“Why are you always making shit up? That’s what I mean by weird.” Janet was speaking loudly, but Kaye could barely hear her over the wind and the sound of her own laughter. “Like he slit his wrists in a bathtub and the blood is all over the water.” “No, what?” Janet said, holding the lipgloss out to Kaye.

There was only a little more than a slice of red where the sea met the sky. “You know what the sun looks like?” Kaye asked. And we’re much more likely to find them”-her voice dropped conspiratorially-“while swimming naked in the Atlantic a week before Halloween than practically anywhere else I can think of.” “Why bother with that? Let’s find incubi.” “It’s not that I want you to be a certain way-don’t you want a boyfriend?” Kaye paused and seemed to be listening intently, her upturned, kohl-rimmed eyes watching Janet as warily as a cat’s. Kaye, when we get there, you have to be cool. “The water’s freezing,” Janet said, sighing, “and your hair is fucked up. Everything smelled wet and feral like it did before a thunderstorm, and she wanted to run, swift and eager, beyond the edge of what she could see. She was giddy with night air, burning like the white-hot moon.

Her boots had sand stuck to the tops of them. Kaye spun up to her, fake leopard coat flying open, a run already in her stocking. Janet dug through her tiny purse and pulled out a wand of strawberry lipgloss. Rust marks above an abandoned storefront outlined the words SALT WATER TAFFY. Even the arcades were shut down, prizes in the claw machines still visible through the cloudy glass windows. The cheap hotels they passed were long closed and boarded up, their pools drained and cracked. She liked the sea being so close and the air not stinging her throat. She loved the big old house caked with dust and mothballs. Kaye and her mother had been staying at her grandmother’s a week already, and even though Ellen kept saying they’d be leaving soon, Kaye knew they really had nowhere to go. Janet exhaled ghosts of blue smoke and took another drag on her cigarette. Her glitter makeup sparkled under the street lamps. She stepped over the overflowing, leaf-choked gutter, wobbling slightly on fat-heeled platform shoes. She spun again, dizzily, not caring that her skirt was flying up over the tops of her black thigh-high stockings. She loved the serene brutality of the ocean, loved the electric power she felt with each breath of wet, briny air. It was so good to be able to breathe, Kaye thought. The moon was high and pale in the sky, but the sun was just going down. Waves tossed themselves against the shore, dragging grit and sand between their nails as they were slowly pulled back out to sea. The air was heavy and stank of drying mussels and the crust of salt on the jetties. Kaye spun down the worn, gray planks of the boardwalk. MINA LOY, “MOREOVER, THE MOON,” THE LOST LUNAR BAEDEKER

Tithe holly black series