overlooking the street. Moira found herself looking at it with longing. She wouldn’t mind curling up in a spot like that for a spell, even if she had to fight a few plants for legroom.
The walls, painted in hues of deepening shades of freshly dug earth, golden tobacco, and warm sand dragged Moira’s eyes up to crown molding abutting ceilings higher than even the churches back home had.
Somehow, they made her feel smaller and bigger all at the same time.
“Goddamn,” she heard herself whisper.
“I think you mean goddess,” the woman corrected, stopping to pick a dead leaf off a drooping plant on the ornate credenza. “Everyone knows who really wears the pants in that relationship. Speaking of which…” She turned and called up the stairs. “Aunt Justine! We have company!”
“Tierra de Moray, I’m already in my dressing gown,” came the testy reply. “Who in the goddess’s name is it?”
Moira placed the voice at about the age where women stopped plucking their eyebrows and started waxing their upper lips.
“It’s—” Surprise widened Tierra’s eyes.
“Moira. My name is Moira.”
Moira hadn’t intended to finish the sentence. Just the opposite. She’d almost wanted Tierra to flounder for not even having asked. And maybe a little for having grabbed her like a ragdoll and trotted her in to show off to some crusty old aunt.
They blinked at each other.
It had just happened. As easy as breathing and just as natural. “Moira,” Tierra repeated.
An ominous creaking sounded at the top of the stairs, followed by a shallow pool of light creeping across the landing. The shadow crept down the hall like something out of the slasher movies Moira had always covered her eyes for in the beds of pickup trucks at the drive-in.
In this moment of doubt, it was Uncle Sal’s voice she heard in her head. “You be just as scared as you want, Moira Jo. But don’t you give nobody else the satisfaction of seein’ it.”
Taking a deep breath, Moira straightened her spine and pointed her chin toward the stairs just as she saw the slippered feet begin to descend it.
A crushed velvet housecoat gradually took shape then, but halted abruptly when Aunt Justine’s face came into view.
Moira wouldn’t have thought it possible, but the long, thin face blanched a paler shade of porcelain when those eyes—a harder hue of Tierra’s—fixed on her. The pale ghost of a hand fluttered up to finger the dark red braid laced with silver strands resting over her shoulder.
The housecoat concealed a body that looked more like a bundle of branches to Moira than it did a woman. Sharp shoulders, protruding elbows, a bony nose, and more knots than a forest of redwoods.
Moira’s head itched just looking at the severe line of scalp pulled hard enough to tighten Aunt Justine’s slackening features.
Some of those features were hers.
And Tierra’s.
“It worked! The spell worked!” Tierra announced into the deafening silence. “I have a sister!”
“I can see that.” Justine descended the remaining stairs with slow, deliberate steps that barely set the old wood creaking.
Moira didn’t trust a person who didn’t make any noise when they moved about. She’d have to keep an eye on that one. “Sister? Would someone mind tellin’ me what the hell y’all are talkin’ about?”
Justine turned to Moira, pinning her with a gaze so pale green it bordered on gray. “You shouldn’t have come.”
The pain of those words was intense, but brief—only the needle’s first sting. Once it got past her skin, Moira found the dull ache mostly bearable. Especially when her blood and bile came rushing to meet it. Her face felt hot. She could hear her own pulse like the ticking of a pocket watch.
“Aunt Justine,” Tierra began. “Moira—”
“Shouldn’t?” Moira’s hand found her hip, and she leaned into the welcome comfort of the gesture. “So long as we’re talking about shouldn’ts, you shouldn’t wear dark colors on account of your complexion lookin’ like the inside of a clamshell. That about covers shouldn’ts for the moment?”
Aunt Justine flinched like she’d been slapped.
“Moira!” Tierra scolded.
“Well ‘scuse me all the way to hell’s waitin’ room. It’s not like I just rolled outta bed this morning thinkin’, ‘Gee, you know what’d be more fun than skinning a wet cat? Lightin’ outta here for someplace I’ve never been, leavin’ damn near everything I own, gettin’ harassed all goddamn day by everyone and their ass mites just so some pinched-face old bat can as good as spit on me for my trouble.’”
“You—” Justine’s gnarled finger stabbed at Moira despite Tierra’s attempt to