For all Magic’s agreeability, it took far longer to get his cooperation than Mira would have hoped. Much of her time waiting was spent watching her brother wring his hands and mutter silent prayers while he clutched onto the bridge of his glasses like a lifeline.

Mira wasn’t nearly as faithful as Magic; most of the myth he spoke about felt too far-fetched to be true, but despite her misgivings, he’d stuck by them adamantly. He fervently raved to her about these stories, detailing how the sun came to be, why stars flickered and fell from the sky and how, with a flick of its tail, a powerful bird could turn pebbles to gold. Mira had heard these stories often enough to tell them herself.

Just not as well as her overly enthusiastic little brother.

It’s just a storybook, y’know, she’d said to him once when they were younger. It had only been a few months since the aftermath of the mine collapse and they’d sat down on the porch steps of the bakery counting stars as they appeared to sprinkle the sky. If something like that exists in real life, no one’s found it yet.

I know, he’d replied, half asleep, clinging to her arm, but I like that she could be out there. I want to find her one day. Think about how much money they’d give us if we did. Mom wouldn’t cry anymore when she came back from the city.

Now, as they walked from Southern to Central Chrome, Mira glanced at Magic every few feet to check in with him. He lagged behind, kicking his rubber shoes into the soil, leaving indents and evidence of his path. Earth crackled beneath the shuffling of his shoes like loose embers and he kept his head down, focusing intently on what he could see in front of him.

Mira compensated by keeping her eyes up. She scanned the town with a slow stroll that allowed her to keep her distance and allow Magic the space he needed to feel independent, but not be too far away where she couldn’t reach for him should someone interrupted them. Warm weather drew people out of their houses—people were cleaning off their porches and trimming what remained of their plants or dusting off sand and dust from their steps and doorsteps. The recent drought brought with it the wilted stems of plants and swirling dust storms that left many of the town patrons fuming. But the weather, which had been much kinder in the passing days, coaxed people out of their houses with more amicable dispositions.

And Mira felt oddly intimidated by the sheer abundance of town patrons walking around. She was used to crowds—or at least, she should have been. Strangers came and went through the bakery’s front door all the time and with far less space between them. Why it was such a big deal to her now, Mira wasn’t sure until she noticed a distinct pattern in the way that the adults—both young and old—stopped what they were doing and watched. Their eyes unerringly found Magic as he shuffled at a distance, interest swapping between Mira and him.

Like they were nothing more than exotic animals leashed and walked for display.

Eerie as it was, Mira knew that this would be the very least of her problems. The adults could think or say as they wished. The true obstacle lay solely with her peers, several of which they passed along the way.

She rubbed her sweating palms against her sides. “How are we feeling, Mags?”

“Why?” he replied with a wheeze.

“Just checking with you. Am I not allowed to do that?”

“You can, I just … I don’t want to talk. I just want to do this and get it over with and be done with it.”

Mira looked over her shoulder, twirling to walk backwards and face him. He looked so small hunched over the way that he was, completely covered by his hair. “I see your point, but strong-arming your way through it all won’t do you a lot of good.”

Magic gave an indignant shake of his head, the bedraggled strands of black waving side to side like limp puppet strings. “Not talking about it and not thinking about it saves me the trouble of having a panic attack. I don’t want to talk about it, I don’t want anything to do with talking about it. Talk about something else or don’t talk to me at all.”

“Whatever works for you. Just do me a small favor?”

“What?”

“Walk a little faster.”

“Why?”

“Because a lot of the kids like to hang out near the squares.” She waved a hand low to the ground so that the signal would be visible through the veil of his hair. He sidled up beside her, visibly trembling, pressed against her arm. “Just stay close.”

With a quick nod of his head, Magic mumbled in agreement and snagged the loose fabrics on the side of her shirt.

The number of schoolchildren increased as they passed the main market square. Several were horse playing, tackling their friends to the ground, or throwing a red Squiggle back and forth to one another, a flash of red lobbed between energetic palms. The squealing was audible even from a distance and Mira’s heart pounded with an intensity that rivaled the furious shaking of her brother beside her.

