our porch.”
“Me too!” said eight-year-old Adam, hugging his other side.
Stefan kissed their heads. “Who’d have thought I’d have two little princes?” he whispered.
Sophie watched her father, heart in her throat.
“So come on, tell us what’s in your show,” Stefan said, smiling up at her.
But Sophie suddenly didn’t care about her show at all.
Dinner was a handsome roast, with perfectly cooked broccoli, cucumber salad, and a flourless blueberry tart, but she didn’t touch any of it. She sat rigid, glaring at Honora across the cramped table as forks speared and clinked.
“Eat,” Stefan prodded her.
Next to him, Honora rubbed her neck wattle, avoiding Sophie’s stare. “If she doesn’t like it—”
“You made what she likes,” Stefan said, eyes on Sophie. “Eat.”
Sophie didn’t. Clinks petered to silence.
“Can I have her pork?” Adam said.
“You and my mother were friends, weren’t you?” Sophie said to Honora.
The widow choked on her meat. Stefan scowled at Sophie and opened his mouth to retort, but Honora grabbed his wrist. She dabbed at dry lips with a dirty napkin.
“Best friends,” she rasped with a smile, and swallowed again. “For a very long time.”
Sophie froze over. “I wonder what came between you.”
Honora’s smile vanished and she peered down at her plate. Sophie’s eyes stayed locked on her.
Stefan’s fork clanked against the table. “Why don’t you help Honora in the shop after school?”
Sophie waited for Adam to answer him—then saw her father still looking at her.
“Me?” Sophie blanched. “Help … her?”
“Bartleby said my wife could use an extra hand,” Stefan pushed.
Wife. That’s all Sophie heard. Not thief. Not tramp. Wife.
“After the wedding and the show is over,” he added. “Get you settled into normal life.”
Sophie spun to Honora, expecting her to be as shocked, but she was just anxiously slurping cucumbers through dry lips.
“Father, you want me to—to—” Sophie couldn’t get words out. “Churn b-b-butter?”
“Build some strength in those stick arms,” her father said between bites, as Jacob and Adam compared biceps.
“But I’m famous!” Sophie shrieked. “I have fans—I have a statue! I can’t work! Not with her!”
“Then perhaps you should find somewhere else to live.” Stefan picked a bone clean. “As long as you’re in this family, you’ll contribute. Or the boys would be happy to have your room.”
Sophie gasped.
“Now eat,” he spat, so sharply she had to obey.
As he watched Agatha slip on her old, saggy black dress, Reaper growled suspiciously, sucking on a few trout bones across the leaky room.
“See? Same old Agatha.” She slammed the trunk on Sophie’s borrowed clothes, slid it near the door, and kneeled to pet her bald, wrinkled cat. “So now you can be nice again.”
Reaper hissed.
“It’s me,” Agatha said, trying to pet him. “I haven’t changed a bit.”
Reaper scratched her and trundled away.
Agatha rubbed the fresh mark on her hand between others barely healed. She flopped onto her bed while Reaper curled up in a moldy green corner, as far away from her as he could.
She rolled over and hugged her pillow.
I’m happy.
She listened to rain slosh against the straw roof and spurt through a hole into her mother’s black cauldron.
Home sweet home.
Clink, clink, clink went the rain.
Sophie and me.
She stared at the blank, cracked wall. Clink, clink, clink … Like a sword in a sheath, rubbing against a belt buckle. Clink, clink, clink. Her chest started pounding, her blood burning like lava, and she knew it was happening again. Clink, clink, clink. The black of the cauldron became the black of his boots. The straw of the ceiling, the gold of his hair. The sky through the window, the blue in his eyes. In her arms, the pillow became tanned muscles and flesh—
“Some help, dear!” a voice trilled.
Agatha jolted awake, gripping her sweat-stained pillow. She lurched off the bed and opened the door to see her mother lugging two baskets, one teeming with stinky roots and leaves, the other with dead tadpoles, cockroaches, and lizards.
“What in the world—”
“So you can finally teach me some potions from school!” Callis chimed, eyes bulging, and plunked a basket in Agatha’s hands. “Not as many patients today. We have time to brew!”
“I told you I can’t do magic anymore,” Agatha snapped, closing the door behind them. “Our fingers don’t glow here.”
“Why won’t you tell me anything that happened?” her mother asked, picking her oily dome of black hair. “The least you could do is show me a wart potion.”
“Look, I put it all behind me.”
“Lizards are better fresh, dear. What can we make with those?”
“I forgot all that stuff—”
“They’ll go bad—”
“Stop!”
Her mother stiffened.
“Please,” Agatha begged. “I don’t want to talk about school.”
Gently Callis took the basket from her. “When you came home, I’d never been so happy.” She looked into her daughter’s eyes. “But part of me worries what you gave up.”
Agatha stared down at her black clump shoes as her mother towed the baskets into the kitchen. “You know how I feel about waste,” Callis sighed. “Let’s hope our bowels can handle a lizard stew.”
As Agatha chopped onions by torchlight, she listened to her mother hum off-key, like she did every night. Once upon a time, she had
