Page 85 of The Glittering Edge

“I, uh.” Corey’s voice cracks. “What was I saying?”

Dylan stares at him for a long moment. Then she says, “Explain Alonso.”

Corey smiles, but it feels forced this time. It’s too late to go back, to say he was kidding. He needs to see this story through, and he needs to be convincing.

“Turns out Alonso has a thing for Penny,” Corey says, “so I’m trying to set them up. That way Penny will leave me alone, and hey, I figured it might get Alonso off my back, too.”

Dylan doesn’t blink. “Youjustfigured out Alonso has a crush on Penny?”

That’s not where Corey was expecting this to go. “You knew?”

“Of course I knew.” She glances toward the parking lot, and Corey follows her gaze. Alonso is walking Penny to her car, holding an umbrella over her head while he gets soaked from the rain. He’s standing close, and he makes a wild gesture as he says something. Penny laughs, beaming up at him.

“Looks like Penny might know, too,” Dylan says. “I guess you’re a matchmaker.”

Corey keeps his face neutral, but his stomach turns. He doesn’t like seeing them together, but it has nothing to do with the fact that he thinks Penny is pretty. Maybe Penny would be his type if he were allowed to have a type, but that doesn’t change anything. Alonso is adangerous witch, and he doesn’t deserve Penny. He doesn’t deserve anyone.

And yet he’ll never have to hold back the way Corey does. Alonso doesn’t know what it’s like, being so afraid of having feelings for another person that you learn to mute your emotions like a song. If Corey had been born into another family, would he be the same person he is now? Or would he be completely different—more open, less afraid? Maybe his future wouldn’t be predetermined. Maybe he’d be brave enough to stand up to his grandpa—to live his own life.

If they break the curse, Corey could run away. Figure out what kind of person he is when he’s not defined by his last name. He could look at someone the way Alonso looks at Penny.

Not yet. But soon.

Corey takes Dylan’s hand again, and he presses his lips to her knuckles. When he looks up, Dylan’s eyes are half-lidded, and Corey knows they’ll be okay for now. But he needs one more thing from her.

Dylan has never admitted to leaking Lisa Yung’s nudes. Corey isn’t sure if it was her, even though his friends think it’s obvious. When he sees her like this—so attentive, so obviously in love with him—Corey can’t picture her hurting anyone. It gives him the confidence to say his next words.

“Don’t give Penny a hard time,” Corey says. “She’s in a bad place.”

Dylan turns cold again. She pulls her hand away, leaving Corey’s own hand alone in the middle of the table. His fingers curl into a fist.

“Dylan,” Corey says.

“I won’t.”

Corey tries to keep his voice even. “You promise?”

“Yeah,” Dylan says, her eyes flat. “I promise.”

Alonso

EVERY NIGHT, ALONSO LOCKS HIS BEDROOM DOOR AND DRAWS THEcurtains. It’s risky doing magic while his mom and aunts are asleep on the floors below, but he has to practice sometime, and he’s too lazy to sneak out. Plus, some of the spells require heat, and Alonso can’t build a fire to save his life, so he needs a place to plug in his hot plate.

Alonso sits on the floor, a lumpy pillow under his butt. The Misfits play from his old speakers, the rumble of the guitar enough to disguise any noise. Nimble is curled up on Alonso’s rickety desk, watching him through narrowed eyes, sensing that he’s up to something risky.

“Stop judging me,” Alonso says.

First, he picks upThe Magic of the Every-Day.He originally set out with the intention of doing every spell in the book to build his foundation, but some of them are boring. He’s not going to exert a bunch of magical energy to clean some dishes or mend a hole in the crotch of his old jeans. Instead, he’s practicing spells that are interesting or melodramatic or both. Today, he opens the book to a spell on glamours.

“Fuck, yeah,” he says, rolling up his sleeves.

But the instructions aren’t for big glamours. It’s basically magical makeup—covering pimples or gray hairs. It’s better than housekeeping spells. He settles on a target: There’s a scar on his pinkie finger, one he got from a bicycle accident when he was five.

Most physical spells require an emollient, or something of the sort, to concentrate the magical energy when the spell is in progress.For the glamour, Alonso smears the scar with rose hip oil that he stole from his mom’s bathroom. He places his other hand directly above the scar, clears his throat, and reads from the book.

“Sunrise to moonrise,

take from my mind this disguise,

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