Page 1 of The Glittering Edge

Penny

THE FOURTH OF JULY PARTY IS SURPRISINGLY FUN UNTIL ALONSO DELuca shows up.

Penny is the first person to notice him. She’s at her usual post at the perimeter of the crowd, which offers great people-watching. Plus, she doesn’t know how to socialize by dropping herself into a tornado of drunk people. This is one of Corey Barrion’s parties, which means it’s straight out of a 2000s high school comedy: big and loud and peppered with people vomiting into houseplants. Or, since they’re currently in the woods, vomiting into Elkie Lake.

Penny catches sight of Alonso’s blue hair just as she’s taking her first sip of beer, and she gasps mid-swallow. A few people laugh as she coughs violently.You are beauty, you are grace, she tells herself as her eyes water, but she still can’t look away.

Because if Alonso is here, this party is about to take a turn for the worse.

A wave of silence follows Alonso as he cuts through the crowd. Even the music and the crickets go quiet, or maybe that’s because of the blood rushing in Penny’s ears.

“Naomi!” Penny whisper-shouts at her best friend.

Naomi is absorbed in a conversation with Kyla McGuinness, her on-again off-again girlfriend. Normally, Penny wouldn’t interrupt them. She takes pride in being a great wingwoman, like most best friends with no love life. But this is an emergency.

It takes Penny waving her arms like an air traffic controller forNaomi to finally clock her, and the flirtatious smile disappears from her face. Naomi turns around right as Alonso is stalking by, heading for the keg. Two of his cronies follow close behind, looking bored.

Kyla leaves Naomi stranded as she runs back to her own friends, so Penny glues herself to Naomi’s side. “Sorry! I panicked.”

Naomi flicks her sleek ponytail over her shoulder. “So did Kyla, apparently. Alonso is on my shit list for ruining analmostromantic moment.” She grins as she takes in the party’s rising frenzy. “I bet twenty bucks Alonso throws the first punch.”

“What if he just wants free beer?”

Naomi raises a perfectly shaped eyebrow. “You really think he showed up at Corey’s party on accident?”

Naomi is right. Idlewood’s center of gravity is the animosity between the families that produced Alonso and Corey. Without it, their small Indiana town would probably collapse in on itself like a dead star.

Penny’s eyes find Corey in the crowd. He’s absorbed in a conversation, and he hasn’t noticed the entire party looking between him and Alonso like they’re facing off in a tennis match. Corey starts to turn around, and Penny reflexively hides behind her hands. Because in a matter of seconds Corey will realize Alonso has crashed his party.

But to everyone’s surprise, Dylan Mayberry accidentally saves the day. She saunters over to Corey and interlaces her fingers with his, distracting him.

Crisis averted. For now.

“If you keep staring, you’ll accidentally look into Dylan’s eyes,” Naomi says. “I don’t feel like dragging a stone version of you home in my mom’s Civic.”

Penny snorts. “Be nice.”

“I refuse. Dylan Mayberry is evil incarnate.” Naomi gasps. “Oh my god, did I tell you that Carly Pilowski saidDylanleaked Lisa Yung’s nudes last spring? Apparently Lisa got drunk and flirted with Corey at a party, and the photos were all over the internet three days later. Coincidence?”

“Probably not,” Penny admits.Possessivedoesn’t begin to describe Dylan Mayberry. If she’s around, it’s best to pretend Corey isn’t one of the most attractive human beings alive, as difficult as that may be. Letting your eyes linger too long on his high cheekbones or full lips will be seen as a declaration of war.

Corey is now talking with some theater kids while Dylan scrolls through her phone, sending a clear message that whatever they’re saying isn’t worth her time. Penny looks between them, wondering what she’s missing. They’ve never really made sense as a couple. Corey is way too nice for Dylan, but then again, Penny doesn’t know him personally. She feels some kinship with him, since they both lost parents when they were little, but that’s the only thing they have in common. What’s undeniable is that anyone attracted to boys will have a crush on Corey at some point. That includes Penny, who liked him for a year in middle school. But as time went on and Corey failed to acknowledge her existence, Penny’s crush faded. She and Corey would only happen in some parallel universe, and Penny is perfectly happy in this universe, thank you very much. She’s got everything she needs—her best friend, her mom, her job at Horizon Café. It’s the summer before senior year, and it might be the most perfect summer of Penny’s life.

She can’t think about next summer, though. High school will be over, and everything will change.

“You might be right about Alonso,” Naomi says, distracting Penny from an impending thought spiral. “He actually seems… calm?”

The subject of everyone’s attention has settled with his friends on the opposite side of the clearing. Alonso is busy glowering, which is as calm as he gets. His friends are holding red plastic cups, but Alonso drinks from a brown bottle he must’ve brought himself.

“Did he bring his own beer to a keg party?” Penny asks.

Naomi leans in, smirking. “Maybe he’s here to cast a spell on everyone. As soon as midnight strikes, bugs will start crawling out of our ears.”

Penny’s throat goes tight. There are lots of rumors about the De Lucas, who have a long, complicated history in Idlewood—a history thatinvolves Corey’s family. The rivalry between the De Lucas and the Barrions has lasted for decades, and everyone knows exactly when it started: Like many mythic wars, it was thanks to a very dramatic love triangle. Corey’s grandmother Ellie was originally engaged to Alonso’s grandfather Giovanni. Then it was discovered that Ellie was cheating on Giovanni with Corey’s grandfather Charles, and she married him instead.

If you were being diplomatic, you could say that Giovanni never got over it. In truth, the termmurder-suicidedoesn’t begin to cover the wreckage Alonso’s grandfather left behind. Over the years, the stories about these two families—and about Giovanni De Luca in particular—have taken on a supernatural bent. And those stories have followed the De Lucas all the way to the present.

Which is to say, most of the people at this party believe Alonso De Luca is a witch.

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