M.L. Rio

alchemic creatures composed of incendiary elements, emotion and ego and envy. Heat them up, stir them together, and sometimes you get gold. Sometimes disaster

Instead he was handsome the way you think of the devil as handsome—forbiddingly so.

Wren: “By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes!”

LL: “Double double, toil and trouble;
Fire burn and cauldron bubble—
Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf,
Witches’ mummy, maw and gulf…”

ALL: “Double double, toil and trouble,
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.
Cool it with a baboon’s blood,
Then the charm is firm and good.”

Meredith was much admired but also much envied, and any misstep of hers was jealously savored by at least a few

I need language to live, like food—lexemes and morphemes and morsels of meaning nourish me with the knowledge that, yes, there is a word for this

He paused, gazing upward in soft surprise, sadness like drops of blue in both his eyes. Then he sighed and, smiling, shook his head.

James was in love with Wren, and I was blindly, savagely jealous.

acters we played as if they were our own.