Saint Juniper's Folly by Alex Crespo

Author:Alex Crespo
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781682635780
Publisher: Holiday House
Published: 2023-03-06T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 17

TAYLOR

THE BARE LIGHT BULB overhead took a minute to reach its full brightness, but the closet was still so dim that Theo and I had to hover at the door and squint to make out what was what.

The smell of dust and warm cotton filled my nose as I peeked at a bin of my mom’s old clothes. Flashes of maroon silk and worn denim and black velvet hit me with a tidal wave of nostalgia that I pushed down as best I could. This isn’t why you’re here, I reminded myself sternly, my resolve already on dangerously thin ice.

“Where do you think he put it?” Theo asked quietly beside me.

I made sure the lump in my throat was under control before I responded. “Your guess is as good as mine.”

A pile of cardboard boxes in the back of the closet marked MISC seemed like a decent enough place to start. My mom had never left her grimoire unattended, not even for even a few minutes, so I only had the barest memory of the brown leather-bound book to guide my search. I gave Theo the best description I could, and we dove in.

To anyone else, these boxes were full of disorganized junk. But I saw the meaning and value behind every memento and saved scrap of paper. There was a tarnished necklace I’d gotten her from a vending machine on a road trip, a handful of the hair ties she never seemed to have enough of, a pot of her favorite lip balm that reminded me of sticky forehead kisses.

In the months since my mom had passed, I’d made it my mission to keep my chin up. But being surrounded by her things was the ultimate test, and I was dangerously close to failing. Just like Jaime and I had talked about, coming to terms with my mom’s death wasn’t a difficult process, it was an impossible, soul-crushing mission I wasn’t sure I’d ever successfully complete. In that little walk-in closet, her absence was inescapable, and if Theo hadn’t been there, I might have slammed the door shut and run.

But then my fingers brushed a leather-bound spine, and I paused. Wedged between a stack of envelopes and a map of Massachusetts, there was a thick notebook, falling apart at the seams. As I pulled it gingerly from the clutter, I recognized the strange, labyrinthine etchings on the cover. I’d never gotten a good enough look at them to puzzle out what they represented, but now I could clearly see that the twists and curls were the edges of a storm cloud wrapping around the branches of a massive tree.

I cracked the grimoire open and started to leaf through it, equal parts invigorated and shell-shocked. In the dim yellow light, I could barely make out the writing that spiraled tightly across each page, traversing the margins and squeezing between drips of candle wax. The handwriting toward the front of the book wasn’t my mom’s. As I flipped through the

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