more "Both the Living and the Dead."

Have I mentioned I hate being a sensitive? I know, there are people that fake it, stick out a shingle as a shaman, and that's why you should always check your references when sealing grandma in the wall. And I know, there are all kinds of stupid teenagers in black and piercings, or floaty bits and blessed-bes, trying to magic up some scrap of power. They don't get it. Sensitivity -- is the right word. Being a sensitive is like missing your eyelids. My cobbled-up mess of spells and sketches, drywall and white dresses -- just sunglasses.

On the bright side, my parents were wrong: that fine arts degree was good for something after all.

So now I'm sitting, sans eyelids, with Brian on the loveseat in my parents' living room. And doing my best to put a wall of smoked glass behind me. Glass is good: it's got a wall's flatness, and water's clean coldness. Makes a good temporary binding. And thanks to years of painting, I know it -- know how it bends and dims light, know how to picture it and cast it. But today, the casting's not going so well. I look back only once; the wall of my denial is dark, yes, but dark like a wet matt of hair, like something pulled from a drain. It's stirring.

Mom has fixed chamomile tea. (Well, where did you think I learned it?) Bri is perched beside me, prim as a prom date. I wonder what he thinks is behind us, why he thinks the loveseat is pulled out six feet from the wall. I wonder what Mom can see. Something, or she wouldn't have moved the furniture. We sit there with our teacups while the hair surges in oily waves behind us.

Dad.

Suddenly I can't breathe -- the hair and the mustard. I stand up. I'm sort of aware that I've interrupted a creaky see-saw of small talk between Mom and Bri -- something about the little painting of waterlilies among the china flowers. (It's the only work of mine in the house -- and it's been awhile since my flower period.) "I'm just --" I say. The tea is still sloshing around in the cup, running down over my hands, scalding. "I'll be right back." I go upstairs. I have to see if the murals in my room are still there.

***

I sit down on the narrow bed. It creaks a little; there's a breathe of dust. Yes, the walls are still black (and doubtless the paint is still perfectly good) but the murals are gone. There's a card table in the middle of the room, Mom's quilting squares laid out. She's even got block patterns sketched on one of the walls.

Somehow that softens me, gets the last of the horrible out of my throat. I flop onto my back on the bed, breathing again.

The mural on the ceiling is still there. I'd forgotten about it, though I don't know how. Repressed it maybe. Ceiling work is horrible; there's always stuff dripping on you and your shoulders threatening to go on strike. Possibly why Mom left it. But there it is, anyway, and when I see it, I remember. My stars.

I lean back, peering, prying at a chip in the red lacquer headboard with one fingernail. My stars: the ceiling is a rough map of the actual night stars, but with different ghostly constellations drawn over them. Right above my head is a hand -- which I know is my hand, witchy skinny but stronger than it looks. Red Alderberan on the tip of one finger. Seven little stars on the palm where the head and heartline meet: the Pleiades. I turn my hand over. My stitches: seven black stars.

What's happening, what's happening? The darkness in over the ghost-bed, the darkness in Bee's mirror. Oily, matted, shifting darkness. I've seen a lot of stuff, but I've never seen that before. And hope never to see it again. But I know if I breathe just a little deeper, I'll be able to taste it, seeping up through the floorboards.

But when I first saw the bed, there was nothing but sunshine slanting right through it. The darkness was in the glass. My glass.

Bri taps against the doorframe with his fingertips. "Jess?"

I lift my head. "Yeah. I'm okay."

He wanders in,
swings the folding chair around. "Your mom's worried."

I drop my head. Again a puff of dust from the pillow. "Yeah."

"Your room?" he asks. "You go through a Goth phase?"

I make a rude noise.

"Looks like they're keeping it for you."

"Like Bee," I murmur. I look at the ceiling, the red glow on the star-hand. The darkness. In the glass. In Bee's mirror. What if it's mine?