Sisters

by Eliza Nolan

  “Come on,” she says. “Bring it downstairs and we’ll check it out. You could think about it.” She bats her eyelids and dabs at her lip once more as if to suggest demon summoning will totally make up for me accidentally kicking her in the face.

  I sigh. There’s no way I’m getting out of bringing it down at the very least. Also, I still feel like the book somehow belongs to me. So the idea of leaving it upstairs doesn’t appeal at all. “Okay, we’ll bring it down to my room. But no promises.”

  “Yay!” Fiona reaches out for the book. “I’ll carry it for you.”

  I pull away, close it, and shake my head. “We have to get those boxes down to my sister first. Mother Demon said we had to obey my sister. Remember?” I smile. Also, Grace will tell on us for stealing her cookies if we don’t finish grabbing all her Christmas stuff.

  She frowns. “Oh yeah.” She surveys the boxes I’ve piled up at the edge of the attic door. “I’ll go down the ladder and you pass them to me.” She heads over to the hatch.

  With Fiona’s back to me, I hug the book close to my chest once more, instantly feeling the warm draw of the book. Why does a book on summoning demons feel so right in my hands? Seriously, what is wrong with me?

  8

  Grace

  “Did you guys get lost up there?” I say to Fiona’s backside as she finally descends the ladder. Our family attic is an embarrassing mess, but I organized the Christmas stuff myself, so it shouldn’t be hard to find my boxes. “What’s taking so long?”

  “Chill, princess. We’re coming with your precious cargo.” Her brows rise as if I’m being impertinent. I won’t look a gift horse in the mouth, but I have to wonder why Fiona volunteered to help me out in the first place. I cannot figure her out. Whatever her reason, the wave of nice is gone now. She’s back to her cruel, poison dart-eyed self I’m so accustomed to.

  “Sorry,” I say. “You didn’t have to help. But thank you.” I meet cruelty with kindness whenever I can, although it’s harder with some people.

  “Whatever,” Fiona says.

  “Here’s the first one.” Eva peeks out of the attic hatch and hands a box down to Fiona who takes it and drops it—not so gently—on the ground.

  I rush to the box, as if I can protect any breakage. I pull off the top and peek inside, doing a quick check. It’s mostly well-packed lights. They appear to be unharmed. I glare up at Fiona.

  Eva’s eyes catch on me for a second, and then they widen. She slips back into the attic. Huh. I know that look. She’s totally trying to figure out how she can get away with something.

  But what?

  Eva comes out with another box. “Why don’t you start bringing these downstairs, Grace?” she says, but there’s a forced niceness to her voice.

  If she thinks I’m going to leave her alone to do whatever it is she’s doing, she’s sadly mistaken. I can always use more dirt on Eva. These days it’s the only way I can get her to help me with anything.

  “I’ll wait up here until I know we have it all, then you can help me bring it down,” I reply. I can almost feel her cussing me out in her mind. And for some reason I’m taking more pleasure in this than usual. Oh yeah, right—she ate half my cookies. I lean against the wall in the hallway and watch as Eva sends two more boxes down with my Christmas markings on them; then she ruffles around, and finally peeks out again.

  “This last one is heavy,” she warns Fiona.

  Fiona stumbles on the ladder under the weight of the box. “Dang, what’s in this one?”

  I spring to my feet to help her, but she catches herself and glares at me.

  Eva switches off the attic light and drops her feet down to the ladder, crawling down after Fiona. “That’s a box of my old school reports. I’m searching for a story I wrote when I was twelve. I think there should be a copy of it in there.” Her eyes dash to my face and away imperceptibly fast. Oh, she is definitely up to something.

  I try not to show that I know. I keep my eyes on my own boxes, shifting them around as if I’m checking to make sure everything’s made it out of the attic. But really, I’m dying to know what’s in that box of “old school reports.” What is she hiding?

