Page 39 of If Anything Happens To Me

“They were three sisters,” Sirena said. “Just like the sign says.”

“Were they really oracles?” Iris asked.

“Yep,” Sirena said, seeming to revel in telling the story. “Sailors are very superstitious. This is a maritime town—ships coming and going, from all around the world. Navy, fishermen, smugglers. Sailors could be gone from their families for months at a time. And they wanted to know things: Would they return alive, would their wives wait for them, would they have success and come home rich?”

“What does that have to do with the three sisters?” I asked.

“Well, according to Minerva, the three sisters were able to tell fortunes,” Sirena said. “In fact, we’ve capitalized on the fortune-telling legend. We’ve learned how to read the tarot—Minerva’s actually good at it—and sometimes my parents hire mediums to come into the pub with their crystal balls. Brings in customers like you wouldn’t believe!”

I wondered who this “Minerva” was, but I didn’t want to interrupt Sirena until she was finished talking.

“So, the sisters had second sight—an ability to see into the future,” Sirena went on. “They traveled up and down the East Coast, appearing on stages, in theaters, even in taverns like this, drawing huge crowds who would pay a lot of money to learn their futures.”

“And the sisters came here?” I asked. “To this pub? Did they perform in New London?” I looked around; the tavern seemed small, hardly large enough to hold a crowd.

“Well,” Sirena said. “That’s what Minerva says. She has a great-aunt who’s, like, a hundred, and she’s somehow related to the Sibylline sisters. Apparently the sisters lived upstairs in this building for a while, but then they moved somewhere else. There was some kind of family tragedy.”

“Tragedy?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Sirena said, and I noticed her flinch. “Poor Minerva. She carries the weight of it. Even though it didn’t happen to her personally, she feels the old trauma.”

That pierced my heart—I thought about losing my parents, and Eloise. I knew what it was to carry the weight of family trauma.

“Have you ever seen other paintings of the sisters?” I asked, desperate to learn more.

“Apparently some exist,” Sirena said. “But Minerva would know more about that.”

“We need to meet Minerva,” I said. “Right away.”

“Yes,” Iris said, trembling so hard her voice shook. “Where is she?”

“That’s easy,” Sirena said. “Her shop is right next door. Mermaid’s Pearls. You can’t miss it.”

We thanked Sirena and hurried into Mermaid’s Pearls, the jewelry store next to the pub. It was narrow and long. No one was at the front counter, but we noticed a girl sitting on a tall stool at a workbench in back. She had wavy red hair and wore a shimmery blue-green sundress, the color of a mermaid’s tail.

“Excuse me, are you Minerva?” I called.

“I sure am! Hello, mermaids!” she said, beaming and beckoning us toward her workstation.

“I’m Oli, she’s Iris. Do you own the store?” I asked, thinking she looked too young for that. She was not much older than Iris and me.

“My great-aunt is the owner,” she said. “But I’ve been an apprentice here forever. Can I help you?”

“Do you make the jewelry?” Iris asked.

“Yes,” she said. “A lot of it.”

I looked in the glass case and couldn’t help but be dazzled by the rings and charms in there. Each one was a miniature canvas for enamel paintings set in fields of diamonds: a white owl, a pearlescent cat with wings, a silvery mermaid, and one that really caught my eye—a tiny white witch flying through fog, just the suggestion of mist on the face of a gold charm barely larger than a dime. The sight of it made me shiver.

“You like that one?” Minerva asked, leaning over next to me.

“It’s beautiful,” I said, frowning because even though I saidbeautiful, that’s not what I felt. My mind was swirling. The witch made me think of something evil that I couldn’t quite define.

“Thank you,” Minerva said. “She’s my favorite. When you live by the waterfront here, you see lots of sea witches.”

I glanced up, thinking she had to be kidding, but when I looked into her eyes, in spite of a friendly glint, she seemed dead serious.

“We’re actually looking for sibyls, not witches,” I said.

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