The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches

by Sangu Mandanna

She was so aggravatingly, relentlessly sunshiney. And, like the actual sun, she seemed determined to nurture every green or living thing in sight. It was absurd.

Before-Jamie’s glass had been more than half-full. He hadn’t looked for the worst in people. He’d trusted that even when things went to hell in a fucking handbasket, everything would turn out okay in the end. After-Jamie knew better.

Nowhere House was shifting in Mika’s mind. The new Nowhere House was messier than the first, a place made up of fractured pieces that, somehow, had come together to make something whole and wonderful.

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.”

“Mika has been so deeply hurt that she has taught herself to run before she can lay down roots, but the thing you have to remember, Jamie, is that when someone leaves, all you can do is leave a window open for them so that one day, if they choose, they can come back.”

She tasted like sea salt and sugar, and lightning, too, if lightning had a taste. The cold wind, the past and the future, the terrible secrets he had been guarding—none of it mattered. Christ, he was drowning, and he didn’t ever want to come back to the surface.

“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.”