Born Of Two Moons

e scrub at a time, on more Saturdays than I could remember. Today I was counting them again

glasses Mom only brought out for company, the thump of music someone kept turning up

le? Brielle, sweetheart,

or eighteen years, and I could not reme

lived in the house but never quite in the family. I had stopped asking why around the age of ten. There

every table. It was that I had never matched any of them. I was pale in a way no summer could fix, wi

That was another thing

across the counter in an envelope. "Get yourself something," he'd said, already lookin

wipe the sweat from my forehead. The chain around m

neck for as long as I could remember. When I was little, Dad had told me it was "some cheap trinket we found in your blanket," and he never mentioned it

bucket, and th

ever noticed had let go. Then the locket hit the tile with a crack that was far t

ond I cou

king through my jeans, my heart pounding as if I'd dr

as w

lm, and a thin seam I had never been able to find slid open on its own wi

should have run into the li

, and some quiet part

ched it between two fingers, and it unfolded as if it wanted to be read. The ink was dark, the

rling

to me, and yet something in my chest turned over, slow

d enough to bear the truth. I am sorry I could not give it t

a creature of the night, and the love between us was forbidden by bot

A creature of the night. It sounded like one of those stories Brielle's friends

s wouldn't

ad no name for, like rain on old stone and a night that hadn't ended ye

ademy. Go there. Find out who you are. Find out what they

o close, as if there were no wall between us. I could pick out each voice, even the whis

g," Brielle said. "It

cause everything inside me had gone strangely quiet

except for one thin line along the edge of the back plate, where it didn't sit qui

e letter. There was

you, Aurelia, don't tru

a long, desperate stroke, as if t

and a faint tear in the corner where the paper had been gr

the ones who

you? Know you? A

empty kitchen. Somewhere in the back of my mind a small voice whispered that this was a prank, a mistake,

he kitchen d

sharp and impatient.

nd the locket. For the first time in