A long, high-pitched whistle warbled to her right. It fluctuated frantically in tone and Mira snapped at attention just quick enough to process a gust of hot red air whooshing past her. A Squiggle whizzed by with a ripe boing, smacking into a wooden porch. Magic cried out and stumbled into her before she could process the sound of the ball colliding with his leg. It slowed in momentum, springing in gentle arcs until it rolled nonchalantly by them. Raucous laughter rumbled in the air, sending Mira’s nerves into a buzzing frenzy.

Not even halfway to the school and already the kids were making a fool of him.

“You okay?” she whispered, gripping Magic by the shirt sleeve to keep him upright. He looked about ready to collapse, knees bent, feet splayed to the side.

“Fine,” he murmured, the waver in his voice betraying him.

She righted Magic back on his own two feet and snagged the tiny rubber ball, rolling it between her palms as she silently transmuted her anger to something calm, a chameleon changing colors on a leaf. She waved the Squiggle around, looking at the two boys laughing at them from just beyond a fenced park—which was less a park than it was the remains of an old demolished house that was never built back up into something better. “Need this?”

One of the boys beckoned her over and she approached, ignoring Magic’s fretful stammering as he skittered and hid behind her. Mira recognized the taller of the two as Hershel Greyson, an incoming senior who was as annoying as he was idiotic—at least, she assumed he was. They were one table apart in Astronomy last year and, for the entire ten month span of the school year, she’d watch him pluck wood from beneath the furniture to flick at unsuspecting victims, the teacher included. He didn’t seem to have an interest in anything aside from being a nuisance, so why he was still attending school, Mira didn’t have the slightest idea.

Hershel shoved the long brown hair from the front of his face, though his hideous bangs, uneven in length, insisted on shielding his large forehead that could easily have fit all five of her fingers. The icy blue glare he gave her, pupils rimmed in dangerous amber, quickly vanished upon sight of the rubber ball in her hand. “Sorry ‘bout that, Arbesque,” he said as she approached. “I almost didn’t see you there.”

“Almost?” she echoed. “If that’s the case, then maybe you should get your eyes checked.”

“I have already. The sun just makes it hard to see, so I gotta squint. Makes it easier to see even the more invisible things.”

Mira raised a brow in silent challenge as the back of her shirt tightened from the iron grip behind her. Pouting, the sweet sounding tone that left her lips was mocking in nature. “Then maybe you should invest in sun shades if the sun’s that much of an issue. Or, practice somewhere else.”

“Oh, don’t worry your pretty head about it, Mirabel,” Hershel replied, flashing a disgustingly cocky grin that she would’ve killed to punch. “It’s just a bit of glare. Besides, I don’t see what you’re getting so riled over. I didn’t hit you.”

I didn’t hit you.

Her lips quirked. She rested her hands over the wire fence, discreetly wriggling the rubber ball into a sharp edge of the fence, applying the smallest bit of pressure to it. “No, but you aimed my way, didn’t you?”

“Stray kick.”

“Seems a bit odd for the star player to have poor aim. Coach Manson will get mad at you if you pass the Squiggle to the wrong team during the Shuffle exhibition, y’know.”

Hershel scowled. “The hell would you know? You don’t play on a team.”

“Didn’t know I needed to be on a team to know basic rules. C’mon, Greyson. Don’t be stupid. Everyone knows the rules; it’s the same as any other sport, meathead.”

The boy groaned, dismissing her with a wave of his hand. “I don’t know why I fucking bother. I don’t need to take advice from you, rat. Hand me back that ball, would you?”

A wild, sadistic grin curled her lips up. Mira gave one last shove against the fence for good measure. “Sure, I’ll hand it back to you. Just make sure you check the air pressure.”

“Huh?”

With a nonchalant shrug of her shoulder, she turned her hand over and allowed the ball to slink out of her palm and onto the floor in a pitiful, red heap.

Hershel stomped over in a rage; he snagged Mira by the collar of her shirt, yanking her upper body hard over the fence, shards of metal pricking at her skin and shirt. The grip Magic had on the back of her shirt tightened, forcing her back; the momentum made her wince, but she wiped it off her face, focusing on the sheer irritation in the boy’s face. It was priceless. Perhaps, if she cashed it in, Mira and her father could afford a new renovation for the bakery and the upstairs floor. After all, they needed a new carpet.

