Page 75 of Persephone's Curse
“The planet?”
“The planet, yes, my love. That little bright thing next to the moon.”
“That’sMars?”
“Indeed. Isn’t it almost impossible to comprehend? We’re here, on this planet, going about our days, going to work, going to school, living our lives, and there, in the sky, there’s just thisotherplanet. Anotherplanet. How wild is that?”
“Wild,” I agreed.
“Is that what you were looking at? You seemed pretty intensely observant.”
“Well, I didn’t know it was Mars. But yes.”
“Right on.”
“Do you see anything else?” I asked cautiously.
“What do you mean?”
“Any other… things in the sky?”
“Well, the moon’s a lovely little crescent tonight. I’ve always loved a crescent moon. It looks like the blade of an axe, ready to strike, doesn’t it?”
“Sure. And anything else?”
“Not quite dark enough for any stars yet. Is that what you mean?”
“Or just… anything… else?”
Dad shifted his gaze from the sky to my face, his expression bemused and adoring (in a house full of Farthing women, this wasDad’s default expression). I knew Clara had already asked our parents if they could see the black slice in the sky, but I thought, if it really was getting bigger, it was worth checking again. But clearly it was still only visible to us, for some reason I didn’t understand and didn’t want to think too much about.
“I thought I saw a shooting star,” I said weakly, by way of an explanation.
“Ah,” Dad said, touching his finger to my nose. “I hope you made a wish.”
He started up the stairs to our front door and I followed him, tearing my gaze away from the sky, forcing myself to move.
“It’s getting bigger,” Clara said that night. Attic, all four of us, after dinner.
“I noticed, too,” Evelyn said.
“I found a medium,” I said. “This weekend we can try to contact Henry, and we can ask him if he has any ideas on how to get him home, and we can ask him about the black mark.”
“I think I know why he couldn’t come back with me,” Evelyn said. “I think it’s because he’s dead. And if you’re dead and you go to the Underworld, you don’t get to come back.”
“Otherwise we’d have a lot of zombies on our hands,” Clara said, shooting me a knowing look.
“Well, we’re going to try,” Bernadette said decisively. She had a journal open on her lap and was scrawling so quickly her hand was almost a blur. She had the uncanny ability to journal and talk at the same time, never missing a beat.
“When will Mom and Dad be out of the house next?” I asked Clara, who somehow always knew their schedules. “We need to have a séance.”
“Saturday,” Clara said. “Dinner party downtown. At least four hours of parent-free house.”
“Perfect. I’ll see if she can do it then,” I said.
“The cute girl?” Evelyn asked.
“I wish, foronce,there wasn’t a collective pool of sister gossip here,” I said.
