Auggie Cipriano didn't remember his mother being quite so insistent in life. She'd been a little distracted and cloudy at times, but that was expected for a medium who embraced her gift. But now that she was dead, Auggie was finding it impossible to ignore her, especially when she was insisting he go to one very specific place. That was how he wound up in the spooky little town of Harmony Virginia, hauling his Airstream trailer with him. He wasn't a stranger to the town. He

Kunal Sadaram untied his apron, smoothing it as he hung it up behind the door of the kitchens. The wall next to the door had neat rows of a hook-and-cubby system devised by Divya, the elder of his two younger sisters, to keep everyone’s belongings neat, tidy, and perfectly in line. It was a reflection of her life. As Kunal looked at his sparse cubby, he thought it was also a reflection of his own: organized but empty. It wasn’t too fair to come down hard on himself for not fi

Illustrated by Aisha Akeju Julia Roberts was right. I should never have kissed him. The circumstances may have been different, but it amounted to the same thing. 'Don't kiss on the mouth' was just a way of saying 'don't let feelings get involved.' I should have listened. Falling in love was not supposed to be part of the job. It's late when I get the text, but it doesn't matter. I don't sleep like I used to anymore. Late nights on the job mean if I'm in bed at 1 a.m., it's ea

Walking into the halls of Martin Luther King High School was like coming home, and that wasn't really a good thing. Home was full of reasons I didn't want to be there, and school wasn't any different. This was supposed to be better, even though I knew that was a load of shit my mom told me to get me to pack up my stuff and leave in Dad's beat-up old Corolla. It was Dad's house, Dad's rules, Dad's decisions, or it was military school. At first I thought my mom was full of shit

This excerpt (and the rest of the story) is not safe for work. It's halftime. I can hear my blood pounding in my ears almost loud enough to drown out the screaming crowd and cheerleaders, before the noises dissolve into the halftime show. Coach is patting me on the back, and on some level his words sink into my head, make some kind of sense, but I'm not listening to him; not really anyway. I'm looking for Moon, but not with my eyes. I never need eyes to see him. I can feel hi

"Again." Cal's eyes stung as sweat poured into them, but he didn't so much as raise a hand to wipe his brow. He could feel Sir Taren Veretti's eyes on him and he refused to look weak. So he blinked the sweat away as rapidly as he could, took his stance, and lunged again. Once again his thrust was easily parried, but this time Taren slapped the blade further to the right, slid into close range, and smacked the flat of the blade against his stomach. "Hit. Were I an enemy, Cal C