“You’re a bitch,” Hershel snarled into her face, breath puffing her hair back.

Mira craned her neck to glare at him. “And you’re a bastard,” she shot back. “Hardly a difference.”

“Sure there is. You choose to be a nuisance.”

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

“Glad we can both agree that you were born one, then.”

Hershel yanked harder; the barbed wire dug into her cheek and poked at her skin through her shirt. A grunt of pain rumbled in her throat as she adjusted herself to lessen the digging sensation on her face. “Don’t get wise with me, Arbesque. Because do you know what else you are? A pest. A pest who can’t keep its fucking mouth shut.”

“Look who’s talking,” she heard Magic mutter beneath his breath. To her relief, Hershel didn’t seem to have heard. Or, if he did, her brother’s jab went completely ignored as though he simply wasn’t there.

“True,” Mira conceded. “I might not know when to stop talking. But I do know that your father was a pirate off the coast of Bossi in the deep south of the Maribyssian archipelago. That your mother was so distraught at having a child out of wedlock that—”

A strike to her face sent pain crackling through her cheek and mouth, radiating to her ears which rang loud in her skull, drowning out the muffled shout near her. Warm blood trailed down her skin and she blinked, willing stars out of her vision. The taste of iron sat heavy on her tongue and Mira realized she’d bitten it to brace the impact.

It would have been far easier to take her loss and go, but the idea of getting one over on Hershel, even from her spot impaled against the fence, was too satisfying to give up. There was a certain giddy glee in making him look foolish. If bruising his pride meant he’d leave them alone, then that was far worth the risk.

Mira laughed. “You can hurt me as much as you want, but that won’t do you jack shit. I hear everything in this town. Perks of running a shop. For everything you know, I know a hundred more. So either you let me go or I ruin your life with more than just hitting you back. Pick your poison, Greyson.”

Hershel made a low sound that was half groan, half growl and roughly pulled Mira away from the fence, his fist colliding with her jaw. Her bottom teeth smacked into her top ones, a bright spark of pain lancing through her jaw. “I’d watch your step if I were you, Arbesque,” he said. “Otherwise, you’ll need more than a seance and pretty words to talk to the ghost hiding behind you.”

A whimper sounded behind her and she reached back, gripping Magic’s shirt sleeve to reassure him of her presence. To Mira’s surprise, the younger boy shook his arm free and seized her hand, entwining his fingers with hers in a clammy death grip as he rested his forehead against the back of her neck.

She gave his palm a comforting squeeze, all the while eying Hershel with silent challenge. “I would love to see you try. Because if you so much as reach over this damn fence to touch him, I’ll snap off a shard and give your friend there a hole in his face to match mine.”

The other boy paled significantly at the threat. It was an empty one—Mira didn’t have the energy to bother, but neither he nor Hershel had to know that. Still, the words landed and Hershel, curling his fingers, pulled his lips back in a snarl. “That’s my brother you’re talking about, Mirabellis.”

Mira smiled sweetly, malice dripping from her tongue. “So we’re on the same page, then. Say that shit to my brother again, and I’ll do to yours what you do to mine. Just far, far, worse. And we both know that Darlene wouldn’t be happy knowing you got her angel son in trouble, don’t we?”

“Says the girl who turned her father to the bottle.”

The smile vanished and her nerves stilled, muscles tensed. A violent pounding knocked along her chest, robbing her lungs of air. Numbness settled in her hands and feet. “What?”

“Oh,” Hershel continued, “did you forget? Too high and mighty to remember that your father suffers because of you?”

“Mira,” whispered Magic from behind her, barely audible through the ringing in her ears, “my hand hurts.”

“Should I leave a gift outside your door, liquor rat?”

“Let go—”

“Wouldn’t want to push the old man to drown himself, now would you?”

If Benji were here, he would have told her not to bother with the bait. He would have placed a hand on her shoulder and walked her away. Would have told her that people like Hershel weren’t worth the time nor the energy to retaliate against. Would have told her to forget about it, push it aside, and move on.

But Benji wasn’t here.

