Chapter 20 #2
“You don’t own shit, and even if you did, it’s not you in power.
You mean they belong to Valeria. Not you.
Never you,” Joan replied, her voice gaining heat.
Ire prickled along her skin, raising goose bumps in its wake.
“Even now, even knowing you were wrong, you can’t for a second admit you may have made a mistake invading the market?
Not even you can be so arrogant as to think you get to determine whether Moon Creatures live or die, whether anyone gets to live or die.
Human or witch, man or god, I’m not bending to the whims of this family.
I will not lie and blame the Moon Creatures for what I did. ”
“Then perhaps, Joan,” Merlin said, and this was a guttural proclamation, a violent final ruling manifested between them as he jabbed a finger at her chest, “perhaps you aren’t part of this family at all.”
Silence gathered them both in her cruel fist, a trance broken only by Merlin’s heaving breaths, the faint traffic outside. Joan’s hospital bracelet was still on her wrist.
You aren’t part of this family at all.
What a contrast it was to every loving thing ever uttered to her by CZ. Grace. Mik.
Jo, you’re absolutely singular.
I don’t know, I think I’ll have your back as long as you’ll let me.
Joan registered her tears only when they hit her collarbone.
“Oh, don’t be dramatic,” Merlin huffed, turning from her and taking a few steps away, embarrassed on her behalf.
Joan heaved an uneven breath around her tears, dashed them from her eyes with weak hands, and straightened her spine. “There,” she said, only a little wobbly. “Was that so hard to admit?”
Merlin turned then, eyebrows rising in confusion, but Joan wasn’t going to stand around here, frozen, like usual.
She wasn’t going to let Merlin’s words spell her into paralyzed complicity.
She wasn’t going to let his anger hold her still, his yelling steal her will.
She had a choice in front of her, a choice about what kind of person she wanted to be.
A week and a half ago, when CZ had first called to tell her he had Mik, Joan hadn’t hesitated for a moment to run to him. It was a law of the universe—Joan and CZ against the world.
She knew that if she ran, people would run with her.
If she fell, people would catch her.
Joan strode for her closet, ripping open the door to grab her largest duffel bag before planting it on top of her dresser and yanking at her drawers, still mindful of her splinted fingers.
“What are you doing, Joan,” Merlin ground out, and his tone was flat.
Joan bit her lip, hard. She could do no more than shovel her clothes into the duffel, fast, messy.
Once she had the basics, she turned, brushing past him to toss in the sketch pads on her bedside, her pencil case, her phone charger, her laptop and headphones.
She snatched a few of her favorite sweaters, a pantsuit Molly had given her, and one tailored suit—because who knew what she’d need in her new life—before opening a new compartment and shoving in a pair of shoes.
“Joan!” Merlin barked, but Joan was on a rampage, cataloging everything she’d ever owned, realizing how much of it, how much of this life, she was willing to leave behind. When it came down to it, she was willing to let it all go.
Merlin’s hand on the scale wasn’t enough to tip her back, his threats, everything. She’d looked up to him once—her dad was the most powerful man in New York City.
She saw him for what he was now: a coward riding the coattails of his sister’s power.
Merlin moved to block the door as Joan slung her bag on her shoulder and made for it, but she ducked under his arm, fast, and sprinted, slipping through.
“JOAN GREENWOOD!”
Joan’s socked feet thudded against the floor as she picked up speed down the hallway, sliding to the top of the stairs and then thundering down it in a way that had her afraid she was going to slip and die—and wouldn’t that be pitiful—her breaths gasping out of her throat.
She was stupid for this; she had never been more of a fool in her whole entire privileged life.
She saw nice apartments and expensive clothes and vacations flit by her eyes as she rounded the corner, heading for the front door.
She saw family dinners, Molly nudging her beneath the table, her mother nearby, Valeria opening the door to her home with a gentle smile on her face, all gone.
“STOP IT THIS INSTANT, JOAN,” Merlin roared from the top of the stairs.
Molly’s voice drifted down too, faint behind the screaming in Joan’s head. “What the hell is going on?”
“Merlin, what is this now?” Selene said.
Joan was too busy jamming her feet into her sneakers to turn.
The parties, gone.
The access, gone.
Her coven, broken.
And beyond the horizon, she could see CZ, where he always was, in his dusty Hell’s Kitchen apartment. Grace waiting for her at the café for lunch, Billy appearing in the middle of Grace’s apartment, Mik in a corner watching TV. A new coven, less likely, but kinder than the one she’d been born into.
