you have another question, Franklin,” I said, pressing two fingers against my forehead. “One that’s your real reason for coming here.”

The glowing essential oil diffuser gurgled contentedly behind me. Its steady stream of patchouli and rosemary was powerless against the smell of deep-fried calamari drifting up through the old floorboards and the rancid stench of the dumpsters out back. The cramped, dark room circled in tighter around me as I breathed through my mouth.

Mystic Maven had occupied its room above Boston’s Faneuil Hall Marketplace for decades, bearing witness to the succession of tacky seafood restaurants that cycled in and out of the building’s ground level. Including, most recently, the particularly malodorous Lobster Larry’s.

“I mean ... ,” my client began, looking around at the peeling strips of floral wallpaper, the small statues of Buddha and Isis, then back down to the spread of cards I’d placed on the table between us. “Well ...”

“Anything?” I tried again. “How you’ll do on your finals? Future career? Hurricane season? If your apartment is haunted?”

My phone came to the end of the playlist of harmonic rain and wind chimes. I reached down to restart it. In the silence that followed, the dusty battery-powered candles flickered on the shelves around us. The darkness gathered between them hid just how dingy the room was.

Come on, I thought, half desperate.

It had been six long hours of listening to chanting-monk tracks and mindlessly rearranging crystals on the nearby shelves between what few customers had come in. Cabell had to have the key by now, and after finishing up with this reading, I’d be able to leave for my real gig.

“I just don’t understand what she sees in him—” Franklin began, only to be cut off by the digital wail of my timer.

Before I could react, the door swung open and a girl barreled inside.

“Finally!” she said, parting the cheap beaded curtain with a dramatic sweep of her hands. “My turn!”

Franklin turned to gawk at her, his expression shifting as he assessed her with clear interest—the way she all but vibrated with excited energy made it difficult to look anywhere else. Her dark brown skin was dusted with a faint shimmer, likely from whatever cream she used, which smelled like honey and vanilla. Her braids were twisted back into two high buns on her head, and she’d painted her lips a deep purple.

After giving Franklin a quick once-over in return, she quirked her lips in my direction. In her hand was her ever-present portable CD player and foam-covered earphones, relics of simpler technological yesteryears. As someone incapable of throwing anything away, I was begrudgingly charmed by them.

But the charm quickly faded as she turned her belt around and tucked both into what appeared to be a pink fanny pack. One with fluorescent cats and the words I’M MEOW-GICAL emblazoned across it in glow-in-the-dark green.

“Neve.” I tried not to sigh. “I didn’t realize we had an appointment today.”

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