  Eva takes the box from Fiona and they exchange a look before she slips down the hall, sliding the box into her room, and closing the door. She comes back towards us, and I busy myself taking the first two boxes down to the living room. I saw the conspiratorial look Fiona gave her.

  I used to be Eva’s partner in crime. I sigh. Now I’ve morphed into the enemy.

  Fiona had better not be getting my little sister into any trouble. It can’t possibly be any good if Eva’s trying to hide it from me.

  I’ll figure it out. Whatever it is.

  9

  Eva

  Fiona closes my bedroom door behind us, and I open the top of the cardboard box, pulling out the old book.

  “What’s with the heavy box of school papers?” Fiona asks.

  “I didn’t want Grace to see the book. She’s so nosy, the second she saw it, she’d want to know what it was. I figured it was better to hide it from her.” It feels weird hiding things from Grace. We used to share all our secrets. But now she’s always threatening to narc me out over stolen cookies, or making fun of my friend’s spirit board—it seems like a better idea to keep this between Fiona and me.

  I run my hand over the soft leather cover. It doesn’t have a title. There’s nothing on the spine, only a symbol etched into the cover. It’s a triangle, with a vee and several lines through it, and a circle above and below, and then an open crescent at the top and bottom. I trace my fingers over them. They seem familiar to me, but I can’t figure out why. Fiona’s staring at the book in my hands, so I pass it to her as I try to remember if it was something I’d seen before in one of Dad’s plays. Maybe that’s why it’s familiar, and why the book was up there with his other props. Only I’ve seen all his plays, and don’t remember any with a book like that.

  I peer over Fiona’s shoulder as she flips to the middle of the book. “Summoning Aramadao” is written across the top of the page.

  “This summoning spell doesn’t seem too hard. I mean, the pentagram is a bit complex, and there are a lot of these scribbles we have to write, but we only need candles, chalk, straw, feathers, and a needle. We can get most of this stuff at a craft store.”

  “Those ‘scribbles’ are not scribbles, Fiona. They’re writing in another alphabet. I’m pretty sure we have to be like ultra careful to write them all out perfectly or else whatever we summon could kill us or something.” That’s the way it works in all the movies I’ve seen.

  “I thought you didn’t believe in any of this.”

  “I don’t,” I say. But my stomach is twisted up in knots.

  “Then what does it matter?” she asks.

  I take the book from her, flip back to the front, and read aloud in my deepest spooky voice. “Take heed, be steadfast, constant, and precise in observing exactly, word for word, each step laid out in this grimoire.”

  “Does it say what happens if we don’t?” Fiona asks.

  “It stops there.” I leaf through a few more pages near the front of the book. “There’s more than one summoning spell in here. A few near the front are level one and two spells with fewer steps and easier stuff to get, and that one you want to do says it’s a level ten. I don’t know about you, but doesn’t it seem like a good idea to try one of the lower level ones near the front first? Like you said, it doesn’t really matter since it isn’t real. We might as well start small and work our way up. Right?”

  Fiona smirks, her eyes sparkling with mischief. The last time I saw that look, we ended up breaking into an old abandoned warehouse, just for fun. It was terrifying, but also exhilarating.

  She reaches over my shoulder and flips the book back a few pages. “It says the best time to do this is on the night of the full moon.” She pulls out her phone and swipes through some screens with her thumb. “Next Sunday night! We’re doing this.” He
r grin goes wide, showing her teeth, then she winces as her lip cracks open, and blood starts to pool.

  Crap, not again. “I’m so sorry,” I say.

  “It’s fine.” She dabs at her lip with a tissue. “We’re doing this!” she says again through the tissue.

  Outside, a car engine hums as it pulls into the driveway. My parents aren’t half as big on Christmas as Grace is, but they’re both into bargain hunting, and thus have a tradition of going out on Black Friday to do some serious shopping.

  “My parents are home.”

  Fiona checks her phone. “I better go. Mom wants me home for dinner every night while her parents are visiting. I think it’s because they like me more than they like her.” She pokes me in the arm. “But they’re leaving on Sunday morning, and then we’re gonna do some summoning.” She smiles.

