Page 10 of The Queen's Box

“So definitively, as if you know better than I do who I want to talk to.”

Willow huffed. “I’m Willow. Theoldestsister. The one who didn’t go to college?”

Miriam’s expression remained the same.

“If you’re wanting to talk to someone, it’s probably Ash,” Willow said.

“I see. Did Ash go to college?”

“No, but . . . she will. Obviously.”

“And for that reason, I would want to talk to her?”

Willow laughed. She couldn’t help it. She felt terribly weary all of a sudden and dropped down next to Miriam. “Well, it’s not me you’re looking for. I promise you, there isnobodyat this party who came here hoping to speak to me. I’m the crazy one, in case you didn’t know.”

“What a funny hill to die on,” Miriam mused. “Do you know the hearts and minds of all your parents’ guests?”

Willow felt flustered.

“Never mind,” Miriam said. “Tell me this, though. Why do you say you’re the crazy one?”

“I don’t. Other people do. Because... of things that happened.” Willow felt her cheeks grow hot. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Areyou crazy?”

“No! I mean—maybe. Not like that.” She hitched her shoulders. “Are you? My father said you believe in black magic.”

Miriam threw back her head and laughed. “Well, maybe I do—although I highly doubt Grant said anything of the sort. I collectstoriesabout magic—black magic, white magic, all sorts of magic. But then, I collect stories about all sorts of things.”

She inclined her head toward the room’s closed door. “I sense that you have some stories of your own. We’re alone here, you and me. I would love to hear them.”

“Oh, sure. Because every famous folklorist is dying to hear the stories of a failed Atlanta debutante.”

“You were a debutante?”

“Well. No.”

“Then you’re no more a failed debutante than a failed heart surgeon,” Miriam said. “Unless you have a secret career I don’t know about?”

Willow dragged her thumbnail across her eyebrow, which itched. Then she lowered her hand and turned both palms upward to say,What do you want from me, strange lady?

Miriam smiled. “I’vemade a career out of studying the places where the veil runs thin, and the energy you give off...” She shrugged. “It’s possible you could learn as much from me as I could from you. That’s all.”

“‘The veil’?” Willow echoed. “What do you mean, ‘the veil’?”

“The barrier between this world and the worlds that we’ve forgotten. Worlds that have forgotten us.”

Willow’s breath grew shallow, and her spine prickled, the way it did when the lights flickered in a storm. She blinked several times in a row, clenched her hands in her lap, and said, “Ithink you’re making fun of me.” She kept her voice as steady as she could. “And I don’t appreciate it.”

“I am not making fun of you, Willow. Far from it.” Miriam rubbed her own eyebrow with the knuckle of her index finger, and Willow had the absurd thought that her itching eyebrow had been contagious.

“I study the unseen doors that are woven into the fabric of reality,” Miriam said with a surprising lack of formality. “I myself have never been fortunate enough to see one. But based on what I overheard”—she tilted her head at the door—“I suspect that perhaps you have. If so, I would very much like to hear about it.”

Willow didn’t know what game Miriam was playing. She felt suspicious... but also curious. She eyed Miriam and said nothing.

Miriam waited several beats, then said, “Your mother believes that her mother committed suicide when she was an infant. Is that correct?”

Willow drew back. Did Miriam mean,Your mother’s mother committed suicide, correct?Or did she mean,Your motherthinksher mother committed suicide, correct?Either way, how did she know—and why was it any of her business?

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