Page 4 of Death Card

Down the hall, Gramps notices that we’re not behind him. He turns on his heel and calls, “Stop messing around! Get over here.” Then he makes a right and disappears down a different hallway.

“See what you did?” Orion snaps.

I grip his elbow and shuffle along after him. The floor still feels unsteady beneath me. “Ididn’t do anything. You’re the one who showed up drunk.”

“It’s called liquid courage for a reason. We can’t all be perfect like you, Mikaela.” He sighs. “I’m trying here.”

Not hard enough, I think. He showed up today, but he isn’taround when it really matters, like last night. I want to fuss, but I keep my mouth shut instead. This isn’t the time or the place. Besides, he’s right. We may be twins, but that doesn’t mean we’re coping with Gran’s death the same way.

We turn the corner and catch up with Gramps. He stands before the wall, hands placed over Gran’s name, head bowed. I don’t need to see the engraving to know what it says.

Adelaide Broussard

Beloved Wife, Mother, and Grandmother

She Lights the Path

My eyes burn. God, I miss her so much I can barely stand it.

This past year has been the hardest of my life. She missed our seventeenth birthday, and in a couple of weeks, she’ll miss our eighteenth. It was only last weekend that Orion and I walked across the stage at our high school graduation, and that I gave my valedictorian speech. She wasn’t here for our entire senior year, so I don’t know why I was surprised at how much her absence stung.

Once it was clear I had the grades for it, she desired for me to become valedictorian. Gran was my cheerleader, but she never got to see me achieve our goal.

While most of my peers spent the fall submitting college applications, I couldn’t bring myself to submit even one. If she knew I wasn’t going to college this year, she’d scold me until the cows came home. And honestly, I would give anything to hear her give me a good ear-licking just one last time.

Gramps and Orion are silent, but they don’t have to speak for me to know they both miss her dearly. I can see it in the stiff set of Gramps’s shoulders and the slight wobble in his lower lip. It’s clear in every single action Orion takes.

Finally, Gramps turns to look at us and frowns at Orion. “Take those sunglasses off, boy. Show some respect.” When my brother hesitates, Gramps shakes his head. “I already know what you’ve been up to, and so do they.” He points his finger toward the heavens. “No use hiding it. Besides, I can smell it on you from a mile away.”

Orion mutters something beneath his breath but removes the glasses. Just as we all thought they would be, his eyes are bloodshot.

Gramps shakes his head and lifts his gaze to the names above Gran’s—the other two missing pieces in the puzzle of our family.

Arielle Broussard and Mitchell Guillory

Mom and Dad.

Orion and I never got the chance to know them. When we were only two months old, another vehicle struck their car in the middle of a torrential downpour. They’d been on their way back home from their first date night after having us.

It was a story that our grandparents made sure we knew. A cautionary tale, so to speak, about the tragedy of youthful invincibility. According to Gran, our parents were twenty-four years old and assumed they knew everything about the workings of the world. She and Gramps had begged them to wait out the storm at the movie theater, but they couldn’t wait to get back to their babies. Gran always spoke about them with a mixture of incredible sadness and overwhelming anger.

Losing my parents is a different kind of grief. It isn’t all-consuming like what I feel for Gran. Her loss is a tsunami, while my parents are small ocean waves on a windy afternoon. I never knew them, but sometimes I’m desperate to, like when I look atold photos of my mother and see my own face reflected back at me. I wonder sometimes what they would’ve been like or how my childhood would’ve been different.

“Let’s say a prayer for your grandmother’s soul,” Gramps says. He extends both his hands, and Orion and I each take one. We bow our heads as he speaks.

“Ancestors, we call to you today to thank you for bringing Adelaide into our lives. We ask that you protect her in her journey through the Afterlife and provide us with the strength to carry on without our queen.”

“Thank you,” Orion and I murmur.

We’ve been blessed with the guidance of our ancestors for untold generations. Covens throughout history have been destroyed by jealous mortals who seek to tear them down. Through the ages, we’ve survived and thrived, thanks to our ancestors. Very few witches are able to communicate with them. Gran was the only one in our coven who could. Now our link to the Afterlife is fractured.

Gramps’s phone chirps. He glances at it quickly before stuffing it back into his pocket. “That was your aunt Roberta. They’re cooking at the house right now.”

Gran’s death hasn’t only been hard on our family but on the coven as a whole. Gran was our Witch Queen, a title that has been passed down through our family for ages. Gran’s bloodline is descended from the strongest Queen in our history—an African woman whose name has since been lost to time. Her power has persisted, though, only strengthening as it descends from mother to daughter to granddaughter.

I have a theory that the power ended with Mom. When she died, she must have taken it with her. That’s the only explanation I have for my own magical woes. I can’t heal the sick or speak to the ancestors.

Ever since Gran’s death, the coven has been without a formal leader. Gramps has stepped into the role unofficially, at least for now.