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Her lips press together, causing the lines around her mouth to deepen. “Summer, you know the rules of living here. Nothing from those creatures inside my house.”
Her hard gaze flicks to the portrait in the living room above the dusty beige couch. A family wearing denim and shiny boots smiles against a white background. It’s the kind of picture done at a department store, but that does nothing to cheapen the emotion I feel whenever I stare at the family she lost. Two strapping teenage boys and a husband.
I only lost my parents, and sometimes that grief is enough to swallow me whole. I can’t imagine children. What it would feel like to have them stripped away one day without a trace.
Aunt Violet strides into the pantry where she keeps the secret stash of cigarettes she doesn’t know I know about. As soon as she disappears somewhere on the back porch, the jar of moonshine she hoards clutched beneath her arm, Aunt Zinnia takes me aside.
“Don’t you worry,” she says. “Vi will come around. No reason to waste precious fruit such as this, even if it does come from . . . them. Now get washed up. You’ve done enough for today, Summer.”
My throat aches as I imagine not seeing Aunt Zinnia again. Will she hate me for leaving without saying goodbye? If only I could talk to her, tell her what happened. I rub my arm, the mark embedded in my flesh aching.
Midnight. When the moon crests the ridge. I have roughly five hours until my life ends.
My secret bubbles up my throat, begging for release. But if I told Aunt Zinnia, she would never let me leave. The scars from losing her family, while not as visible as Aunt Violet’s, run just as deep.
She would fight like a lioness for me.
I can’t let that happen. The Fae’s warning not to make him wait replays in my head, and I know I’m making the right choice.
Aunt Zinnia will be hurt, but she’ll live. That’s more than can be said for me.
6
I cross the peeling linoleum floor and inspect the neverapples. According to the few articles I could find before our internet crapped out, one bite of the golden fruit has more vitamins than a serving of spinach.
More importantly, they replenish themselves. You eat the apple, set the core on the windowsill at night, and in the morning it’s good as new.
Magic is so cool.
One apple a day, plus anything Jane can find from the traps I have set up around the land, and they might be okay. Upstairs is a scribbled list of instructions on everything they’ll need to know when I’m gone.
I hope it’s enough. It has to be.
The back screen door slams shut as Aunt Violet reappears, the tinny smell of smoke clinging to her. The furrows trenched across her weathered forehead have softened, and she quietly makes herself some sweet tea, her spoon tinkling against the glass. After she takes two sips, she begins washing the dishes left by Aunt Zinnia.
“Cal came by today,” Aunt Zinnia says carefully, glancing up from her cornbread.
Aunt Violet stops scrubbing a heavy cast iron skillet and glances over her shoulder at her sister. “You let that boy enter this house?”
“Vi, I’d let the devil in this house if he came with the gifts Cal did.”
“Huh.” Aunt Violet slams the pan onto the drying rack and begins assaulting a cup. “And what did it take to buy you off?”
Aunt Zinnia stares down at her hands, a flush creeping over her cheeks as she lists off the items. Way more than what I fit in the wheelbarrow. “Oh, there might have been some slims in there too, for when you don’t go outside and smoke.”
Aunt Violet whips around, soapy bubbles dribbling from her purple dish-gloves onto the floor. “Are you saying I can be bought?”
“Well, you certainly didn’t hesitate to fill your tea with the sugar Cal brought.”
Vi stares death at her sister.
“I’m saying,” Aunt Zinnia amends, her gaze flitting to the kids around the island, “we do what we do to survive.”
If I don’t distract them, they’ll fight until one storms off, usually Aunt Violet. Then they won’t talk for a week and the tension will be awful.
So I grab a hot pad shaped like a donut and bravely jump into the mix.
“I hate Cal more than anyone,” I say, punctuating the word hate. “But if he wants to give us what’s technically ours, anyway, why not let him?”
