Page 47 of The Glittering Edge

Babysitter mode: activated.

The full force of Alonso’s glare is directed at Penny, and she remembers exactly who it is she’s talking to. Her anxiety threatens to bubble up—did she take her meds today? Yes. What time? Eight in the morning, like always.

This brings her some comfort. She needs a little bravado of her own to get through this, so she straightens up in her chair, cocking her head at Alonso in what she hopes he interprets as a challenge. She can only hope it’s convincing.

In response, Alonso slumps into the booth and drinks more root beer. Penny takes that as a victory.

“Youdohave a plan, right?” she says.

“I never said I had a ‘plan.’” Alonso uses air quotes. “It’s more of a hunch.”

“I knew it,” Corey mutters. He grabs his backpack from one of the booths. “I’m leaving.”

“Already?” Alonso says, not sounding upset in the least.

“A hunch isn’t good enough,” Corey says. “If you’re going to lie to us, I have better things to do.”

Alonso drums his fingers on the table. “There’s this story.”

Corey pauses halfway to the door.

“It’s about a witch who broke a very old curse that she didn’t create,” Alonso says. “Her name was Park HaeJung. She’s probably the most famous witch of all time. Lots of covens wrote about her, studied with her. She was constantly coming up with new spells, almost by instinct. But HaeJung was bad at recording her process. A lot of the spells that made her famous have been lost.”

“Including this one?” Penny asks.

“We have the incantation. There’s only one curse-breaker spell, remember? We just don’t know why it worked for her and never for anybody else.” He shrugs. “It might’ve been because she was powerful enough to manage it.”

“So we’re here because of a legend,” Corey mutters.

“Not a legend. This really happened, so we know it’s possible.”

“What makes you think it’s possible foryou?” Corey says.

Alonso doesn’t answer.

That day back in the woods, when he brought the kitten back to life, Alonso didn’t use any incantations. It just… happened.

“What separates powerful witches from… I don’t know, the regular ones?” Penny asks. “You said HaeJung could do magic by instinct?”

“All witches get their power from the Second World, across the Veil,” Alonso says.

“The Veil?” Penny says. “What’s that?”

Corey drops his backpack into a booth again. “It’s what separates our world from the spirit world, right? My dad’s cousin Sofía told me about it. She’s done a lot of research on the occult.”

Penny is barely listening. The Veil, the spirit world… all these things really exist. She shivers.

“The Second World is where we go after death,” Alonso says. “It’s basically a waiting room before we move on to whatever’s next. It’sfull of magical energy generated by all these spirits, and witches can access and manipulate that energy, but mortals can’t.”

“So Corey and I can’t break the curse? You’d have to do it?” Penny asks.

“You can lend your own energy to a spell to make it stronger, but you need a witch to be your conduit. Aka, me. You guys have electricity, but I’m the electrical wire.”

“And the incantations are predetermined,” Penny says, trying to calm her heart rate.

Alonso nods. “But witches like Park HaeJung didn’t even need spell books. She could make stuff up on the fly, and the spells would work. She was like the Mozart of witches. A total virtuoso. And in this case, she was able to break a curse that had been around for a hundred years.”

Alonso’s voice grows quiet as he speaks. Like he’s in awe.

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