Page 19 of Saint, Sorrow, Sinner
“Soufflé? Teach me,” Juniper said. The psychic gestured between the blender and Tehlor. “Would you mind? Blend, pour, stir. That’s it.”
The witch sighed and slid across the countertop, mumbling aboutscrewing it upalong withdon’t blame meandI’m no fuckin’ chefwhile she reached for the blender.
Juniper stepped around Colin, dusting her hand across his shoulder as she went, and came to stand beside Sophia at the island. Her hair was fastened into a messy bun and her beige apron covered a black sweater paired with pleather pants. She smiled, assessing the ingredients strewn across the counter.
“Teach you,” Sophia repeated. Nerves fired in different areas—spine, wrists, gums. She cleared her throat and nodded, arranging the ramekins she’d found in a drawer, and gestured to a clean bowl next to the flour sack. “It’s, I mean, it’s nothard,but it took me a few tries to get it right, you know, so, don’t expect them to be—”
Gently, Juniper rested her wide palm on the small of Sophia’s back. “Nothing perfect happens the first time. What can I do?”
Thumb against vertebrae. Heart line to tailbone. Sophia felt her everywhere.
Vocalization failed. She hummed, though. Tapped a flour-covered finger to her chin and realized where she needed to start. She opened the fridge, found the eggs, and handed one to Juniper. The psychic tracked her like a puma, orbiting every movement. When Sophia cracked the egg, Juniper did too. She separated the whites, dumping the yellow yolk into a smaller bowl, and smiled when Juniper said, “Ah, I see.” Sophia chopped the dark chocolate while Juniper whisked the egg whites, and laughed when Sophia tilted her head, directing her to shake salt flakes into the darkening batter. For most of her life, Sophia pushed through the urge to stay quiet and spoke when speech was not a comfortable form of communication. But there, in the Belle House, surrounded by strangers who were becoming something else, Sophia listened, and smiled, and taught Juniper Castle how to bake a beloved dessert without saying much of anything at all.
Nearby, Tehlor laughed, and Bishop commented on the spiciness of the short ribs. Lincoln sipped from a beer bottle, hip propped on the edge of the sink, and Colin topped a salad with roasted pumpkin seeds. Days ago, she never would’ve thought the four could share a room, nonetheless a meal. But Lincoln pressed his mouth to Tehlor’s cheek, and Colin adjusted Bishop’s crooked glasses, and beside her, Juniper asked, “Do we chill the batter?”
Sophia nodded.Yes.She prefilled the ramekins with chocolate batter and slid them into the fridge.You’re beautiful, who are you, how did you—
“Did your mother teach you?” Juniper uncorked the bottle of merlot and poured herself another glass. When she held the bottle out, Sophia nodded.
“She started to,” Sophia said. Her voice was still hidden, crouching in the back of her throat.
Juniper—smart, attentive, poised—watched her lips. “My abuela taught me how to cook. She tried to teach me Spanish, too, but ...” She shrugged, sighing wistfully.“This is LA, Grandma. I’ll be fine,”she mocked, nasal and cute. She paused to laugh. Her smile waned. “Thought I knew best. I’m teaching myself, though. It’s not the same, but it’s what I’ve got. Qué remedio.”
“When did you ...” She paused, searching for the right way to ask a complicated question. “How did you ...?”
“Learn to speak to the dead? Oh, it’s been ... Twenty-two years, maybe? The women in my family are blessed with el óido—the hearing. So you can imagine the collective shock whenIdeveloped gifts.” Her mouth split for another toothy laugh. “I ignored them at first. I think most of us do. But womanhood still found me. Rode to me, really, on the back of a botched ritual at a party in Pasadena.”
Sophia pulled the bread from the oven and set the baking sheet on a cooling rack, glossing each browned loaf with honey butter. “Found you?”
“Isabelle found me, actually,” she said.
Colin Hart shifted in place, averting his gaze to the tile. When Juniper held out the merlot, he extended his glass. His freckled face remained slack and open, but something brutal and finished slid through Sophia, reaching.Isabelle.She righted herself against it. Tried to ignore it. But the spirit refused to go unnoticed.
Take his hand.Isabelle appeared like a moth, like a sunflower, like a small, hopeful, fluttering thing.Take his hand, take his hand, take his—
When Sophia reached for him, the room stood still. The bustling kitchen tunneled inward. Time stretched. Movement, sound, light,everything paused, slowing like a faulty videotape. For a brief, significant second, Colin and Sophia were alone, suspended in their own private space. She slid her fingers around his palm and squeezed.
Love was finite like that. Offered freely at the behest of a ghost.
The touch lasted a heartbeat, no longer, and neither Colin nor Sophia knew what to do with it.There,she thought, aware of the house, the magic, the people around them, caught in the orbit of a stolen goodbye. When Sophia let him go, Colin chased her. She clutched her wrist to her chest. Once it was over, the reality they’d momentarily escaped came rushing back. Tehlor’s raspy laughter. Lincoln snapping the cap off another bottle. Bishop taking Colin’s chin, steering his face.You okay, babe?
Sophia blinked, hyperaware of her socked feet on the tile, and dishes clanking on the countertop, and a drawer rolling open.
Juniper flipped the dial on the stove, killing the flame. “When a spirit you love returns to you, it’s hard not to listen. My cousin told me what I’d already known, what I’d kept hidden for a lifetime. Choosing to believe her meant finally believing in myself.”
“She loved you,” Sophia said absently. The thought consumed her until then, until she made it known. As quickly as Isabelle had arrived, slipping into her consciousness like a coil of smoke, she disappeared.
“She did. And I loved her,” Juniper said. “Colin did too.”
“How did she ...” She paused, tripping over compulsive intrusion. “Sorry, I—”
“Exorcism is risky,” Juniper said, shrugging. She stirred the steaming pot, filled with short ribs, vegetables, and spices, and gathered a bit of broth on the edge of her spoon, lifting it to Sophia’s mouth. Sophia parted her lips, darting her tongue across curved wood. Sour lime, smoky cumin, fiery habanero, rich tomato. “It doesn’t always go how we hope. Too spicy?”
Broth beaded at the corner of Sophia’s mouth. Juniper swiped it away and sucked the sauce from her thumb.
“No, it’s fine—good,it’s good. I’m—I don’t mind spicy,” Sophia blurted.
Blistering heat climbed her sternum and settled in her cheeks.Get it together,she thought, scolding herself.This woman is beyond you.
