Small town big magic a w.., p.33
Small Town, Big Magic--A Witchy Rom-Com, page 33
Drip feeding my opinions on this literal dickweasel so I laughed him off and considered him nothing more than a punchline. A joke. Annoying but never dangerous.
Maybe the only thing that changed here is that Skip branched out on his own and started using black magic. The kind Mommy can’t clean up.
But outwardly, I’m nodding along with her. “Of course,” I murmur. “Boys will be boys. Especially grown ones.”
“Have a good day now, Emerson,” Carol says.
I feel that like a bookend. The finish line of her spell.
“You too, Carol,” I say brightly. “Thanks for stopping by. I so appreciate your support. I’m excited about tourist season this year. We’re really going to put St. Cyprian on the map.”
“I can’t wait,” she says warmly, and for a moment she looks like the benevolent, faintly frazzled, yet always formidable grande dame of St. Cyprian’s founding families that I’ve always thought she was.
And by always, I mean while scrubbed of my magic. By her.
I remember that too. I feel it. And there’s a kind of grief in me that swells up then, because that Carol isn’t real. She was never real. It’s not like I confused her for a mother figure, but I had a certain affection for the woman. She represented the best of St. Cyprian to me. I thought we shared the love of this town, at the very least.
I don’t wait for Carol to do something else. I bustle back behind the counter and start tidying the area around the computer and register. I do a great rendition of my former self, who would have been—who was—totally unaware of it every time Carol “encouraged” me.
And it’s only after she leaves, with an airy wave, that I let myself go still again.
Outside, I see her and Maeve put their heads together. I see the looks they shoot back toward the store window. They walk together down the street, out of sight, and only then do I let myself mourn the ten-year-long life of mind-wiped Emerson Wilde.
I’ve been so caught up in the awesomeness of magic, and falling in love, and Skip and battles and the rest, that I haven’t let myself do this.
I do it now.
I hold her close. I let her grieve.
Then I let her go.
And I let myself laugh.
Because boys might be boys in Carol’s world. But are weasels...weasels?
It turns out that new me—magical Confluence Warrior me who remembers everything and knows how to bide her time—can’t wait to find out.
27
There are no new answers that day. Or the next. Only questions.
And that’s a theme that continues as days pass. Too quickly, marching us toward the full moon. A severe dearth of answers everywhere we look.
I never reach Rebekah again, though I try—with our friends and on my own. She has us fully blocked. Even in dreams. Which, of course, means she has her own power, and should want to come home and wield it, but I digress.
My sister never did take kindly to being told what to do.
Frost too remains aloof. Unwilling to allow any communication. I feel like I could force both their hands if I had more time. To learn, to harness my power, and to wield it effectively. To push in ways I was never taught because I allegedly didn’t have that kind of power.
Or any power.
But I don’t have time. We’ve run out. The flood is coming.
It becomes clear that something is in the air. A tension even humans feel, and it’s everywhere.
Carol reports Skip’s disappearance to the human police, but there’s a strange lack of urgency about it. In witch circles, it’s suggested that Skip ran afoul of magical law—possibly by misbehaving with yours truly. And Carol is seen as a better leader for having treated her own son as she would have treated anyone. No wonder she can’t bring herself to discuss it, people tell Georgie and Ellowyn and even Zander. Imagine how painful it must be.
It’s a blessing that no one talks about it to me. Just the strange disappearance of the mayor, sometimes, when people remember to remark on it at all. I assume that’s Carol’s spellwork in action. But then, day in and day out, I find that playing the role of mind-wiped Emerson makes me almost too aware of the costumes everyone else is wearing.
I’m pretty sure all the residents of this river town sense something big is coming.
My friends and I pore over the ritual. I practice my fighting skills. Jacob and Zander are distracted by Aunt Zelda’s worsening health, and Uncle Zack stops allowing visitors. Ellowyn continues to look pale and drawn but when I ask her about it in the tea shop, alone, she says she doesn’t know what’s wrong.
Since she can’t lie, I have to believe her.
I feel Georgie and I are the only ones operating at one hundred percent, and though I try very hard not to let myself worry...I can’t seem to do anything else.
I make charts. I make graphs. I write reports. I give Power-Point presentations. I make lists upon lists.
But the moon grows rounder every night, and we’re still only five.
Can five beat back the dark?
Well, I tell myself, again and again like a prayer—we will.
Because we must.
We have no other alternative.
The night before the ritual, we gather at Jacob’s to do a practice run. Because we have to be careful, to keep our magic close, protected, hidden. Even while we’re holding back the fury of three mighty, magical rivers. Even though, together, the five of us are already more powerful than maybe we should be. We still don’t know what it will mean if our magic attracts attention.
We just know it won’t be good.
We also don’t know who controls the dark magic swallowing the confluence. It could come from anyone. Or no one we’ve ever met. It could be Frost himself, as Zander belligerently suggested the other day. We suspect everyone and no one.
The only people it can’t be is us. This I hold in my heart, like a talisman.
