I kept my demon-summoning career secret from my girlfriend through six months of dating. But one week after I moved in with Diana, the fiction that I was just some goth chick with a job at the Wiccan bookstore went up in flames (along with five of her blouses) when an imp got loose in […]
“No, thank you.” The demon inclined her head graciously. “Pardon?” The knight blinked. He was not prepared for politeness from demons. It went against all his training. He swallowed the rising lump in his throat. “To be clear,” he said, “are you refusing to surrender? Or refusing to move yourself out of that good woman […]
I slink down the street, rotting tot in stroller. Each clack of the wheels on the sidewalk cracks becomes a twist inside my chest. Squeals ringing from the playground. Ladies on benches in neat dresses, reading or chatting or watching kids play. I sit on a bench, soaking up all the happy around me. Wendy? […]
Gene believed the mitochondria were feminist until someone asked him why. That’s how things started going downhill. My husband, Gene Saperstein, fifty-eight years old and retired from the IRS just this past spring, standing there holding a glass of boxed pinot grigio in Lucy Halperin’s living room, surrounded by women with statement earrings. You should know […]
She feeds the abdicators every morning at eight o’clock. Canned tuna or beans. She opens the cans into a few of her Wedgwood bowls and places them outside the glass doors of the Dakota. She wishes she had better use for her fine China. She stands inside the vestibule and watches them. Like feeding stray […]
Liesel felt herself counting them, one, two, three. In and out. In and out. One two three. Counting the breaths made it feel less like waiting and more like expecting. “Is it sick?” Krista asked. Her little sister leaned close to her side. Liesel shrugged. “I think so.” She knew it wouldn’t be long. Moments, […]
The night before Grandaddy Burl died, Colly dreamed of a flathead catfish swallowing him whole. Summer storms had been rolling in since June; the mountain air sitting heavy like flannel on fevered skin. Splashes of sunbeams illuminated verdant pockets, but the inevitability of more rain coaxed the shadows out from crevices and caves to smother […]
It’s rare for someone to be born with a genuine gift. I certainly wasn’t. Only thing I ever saw in a crystal ball was my own reflection, not that it stopped me taking the coins off the hopeful and the hopeless. Maybe that’s why I’m still here, dead but not gone, trapped in the body […]
