We arrived back at Olivia’s house that evening. I wasn’t sure how Big Jacky was doing, but Olivia and I were tired and grumpy. We’d spent that afternoon trying to find out anything else that might be useful. All we got were more details, and, like specks on a windshield, they only made things less clear.

Doc Morgan had gone through his whole inventory. Nothing but that one hypodermic needle was missing. When pressed, he insisted he wasn’t mistaken.

“This isn’t a hospital, Miss Langley. I don’t have to use needles often. I know how many I should have.”

The locks on the hardware store, the doctor’s office, and the Barlowe’s place were indistinguishable from any other lock. Mr. and Mrs. Barlowe said they never made a spare key. They’d never found a use for one.

When we went to talk to Officer Ansel, we decided to bring her a coffee from the local shop as a peace offering and modest bribe.

She thanked us for the coffee, and for bringing the footprint on the other side of the road to her attention. When I asked if anyone else had called to report a robbery, she gazed at me over her disposable cup while taking a very, very long sip.

“No,” she said.

“Are you sure?”

“I’m still the only cop in town, Miss Cole. If they don’t report it to me, who do you think they’d report it to?”

“Would you mind if we went into Kirby’s shop?”

Her eyes narrowed. “Why?”

“We want to check if any of his inventory is missing,” Olivia explained.

“You know his inventory?”

Olivia flushed.

Officer Ansel’s eyes moved over to Autumn. “Do you?”

Autumn shook her head.

“I’ll talk to Mrs. Gilbert when I get the chance. In the meantime, I suggest that you go home and get some rest.” She paused, then added, “You look like you could use it.”

She was right, but hearing it from someone as exhausted as her stung. We said goodbye to Autumn and headed home.

Unfortunately, when we arrived, it was obvious rest wasn’t going to be an option. The whole house was brimming with activity. The caterers for that evening’s cocktail party had taken over the kitchen and were already helping Mrs. Oliversen set up the living room.

She turned when she heard us in the hall. “Good evening, Olivia—no, step back.”

Olivia, Jacky, and I backed away so the two young women that had gotten caught behind us while carrying a table could get through.

Ellis moved around them and came out into the hall. We moved closer to the stairs so we’d be out of everyone’s way.

“It’s fortunate you got back in time to get ready,” she observed. “It’s meant to be a relaxing mixer, but the dress code is semiformal.”

I crossed my fingers behind my back, closed my eyes, and prayed. Big Jacky always talked as if there were a lot of gods hanging around, so it seemed extra unfair that none of them had the time to listen to me.

Olivia said, “I have a dress.”

There was a note of challenge in her voice. Of course there was.

Mrs. Oliversen paused for a nanosecond. “Perhaps you should borrow one of Nylah’s.”

“Nylah doesn’t own anything in my color,” Olivia said.

“That color being black?”

“Yes.”

Yup. I was doomed. I’d have to go to a cocktail party, all because of a witch’s pissing contest.

Ellis sighed through her nose. “If that’s what it takes for you to come, then, by all means, have it your way, Olivia.” She said to Big Jacky, “Will we be seeing you there, Mr. Noctis?”

“Thank you for the invitation,” he said. “I plan on being there unless something more urgent prevents me.”

Ellis Oliversen looked directly at me. It felt like being speared. “Miss Cole?”

Since I didn’t have enough time to remove the six-foot shaft sticking out of my chest, all I could do was stammer, “Y-yeah. Sure.”

Ellis’s eyes lingered on me for an extra second. My hands were already behind my back. That meant I could squeeze the fingers of my right hand without being obvious about it.

“Mrs. Oliversen?” a woman’s voice said.

We all looked around. One of the caterers was standing in the entryway to the living room, looking helpless.

“If you’ll excuse me,” Ellis said.

She stepped away from our group, and Olivia, Jacky, and I turned to go up the stairs.

“Olivia, are you sure this is what you want?” Jacky asked, keeping his voice low.

The idea that Jack Noctis had picked up on the fact something was wrong was vaguely alarming.

“It’s all right, Mr. Noctis,” Olivia said. “Let’s just get it over with.”

A few seconds later, I said, as casually as I could, “Hey, Olivia.”

“Yes?”

