Just as Joanie felt her fingers brush something small and metal, the redhead began to make her stomach turn. And this wasn't the normal "you sicken me with your stupid" stomach turning, either. This was the slow, creeping horror that something else was going on without her knowledge, and that it very well might start taking over her life. Taking a deep breath, she looked up at the girl, her expression a mixture of loathing and fear.
"My only sister is dead" whispered in her mind, a quiet reminder of the word vomit that had gushed from her lips on that crazy night. She closed her eyes briefly, trying to forget how her guts had wrenched when she thought that. Joanie had no sisters. She was a peach-colored, bad Wiccan only child that muttered curses secure in the knowledge that nothing would come of them. And yet there she stood, remembering clearly the clover hue of her skin and that dead sister she never knew, whispering magic words to turn hats into frogs.
The answer was sitting on her tongue, too toxic for her to swallow. But this girl, this ridiculously pretty and polite and horrible girl was standing there, shoving that answer down her throat. Checkered dresses and scarecrows weren't particularly common, and neither was being green and magical. It had to be a coincidence.
There were no coincidences in Bellum.
With a sneer, Joanie closed her hand around the key she had finally found, unable to feel any sense of victory as she shoved it into the lock of her mailbox. "You're the only one I know of to get an inanimate object friend," she said coldly as she jiggled the key in the lock, clicking it open. "So a piece of advice. Next time you want to take a trip, put on Dark Side of the Moon instead."