So Mira swung a fist at the boy’s temple.

Hershel crumpled to the floor, the younger boy sprinting towards the fence and she would have kept going, would have jumped the fence and continued the assault had she not felt the tug to her arm dragging her down the street. The harsh wind drew tears from Mira’s eyes and she blinked, registering that Magic was hauling her through town, haphazardly weaving through stands and alleys that forced her to her senses.

She matched his pace, winded and frazzled, until he slowed by the abandoned bookstore. Evacuated and boarded up years ago due to an overabundance of rats and other vermin that fed on pages and human flesh, the last Mira heard of people setting foot in it was to trap the damn creatures and put them out of their misery. She couldn’t remember if the exterminators came back from their task unscathed, only that no other attempts were made after that.

The two of them stopped a few feet away from the front door of the old building. Magic was sitting on the ground hugging his knees, forehead pressed against them while Mira doubled over with her hands on her shins, gasping for air. “How’s your leg?” she asked, heart pounding in her ears.

“Fine,” he said, lifting his head up, deepening his breaths. After a while, Magic ruffled his hair, adjusted his glasses and stood. “Bit bruised. It hit my skin through the hole in my jeans.”

“Okay, that’s not too terrible—”

“He hurt you.”

Mira straightened, tangling her fingers in her curls to hold onto her skull. Her nerves still hadn’t calmed and the warmth of her face from the hole in her cheek was making her wildly uncomfortable. The blood had long since stopped pouring from the wound, but any small movement was met with enough discomfort to get a wince from her. She pressed the side of her arm against it. “It isn’t that bad. I’d have to go get it fixed by the clinic, but it doesn’t feel like it’s too deep—”

“I wasn’t talking about your face—well …” Magic gestured towards her injury. “You’re swelling already and everything, but that wasn’t what I meant. He hurt you when he was talking about Benji.”

A nervous flutter rumbled in her gut. Magic was staring with a squint, eyes scanning her features in quick succession, back and forth like the tapping of a sewing machine. Calculated and precise.

Mira hated that look. It had all the energy of being scolded without being told a word. Her eyes searched for something else to stare at. “It’s nothing, Mags,” she said, hoping to discontinue the conversation.

Unfortunately, her brother had other ideas. “If it was nothing, you wouldn’t have knocked him unconscious. If it was nothing, you wouldn’t have nearly crushed my hand or ignored me when I spoke to you. If it was nothing, you would’ve been paying attention when we ran, not bump into everything on the way.”

“You caught me off guard.”

“When has that ever stopped you from catching on?”

Her lips pursed. Despite nearing the end of summer where the weather was cooler, it was far too hot. “Even the best can have bad days,” she said, biting into her tongue.

“Maybe,” Magic agreed, “but I know his words bugged you because you won’t even look at me when you’re talking. And you only do that when you have a lot going on. Which means that I’m right.”

Mira could feel the conversation being scraped away like she would with frost on a window. Slowly, carefully, and with a degree of focus to not scratch the glass. But this glass was getting closer and closer to shattering, and Mira wasn’t about to let that happen. “What do you want, Mags?” she asked, sitting on the steps of the bookstore since her legs didn’t feel steady enough to carry her anymore. “An admission? Obviously it bugs me, but it’s not like I can do much about it. Everyone knows about my dad.”

Which was true.

She’d lost track of how many times customers came in to ask about Benji’s progress on his sobriety, chatting about it like it was an ordinary discussion. Some did so as a courtesy. Others for genuine concern. Mira didn’t know how they could do it—not even she could breach that conversation without a proper cause for concern or lead-in.

But she did keep track of how many people skirted around the topic while her father was actively drinking. How many people cast a blind eye to the daylane on display during work hours as though it were a piece of decor.

How many people neglected to ask Mira how she was doing when she spent most of her nights on the hallway floor with a walkie clutched in her hands or asleep beside her father to make sure he would wake up alive the next day.

The insult went two ways: it made a mockery of Benji’s active struggles and reminded her that—intentional or not—it felt like her fault.