  “How can we? Do you even know what a Bloodstone is?” I say, reading from another list of items.

  “No, but it’s called the internet. We’ll figure it out. We’re smart!” She taps the side of her head with her finger.

  I close the book of dark things and slide it in between my mattress and box spring—I don’t want to make it easy for Grace to find what she’ll inevitably come in here searching for later.

  ∞∞∞

  As I close the door behind Fiona, the back door of the house whooshes open and Mom yells, “Girls, we’re home! And we have a surprise!”

  Curious and a bit excited I jog through the hall and back to the kitchen as Grace skips in from the dining room, singing along with “Frosty the Snow Man.” Mom and Dad emerge from the back hall. Mom’s blond hair is in a ponytail, revealing cheeks that are bright red from the cold outside. Dad ruffles his hands through his short, white-speckled hair—his standard move after removing his winter hat.

  I scan the kitchen, wondering what the surprise is. They don’t have any of their Black Friday finds with them, but they always hide their Christmas shopping out back in the old camper trailer that Mom uses as her she-shed/office.

  “What’s the surprise?” I ask.

  Mom rubs her arms over her light-blue sweater to get the chill out. “Well…” She glances across to Grace. “We got the tickets.”

  Grace squeaks and her eyes brighten. “To the concert?”

  Dad nods and tugs his beard.

  “Really?” Grace bounces up and down on her stockinged feet, like a small child who needs to pee.

  “Next Sunday evening.” Mom nods, her eyes glistening with excitement.

  I stifle a groan. All the excitement means it could only be one concert. “The Gustavus Christmas Concert?” I ask.

  Mom smiles. “We got tickets for all four of us.”

  My heart sinks. This is not a surprise for both of us. Gustavus is the university where my parents work. Each year the music department puts together a Christmas concert with a bunch of their choirs and several of their orchestras. It was okay the first time I saw it, but it’s freaking Christmas music. How many times do we have to listen to the same five songs? I was sort of hoping they would forget about it this year.

  Dad pulls his round glasses down his nose and peers over the frames. “We got box seats this time!” He raises his eyebrows.

  “Really?” Grace squeals again, louder. And even goes so far as to smile across at me.

  I know this isn’t the time to back out, with all the excitement, but I can’t stop myself. “Do I have to go this year?”

  “What?” Dad’s brows pinch together, and his eyes mist almost instantly.

  “Of course, you’re going,” Mom says. “It’s a family tradition.” She’s smiling, but her smile says you are going whether you want to or not. Mom has a way of saying a million things with a look.

  “But I already made plans to stay over at Fiona’s that night. Grace is the singer. Please?” I hear the painful whine in my voice, but I don’t care. Somehow the idea of going to that concert makes my stomach turn. “We’re barely even Christian.”

  “We are, too, Christian.” Dad straightens, puffing up his chest. “You don’t have to go to church every single Sunday to be a Christian.”

  I lean against the kitchen counter. “Couldn’t we start a different tradition that doesn’t involve listening to the same songs about the same thing over and over again?”

  “Eva.” Mom’s voice is strained. “You are—”

  “Hey,” Grace cuts in. “Maybe it’s okay if she doesn’t want to go. I mean, if she’s gonna be a stinker the whole time, why don’t we give her ticket to someone like Jenna, who would actually appreciate it?”

  I’m tempted to groan at her mention of bringing Jenna—she’s trying to twist the situation so she can bring her own friend along—but her plan would benefit me as well, and if this gets me out of it, I’m willing to play along.

  Mom and Dad lock eyes across the kitchen in silent parental communication.

  “We’ll think about it,” Dad says.

  I breathe out a sigh of relief. When Mom says, “We’ll think about it,” she doesn’t want to do it. But when Dad says, “We’ll think about it,” it means he’s actually considering it as an option.

  So, there’s a chance.