I jogged up two steps so I could be on her level. We continued up. “Quick question—just as a matter of interest—what’s least likely to get me cursed? Showing up to your mother’s party in jeans or not showing up to your mother’s party after I told her I’d be there?”

Olivia gripped the banister and came to a jerky halt. I hadn’t been expecting the sudden stop; I faltered and stepped back to stay beside her. Jacky went on without us.

Olivia closed her eyes. “You don’t have a dress.”

She sounded exhausted—no, it was worse than exhausted. She sounded absolutely beaten. As she rubbed her forehead with her fingertips, for the breath of a moment, I could see the tension, the frustration, and a faint misery that had been lingering for so long it could only be felt by how it played on her scars like silent violin strings.

“I’m sorry,” I said softly.

The moment was gone. Olivia lowered her hand. She stood, proud and untouchable. “What are you sorry for?”

She’d tried to snap at me, but she was too tired to put any real teeth in it. I was being gummed.

She went on, “How were we supposed to know we’d be expected to dress up? Not that it would’ve helped you any.”

“I would have brought nicer T-shirts! Do you have an extra dress I can borrow?”

“You’re not borrowing any of my clothes.”

Geez. You destroy one pair of jeans and burn up some luggage and suddenly you’re marked for life.

“I’d do it for you, Olivia.”

I heard the words spill out of my mouth, and my cheeks went bright red. I was blushing so hard they ached. What on earth had possessed me to say that? I ran a quick thumb over my mouth, but it was too late. I’d have to try to explain.

Rather than look at her, I studied Olivia’s hand on the banister. “I mean, dress up. Try to be presentable. I know you don’t like me, but in your mom’s head, we’re associated—”

“Since when do you care about what my mother thinks?”

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

“I don’t. But I don’t want you to be judged just because you know someone like me, and if there’s something I can do to help you wiggle one of the many pins you’ve got sticking out of your mother’s voodoo doll, all you have to do is let me know. I’ll even try my best not to say anything weird.”

Olivia gave me a blank stare for a full three seconds.

Then she laughed. It was a brief chuckle—little more than a breath—but the smile was real.

“Oh my god, Emerra,” she said. “You’re a walking disaster.”

I grinned. “So are you.”

She started up the stairs again. “At least I own a dress!”

“You have me there. So what’ll it be, Olivia? Am I going in a dress or jeans?”

“Like I care.”

She did, though. I knew she did. But I needed to find the right way to phrase it.

“All right. Which would annoy your mother the most?”

Crinkles appeared around Olivia’s narrowed eyes as she considered my question. They disappeared when she turned to me. One edge of her lips was pulled up in a faint smirk.

“Are you willing to borrow a dress from Nylah?”

A haunting image of a face full of poison popped into my head. But I was the idiot who’d offered, and I wasn’t going to go back on my word now.

“Uh, yeah,” I stammered. “I mean, sure. If she’s willing.”

We reached the top of the stairs. Olivia pointed to the room across from the one we were staying in and wished me luck. I would’ve rather had some kind of a protective charm, but I was willing to take what I could get.

I knocked as Olivia disappeared into her old bedroom. When Nylah opened her door and saw me standing there, her eyes briefly widened. Then she leaned against the doorway and watched me without saying anything.

What was it with the Oliversens? Did they have to be beautiful and intimidating? One wasn’t enough?

Nylah raised one of her sculpted eyebrows. “Yes?”

Crap! How long had I been standing there?

“Ah, ha! Ha. Ummmm. Hi!” That’s right, Emerra, strike her dead with your unsurpassable wit and charm. “The party’s coming up.”

She stared at me, then said with exaggerated slowness. “I’m aware. Thank you.” She went to close her door.

“No! Wait.” I rubbed my eyes. “I’m not actually an idiot—at least, not this bad. Usually.” I sighed. “It’s been a long day. I needed to ask you something.”

The gap in the door widened again. She looked at me with new interest.

“Olivia and I weren’t expecting to go to a fancy party,” I explained. “Do you have a dress I could borrow?”

Another one-second eternity crawled by as Nylah eyed me. I squeezed my fingers with my other hand.

“Olivia really wasn’t planning on staying here?” Nylah asked.

The disbelief in her voice caught my attention. I searched her face and found nothing.

“No,” I said. “Your mother strong-armed her into it.”

