Page 22 of The Queen's Box

Why had the tale come to Willow, though? She hadn’t asked it to. The air had rippled in Miriam’s yard, and Willow had heard that low silver chime that always preceded her visions.

Willow squeezed her eyes shut and forced herself to breathe. A bloodline with too much magic and no place to put it, so it came out where it could. That was the best explanation Willow could come up with.

She opened her eyes and stared at her reflection in the window of the bus. Her face was blotchy. Her eyes were wide. But there was something feral in them. Something newly awakened. Maybe thewhydidn’t matter. Maybe thewhyjustwas, and what really mattered was that the vision tonight and all the ones that came before it—they’d come toher. They’d chosenher.

She thought of the notebook on Miriam’s kitchen table.Veil thin in Hemridge. Orrin not erased. Wrenna = spark. Willow = kindling.

Kindling. Something that burned. Or maybe something that lit the way?

Miriam had said there were other worlds than this one. That Blue had crossed over to one. That magic, if it lingered anywhere in this all-too-ordinary world, lingered in Hemridge.

Miriam had also said that, despite what Willow had been told, her grandmother—Wrenna—hadn’t hanged herself. What, then? Had Wrenna punished her abuser and then found a way to follow Blue, to escape to a better, purer world?

Mr. Chapman hadn’t been as brazen as the pastor. He’d started small. Compliments. Lots of eye contact. He was the drama teacher, and Willow had almost always been cast as one of the leads in whatever given play the students had put on. It made sense that he’d touched her, helped her hit her marks. That was his job, wasn’t it?

She remembered standing on the taped X center stage while he’d adjusted her shoulders, tilted her chin. “Willow, you are light on a dim stage. Let them see you.”

He spoke to all the students like that. Like they mattered, like he saw them.I know you because I’m one of youwas the energy he gave off.Stodgy Dr. Filbert with his love for the Oxford comma? Sad, sallow Mrs. Wright, whose posters of the Eiffel Tower are fading with age? They’re doing their best, guys. I mean it. Are theyme?No, but then, no one is. Only me. Just me. Just me and you... and you... and you,with his eyes lingering on each student just long enough for every one of them to feel the electric charge of his charisma.

There was a reason he’d won “Best Teacher” year after year.

In the spring of her sophomore year, they’d put onThe Crucible. Willow was Abigail. He’d said she had the perfect edge for it—fury, beauty, vulnerability.

“You’re electric,” he’d whispered during rehearsal one night, standing just behind her, their reflections staring back from the darkened mirror of the drama-room windows. “I don’t think you realize how rare that is, to carry that kind of fire.”

Junior year, the play had beenPygmalion, and Willow had played Eliza Doolittle—a girl turned into a man’s perfect woman, scrubbed clean of her rough edges until she could pass in polite society.

At the time, Willow had thought it was romantic—the way Eliza blossomed beneath the professor’s attention. Mr. Chapman had said she brought “an aching fragility” to the role. He said she understood what it meant to be seen.

He’d started asking her to stay late after the others had gone. “Extra rehearsal time” was how he’d put it. She’d been thrilled. When he’d offered her rides home afterward, she hadn’t thought twice.

It had made sense. He’d been the teacher. He’d believed in her. And she was good. She was better than good—he’d told her so often, sometimes placing a warm hand on her arm.

Senior year, he’d asked if Willow might like to go to church with him.Church.

“Is that all right, Mom?” Willow had asked. “Can I?”

Her mother had cocked her head. “It’s a little strange, Willow,” she’d said, but in the end, she’d relented. It was church, after all.

He’d started talking about Willow’s future in a way that included him. “I’m not so much older than you, you know,” he’d teased. “You don’t see me as an old man, I hope.”

He’d given her a Christmas gift that year, a deluxe record set ofThe Brandenburg Concertos.

“Goodness,” her mother had said. She’d made a batch of thumbprint cookies with dollops of strawberry jam and wrapped them up in a pretty tin, presenting them to Willow to give Mr. Chapman as a means of saying thank you.

“Cookies?” he’d said with a smile that had made her stomach plummet. “That’s all I get... cookies?”

One night, in his car, he’d reached over and traced the hole in her jeans.

Another night, he’d talked about the student whose parents he was house-sitting for. “Cheryl Patterson. You know Cheryl, right?” He’d rubbed his nose with the knuckle of his index finger. “Not a bad kid. Not a bad actress, either.”

Willow hadn’t wanted to talk about Cheryl. “She’s fine,” she’d said, and he’d laughed.

“Jealous?”

“What? No.”

“Good, nice kid, but she doesn’t hold a candle compared to you.” He’d kept his tone casual. “They have a hot tub, the Pattersons. I love hot tubs. Don’t you?”

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