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BEFORE

Sugar and Salt

In Gatlin, it’s funny how the good things are all tied up with the bad Sometimes it’s hard to tell which is which But either way, you end up taking your sugar with your salt and your kicks with your kisses, as Amma would say

I don’t know if it’s like that everywhere I only know Gatlin, and this is what I know: By the tiot back topassed along with the collection plate was that the Bluebird Café had stopped serving up ha down, and so froation was still shuffling down the carpeted aisles in what my mom used to call Red Cross shoes With all the purple knees puffing up where the knee-highs ended, it felt like a whole sea of legs was holding its breath At least I was

But the Sisters still propped their hyes with their curled knuckles, wadded up handkerchiefs buried in the spotted roses of their hands Nothing kept the the melody, loud and shrill, as they tried to drown one another out Except Aunt Prue She accidentally hit on a real harmony about three notes out of three hundred, but nobody e, and s, like Aunt Prue, were meant to be off-key

It was as if this summer had never happened, and ere safe within these walls Like nothing but the thick, colored sunlight strealass s could force its way in here Not Abraha and his Blood Pack Not Lena’s et past the fierce hospitality of the ushers handing out progra and the choir would keep on singing, because nothing short of the apocalypse could keep folks in Gatlin out of church or each other’s business

But outside these walls, this su, in both the Caster and Mortal worlds, even if the folks in Gatlin didn’t know it Lena had Claiht and Dark and split the Seventeenth Moon A battle between Demons and Casters had ended in death on both sides and opened a crack in the Order of Things the size of the Grand Canyon What Lena had done was the Caster equivalent of s the Ten Commandments I wondered what the folks in Gatlin would think about that, if they’d ever know I hoped they wouldn’t

This town used to make me feel claustrophobic, and I hated it Now it feltI wouldNo one knew that better than I did

Sugar and salt and kicks and kisses The girl I loved had come back to me and broken the world That’s what actually happened this summer

We’d seen the last of has But we’d seen the start of so, too

The beginning of the End of Days

907

Linkubus

I was standing on the top of the white water toith my back to the sun My headless shadow fell across the ware and into the sky I could see Su out before me, all the way to the lake, from Route 9 to Gatlin This had been our happy place,happy I felt like I was going to throw up

My eyes atering, but I didn’t knohy Maybe it was the light

Come on, already It’s time

I clenched and unclenchedout at the tiny houses, the tiny cars, and the tiny people—waiting for it to happen The dread churned inThen the fa the air out ofme down to the , and I stu to throw him off

Who are you?

But the harder I swung, the harder he hit me The next punch landed in my stomach, and I doubled over That’s when I saw them

His black Chucks They were so old and beat-up, they could have been mine

What do you want?