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Distant sounds reach my ear. Screaming. My eyes flip open to my sister’s face, scrunched in anger as she stands over me. Red lipstick streaks across her cheeks like blood. Black mascara streams down from her eyes like a scary clown’s.

“Why did you lie, Nola?”

My heart races, my stomach turns with nausea.

“Why did you lie!”

I shoot up to a sitting position, splashing water over the edge of the tub, and gasp. Glancing around the bathroom shows no sign of Nora anywhere. Not that it would. Through deep inhalations, I slow my breathing and shutter my eyes, burying my face into my knees. The bath water has gone ice cold, only adding to the chill that clings to my bones, and the chattering of my teeth marks the incessant vibrations running below my skin.

Seventeen years. It’s been seventeen years, and her disappearance still haunts me.

With Denny’s murder, as horrific as it was, I, at least, had closure. And anger, to keep me from drowning in the guilt. The remorse I carried didn’t hold a candle to the agony of that night, when my sister didn’t come home and my parents asked me where she’d gone.

I lied and told them I didn’t know, because for one brief moment, I thought maybe she had run away to elope. Maybe she’d fallen in love with Brian and skipped off to wedded bliss with him. Away from my parents. Away from the responsibilities that always bogged her down.

I had no idea that wasn’t how love worked. Had I known she would never make it to Brian’s house, that he’d spend that night angry at the girl he thought had stood him up, that every second I lied and told my parents I didn’t know where she’d gone, was another second she might’ve been given to return. Had I known all these things, I might’ve begged her not to go that night. I might’ve called my parents and told them straight away where she’d gone.

I might’ve been the good daughter.

Instead, I lay in my bed that night, silent and happy and so ignorant about love, believing some twisted fairytale, in which my sister had ridden off with her white knight. I quietly laughed at my parents’ stupidity, thinking how sorry they’d be when they found out she hadn’t pursued vet medicine, and instead, chose love, just like in the stories Nora made up at bedtime.

The joke was on me, though, when police came to the door. When I watched my dad collapse because they couldn’t find my sister, and her boyfriend didn’t know where she was, either. When that fairytale twisted into something more sinister, and the questions began to mount inside my head.

It’s no wonder I couldn’t say the word as a child. I never truly grasped the meaning of love.

Nor, even, when I became an adult.

22

Nola

The craft show is at the Mariott in downtown, and as I wheel in the cart holding all my wares, I take note of the strange costumes first. Everyone’s wearing black. Black capes. Black makeup. Black everything. My table is next to a heavier-set woman, positioning candles and black satchels on her table, and little necklace thingies she refers to as talismans.

This should be my first clue, really, but I’m so preoccupied with the thought that half my sets aren’t full sets, I don’t notice the symbols and signs and everything that serves as a marquee for my idiocy. No, it isn’t until someone asks me what power my ceramics hold, and if I sell a mortar and pestle, that I realize craft is short for witchcraft.

A fucking witchcraft convention.

Hands covering my face, I burst into laughter when it hits me, to the point of tears, and the stares I draw aren’t friendly.

This is, by far, the only way I can possibly imagine this week ending.

A woman steps up to my booth, and when she asks me if I happen to sell cauldrons, a howl of laughter escapes me, sending her off to my neighbor.

I must look possessed, with bouts of uncontrollable cackling.

Who the hell mistakes a witchcraft convention for a craft show, after all?

“How’s it going, Star Wars?” The deep velvet voice quiets my amusement, and when I slide my hands from my face, Voss is standing in front of me. In a three-piece suit that clings to his muscles, he’s almost enough distraction to keep me from breaking down.

“Look around and tell me who, in this place, doesn’t belong?” Another spasm of laughter bursts from my chest, and when his gaze trails over the surrounding booths and back to me, his lips stretch with a smile.

“Well, you got the craft part right, anyway.”

A wheeze brings more tears to my eyes, which I wipe away. “I haven’t sold a damn thing!” More laughter.

Voss chuckles, too, the sound of his amusement only adding to mine.

Until it hits me. All this work, and I’m a hundred bucks in the hole for the table fee. A hundred bucks that I’d rather have spent on Oli for Christmas. A hundred bucks I could’ve used to pay a bill, or take him out to dinner. A hundred bucks I just donated to a bunch of witches.