The Invocations

by Krystal Sutherland

Before, Zara used to think that if anything ever happened to Savannah, she would cross into the afterlife and snatch her back from the jaws of death—and then something did happen to Savannah, and Zara discovered that she was powerless.

Death stumped her in a way that nothing else ever had. Sure, she grasped the fundamentals: the cessation of electrons in her sister’s brain, the process of decay, the dispersion of Savannah’s atoms back into the universe. Fine. But how could Savannah be gone? It didn’t compute. Still, now, when she thinks about it, it fails entirely to make sense.

“I did not come this far to only come this far,”

Becherovka,

They burned the house to the ground.