Page 36 of Our Crooked Hearts
“So this is your coven.”
I ticked my chin at her. “Who’s she? Why are we in her crappy store?”
The woman laughed again, but Marion tensed. The cords in her neck were unnerving. “This is Sharon. She’s another practitioner.”
“You can say witch, honey.” Sharon tongued her lip ring. “It’s not a bad word.”
“It’s limiting, though,” Marion said earnestly. Always so humorless around magic, all her borders down. “We’re more than that. I want to bemorethan that. Don’t you?”
“Sure,” Sharon replied after a pause. “For sure I do.”
Marion was nodding. “Yeah. So. Sharon’s shop is kind of a meeting place for… for practitioners. I came in to buy supplies the other day and we ended up talking for, what, two hours?”
“That’s right,” Sharon said, looking at me.
Marion cradled the book, her voice dropping into a reverent register. “Something happened the night after I met Sharon. The book gave me a spell forfourworkers. It’s never done that before.” She looked at us solemnly. “I think Astrid wants us to work with Sharon.”
I scoffed. “What, is she our pimp? I’m not working with someone I don’t know.”
“I like this one.” Sharon’s eyes were hard with liking’s opposite. “I like you, honey.”
“Your admiration and a nickel,honey.”
Sharon pursed her lips and breathed out. An impossiblylongwhooshthat filled my nose with licorice and made the lights flicker and broke the room’s tension into mosaic pieces. Fee’s eyes widened, fingertips pressed to the place her crucifix had scarred her.
“We’ve got time.” Sharon seemed happier now that she’d impressed us. “Let’s talk. Let’s drink some tea. I’ll send somebody out for Jimmy John’s.”
I got one of my occasional flashes of clarity then. A glimpse of Sharon’s aura. It was ultraviolet and an orange that was hard to look at, striated like a tiger’s fur. The only dual-toned aura I’d ever seen. I had no idea what it meant.
I looked at Fee. She raised a brow.
“Yeah, all right. We can talk.”
