Chapter 31 #2
Joan turned fully, going up on her knees on the bench, despite her screaming body. “Aunt Lila! It’s been a while.” Someone she knew! She’d thought for a while there that she’d never again see someone she knew, feel that flutter of recognition in her. This, too, was miraculous.
Lila shook her head. “I couldn’t recognize you, you look terrible. You smell unrecognizable.” Her face shifted. “Tell me CZ is okay. I don’t want him caught up in your witch nonsense. We’ve had enough of you all.”
“CZ’s fine, he’s in Manhattan right now,” Joan said. She swung to the side laboriously, remembering her manners. “Astoria, Wren, this is Lila LaMorte, CZ’s aunt.” Joan had met his whole family a couple of times, though it had certainly been a while.
Wren relaxed more fully. “Pleasure to meet you.”
Astoria was silent. Joan lightly smacked the back of her head in chastisement, and Astoria actually growled at her.
“Hello,” she forced out.
“You’re really waiting for a ride?” Lila asked suspiciously. “Girl, there’s enough blood on you to drown someone in. We could smell you a mile away.”
Joan opened her mouth to reassure Lila she was alright, but Lila put up a hand to cut her off.
“You know what, I don’t need to know anymore. Tell CZ to get his ass back home. I’m sick of that boy’s escapades, you hear me?”
“We can’t let them walk away, not a Greenwood, not after the market,” the woman next to Lila said. Her eyes flashed red. “That’s livelihoods they fucked with, and all for some witch we don’t even know.”
News apparently still hadn’t spread widely that Joan was coven broken, if people thought she had any sway in her family. The words were at the tip of her tongue, but she swallowed them. It would sound like an excuse. It was an excuse.
“We’ll wait for this alleged ride,” Lila said. “We aren’t touching Joan. CZ and the witches would have my ass.”
Thus passed an excruciating twenty minutes. Joan’s attempts at small talk were batted away. CZ’s family had never loved Joan, but they’d been friendly enough to her. This was something new, and it didn’t spell good fortune for the magic world.
When Joan faltered, spirits tanking, Wren picked up the threads, trying to coax the group into some semblance of friendship, even as Astoria refused to do much more than glare at everyone.
That was as far as they got before a car rolled to a stop in front of them—Merlin’s car—and the door was flung open for Molly to tumble out, dressed in a rumpled suit, and throw her arms around Joan, knocking her back into the bench.
“You can’t keep almost dying,” Molly said, squeezing hard enough that she was really hurting Joan, her charm necklace pressing into Joan’s skin.
“I don’t—Why the hell didn’t you tell me what you were up to?
I could have helped. Kidnapped! For almost two days, kidnapped, and I didn’t even know! You look so horrible.”
Joan hugged back just as hard, breathing in the smell of Molly’s expensive perfume, letting her eyes prickle and burn. “Thanks for coming,” Joan said.
Molly pulled away, eventually, and greeted Astoria and Wren rather awkwardly, with unhappy looks at both of them. As their appointed babysitter, Molly likely wasn’t pleased they’d been committing crimes under her nose.
Joan spun again to introduce Molly to Lila and the other vampires, but they were gone when she turned.
Wren gave Joan a little pat on the back and a sympathetic wince. “Sorry, I’m hopeful things will get better.”
Maybe if they delivered Moon Creatures a complete spell that would grant them the ability to cast without magic poisoning, sure, but they still didn’t have the spell figured out, and if they did that, witches would lose their collective minds. Or at least the Greenwoods and Wardwells would.
Molly ushered them all into the car, and they piled in, Joan in the front and the Californians in the back, before they set off for Manhattan.
“Okay,” Molly said, waiting at a light. “CZ told me you’d been kidnapped by Fiona Ganon and needed to be picked up, and said you’d fill me in on the rest. Go on, fill me in.”
Joan was too sore to look back at Astoria and Wren, but they were suspiciously silent, letting her take the lead.
Molly’s eyes were focused on the road—she was not a very good driver, an endearing failure Joan much enjoyed. She tapped her fingers on the wheel. “No lying,” she said. “I’m in too deep not to tell me the truth now.”
She had a point. And Wren had one too, about Fiona’s grudge.
Though she’d claimed she wasn’t specifically after the Greenwoods, they seemed to represent everything Fiona found wrong in the magic world.
As angry as Joan was with them all the time, she did not, for even a moment, wish the pain she’d experienced for the last two days on them.
Not Valeria, not Selene, not even Merlin, and especially not Molly.
