Page 90 of Scars Like Wings

I shivered despite the bath being magicked to never cool down. Was that a shiver of fear or thrill?

I flipped through the pages. They were all blank aside from indents on the paper. I finished my wine, poured another glass, and pressed my hand on the paper to feel the indents there. So many stories were etched in this book. It’s like I could almost hear their voices through the different handwriting written on top of one another. I wished I could read the stories written there. This was supposed to be my family book with our secrets and nuggets of wisdom. Yet, I couldn’t read a single word of it.

I sighed and leaned back against the tub, taking another sip of wine. My frustration with this book was going to get me freaking wine-drunk.

“I just want to know everything you want to tell me,” I whispered to the book, hand still pressed on a page.

Suddenly, as if hearing my plea, writing inked onto the middle of the page. Against my chest, my necklace warmed even hotter than the steaming water of the bath. Just like before, a spirit wrote in the same stunning, feminine cursive as my mom’s handwriting:

Do you want to know the truth, my baby Byrd?

My hand flattened on the page, as if I could reach out and touch my mom if I just pressed hard enough. How was this happening? Why? After all this time? Was this really Mom talking directly to me, or was it just the book using Mom’s voice? How would either even be possible? Izzy said grimoires serve a purpose for a family and held their secrets. What could be the purpose of this one, then? What secrets could it possibly hold? I was supposed to be human. Humans didn’t have grimoires. Since this wasmygrimoire—myfamily’s grimoire—what did that make me? What did that make Mom and Pops? Would this book tell me what I was?

“I am ready. I want to know the truth,” I said out loud to the book. “What do I need to do?”

As if we were in conversation with each other, the imaginary hand wrote on the other page:Turn the page, my love.

I swallowed half the glass of my wine before putting it down on the caddy. “Cleo? Play lo-fi for reading.”

“You got it! Playing lo-fi hip hop radio—beats to relax/study to! Happy reading!”

I snorted at her salute as Adele’s “Easy On Me” shifted to soft, down-tempo chill hop sounds. I picked up my phone from its perch on the caddy. Maisie and Simone were probably detoxing from the day and wouldn’t reach out until later in the night, if all. Everett was working and would still be out for the next few hours. I shot Quinn a text that I was about to be wrapped up in something and would text her when I was done. With everyone accounted for, I silenced my phone to fully focus. I settled in. Usually, when I was in the bathtub, I was reading a monster romance or some dark romance, so this was definitely different from my normal taste, to say the least.

Byrd, you’re stalling again,I thought.

I sighed.

I took one last hefty gulp of wine.

Then I turned the page.

At first, the pages were the same. But soon, my mother’s handwriting started to form on the page again in thick black ink:

My life both ended and started after Mama died.

With that sentence, the page on the right filled with such vibrance that the open book in front of me looked more like a movie playing in 4K. Color splashed onto the old, dusty page like watercolor, quickly inking its way to fill it. A beautiful black woman materialized on the page. Her back was to me, but I knew that curvy, petite frame that wasn’t much taller or larger than mine now, that dark skin that always seemed to glitter, that afro that would make any natural hair YouTuber squeal at its length.

“Mom.”

Like she had heard me, the woman turned around to meet my eyes with a fiery focus in her dark ones. The Mom within the book was younger, but it didn’t look like much, since Mom always looked like she could pass for her early thirties. She had the same face that was so much like my own, with our samestraight eyebrows, upturned round eyes, nose, high cheekbones, and full lips. Gods, it had been so long since I had seen Mom in motion like this. I had forgotten the little things about her. Like how her eyebrow and lips would always twitch up as if she had a joke on the tip of her tongue. Or how her fingers were always turning her rings around, a nervous tick that I had even inherited. How had I forgotten her smile, how brilliant and contagious it was? Even now, as I cried, I couldn’t resist smiling back at this tiny vision of my mother. It wassomething. It was more than I had gotten in years, the first time I had seen my mother in living color since I lost her. I could have sat here admiring her all day. I placed my hand on the page. It was so warm under my hand, radiating magic that matched the heat from my black stone between my boobs. I felt a strong ache, a hunger, deep within my chest and all the way down past my stomach.

No words would ever be able to describe how much I missed her, how much it hurt that she wasn’t here.

Mom’s smile widened, and she turned back around. She readjusted the violin case in one arm and the three duffel bags on her shoulders before she walked on. A familiar city came to life as more of Mom’s handwriting appeared on the other page.

Mama had been my world. She was all I knew. Without her, all I knew was that I had to find my own way. I couldn’t stay where I grew up—too many memories of her around every bend. So, I packed up my violin, my family’s grimoire, a few clothes and trinkets, and the small fortune my mother had left behind for me—a bag of gold, jewels, and money that would leave me and anyone else I wanted beside me set for life no matter what I decided to do.

I decided to settle in Blackbell. The city called to me like the Northern Star. It wasn’t far from where I grew up, but the city and her magic made it feel worlds away. If it wasn’t forBlackbell, the pain might have engulfed me. People say grief is like an ocean, drowning you.

They are wrong. It’s like fire, slowly burning you from the inside out until it consumes you. Even if you put it out, the burns and agony remain to always remind you that you are scarred.

The page flipped on its own, and Mom’s handwriting started up again, captioning the story.

I went to college at Everlore University. I met Everett there at a party. I drank too much that night, but so did Everett. He was dancing on a table, and I wanted to join him up there. He helped me up, we started to dance together, and we clicked immediately. We remained inseparable from then on.

On the right, a picture blossomed in ink. Mom was scantily clad in a very 80s but sexy outfit that I would definitely wear to a themed party now. She held a red Solo cup in one hand, and she clutched someone else’s hand just out of frame of the page. Then the person hoisted her up onto a table. When they did, I saw that it was Everett, young and in a neon windbreaker suit that holleredtotally tubular. I giggled seeing him with a mullet going down to his shoulders.

Oh, he was about to beflamedalive when he got home.