Page 86 of Our Crooked Hearts
CHAPTER FORTY
The suburbs
Back then
Ivy’s mom was a total freaking hypocrite.
She talked all the time about balance and responsibility and being careful what you put into the world and blah blah blah, when all along you justknewshe’d done some bad, bad things.
You could see it in her refusal to talk about the web of scars on her hand. The abrupt silence that fell when Ivy walked into a room where Mom and Aunt Fee were talking. The stormy weather that blew through the house at random, and made Dad say,Guys, give your mom some space.
Most of all it was in the look on her face when Ivy pulled something off. Ivy was so good now, sostrong,her mother’s pride should’ve grown accordingly. Instead she seemed to shrink as Ivy expanded, becoming more watchful, more controlling and afraid. If she could’ve lassoed Ivy’s ability and broken it like a colt, she probably would have.
Ivy was certain it had to do with the thing she wouldn’t talk about—the thing she’d done. She waited for Mom to let something slip, or Aunt Fee to spill the secret. And when neither happened, she made other plans.
She was waiting for a night when both her parents were out. If it made her feel a little guilty that it finally happened because her mom was in the hospital, well, guilt was rarely a useful emotion.
It was just past eight. Hank was on the other side of the wall watchingBattlestar Galacticaand her room was soft in the gloaming.
Ivy propped a mirror against her footboard. She pressed a blend of clarity oils into seven crucial places. She looped a thread of dark hair around her right ring finger—spirited off of her best friend Billy’s shoulder—and incanted as she used that fingertip to trace a sigil over the mirror. Mist spilled into the glass, displacing her reflection. She made her voice cool and commanding.
“Show me what Billy’s doing right now.”
Out of the mist, like a photo dipped in developer, a boy with freckles and wet dark hair appeared. When she made out what he was doing—pulling a shirt over his head, damp from the shower—Ivy squeaked and yanked the strand off her finger.
The boy in the glass gave way to a many-toned nothing, a galactic vista that tinted the room with gauzy light.
Ivy counted breaths, waiting for them to slow. She could smell her own sweat beneath the bright spice of frankincense.
It hadworked.
But that was just a test, to see if she could. Now it was timeto do it for real. It might not work the second time, she reminded herself. The question she wanted to ask was fuzzy. But she didn’t know enough to ask a better one.
Ivy took another strand of hair and twined it around her finger. This one was the same color as her own. She’d pulled it from her mother’s hairbrush.
She retraced the sigil. Her door was locked, Hank had headphones on, and still the words came in a heavy whisper.
“Show me Mom’s secret.”
This time the mist caught the question like a pond catching a rock, an impact then a widening ripple. When it smoothed out what Ivy saw in the mirror was a girl.
She darted back, bare legs catching on the humid wooden floor. She just barely kept herself from ripping the red strand free. Through her panic the girl hung motionless in the mirror, odd and definite, framed like a portrait somebody dug up from a thrift store. Fish-belly skin and blonde hair and a look of forbearance. It almost seemed like she was looking back, but that wasn’t how scrying worked. Ivy gathered her nerve and moved closer. When she did the girl followed the motion with her unsettling eyes.
Ivy gasped. “Can you…” She coughed the nervous scuzz away. “Can youseeme?”
Of course she couldn’t, scrying was a one-way mirror. But the girl said, “Yes.”
Just one word, in a voice that sounded like something dug up from the back of a basement.
They watched each other a while, the patient apparition and the child with the butterfly bandage stuck to one knee.
“Who are you?” Ivy asked. She tried, but the command she had summoned was gone.
“I’m an occultist.”
Ivy drew back, impressed.Occultist.Definitely a cooler term than her mom’s bland, belovedworker.
“What’s your name?”
The girl’s dusty voice was gaining strength. “What’s yours? Name for a name.”
Ivy narrowed her eyes. “I bet you already know it.”
“Clever Ivy,” said the figure in the mirror. “I’m Marion.”
The compliment gave Ivy a shot of blunt courage. She squared up. “What do you have to do with my mom’s secret?”
Now the girl—woman? Ivy couldn’t decide—smiled for the first time, dry lips stretched around even white teeth.
“I am your mother’s secret.”
