More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Read between
January 1 - January 4, 2022
Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too, was a
gift.
My mother once told me a girl’s success in this world was dependent on how well she could pretend.
A body with my sewing shears buried five inches deep in its neck.
“Your test results have returned,” she trills, “and we are so terribly sorry to inform you of your tuberculosis diagnosis.”
“Haxahaven.
HAXAHAVEN SANITARIUM
TURN BACK FOR THE SAFETY OF YOURSELF AND OTHERS.
“Welcome,” she says, with a flourish of her gloved hand, “to Haxahaven Academy.”
Our mother used to say there was something about the middle of the night that always made things seem worse than they were.
Magic. I have magic.
If thousands of years of history have taught us one thing, it is that the world is not kind to women who possess power.
Her answer makes me angry. How completely predictable, how infuriatingly boring that women with magic can be so easily intimidated by ordinary men with guns and
matches.
“A magic book buried in the park, revealing itself to us the same night Frances was supposed to meet a murderer in the woods,”
She reaches out and traces her fingers gingerly over the words stamped in faded gold on the black leather cover; The Elemental it reads.
“The Resurrection.”
Four objects are drawn and carefully labeled. A scrying mirror, a vial of graveyard dust, a hairbrush marked item belonging to the deceased, and a dagger labeled Freagarthach.
“Women are supposed to be competent at everything, but experts at nothing. Haven’t you heard?”
“Two might not be a pattern, but three is. Sheepshead Bay is the same beach where they found my brother.”
“The Founding Fathers stole the model of democracy from the Iroquois Confederacy, bastardized it, and everyone called them geniuses. These women are
doing more of the same. Only certain kinds of people get to be equal.”
“Welcome to the Bizarre Bazaar, ladies.
was once a student at a place called the Thomas School.
Every witch who ever burned was once a girl just like you, one who thought she could change the world.”
The women in this room exist only in their relationship to men: mothers, daughters, wives. But the men are simply men, and their power is never stronger than when they give themselves a fancy room, a podium, and a seemingly endless supply of cash.
Suddenly her neck snaps sharply to the left, and she crumples like a rag doll onto the fine entryway floor.
“What did you do, Finn?” It comes out as a whisper.
It was Finn who killed my brother.
His green eyes flutter open.