  10

  Eva

  Down a dimly-lit hallway stands a beautiful woman in a long flowing dark dress. Her shoulders are broad, her head held high. Her wavy auburn hair parts around the two ivory horns that coil out above her forehead. She smiles at me, her blood-red eyes beaming, and I instantly feel comforted, at ease. She beckons, and I follow her to the end of the hallway, to a wooden door with carvings of two demons—one made from wind and one of fire—engaged in battle.

  The horned woman waves her hand across the door and it swings open.

  Massive plumes of fire crackle and dance inside. The woman takes my hand and we walk through the doorway together, side by side. Heat surrounds us. The flames lick my arms and legs, making me feel not hot, but warm and cozy, relaxed.

  ∞∞∞

  I wake and instantly gasp, clawing at my blanket as if I’m fighting some sort of demon duvet. Who the hell was that demon woman? My eyes strain in the dark of my bedroom. The streetlights that peek in underneath my curtains give enough light to make out the shape of my desk, my dresser, and…

  … a lump on my rug.

  I squint. A large pile of laundry maybe. Only I usually stash my laundry in my closet hamper. I rub my eyes and blink. The lump moves slightly. Panic jolts me into action, and I lunge towards my nightstand, switching on the light.

  I blow out a breath and relax, recognizing the lump.

  My sister sits cross-legged on the floor of my bedroom in her red and white, snowman flannel pajamas. A book lies open in her lap, and her hand is stretched out flat on one of the pages. Her face is still, eyes staring off as if she’s in some sort of trance. Only there’s something wrong with her eyes. I can’t see her irises. I can’t see the whites. In the dim light of my reading lamp her eyes appear black.

  “Grace,” I whisper. Trying to keep calm. I wipe at my eyes once more to clear them. No, wait. Her eyelids are closed. Of course, they’re not black. I was probably still dreaming.

  Grace is sleepwalking. She hasn’t done this in a while. “Grace,” I whisper again. I have to be careful not to startle her awake.

  “Grace.”

  She blinks her eyes open. “Yeah?” It takes her a moment to realize where she is. “Oh, sorry.” She looks down at the book in her lap. Her eyes widen, and she heaves the thing off her lap, leaving it open on my bedroom floor. I expect her to say something. Usually after sleepwalking episodes she says stuff that doesn’t quite make sense, as if she’s still not totally awake. One time she said, “You’re the pirate of toast.” Another time she said, “The mermaid can’t find her shoes!” Total nonsense, but great entertainment.

  She shuffles towards the door in her bare feet, pulls it open, glances back to me and says, “I don’t think we should keep reading that one. It’s not very good.” She slips out a
nd pulls the door closed behind her.

  My sister must have the strangest dreams.

  Not that mine are any more normal. I shiver as I remember the woman in the long flowing dress with the ivory horns. What the heck was that? Maybe I was dreaming about the demon etched into the creepy spirit board.

  My eyes fall to the book Grace had been holding. It’s open face down on the floor—the cover is dark leather. A chill flows through me as I recognize the symbol on the front. The book Fiona found in the attic. Only it can’t be. I throw off my blankets and slip out of bed. I kneel down, and then lift my mattress, sliding my arm in, feeling around. There’s nothing but padded space. I crawl over to the book, flipping it over to see several pentagrams. “Summoning Aramadao,” the same page, the same summoning that Fiona wants to do. I glance over my shoulder to my bed. How had Grace gotten the book out from underneath my mattress while I was sleeping on it? How did she even know it was there?

  I fold the book closed and glance at my bedroom door. Had she known what she was holding when she woke up? Will she remember any of it tomorrow?

  I open my closet and pull back a section of loose wood molding on the side to expose a small hole in the wall. I found it a few years ago and have my old diaries inside. There’s enough room for the book, and I slide it inside and replace the molding. If Grace does remember the book, I don’t want her to be able to find it again tomorrow.

  11

  Grace

  I bend over one of the open boxes of ornaments on the floor and pull out another gold ribbon.