Violet Skies

Previously

…Starla wrapped the Key in the rag and locked it in her desk drawer. She turned off the lamp and stood in the dim apartment, the only light coming from the stained-glass window that faced the alley. Her reflection stared back at her from the dark glass of her laptop screen—a woman with her grandmother's cheekbones and her mother's guarded eyes. She didn't sleep that night. She sat at her kitchen table until dawn, watching the glass photograph shift through its silent colors, waiting for something to happen. It didn't. But she knew, with a certainty that settled deep in her gut, that she had woken something up.