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Then the dead marigolds along my porch open.
All of them. At once.
Snapped black stems lift. Curled leaves flush green. White blossoms tear open out of season under Maren's feet, one after another, faster than blooming has any right to go, until the whole bed is a riot of flowers that were bones a breath ago.
Maren stares down at them. So do I.
Evelyn has gone the color of ash.
She breathes a single word. Too low for Maren to catch.
Not for me.
Maren's head comes up slowly.
"What did you just call me?"
9
MAREN
STILL TEN DAYS UNTIL HALLOWEEN
Turns out I can raise the dead.
So far, only marigolds. But it’s early.
A few minutes ago the flowers along Gage’s porch rail were brown. Curled. The sad, papery brown of things nobody remembered to water, which is exactly what I’ve been telling him they were for three weeks. I have mocked these marigolds. I may have held a small funeral.
Now every stem stands green and straight, crowded with white blooms that have no business opening ten days out from November.
It's cold enough out here to see my breath, and the cold isn’t helping. Down the block a wind chime knocks in a wind that isn’t blowing.
Sid sits in the middle of the flower bed like a small black judge. He leans in, sniffs one bloom, and sneezes.
I point at Gage. "Explain."
He looks at Evelyn.
She looks at him.
Something behind my ribs pulls tight and goes warm, and the nearest marigold shudders and grows another inch.
"No. Nope." I step back. The stem stills. "Stop looking at each other like I’m about to go off."
Neither of them stops.
"I swear, if one of you tells me to breathe..."
"I wasn’t going to," Gage says.
"Smart."
I look at the woman again.
She’s somewhere in her fifties, maybe older, the kind of elegant that makes me feel like I got dressed in the dark. Silver threads run through black hair knotted at the nape of her neck. Charcoal coat. Leather gloves, in October. A small silver pendant hangs at her throat, shaped like an old-fashioned lantern.
I hate the necklace on sight.
