Chapter Thirteen
Lily shut off the engine and listened to its cooling clicks as she rested her head against the steering wheel. Outside, the temperature had dropped with the sunset. It wasn’t cold, not yet, but a distinct autumn chill had taken over, and it was most noticeable at night. Lily didn’t expect the temperature inside the house to be much warmer. Her father had arrived at the Society separately and had therefore driven home separately, and if he hadn’t already informed her mother about what had happened, he would have as soon as he got in the house.
Which was why Lily was delaying in her car.
She didn’t need her parents telling her how much they did not approve of her behavior. Neither did she, honestly. She’d lost her temper and actually thrown a pen tonight. It was shockingly unlike her. How had she gone from pretending to ignore Chrysanthemum’s aggression to lashing out in public? Why was she suddenly losing her composure?
Lily didn’t know, but she had to get her anger under control. Yet, even as she thought it, her white-hot rage at losing her Saturdays threatened to consume her. She was the victim here, not the aggressor. The seagull hadn’t been her best decision, but Chrysanthemum had started everything else. The hex. Talking about Lily being a witch. The book …
Lily frowned. The bookshelves in the library had shaken when Chrysanthemum yelled at her. Did she have some kind of talent with books? It was the only explanation Lily could think of. Whatever it was, one thing was clear: Chrysanthemum and books was a dangerous combination.
Her phone chimed with a text from Sonia: Are you ok? What happened at school?
Fury curled Lily’s hand into a fist around her phone. Too much had happened. If she wrote back now, she’d never leave the garage.
With that in mind, Lily got out of the car and entered the house, prepared for the worst.
She longed to sneak off to her room and fill Sonia in on the unfairness of everything, and she considered doing exactly that as she passed through the kitchen and grabbed a banana. But Lily had never liked to delay the inevitable. Voices drifted out of the family room, so she decided to get her reprimand over with and headed for them.
Her father was pacing, which was no surprise, but Sara sat on the floor by their mother’s feet, her knees pulled to her chest, and she didn’t seem gleeful to witness Lily’s dressing-down. Her sister actually looked like she might have been crying. A sliver of concern pierced through Lily’s foul mood, but her mother raised her head before Lily could ask what was wrong.
“Your father filled me in,”
her mother said with that same no-nonsense voice Lily imagined her using in the ER.
“Aside from anything you need to do for school or the Society, you are officially grounded.”
Lily stared at her. That was it? No reprimands, no we’re disappointed in you speeches? Just here’s your punishment, take one a day until your behavior improves, and call us if you experience any unusual side effects?
Unless … maybe they were so angry that they couldn’t bear to look at her? Surely that had to be the reason.
It didn’t explain Sara’s pink-tinted eyes, though, and Lily hesitated.
“Are you okay?”
she asked her sister.
Sara shook her head.
“We’re having a small crisis,”
said her mother.
Her father glanced Lily’s way.
“Elena is moving to New Jersey,”
he explained, dropping the name of Sara’s swim coach.
Sara’s whining increased in volume, and she curled up into a ball.
“She’s the best coach. We need to move off this stupid island. No one wants to live here but us.”
Lily’s stomach sank. Her parents wouldn’t actually consider that, right? There wasn’t even a witch enclave in New Jersey.
“We can’t move. You know you won’t swim half as fast anywhere else because your water talent won’t be so strong.”
That got Sara to look up, and she glared at Lily.
“Lily!”
Her father raised a hand in a stop it kind of gesture.
“You have already caused enough trouble for one day. Be thankful we have other things to worry about besides your behavior. Go to your room, reflect on what you’ve done, and under no circumstances expect to throw that party you were planning. Understood?”
Lily’s jaw dropped, but her parents’ attention had already been lost as her sister began plaintively detailing why the mainland would be so much better. She’d been dismissed.
The sparks of anger in Lily’s blood roared into a wildfire.
She stomped up the stairs and barricaded her bedroom door, for all that mattered. No one was going to check on her. No one cared enough to be upset. No one thought of her at all.
No one except Chrysanthemum.
It was too much to tolerate. She was going to scream, to throw something. To break things before she broke.
Except, she’d already broken—she’d lost control, and she had vowed not to do that again.
She had to do something, though. She had to protect and care for herself, because no one else would. And that meant defending herself from Chrysanthemum. Chrysanthemum would keep hurting her, keep talking about her, keep hexing her, keep stealing successes from her, keep diminishing her in her parents’ judgmental eyes. Lily needed her to stop.
And, clearly, the only language Chrysanthemum respected was aggressive magic.
Hands trembling, Lily had set a bloodred candle (the most violently colored one she owned) on her altar before she even realized what she was doing. She’d never attempted a hex before, and she didn’t know how to do one, but the basics were clear enough. All spells relied on intent; everything else was mere theatrics. And Lily had intent seeping out of her pores, so what need did she have for props or ritual?
With a snap of her fingers, she lit the candle, and the flame streaked toward the ceiling. The effort didn’t tire her at all. If anything, it had the opposite effect. As if a small leak had weakened the walls of her magical dam, the full force of her power strained for release. She was wide-awake and full of fire, magic crackling like lightning along her skin.
“I hate you.”
She whispered the words, pouring her intent into them.
“May everything you feel about me be redirected back at you a hundredfold. May every bit of magic you work on me be turned against you. May …”
Lily choked on her rage, unable to articulate her intentions, and she waved her arms to extinguish the candle.
Exhaustion overtook her as the flame went out, leaving her as burned out as the wick. She fell back on the floor and sighed. Despite the tiredness, something faintly like relief was washing over her. The hate in her gut, the anger boiling her blood, flowed away.
A purple mist rose from the candle smoke and dissipated with it.
Swallowing, Lily watched it vanish, and only then did the hairs on her neck and arms rise to attention. Without her anger, the air felt colder.
She should not have done that.
It was hardly a focused spell—just fury and bitterness strung together with some vague words. Not even all were words. That last may had been nothing but raw emotion.
It was exactly the sort of spell that no witch should ever cast under the best of conditions, and these were not those.
An unfocused hex cast between the equinox and Samhain was the most dangerous sort of magic.
She took a deep breath, then another, trying to shake off the cold dread. Her actions likely hadn’t done anything besides create a little tinge and allow her to vent, she reasoned. She hadn’t even known what she was doing, and while powerful witches could cast spells without tools, Lily was not powerful enough for that. Not yet. She needed instructions and the sort of external focus that candles and incense and detailed actions provided.
So yes, everything would be fine. All she’d done was make herself feel better.
And she did feel better, which was both a surprise and a relief. Better enough to know that her parents ignoring her was not Chrysanthemum’s fault.
A scratching noise from behind shook Lily, and she gasped, spinning around before realizing it was only Ella and Cinder getting antsy in their castle. Great. She was going to be jumpy until she knew for sure she hadn’t done anything irredeemably stupid.
“I’m coming, you two.”
Lily crawled over to the cage and opened the door.
Recalling the banana she’d taken, Lily peeled it and took a bite for herself (expending all that magical energy had left her ravenous), then broke off bits for the rabbits. They gobbled them up happily, conveying their pleasure through a stream of images into her mind. For a moment, she allowed herself to enjoy their contentment and let it push aside her lingering worries about the almost-certainly futile spell.