“They just have a—I don’t know, this is going to sound silly—”
“No, please. Go on.”
“They have a sort of presence about them. Like a scent that lingers.”
“Is it grape soda and cinnamon? Because I sprayed some perfume right before I handled this stuff.”
Lily shook her head. “Not an actual scent. More like”—she looked at me as if I would think her crazy—“more like a memory.”
The topmost jacket lay on the table with its arm pointed toward me, like an accusation. I dragged my gaze away from it. “What do you mean, ‘a memory?”
Lily held the bow tie toward me.
I took it. Held it in my hands. Rubbed my thumbs over the silk, as she had. Was it my imagination, or did I feel a wisp of vampire magic? I looked at Lily. “What do you sense from these clothes?”
“You don’t think I’m weird?”
“Lily,” I said, “I’ve seen more weird than you’lleverbe.”
She took a deep breath and placed her hands on the clothes again. “Roses,” she said. She closed her eyes and said nothing for several moments. “Ice.”
I caught myself inhaling sharply, then released the air slowly so as not to startle Lily.
“And there’s something else…” Head bowed, she ran her hands over a tweed jacket. “More like a…feeling.”
“Yes?”
“This isreallyweird—”
“Just say it!” It came out far sharper than I meant it to.
“A… struggle? A fight,” she concluded.
My stomach slowly twisted, like a snake doubling back on itself. “In the past, though, right? You said it’s like a memory.”
“Not this part.” She opened her eyes and rubbed her arms as if noticing a sudden chill. “You think I’m crazy, don’t you. That I’m imagining I’m some kind of clothing psychic.”
I was caught between wanting to comfort her and needing to keep her in the dark about things that weren’t mine to reveal, like her family’s magic. “Lily. Listen to me. You’re not crazy. I happen to know—” I stopped and chose my next words extremely carefully. “I can tell you that you are not wrong about what you sensed.”
“I’m not?”
I shook my head slowly.
“I mean, the roses and the ice were kind of pretty, really. But the other feeling… I’ll be honest, Aunt Zelda. It was kind of scary! Maybe I was wrong about that one?”
I slid the bow tie in my pocket and remembered that night on the ice field, embracing my enemy for the first and last time. “I don’t know, kiddo. I don’t know.”
5
WithastopatWest Side Sandwiches to check on everything, it was dark by the time I arrived home. Jester greeted me at the door with circus poodle hops and doggy kisses, and I found my mother settled on the couch with Georgiana like a shaggy electric blanket across her lap.
“You’re home!” she said. “I had the most wonderful idea!”
“Oh?” My mother’s wonderful ideas could range from the truly wonderful, likelet’s have ice cream for dinner, to the less wonderful, likewhy don’t we go get you a nice dress, you always wear those darned tank tops and shorts.
She waved her phone at me, looking immensely pleased with herself. “I bought us tickets to a Broadway show tonight.”
“Which one?”
