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ate it, she had to stay with him forever.”
    “I know the story,” I said.
    “Those are the seeds of hell. Now you’ll never again need
the sun to see.”
    The more he sleepwalked, the more his
voice cracked, as if speaking to me from inside a collapsed cavern.
    I gripped the pomegranate in both hands. I saw the demon’s
spider crawling on his neck. Her hair unraveling from the
trees, her hips the hips of a witch.
    “Now,” he said, retrieving a bag of charcoal from the patio,
“I think I’m ready.”
    I whispered, “Okay,” but I knew that, even if he reached
Nirvana through bare feet on burning coals, it wouldn’t save him. He belonged
to her. She who bewitched him with Little B. She who plucked out my cat’s eyes. She who made him reach out for her in the dark.  

 
    ***

 
    Momma came back home a few days later with her selkie skin
shredded and her hair in knots.
    “Lily!” she called, “What have you done to the walls? My
lamp?”
    I kept my hands at my sides. They still smelled of lighter
fluid and charcoal. Momma ricocheted through the kitchen, smearing flour on her
arms and face, flying through broken glass, flowers, and spilled wine. Scraps
of her selkie skin fell to the tiles.  
    “Baby, are you angry with me?” she asked.
    I stepped barefoot on broken glass, and it sliced into my
heel. I stiffened.
    “Why don’t you look at me?” She asked.
    I didn’t want to tell her it was because I thought poison
would drip from her eyes to mine.
    “Look at me.”
    Why did my mother have to be a warrior chartered with
keeping the moon and sun from crashing into each other? Why did she have to
plant an acid seed in my brain, my sister Schizophrenia?
      “Baby,” she
said. “Oh, baby.”
    Her mad red hair shot up to the ceiling. She danced in
mid-air like Jesus.
    “Stop calling me that,” I said.
    I felt dizzy and dry-mouthed, but why?
    “You’re bleeding everywhere.”
    Ah, yes, that was why. Paralyzed from the waist down. My
blood congealed in between my toes.
    Momma caught me before I fell.
    She set me down on a kitchen chair. She spoke but I heard
only a ringing in my ears. She knelt and pulled the glass out of my foot, a
big, bloody shard of glass. From the looks of it, a piece of Momma’s special
Saint-Aignan wine I smashed, spraying it up the walls.
    “There it is,” Momma said. “My Lily’s devil smile.”
    I wanted to ask if she knew Charlie’s parents were
behavioral scientists - and by the way, can you tell that we kissed in your car
and the smoke smell will never come off the leather seats?   And have you seen Pluto lately?
    I lolled my head back, curled my toes. Pluto jumped up onto
my lap. Momma saw her wormwood eyes, the blood on her snout, and stroked her
black fur.
    “Someone’s looking out for you,” she said.
    I imagined the demon, luring the cats of the neighborhood
into the woods, one by one. It was she who tore their eyes out and asked, “Do
you know a girl named Lily?” until she met the one who mewed a soft, “Yes.” My black Pluto.
    At night Charlie chased the demon through the streets as she
taunted him with his teddy bear, laughing, always a step ahead. She lured him
onto my lawn and ran circles around him in the grass, the teddy bear held over
her head. Charlie ran after her with the soles of his bare feet blackened from
walking across burning coals until his legs gave out. He collapsed in the grass
outside, panting up froth, clutching at the sky. He cried for Little B. Always
Little B.
    I threw off my blankets and ran toward the door to go save
him, but the demon slammed her hands against my window. The force reverberated
through my house. I fell backwards into bed, clutching at the sheets.
    She pressed her mouth against the window. She wore the
funereal veil, and bit down on the top of the teddy bear’s head.
    I dreamt, sometimes, that she opened the latch and came into
my room, pale skin wrecking the light, wormwood about to collapse. But instead
of