Joan saw plants in windowsills, her own desk at a smaller architectural firm, freedom outside the bounds of New York City, an endless, ageless future waiting for her if she could just get out, if she could turn the doorknob and make it out—
You aren’t part of this family at all.
The doorknob hummed with magic beneath her hand and resolutely refused to turn.
Joan let out a frustrated scream, half sob, half yell, as she turned to see Merlin with his hands drifting down, having cast the door sealed.
Molly and their mom were barely visible behind the veil of Joan’s tears.
“Undo it,” Joan breathed, but Merlin paid her no mind, animatedly talking to Selene. Joan caught snippets, her hearing fading in and out: She’s being unreasonable… It’s time for her to face reality… Maybe if she stopped to think about how I feel in all this…
Joan could not counterspell the door herself; they all knew that. She lived at Merlin’s whims—to leave, to stay. She was part of the family when he dictated, and she wasn’t when he said so. Always, always she was under his control.
She tried to reach for magic and channel it in, snuff out the wards, but there were so many wards, and even as Joan tried to pull in magic, she felt winded far sooner than she used to.
She tried harder, her concentration slipping, disappearing entirely.
Again and again she tried, but she couldn’t focus well enough to cycle.
She stopped, leaning heavily against the front door.
No.
She couldn’t be trapped here. Why, why was this failing her now? She needed more time with this skill, more practice, more grace, more learning, and to be less magic fatigued.
The words ripped out of her, larger and harsher than she’d ever been with him. “UNDO IT,” she demanded, loud enough that her voice shredded, and the snake plant by the door withered, and finally, they turned.
“Joan, go to bed,” her mother said, a placating hand held out to Merlin. “We can talk about this tomorrow. You know your aunt and I already feel it would be best if you stepped back from family duties. You had to know there would be consequences.”
Of course, Selene would soothe and make excuses.
She’d say the same things Merlin had, in different words, in a different tone, and because it was gentler, Joan was supposed to forgive it.
But Selene had said it as firmly as Merlin had: Joan was not part of this family.
Joan was not a Greenwood witch. Joan had no place in this coven.
“You guys can’t be serious,” Molly said faintly. “You know what you’re doing to her. It’s akin to exile. A coven break in all but name. You can’t make her lie about the Moon Creatures.”
“This doesn’t involve you, Molly,” Merlin snapped. “Go back to your house if you don’t like it in mine.”
Molly looked like she’d been slapped.
Joan choked on a laugh, because if Molly couldn’t command respect here, Joan didn’t know why she’d ever, for even a second, thought she might.
They weren’t going to keep her here. She had made up her mind to run, she had made up her mind to destroy her own life before Merlin managed to do it, and she had all the self-preservation of a cornered rat now.
She’d chew herself out of this cage if she had to; harm was an old friend.
Her fingers wrapped around the stupid vase in the entryway, one that was suitably expensive but wholly modern, at least. Did it deserve her ire? No. But everything was collateral damage now.
It hit the window with a sharp crack, and the entryway window had been spelled against damage, but the vase had not. It shattered beautifully.
A wordless roar greeted her from the head of the stairs, but Joan was on to the next thing.
The hall table, tipped. She managed to throw the runner at the glass chandelier in a way that set it swinging precariously.
Her right hand throbbed as she bashed it around, but it didn’t matter.
Another vase, launched at the wall. A potted plant kicked over, its leaves going limp.
But, of course, Merlin couldn’t stand a rampage for long.
As she skittered to the hall closet, reaching for one of his precious golf clubs, her hand froze in midair.
Paralysis spread slowly up her body, enough so that she had time to look up and see Merlin red in the face, casting.
And see Molly bring one hand up, tears brimming from her eyes. See her other hand grab Merlin’s, hard, stopping the spell in its tracks.
Her arm slashed down, and Joan was freed. Molly’s fingers moved, and the door swung open.
In her sister’s gaze, Joan saw every apology they’d never been brave enough to exchange. Every act of defiance they’d both snuffed. In her eyes, Joan saw Molly call uncle for her.
Chest heaving, Joan pulled her duffel bag on more firmly, her feet moving before her brain could fully catch up, seeing only the door and feeling the walls of this house fall away.
She paused, once, in the threshold, the infinite night at her back, the smallness of her family in front of her.
She faced down her father, incandescent at the top of the stairs.
“Fuck you, Merlin Greenwood,” she said, “you spineless, worthless worm of a man. You will never be great. You will always be less than Valeria. And you live the narrowest life I’ve ever seen.”
And Joan Greenwood, of the historic Greenwood witches of New York City, broke from her coven.