Nylah stepped back from her door and motioned for me to enter.

With one last fleeting thought about that protective charm, I stepped into her room.

The walls were a pale blue-gray. The trim was the same creamy white that was found all over the house. Her bedcover was a navy-blue tone that had enough gray in it to compliment the walls. The upholstery on her desk chair and end-of-bed bench were a shimmery champagne, and the furniture was all made of dark wood. Most of the room oozed with the house's familiar, understated elegance—which is probably why the art stood out so much.

I honed in on those posters like an art-hungry hawk.

I didn’t know if all of the art were posters, but I knew, for a fact, at least two of them had to be. The originals were in museums.

“Van Gogh,” I muttered.

The vibrant colors of Sunflowers and A Summer Evening in the City blazed out from the muted background. I didn’t know the other artists featured in the collection, but they were contemporary impressionists, and all of them used pure hues. Despite the expensive dark wood frames that matched the rest of the furniture, the pictures looked too bright to belong in the room.

“Over here,” Nylah called.

I turned. The wall she was standing beside was dominated by two large doors. She slid them back to reveal a wide, shallow, well-organized closet. If you added up all the clothes I’d owned in both my lives, it still wouldn’t cover the array of outfits I was gawking at.

I stumbled toward her wardrobe. “Holy cow! Dude! What a selection!”

The ends of Nylah’s lips nudged upward when she heard my exclamation.

I ran my hand over her line of shirts. As the variety of fabrics ruffled under my fingers, then fell back, I noticed that most of them were grayish tones of blue, purple, or green. There were a few whites and off-whites, but the closest she ever got to red was burgundy or wine. There were no yellows or oranges, and there was no black.

“Can I ask you a weird question?” I said, still looking over her collection.

“All right,” she said.

“What does your mother have against black?”

“Mother doesn’t mind black. She minds excessive black.”

“And Olivia’s wardrobe?”

“It’s excessive. Everything Olivia does is excessive. If you’ve had to live with her, I’m sure you’ve noticed that.”

My breath caught, and my shoulders stiffened. I pressed my lips together as hard as I could so I wouldn’t accidentally tell her how much I hated her comment and her thoughtless confidence that I would agree with her.

It reminded me of all the people in my life that had told me I was “too much.” Too loud. Too talkative. Too excited. Every comment they had made flowed over me, ripping up soil that had been shaken loose by my lonely childhood, carrying it away until my heart was a chasm. No matter how much I tried, no matter how much I cared about others, there would always be something wrong with me—a reason others wouldn’t like me: I was too much.

I didn’t think Olivia was too much. She had an attitude, but she didn’t go out of her way to pick a fight with me. If I left her alone, she left me alone. She always wore black, but I’d assumed that was her style and never thought twice about it. She did study a lot—but wasn’t that her job? And, if I was being honest, I envied her. I thought that being dedicated, hardworking, and studious meant that Olivia was somehow a good person—or a…a valuable person—in a way I wasn’t.

That wasn’t excessive! That was Olivia!

I swallowed my indignation. The last thing I needed was to upset the Oliversens…

You know—anymore than I already had.

I cleared my throat and said, “Dresses?”

Nylah stepped back and motioned to the section at the edge of the closet.

And, anyway, a woman who owned that many dresses wasn’t qualified to pass judgment on what was “excessive.”

I chided myself for being unfair to Nylah. Wardrobe requirements were probably different if you had a mother who hosted catered cocktail parties.

I started looking through the line of dresses.

Nylah leaned on the wall. “Why did Olivia come home?”

Since I was already hiding my anger, it wasn’t difficult for me to keep my poker face. There was barely a hitch in my movement. Count Vasil would’ve been proud.

I hummed noncommittally.

“I heard about her report,” Nylah said.

If I hummed again, I was pretty sure she’d catch on to the fact I had already decided I wasn’t going to tell her a darn thing, so I reached for the next avoidance tactic in my arsenal: make them talk.

“What did you think?” I asked.

She shrugged. “Typical. Olivia never misses a chance to show off.”

“You see it as showing off?”

“What else could it be?”

Rising to a challenge, I thought.

If Nylah’s voice had been even a smidge less dismissive, I might have said it out loud, but it wasn’t, so I didn’t bother.