Georgie sets up the circle tonight. Crystals twinkle in the moonlight. Ellowyn organizes a tray of candles, Jacob cleanses the whole area of any potential creeping magic, and Zander instructs the familiars.
I watch the proceedings. I’m not used to standing still instead of acting, but something holds me back. Apart. Not my lack of magical memories this time. If anything, it’s the weight of having them back.
Never happy, are you?
I look down at Cassie. Now that I fully remember her, us, I don’t think she’s mean the way amnesiac Emerson did. I understand instead that, when I’m at my worst, Cassie will remind me to stop. To regroup. In that sarcastic way of hers.
I am decidedly thrilled, I respond in turn, though it isn’t true.
I know I’m strong. I killed those adlets without any magical memories. I defeated Skip easily enough, and maybe he was weak—a weasel, for God’s sake—but he was still bolstered with all that dark magic. I know I’m strong, and powerful. That we all are.
Especially together.
But I also know we’ve never faced anything like this. And I believed I was special once before, then spent the next decade not even knowing who I really was.
Jacob comes to stand next to me and slips his arm around my shoulders. “Ready?”
I nod. Because I don’t know what I might say if I speak.
We won’t do the actual spell. The words are too powerful, too sacred. Tonight is about more mapping out how it will all go. We’ll hold space for the words in our heads, but we won’t risk saying them. Not until it’s time.
We all take our places. A pentagon more than a circle this time. Me at the top point, looking out over the river, Jacob and Zander on one side, facing Ellowyn and Georgie, over the array of candles.
Georgie has researched this ritual backward and forward and inside out. “We’ll each hold our crystals in our palms,” she tells us, demonstrating with an innocuous pebble. “We’ll wear whatever charms we see fit. We’ll wait for the familiars to create their outer protection circle, and then Emerson will start.” She nods at me. “She’ll light the white candle, then we’ll follow suit around the circle. When all our candles are lit, Emerson will start the chant. We’ll add our voices in the same order.”
“We’re missing something,” Ellowyn says darkly.
“What could we be missing?” I counter. “We’ve prepared and practiced and prepared all over again. We’ve done all that we could.”
I’m not sure I believe it, but I will by tomorrow night.
“Ellowyn’s right,” Zander says, surprising everyone. Maybe especially Ellowyn. “I haven’t been able to put my finger on what’s missing. But I feel it too. Something is missing from the ritual itself.”
Georgie seems to take a long time to look at me. A foreboding shiver zips up my spine.
“There’s no sacrifice.” Her voice is grave. “Every major ritual I’ve ever done or read about requires some kind of sacrifice.”
“Maybe there’s no sacrifice needed,” I suggest. “We’re fighting the dark here. Maybe fighting for the light is enough.”
“Sacrifice is always needed,” Ellowyn replies, looking pale again. “For balance. It’s a basic tenet to everything magical.”
It’s what we’ve always been taught. Magic seeks balance, and if it’s not offered—magic will find its own. Everything has a cost. What we take, we must give. Like the seasons. Like the moon. Everything returns in its time, in its way. Earth. Air. Fire. Water. But it doesn’t sit right tonight. Because what could we sacrifice that could possibly balance out the coming flood?
Maybe no one has an answer because there are no good ones.
It weighs on me, and I can see it weighs on all of us. As we discuss the finer points of the ritual. As we run through it, once and then again. Even as we begin to go our separate ways later.
“Staying here again tonight?” Georgie asks with a smile after Zander and Ellowyn leave, Octavius rubbing his face against her legs.
“Yes.” I know she thinks it’s Jacob, and it is. But it’s not only Jacob. I feel closer to my grandmother here, and through her, closer to Rebekah. The voices of St. Cyprian don’t reach me quite so loudly here. I sleep better. “You don’t feel alone in that creaky old house, do you?”
“I’ve never felt alone there. I feel protected. There’s a dragon in the banister.” She leans in and gives me a hug, the cat purring between us. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
Maybe our hug lasts a little longer than usual.
When she and Octavius leave, it’s just Jacob and me, standing in the light of the almost-full moon. Cassie and Murphy have made themselves scarce, their work with the ritual practice done. Now it’s their time, to recharge or find trouble...whatever it is that familiars do on their own that we lowly witches will never fully know or understand.
It amazes me anew how many worlds exist within the worlds we think we know.
Jacob runs a hand over my hair. I let my hands trail up his hard chest. But neither of us says anything as he leads me inside.
In fact, we don’t talk much at all. We get into bed. We turn to each other, urgent and intense. And then we fall into sleep, tangled all around each other. As if it was any other day and we were ordinary people.
But the dream that grips me is not ordinary, no matter how familiar it seems.
There is a storm whipping around me. I hover above the confluence, looking at all that dark and churning water. All three rivers are angry. That thread of black is thicker and stronger than it was when Frost showed it to us before.
I used to have this dream all the time. And I realize that the nonmagic memories I had still included this. Even Carol’s spell couldn’t strip this dream from my memories. I’ve done this hovering a million times. I’ve looked at the rivers, at St. Cyprian, at this pretty little part of the world that means everything to me, over and over.
