By the third straight hour of Chicago rain since her shift started that morning, Junie was close to finishing her fourth espresso shot. She drank it quickly in between customers with their own caffeine needs, no time for her to savor the flavor. Rain like this always brought a rush to the coffee shop, and they were short staffed this morning.
“Large matcha latte today, please. Extra hot,” the next woman in line fished her phone out of her bag while her toddler stood beside her, swishing her small pink umbrella back and forth.
“Sure thing, Candace,” Junie replied with a tired smile, tapping the order into the register. The little girl peeked up at her, wide-eyed but calm. The crowded shop and long queue didn't seem too overwhelming for her.
For Junie, however, the constant flow of orders were starting to mix together in her mind. She started heating milk for the latte, the milk hissing as she brought up the heat and foam. In one corner of the cafe, someone dropped a saucer that clattered then shattered on the floor. Beside her, another barista was repeating a complicated order back before keying it into the register. Before the milk was up to the extra hot temperature Candace liked, a teenager started asking Junie how to refill the creamer on the bar.
Junie struggled to hold each thing happening in her mind before responding to the teen's question. She finished the milk first, and rushed to set it down on the counter. In her confusion, the hot milk slipped the edge of the counter. It started to fall.
And time slowed.
She watched it fall, spiraling slowly. The froth began to escape out first as the steel cup lazily made its way to the floor. In its own time. All the chaos in the shop slowed, too, and the slow music began to drag its notes out even further. Junie's breath caught. The milk hadn't fully crashed down. Not yet. As sound stretched, warped around her, Junie plucked the cup from the air and set it properly back on the counter as she'd meant to do in the first place.
Then everything around her snapped back to normal.
Junie blinked, breath catching in her throat. No one else around acted as if anything unusual had happened.
"Oh man, nice catch." The teenager grinned. But Junie was suddenly aware of a man waiting. He was watching her closely.
He stood near the pickup counter, coat still damp, hands in his pockets. Tall, with attentive eyes that seemed sure to miss nothing. He had shoulder length hair pulled back in a small, tight ponytail, slicked down with rain. Junie looked away quickly, heat rushing to her cheeks.
When she glanced back, he was gone.
The rain and her nerves followed her home that afternoon. Juniper Lockewell stood under the overhang of a battered front porch, hood drawn, two keys in her hand. One was large and brass, old-fashioned. The other was a plain silver key with a paper tag reading "Lockewell" dangling off the side. She held them up to her sisters like a punchline.
"Pick a key, any key," she said.
Jade rolled her eyes, arms folded under a leather satchel. "Just open the door. I’m soaked."
Jasmine, balanced on the bottom of the railing along the front steps, grinned from beneath a wide-brimmed rain hat. "Ooh, mystery key challenge. I like it."
"It's not a mystery. The big one is for the security latch at the bottom of the door, and the other is the regular lock," Jade said.
Junie rolled her eyes, but knelt first to the lock on the lower right edge of the door. She hadn't even seen it.
With both locks undone, the door creaked open. An old but pleasant smell rolled out - like a library or antique shop. The three sisters stepped through the doorway and into the foyer. High ceilings, dark wood paneling, and a rainbow across the floor from the stained glass of the entry, despite the rain.
"Okay," Junie said, stepping inside. "This is... a lot."
By evening, the house was chaos. Boxes spilled open in every room. Junie had taken the smallest bedroom under protest, while Jade claimed the main bedroom. Jasmine was setting up a cot in the sunroom purely for its "vibe," but declared the third bedroom/study conversion as her redesign project.
They ordered pizza for dinner, and argued over what could be causing the lack of hot water.
"Do you think it's cursed?" Jasmine asked while she picked olives off a slice.
"Not cursed, just old." Jade, a professor or archaeology at U Chicago, was secretly thrilled with moving into the Victorian house. She loved places with character like this. "This place has history, not ghosts." No one argued, but Jasmine did not look convinced.
Junie kept to herself mostly, unpacking slowly in between some garlic knots, overwhelmed by the noise and motion. Her thoughts spiraled. Too many decisions. Too many voices. Her right hand wandered to her left and began to spin her rings around her fingers.
It was Jade who first found the attic.
She’d been investigating the bookshelves in the upstairs study (Jasmine's future bedroom-to-be) and a small portrait of a young, curly haired woman caught her attention. She picked up the portrait and she found concealed behind it, a small lever.
Jade never hesitated. She pulled the lever.
The book shelf swung forward easily, balanced to pivot smoothly with the force she applied to the lever. A ladder stood behind. Jade mentally congratulated herself on the discovery. "No ghosts, just history," she murmured.
At the top of a ladder: dust, spiderwebs, and a small room with a pitched ceiling following the lines of the roof. A single steamer trunk sat in the corner.
Jade flipped on her phone's flashlight, and crossed to investigate the trunk. The old drawbolt lock on the trunk opened easily under her hands. Inside was a tumble of old books and paper, some small parcels and bottles, and a velvet jewelry box. Jade reached for the small velvet box while her mind jumped ahead to how she could best organize and look through these old documents. While she mentally added cleaning and sorting this attic to her growing to-do list, she opened the box. Inside, nestled in a dark burgundy velvet, was a silver locket.
Jade picked up the locket for a closer look, but the moment her fingers touched the silver, she threw her head back and staggered.
A vision: Two women in long cloaks, one with dark, curly hair, one red-headed, standing in a candlelit circle. They pressed matching lockets into each other’s palms. One wore a cursive 'L' embroidered on her overcoat.
Jade gasped, the attic swimming around her. The vision faded.
The three sisters regrouped in the living room, hovering around the last scraps of pizza and a single working floor lamp that Junie set up.
"You did not seriously faint," Jasmine said.
"It wasn’t fainting," Jade muttered. "It was... a flash. A memory? Just not my memory."
Junie rubbed her arms. "It feels weird in here tonight. Like the house is listening."
The rain had not given up outside. And wind had begun to whistle in the unlit fireplace.
Then the front door creaked open.
Junie felt it before she heard it. A shift. A tug at the edge of her senses. Her breath hitched.
The door drifted wider, letting in cold air and smattering rain.
"Close it," Jade shouted.
But Junie was frozen. Something was... off. The light bent at the edges of her vision.
Jasmine began to make for the door, to close the rain back outside. But she seemed to Junie as though she were moving through water, each step stretching long even though she should be rushing. The sound of the rain falling against the floor slowed and dropped to a lower pitch. But then Junie felt Jade grab her hand, and time snapped back to its normal pace.
Jasmine slammed the door shut.
Silence, except the rain.
Junie looked down at Jade’s other hand. In her palm, the front of the locket caught the light faintly across its face.
Jade stared at it, her face drawn and pale. "I saw him. A man with long hair. He killed someone. A woman - her hair was all black and blue curls. He stabbed her with a silver dagger."
Junie and Jasmine stared at her. Jasmine spoke first. "Who was she?"
Jade whispered, "I don’t know. But I think... I think she was like us."
The sisters sat in the flickering light, the house creaking softly around them, and the city beyond.
"Like us how?" Junie whispered.
Jade looked up at her sisters.
"Witchy."
Outside, the rain continued to fall.