Instead, I said, “Would it surprise you to learn that Olivia hadn’t planned on giving her report?”

“It would have, but considering that she’s gone all the time and you said you didn’t plan on coming to any of the parties—it made me wonder.”

My brain held up a yellow warning flag. Nylah was fishing for information. I clamped my mouth shut and focused on the dresses. She didn’t need my help if she wanted to go around wondering things.

She pushed away from the wall and turned to look at the dresses with me. If she was going for a sense of non-threatening camaraderie, she failed. I was halfway down the row and about to pick one of the navy-blue options, just to get out of there, when a much bolder color caught my eye.

With a delighted laugh, I reached over and pulled it out. “Oh, wow. I like this one.”

That was a lie. I didn’t merely like the dress; I loved it. It was a vivid teal, wrap-around style, with three-quarters sleeves and at least a three-quarters circle skirt, perfect for twirling. The hem would hit somewhere around my knees.

Nylah glanced at it, then raised her eyes to me. “Don’t you think it’s a little bright?”

The question was nothing but a tissue-paper thin veil for her opinion—her tone told me that much—but she could cat at me all she wanted. I was holding a dress that would make a Crayola crayon blush.

“Well, normally I prefer something really bright,” I said, “like a nice, eye-searing shade of magenta, but you don’t seem to have that, so I’ll have to settle for something only a little bright.” I winked at her.

Nylah shrugged. “Suit yourself.” When I moved toward the door, she said, “You say you’re not friends with Olivia?”

My brain hoisted the yellow flag again and waved it. Frantically.

I turned around. “I already told you we’re not.”

“That doesn’t surprise me.” Nylah gave me a knowing look full of mutual understanding that wasn’t mutual at all. “Olivia doesn’t have any friends. I think she’s proud of it. She hates everyone, and she’s perfected the art of making sure everyone knows—”

“You’re wrong.”

My cheeks were red, and I was clutching my hands together under the fabric of the dress so Nylah wouldn’t see them trembling. My mind felt like it was blistering from the heat of my emotions. All thought of respecting Olivia’s desire to keep quiet was gone. My only goal was to get through the conversation without yelling.

Nylah crossed her arms. “You think so?”

“I know so. Olivia doesn’t have a lot of friends, but she has them. And she loves them. She’s loyal. You have to be when you only have a few friends.”

“But you’re not one of them. Why are you sticking up for her?”

“Because you’ve never seen what she’s really like. You want to know why Olivia came back? One of her friends has gone missing. She was willing to break a promise to herself and come back to a place she knew she wasn’t welcome so that she could try to find out what happened to him. That’s the only reason she’s here.”

Nylah’s face went slack and I could see anger in her eyes. “I don’t believe you.”

“That doesn’t surprise me. You probably think she’s here to show off, upset your mom, and ruin your life.”

“That’s right.”

A hiss of laughter melded with my scoff, and I shook my head. “That’s fine. Think what you want.” I took a deep breath, raised the dress a few inches, and said in my best rich-girl-trying-to-get-into-a-country-club voice, “Thank you so much for letting me borrow this. Would you like me to get it cleaned before I return it?”

Nylah adopted her own tone of bogus civility. “You don’t have to worry about that. I’m glad I could help.”

I took a step toward the door, then paused and turned back. “It’s odd.”

“What is?”

I raised the dress again. “This dress is the only thing in the room that matches the art.”

Nylah’s scorn vanished. She stared at me, her face stiff.

“Did you pick the art?” I asked.

“Yes.” Her voice was as stiff as her face.

“Oh.” I paused. “Do you pick all your clothes?”

“Of course I do,” she snapped.

“Hmm. That’s interesting.”

My anger was fading, and whatever intimidation I’d felt when I entered the room was nothing but a memory. When a girl owns one dress that matches her art, but she won’t wear it because it’s too bright, that means she’s hiding, and she’s probably been hiding for a long time.

That was a hard place to be.

“Thank you again,” I said. “I’d better hurry and get ready.”

I left. After shutting the door behind me, I leaned back against the wall.

“Don’t want to upset the Oliversens, huh?” I muttered.

I groaned, laughed at myself, then held up my prize with a sigh.

“At least I got a killer dress.”

I stood up and crossed the hall. It was thirty minutes till go time.