The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches

by Sangu Mandanna

Oh. Oh, no. He’d pushed the sleeves of his white button-down shirt up past his elbows. She could see his forearms. Forearms were invariably her ruin.

Niceness is all about what we do when other people are looking. Kindness, on the other hand, runs deep. Kindness is what happens when no one’s looking.”

“I could have another hundred years with Ken and still want more,” Ian said simply.

“It’s not always enough to go looking for the place we belong,” Jamie said, his eyes on the house ahead. “Sometimes we need to make that place.”

It’s a leap of faith to love people and let yourself be loved. It’s closing your eyes, stepping off a ledge into nothing, and trusting that you’ll fly rather than fall.

Danger rarely wore a monstrous face and a wielded a pitchfork. No, danger came most often in the form of people like Edward, the nice people whose niceness only went so deep, who saved their niceness for people exactly like them, who believed they were more deserving of power and respect than anyone who was a little bit different.