Tonight I lower myself down, closer and closer to the very center of the confluence. I keep going until my feet touch the cold water, and for a moment I hold myself there. Suspended while the might of three rivers races over my toes. For a moment.
Then I let go—
And I’m sucked in.
I go down, deeper and deeper. And for the first time I can remember ever having this dream, there are words.
Voices.
Whispers.
What will you sacrifice?
What will you give?
Haven’t you known all along what you must do?
Warriors do not live in glory, Emerson. They die for it.
I sit bolt upright in bed, breathing heavily, the clawing sensation of drowning still clinging to me. Even as I recognize that I’m in Jacob’s bed, beside him. That it’s morning, dawn beginning to stretch and yawn its way across the sky outside.
The day of the ritual. The day of the flood. The day of the show, one way or another. It all comes down to today.
There’s something swimming on the edge of my consciousness that I can’t quite reach. An answer, if I could only get there—
Jacob puts his hand on my back. I must have woken him up and I feel bad about that. But some of the tension loosens at his touch. I can breathe easier. He’s helping me relax. Helping me, the way he always has.
“Bad dream?”
I nod, then smile. “You’re here. You’re never here when I wake up.”
His hand is hot and the heat moves through me, chasing away the tendrils of that dream. The water’s dark, cold grasp. The insidious whispers. “No healing calls today and it’s still early enough to get my chores in before breakfast. We’ll count it as a good omen.”
I think about my dream. Usually I float down to the water, then shoot back up. Usually it’s about flying, not drowning. This time, for the first time, I did not rise from the confluence. I sank deeper.
Jacob kisses me. I wind myself around him because he’s strong, safe and good, and best of all, mine.
And we’ll need all the good omens we can get.
28
It might be the end of the world, but I still have a job to do. And maybe I’m a little jumpy, but I refuse to let that keep me from being the best bookseller in Missouri. Character shines in times of peril after all. Still, before I open the store, I stop at Holly Bishop’s bakery and coffee shop. The vast quantities I already downed today aren’t doing the trick.
I need sugar and fat and caffeine. I order the sweetest, thickest coffee drink on the menu and then wait for the barista to put it together, and possibly alert emergency services while she’s at it. But as I wait, Carol walks in.
Like she’s stalking me, I think balefully.
All my nerves, all my fears, all the whispers of sacrifice seem to surround me. But she merely smiles kindly, as she always has.
As she always does, even when she’s casting spells and exerting her control.
“Good morning, Emerson.” She casts an eye over me. “You’re looking a bit worse for wear today.”
That’s a bit rich coming from someone who could use a glamour, yet chooses the hair of a labradoodle.
I pout a little, calling on everything I have to put up a good front. “Am I?”
Carol puts in an order for two coffees. I look out the window to see who she’s buying for, and am not at all surprised to see Maeve Mather standing on the red bricks, practically vibrating as she looks down at her phone.
Texting, obviously. Who would take her call?
Carol follows my gaze. Then treats me to what I assume is her version of a maternal smile. “Maeve tells me you and Jacob North have started seeing each other. I imagine there was...some overlap.”
She says that last part a little louder than the rest, and out of the corner of my eye I see a table of locals nod sagely. It takes me a long—dangerous—moment to remember the story she planted in my head. And spread around town. Skip may have “gotten handsy,” as I was told the police chief said, but I’d had something to do with it. My feminine wiles, apparently, since women have been held responsible for the reprehensible sins of men since the primordial ooze.
I turn my gaze back to Carol and I trot out the guileless smile of spell dim Emerson, who believed everyone on these old bricks was her friend. Or wanted to be. Not for the first time, I think of what a harsh term spell dim is and how Carol and her coven use it like a weapon—but this isn’t the time to fight that battle. If I’m lucky, that time will come later.
I focus on now. And this battle. “Jacob and I are a bit overdue, don’t you think?”
“What I think is that you, of all people, could do better than a town-hating hermit,” Carol returns. “Couldn’t you?”
I open my mouth to defend Jacob, automatically and robustly, but there’s something about the way she looks at me that makes me realize that’s what she’s looking for. She’s prodding, and she wants to get me worked up.
Because if I’m busy defending Jacob, I can’t defend myself, and she can poke around inside me again.
She’ll have to work a lot harder today. “You know, maybe you’re right,” I say with a shrug. I lean forward conspiratorially, but make sure to pitch my voice loud enough for the table of sage nodders to hear too. “But he’s excellent in bed.”
Carol rears back in surprise and perhaps a little bit of pearl-clutching horror.
I bite back a laugh and merely gaze at her. Like we’re two girlfriends chattering about boys, tee-hee.
“How nice for you,” she says, clearing her throat. “Will you be at Wilde House tonight?” Her voice is casual. “There’s an emergency meeting of the town council at six to address the mayoral vacuum of power. There’s a slightly treasonous idea being bandied about that we should simply merge with the county.”
And I can feel the layers of her spellwork, winding around me, encouraging me to nod along as if the “mayoral vacuum” isn’t the disappearance of her son. As if it’s a fuzzy, bureaucratic notion that requires some dry meetings in overheated boardrooms, that’s all.
