a sketchbook clutched in one hand to ask my opinion on a logo he’s designing for a friend’s band. He’s there in the lunch line, complaining about the soggy pizza and room-temperature ranch.
He’s a thousand tiny memories built over a year of friendship. I’m already so on edge about Sarah and Alice and everything that each time I hear his voice, each time I remember his laugh and his smile and the nudge of his elbow at the art table, I lose a little more of myself.
My week becomes a cycle of nightmares and hallway ghosts and a half-hearted attempt to retain some semblance of normalcy. I keep my promise to explain my NYC trip to Gemma. Archer schedules meetings to practice my recruitment speech for David. We go over the blueprints for Hall Pharmaceuticals. Every day, I squeeze in as much homework as I can, but I’m slipping further and further behind.
And always there’s this pain in my chest for the people we’ve lost. Alice’s parents. Elder Keating’s brother. Council agents.
My dad.
So when Mom invites me to go with her to visit Dad’s grave on Friday night, I agree. There isn’t much more I can do at this point to prepare for tomorrow’s trip, and maybe—just maybe—visiting Dad will help with whatever is blocking my magic.
Mom drives us, and with each mile, I get more and more anxious. I haven’t visited the cemetery since the burial, and by the time gravel crunches under the wheels of the car, everything inside screams at me to turn around, to beg Mom to drive away, but I can’t. I don’t say anything as we continue forward.
Though I haven’t been here since the burial, Mom comes at least once a week. She always invites me, and I always say no. Tears threaten when I spot the crooked, gnarled tree and Mom pulls over. We sit silently in the car, Mom waiting for me to make the first move. The air is warm, her power filling the car with gentle reassurances that I’m not alone.
My fingers tremble as I reach for the handle and open my door. I step out into the mid-September sun, and the silence is suffocating. There’s this awful sense of finality, and it’s almost enough to send me running. Mom climbs out after me, and we both shut our doors, twin thunks in the silence.
Earth shifts beneath my feet, but the energy here is no different than anywhere else in Salem. The cemetery may be a place of rest for bodily remains, but there’s nothing left of the energy of their lives. No spark. No pulse of power in the earth.
Not that I could feel it now anyway. Not with my magic still too painful to access.
But . . . I wish there was something that lingered beyond our deaths, some hint that my dad was still here, watching over me. Instead, the Middle Sister claims our souls and carries us to wherever the Mother Goddess has banished her. We’re reunited with our creator in death, but she leaves nothing for those who were left behind.
Maybe that’s why the Mother Goddess doesn’t interfere with the happenings of earth. She’s happy to let her three daughters collect us like rare dolls. I wonder, suddenly, what happens to witches whose powers have been stripped. Can the Sister Goddesses still find their souls in death?
A shudder works through me as I approach Dad’s grave. I take some small comfort in knowing he was a fully powered Elemental when we lost him. At least he’s safe in the next life. Even if there’s a chance the rest of us won’t be able to join him.
Mom and I stop before his grave, and she presses the back of her forefinger under her eyes. “What do we do now?” I ask, voice hushed.
“Sometimes I talk to him.” She lays a hand on the recently installed granite headstone. “I tell him how much I miss him and how worried I am about you.” Mom glances over her shoulder at me, but there isn’t judgment in her tone. She’s sharing a truth, even if it hurts us both.
Cautiously, I step forward and turn to sit beside the gravestone, leaning against the rough sides like I used to lean against him. I try to remember the weight of his arm slung over my shoulders or the press of a kiss to the top of my head, but it doesn’t come. I want to remember his laugh and his cologne