Creaking to her left pulled her from her thoughts and she turned to watch Magic sit beside her, rolling a tiny rock between his palms before he settled for clutching it in his left hand. “But I don’t understand why you let the kids call you that,” he replied, chucking the stone along the dirt as though he were skipping it atop a large puddle. Dust puffed in clouds from where it landed on the earth. “You would beat a kid bloody if they called me a ghost. Stars, Mira, you took a strike to the face for me—because of me.” He motioned tentatively to her injury. “You’ve stood up for me for as long as I can remember—which is all well and good, but … why don’t you stand up for yourself when they do the same to you?”

“In case you didn’t notice,” she said, “Hershel dropped like a sack of bricks.”

“Yeah, but I don’t think you punched him to teach him a lesson.”

“No. Not really. Not that time.”

“So why don’t you tell them to back off? Or ignore it?”

“I don’t know.” The words felt true enough, but they left her feeling oddly hollow. She reached for a pebble on the ground and copied her brother, chucking it with as much strength as possible. It gained more distance and exploded on the ground with a satisfying cloud of dust. “I may talk to people, but I’m not exactly liked either, Mags. They would do it just to rile me anyway. Shutting them up is the only good way I can think to solve it.”

Magic sighed and brushed the hair out of his face, holding it together into a low ponytail before he released it and let it fall, tucking parts of it behind his ears. “And when I solve my name issues, you throw a fit.”

Mira rolled her eyes. “I don’t throw a fit. I just don’t like hearing their insult come out of your mouth. To be honest, it’s unsettling.”

“And I don’t like you rolling over and taking their insults when they aren’t even true—and even if they were, I would still tell you the same thing. You don’t deserve to be called a liquor rat. Neither does Benji.”

“What do you suggest I do, then?”

“You could do what I do and ignore it. I don’t like my nickname, but the less they can see how much I really hate it, the less fuel they have.”

“Who’d you learn that bit of wisdom from? My dad?”

“No, my mom. But my point stands. They have no right to call you that.”

The kids had plenty of right to since it was the truth, but she didn’t think that Magic would take that answer lying down, so she just nodded her head. Out of habit, Mira patted him on the shoulder. He predictably shuffled a little away from her. “Anything else you want to get off your chest before we get to the actual building?”

She expected him to say no.

She wanted him to say no.

To her immeasurable disappointment, Magic wasn’t done talking.

“Only one,” he said. “I’ve never heard you talk like that.”

Mira scoffed. “Talk like what?” she asked, her voice feeling rough and out of place on her own tongue. “Like I’m a snarky bitch? Like I was ready to murder him where he was? I know how that whole thing sounded, but it’s not—”

“No, not that. I’m used to that already. You told him that you would do to his brother what he did to yours. But you’re an only child. So am I.” He pivoted to sit facing her, brows pulled together with nothing more than the creases to separate them. “I’m not your brother—not by blood or by marriage. And I’ve never heard you call me that until today.”

She went silent. All Mira could do was stare at him—and herself through the glint of his glasses. There was not a single bit of yelling involved and yet it felt strangely like she was being scolded by a younger child, though maybe that had more to do with how much Mira still saw him as the little brother that slept over on the couch when his mother went to the capital to sell fabrics.

The little brother she carried on her back whenever he got too tired to walk through the rest of town.

The little brother she sheltered outside the chapel—screaming and crying—on the day of his father’s wake.

Mira swallowed the small lump in her throat. “I don’t have siblings,” she conceded, “but you’re a brother to me. No, we’re not related by blood or marriage, but you and Amelia are family—Bennett, too, when he was alive.”

She watched Magic’s hands drift to his eyewear, stroking the hinges closest to the lenses with delicate fingers.

“No one gets one over on my family like that,” she continued. “Not Hershel, not any of them. The day they realize that is the day I’ll stop fighting them.”

“And if they don’t?” Magic’s words wore the dressings of a question, but his tone was more akin to a challenge. What will you do?

The hole in Mira’s face whispered the answer to her through the pulsing pain. “Then I’ll keep reminding them. For as long as that takes.”

Magic just stared at her, expression blank. Whether or not he was satisfied with her answer, she didn’t know. His hidden facial expressions were still a mystery to her.

Regardless of what he thought, he stood up when she did with no additional comments on the matter and fell silently into step alongside her.