“You have to promise not to tell Mom and Dad,” Joan said. “And Aunt Val.”
“I’ll make that judgment call after I hear this story,” Molly said. “You were kidnapped, Joan, this isn’t a joke.”
“I’m not laughing,” Joan replied. “I’m so dead serious, Molly. Not a word.” This was why Molly hadn’t been brought into the fold in the first place. Her sister was still loyal to the Greenwoods, still believed in them.
“Jo—”
“Uncle,” Joan said.
Molly’s gaze finally left the road to pass over Joan, bloody and covered in cuts and bruises, a half-healed burn on her chest, clothes singed, likely smelly as hell. Whatever she saw there was enough.
She bit her lip.
Joan started as best she could at the beginning—with the phone call from CZ, Mik, all of it.
By the time they made it up to the hotel room, Joan was finishing up the tail end of her story.
“So we’re not sure if Fiona’s going to go after the family. We were hoping maybe you could give Mom and Dad and Aunt Val a fair warning without actually revealing that we have Mik,” Joan said, as Astoria unlocked the door.
Molly looked aged by a thousand years. “I need to process,” she muttered to herself. “Gods, Joan, this is so bad.”
Joan, still on the heels of almost dying, actually felt better about her situation than she ever had before. Maybe it wasn’t helpful to say so to Molly, but she was going to anyways when she was bowled over by a moving body.
CZ kept them from careening into the wall, but his hug was still forceful, bordering on violent. “You’re never leaving my sight again,” he said into her neck, as Joan wrapped her arms around him and squeezed back. “Never ever ever. You’ll come to work with me, come home with me.”
“Go to the bathroom with you when you have to pee, like I’m a cat,” Joan said.
“My tiny, helpless little cat who is not leaving my sight,” CZ said.
“Cat people,” Astoria said with derision, stepping into the room as Mik and Grace crowded out.
CZ didn’t let go of her, and that was perfectly fine with Joan, so the two of them piled into the group hug.
Joan, convinced she had no more moisture left in her body, still managed to shed a few more tears.
Grace sternly told her that she needed a shower, but she also wouldn’t let go of Joan’s hand. Mik climbed CZ’s back to get closer.
“We ran into your aunt,” Joan said at a lower pitch into CZ’s ear, once the main fuss had died down and they’d started to migrate back into the room, leaving Joan and CZ, still attached, to trail after them.
CZ finally pulled back. Sniffled a little. “Out on the street? I’m in trouble, aren’t I?”
“Big time,” Joan replied. “I’m sorry you getting dragged into all this is pissing your family off. I think we all understand if you have to split your time between here and Queens a bit more.”
“I left, and you were literally taken and almost killed,” CZ said. “If there was any doubt in my mind about where I am most needed, this has squashed it. You needed me, Joan, and I left you.”
“It is absolutely not your fault that Fiona kidnapped me,” Joan said. “CZ, it’s so important to me that you know that.”
He wouldn’t meet her eyes. “I wanted to be here. I needed to be here. And I was needed here. There’s a place for me in my pack that allows me to make my life here,” he said firmly. “I’m not turning my back on them, but I’m not turning my back on any of you either.”
All words were inadequate, so Joan took his hand and folded him into this group, one that had never demanded more from him than he could give.
Joan endured their constant glances, even though sometimes someone looked too hard and she thought of Fiona’s calculating stare.
She allowed everyone to bump up against her to make sure she was still there, even though sometimes a rogue touch made her flinch, and she had to work to calm her heart down after.
And she appreciated that they all scrambled to figure out dinner while she was in the shower and offered up various pieces of clothing she could sleep in because CZ had dashed home to get her underwear and regular clothes but failed to bring pajamas.
She ended up in Astoria’s big shirt and a pair of pants Mik had bought.
It didn’t matter what she wore, so long as it covered up her bruises.
Molly pulled her aside after dinner to confess she needed to go back home. There was another hug, luckily not as tight as the first one.
“I’ll be back first thing tomorrow,” Molly said. “I need to give them a broad warning about Fiona, check in on Nate.”
“Do you know how you’re going to phrase it?” Joan asked, not wanting to nag but needing a reassurance that Mik wouldn’t become collateral anyways.
“I’ll figure it out, while keeping you safe,” Molly said with a lopsided smile. “I’ll keep you all safe. Us Greenwoods, we have a way with words.”
Once she left, it was Mik who proposed the movie and cuddle puddle, and Joan got put in the middle, CZ on one side, Astoria somehow maneuvering to end up on her other side, and before the movie even ended, Joan was fast asleep.