Underneath the back porch steps, I reach for a tin tobacco box my papaw gave me before he died. About the only place I could hide something Grandmama wouldn’t think to look. A little bigger than a pack of smokes and rusted around the edges, but I’m able to open the lid. I pull out the browned wad of cotton to get what’s underneath.
The few things I hold dear. A Scottish coin my great-great-grandmother did her witchery with. A seashell I’ve held on to for as long as I can remember, a promise from my mother. Something I treasured but couldn’t recall why until now, just a foggy memory that slipped loose and didn’t return until the sheriff showed me that picture.
It’s the bone-tooth key that hung from my mother’s hand.
A tattered ribbon, a piece of thin flowered cloth tied in a bow, attaches the key to the brass chain. The jagged teeth cut into my palm as I squeeze it. Trying to extract those precious drops of memory from that last Tuesday night I spent with Adaire, four days before she died. I was too stupid to listen to her then. I squeeze my eyes shut, that key tight in my grip, and I try to recall.
Like many nights before, I tumbled through Adaire’s bedroom window with a terrible crash. “When the hell did you put that bookshelf there?” I asked her, incredulous.
“Are you drunk?” Adaire snapped at me—unconcerned I almost broke my neck. She sat on the floor at the end of her twin bed with a fantasy novel in one hand and a Dr Pepper in the other. She grumbled something about people abusing family privileges and how breaking into a house through a bedroom window was considered a felony.
“Maybe. But Aunt V is shotgunning beers in the driveway with Joe Lucky Sr., and I didn’t feel like being chatty.” I inspected the wounds on my legs. Angry red scrapes marred my shins, threatening to bleed, but they didn’t.
“Aren’t you too old to be climbing in through the window?”
“Aren’t you too old to be reading fairy tales?”
“Fantasy, not fairy.”
“Does it have a fairy in it?”
She glared at me. My point had been made. “I need a favor.” I lowered myself to sit next to her.
“I ain’t in the business of doing favors,” she said without taking her eyes off the page.
“Scoot over.” I shoved my way next to her when she refused to budge. She swore under her breath, knowing I wouldn’t leave her be until she agreed.
“What?” She stowed a luna moth conjuring card between the pages of her book to hold her place.
“I need you to scry for me.”
She stared at me for a long moment. I knew this was something she wasn’t fond of doing, but I wouldn’t have asked her if I weren’t desperate. Aunt Violet was no good at it anymore, and Wyatt could only see in a fire, not glassy surfaces.
“Get out.” She reopened her book, back to reading.
Oh, okay. It was going to be like that, was it?
“Seriously, Adaire, I need your help. I was thinking—”
“That’s never a good idea.”
I made a smirking sound. “You don’t even know what I need you to scry for, if you’d just—”
“Not. Doing. It.” She turned the page—I swatted the book out of her hand. She fumbled to catch it, spilling her soda. “What the hell?” She used a random T-shirt from the floor to absorb the mess.
“You’ve gotta help me, Adaire. I’m in trouble!”
“Are you dying?”
“Wait—what?”
“Going to prison?”
“No!”
“Then you aren’t in trouble.” She stuck her nose back in the book.
I swear to Jesus she was the most stubborn, useless, unconcerned friend I’d ever had the displeasure of knowing.
“If you were in trouble, I’d help you.” I huffed and crossed my arms. I had no idea how I was going to get out of this pickle if Adaire didn’t help.
She scowled at me long and hard. Long enough I felt squirmy. Interpreting her scowls was a talent that came with years of practice. That particular one wasn’t hate or anger or annoyance. Heck, it wasn’t even her pretend face she used when she acted like we weren’t best friends. No, this was concern. “Define trouble.”
I perked up, surprised she might change her mind. “Okay, here’s the deal. Dickie Meldrum is paying me two-hundred dollars to be at the drag race on Saturday night, in case he wrecks and needs me...again.”
“But you’ve already talked the death out of him once before.”
“I know.”
“You can’t talk the death out of somebody twice!”
“I know! That’s why I’m in trouble. I just need you to peek into this Saturday and see if he wrecks—or how bad.” Because Dickie didn’t have the best track record when it came to racing.
“Just don’t go. It’s not like you have to be there, you can say no.”
“See, I kind of already took the money.”
A slew of curses flew free, followed by a lecture on how death-talking wasn’t a business—says her, but it earns me some favors and makes me some money here and there.
