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First thing you ought to know is just because the Army says my brother is dead doesn’t mean he is. I’m counting on them being right about the gravesite and the body being intact-ish. Otherwise, Casey could be slowly suffocating in an entirely different cemetery. Maybe even buried back in Afghanistan. In which case my cousin Versal and I will be desecrating graves for nothing.

If I allowed color anywhere in my world it would have been in this sliver of a space—a galley kitchen in a tiny one-bedroom apartment full of beige carpet, white walls and white banker boxes. Perhaps it would have been safe to let the Honeycrisp apples tucked in the refrigerator crisper sit on the kitchen counter cradled in a sunlight yellow bowl.

“Pay particular attention to the coffee service,” I said, pausing to hold my breath as my dress zipped itself. That had been a very tricky spell to get right. “We have the seating plan for the dinner, but who knows where they’ll sit in the drawing room. Keep an eye out for the coat-fetching spell as well. I reinforced it yesterday but I can’t be sure how it will stand up to this many guests.”

Warm breath tickled his nose, a rumbling carpet pressed against his mouth, and Martin tasted stale fur and icicles.

It wasn’t simple misfortune that the thirteenth daughter in the line came to be called Gretel.

Hope Towers, the first and only child born to the greatest super-hero team on the planet, was recording an album. She’d been raised by the heroes who pushed Abaddon the Destroyer into the void between worlds; the heroes who could stop hurricanes from turning, and who could defeat monsters the size of mountains. She was, from the moment of her birth, the most famous person in the entire world. And she asked tiny EachPeach Studios to record her first album.

In the morning, I find my daughter gone. She is my hundred-and-second daughter, but my heart aches all the same. The fire has died out in my pit, the hut filled with the smoke of yesterday’s warmth, cloying and pungent. I pull back the ragged curtains and see her in the mud, a mess of wings and threads of silks that have not yet dissolved.

Caesar parked his AquariCart™ behind the strip mall after hours, in among the recycling bins. His eight arms conferred, then cooperated to crawl him out of the cart’s water bowl. His most inquisitive arm retrieved a screwdriver from the tool compartment, and he climbed to the nearest ventilation shaft.

The wedding chapel had a neon sign outside and a slot machine in the foyer. I'd been in Las Vegas too long. This setup didn't even rate an eyeroll.

Kiki Hernández, rock legend of the Southwest, had seven devils on her tail.