Silverthorn by Sydney Bristow

he’d even consider following me to strip club, but I couldn’t tell whether he and Alexis had been keeping in touch.
    I followed Alexis as she veered down a tributary of the hallway before stopping at the third dressing room on the right. She opened it, stepped inside, and motioned me to enter. I walked in, unsurprised by the makeshift dressing room.
    Two transparent cases full of make-up lay on a scarred wooden desk across from us. Above it, a flimsy and filmy circular mirror was attached to the table. The rolling leather chair with cigarette burns scattered across it supported the outfit that Alexis had worn on stage only moments ago.
    “What do you want?” asked Alexis. “Payback for killing you?” She stopped behind the door, rummaging through her purse on the coat rack. Obviously, after killing me last week before Celestina brought me back to life, she didn’t regard me as a threat. My sister pulled out a roll of chapstick and applied it.
    I pushed aside my fears that she might try to kill me again, since she acted as if I were more of a nuisance than a threat, which I appreciated, since she’d proved that she could end my life with little effort. Furthermore, I understood why she killed me. She’d done so to protect them from me. If the circumstances were reversed and Alexis tried to murder Grams (before she died, that is), I probably would have done the same thing. Not only that, but Celestina was a good kid. Her kind and sunny disposition were in stark contrast to her mother and grandmother, but I suspected that she picked up some of her good traits from Alexis.
    “I don’t want payback. You’re obviously better with magic than I am. And I’m okay with that. But here’s what I’m not okay with, I just had a run-in with Darius.”
    “Yeah?” she asked, disinterested.
    “He tried to rip my head off.” I waited for a response, but Alexis kept looking through her purse. “I torched him, but he recuperates quickly.”
    “Huh,” said Alexis, obviously paying little attention to me. “What did he say about that?”
    I tramped down on my frustration. “Maybe he’ll send me a ‘thank you’ card.”
    “Cool!” Alexis turned away from the coat rack and went over to table behind her. She bent over a bouquet of flowers and inhaled. “Carnations. They smell amazing.” She turned toward me with a smile. “Go on…catch a whiff.”
    “What I said doesn’t worry you?”
    She stared at me, expressionless. “No. There’s nothing I can do about it.”
    “Are you and Darius buddies or something? I barely escaped from that maniac.”
    “I’m sure he had good reason for trying to kill you. I sure did.”
    “Yeah, he wanted the Soul Sword.”
    “See? Told you.”
    Since explaining the obvious and impersonal didn’t get me anywhere, I decided to try a different tactic to get her attention. “How can you go on stage, wearing practically nothing? It’s demeaning and it objectifies women.”
    Alexis scoffed, grabbed her cell phone, and began texting someone. “Did you see Magic Mike ? Do you know how the women in the theater responded? Whooping and hollering. They acted as if they were in a strip club. That movie objectified men. Did they care? Did the women watching the screen care?”
    She made some good points. I looked for another way to incite some intensity in her, so she’d open up to me. “Celestina visited me last night…at 2:00AM.”
    My sister swung around toward me. “What?” She hurried to the desk and grabbed her phone. She gripped the phone so tightly that her forearm bicep flexed. “She snuck out of the house?”
    “Yep. Took a cab. She was scared.”
    “About what?” She stomped up to me, eyes wide. “Why would she sneak out of the house?”
    “She’s scared of Zephora.”
    “Why? Did my daughter have nightmares about her?”
    I shook my head. “Zephora’s back.”
    “Little Miss University.” Dispirited, with all trace of irritation gone, she chuckled. “Grasping at