A Maze of Glass, Chapter Twenty Two, Pt. 3
The weekend after the ritual, Sung-ho invited everyone to the summer house. The Park family arrived first, of course, on Thursday, with a nine-year-old Hyun-jung buried in a fantasy novel. Leo arrived Friday morning, a case of mid-range whiskey in his trunk, and Tanisha followed that afternoon, fresh from Decomp after a run in Texas. Valley, a gargantuan white guy with bright blond hair whose real name Zoe could never remember, arrived last, after sunset on Friday when everyone else—except for Jill and Hyun-jung—had already started drinking. Valley didn’t drink anymore, for reasons unexplained, but he did smoke weed. Sung-ho clarified that the smoking of anything, weed or otherwise, would only happen on the deck and in his den.
Daniel Briar-Smythe, their father, never made an appearance. For their mother’s part, Sylvia Briar projected a multi-sensory pseudo-hologram of herself into the kitchen. Whatever she’d used to fuel the complicated arrangement of spells to make it happen, she’d only given enough fuel to keep things stable for six minutes. Sylvia hugged both of her daughters—extra labor spent to make her illusion tactile—and congratulated Jill on pulling off such a difficult and dangerous spell.
Sylvia offered to move Jill into a small guest house on her property in Short Hills. “I don’t mean any offense,” she’d said, “I’m just not sure Manhattan is a good place for you, right now.”
Jill’s face had fallen, but she’d nodded. “Yeah. Maybe not.”
Nobody else knew how to reply. The moment passed. The celebration continued.
Night went on. Seo-yeon managed to get Hyun-jung to bed with minimal help from her husband. Everyone drank until buzz became sloppiness; everyone excepting Valley and Jill, at least. Even Leo imbibed more than usual, never quite becoming drunk but veering broadly in that direction.
At some point between one and three in the morning, as the party began its natural decline, Zoe walked through one of the halls she’d barricaded for the purposes of the ritual and passed through a glass door onto the deck. Behind her, Tanisha and Leo laughed at something. Ahead of her, Sung-ho sat alone on a lawn chair, a scotch in his healing hand and a cigar in his other. He turned slightly as she approached, revealing the moon reflected in sunglasses.
“You’re just wearing those to make me ask why,” she observed, sipping her own mid-range bourbon.
“Pffft,” Sung-ho snorted in reply, turning back to peer at the trees, the sky, the moon.
Zoe walked up to one of the other five empty lawn chairs lining the railing of the deck. “This seat taken?”
“You think I’m out here partying with ghosts? Go ahead, sit.”
She sat, leaning back. “How do you feel?”
“Eh, my hand still hurts. You?”
“Back still hurts. Other than that…”
“Other than that, I feel good,” Sung-ho said.
Zoe followed Sung-ho’s shaded gaze out to the night. Insects chirred and sang in the woods. The moon glimmered between skinny clouds. Swirling her bourbon in its glass, she took a deep breath and sank into her seat. Her mind wandered back to the Manifestation’s trap, the way Jill had found the strength within the spell and within herself to take control of things. With Jill having over one hundred days clean, Zoe wondered if she should give up smoking, at least. The nic fits had subsided and the lingering impulses had weakened almost beyond notice.
She didn’t, of course. But she wondered about it.
Sung-ho puffed the cigar cherry back to life and exhaled rings of smoke. Chasing the cigar with the scotch, he angled his face to look at Zoe over the rim of his sunglasses. “Want to know what’s up with these shades?”
Zoe laughed. “I get the feeling you want to tell me.”
Sung-ho smirked. “It’s ‘cause the future’s so bright.”
Zoe laughed again.
But nothing stayed bright forever. Just as nothing stayed dark.
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