she’d meet her sisters tonight. Recently, Bea had taught Scarlet how to will herself there, setting the intention before she fell asleep, instead of simply hoping her dreams would take her along for the ride.
Esme twisted twinkling lights through the piney branches, while Ruby carefully placed all the trinkets collected over the years: a tiny Victorian rocking horse, a clutch of hand-painted Russian dolls, a dozen miniature stars, a coterie of carved woodland animals: a deer, an owl, a fox, a hare. When every ball, trinket, and bell had been set in its place, Esme lifted the fairy from her bed of tissue paper.
“It’s time,” Esme said, placing the fairy in her granddaughter’s open hands.
Scarlet held the doll, who gazed glassy-eyed up at the tree as if anticipating her ascent. “How will I do it?”
“Stand on the table,” Ruby instructed. “You’ll be able to reach from there.”
Scarlet hesitated.
“It’s okay, sweetheart,” Esme said. “You can do it.”
“Of course you can,” her mother said. “Don’t be such a scaredy-cat.”
“Here”—her grandma stepped over to Scarlet—“I’ll give you a hand.”
When Scarlet was standing on the table, she stretched up and set the fairy in the crook of a high branch.
“Not there, the very top,” Ruby said. “Come on, you’re not going to fall.”
Scarlet rose onto the tips of her toes. “Hold me.”
“I’ve got you.”
Scarlet reached again, elongating her body until her fingertips grazed the top of the tree, then wiggled the tiny china doll astride the highest branch.
“There you go.” Her mother clapped. “I told you—”
As the fairy fell, three pairs of eyes followed her swift descent. The crack of china on the wooden floor was like the snap of a whip.
“Scarlet!” Ruby’s anger spat like logs on a fire.
Esme scooped Scarlet off the table. “Hush, Rube, it wasn’t her fault.”
Scarlet’s mother was already picking up fragments of the china face: the painted red lips, the black-lashed blue eyes, the curve of a nose—each feature parted from the others, scattered across the floorboards.
Scarlet stared at the broken doll, tears sliding down her cheeks.
“Scarlet, you’re so careless,” her mother snapped. “No one’s dropped her in over a century and the first time you touch—”
“Calm down, Rube, it wasn’t her fault. It could have been any of us.”
“But it wasn’t, was it? It was her.”
Scarlet stared at her mother, who stared back until the flare of fury slowly cooled into a chip of ice in her eye that spread until it had frozen her face into contempt. Scarlet turned to the tree, reaching out to hold a branch, taking one of the twinkling lights between finger and thumb.
Later, Esme insisted a blown fuse had started the fire. Ruby said nothing. Scarlet never forgot how each light exploded, popping one by one in a shower of sparks, before the whole tree went up in flames.
Bea
Unlike her sisters, Bea liked to listen to the shadows, to the unseen creatures that whispered unknown things. She often didn’t understand exactly what they were saying, but she knew how to channel the dark. She was her mamá’s daughter, after all. And, she hoped, her father’s.
Cleo, also a beauty, fell in love with a beast. Though this beast wasn’t a handsome prince under a spell. He was handsome, certainly, but he was also demonic, in the truest sense of the word. Bea’s mother loved him before she realized it, and she loved him after. Indeed, she loves him still. They met in Everwhere the night Cleo turned eighteen and Wilhelm Grimm was, well, he’d existed so long by then he’d long lost count. It was love at first sight.
It was also the night of her Choosing, the night she’d pick dark or light, life or death. And since Cleo was in love the choice was quite clear. Her sisters, however, didn’t choose likewise. Perhaps their father’s charisma had worn thin once he’d picked his favourite. So they eschewed his offer and died for their cause. Cleo watched them die. Indeed, she was the one who killed them. Usually, her father would have done it, but that night, in an act of generosity, he allowed his daughter the honour. Cleo took the gift and returned it in full force. And although she was new to murder, Cleo discovered she had a knack for it.
Bea was conceived that night, on a blanket of crushed roses wet with the blood of Cleo’s sisters’.
The shadows will try to trick you, niña, Cleo told Bea, they’ll try to catch you unawares. If they do, they can floor