Chapter 19
On the foot of the narrow bed of this dusty motel room, we count every dollar we have.
The television flashes colour over the walls and closed curtains. The speakers are old and crackly. But it keeps Sal entertained on the other bed with all his snacks.
Serena unfolds crumpled notes. “Thirty dollars.”
I pick through my backpack. “That’s from your jacket pocket?”
She nods.
Illusion-free, her dark hair slips over her shoulder. Once, it was long, like spilled ink down her back. Now, it’s cropped to her collarbone, and a little on the oily side.
I don’t even want to know what I look like right now. I’ve been avoiding the mirrors in here.
I flick through the notes in my hand, pulled out from a pocket in the backpack. “That’s two hundred. How much was in your purse?”
“Four hundred and twenty-one.” Serena takes the cash from me, just to drop it onto the mattress between us on the pathetic, meagre pile. “So, in total, we are screwed.”
Given how much we started with, it’s a blow to the gut to look down at only a smattering of notes.
Now that I’ve worked jobs in the krum world and counted the meagre amount of cash I earned at the end of the week, I know this won’t go very far at all.
Sofía’s monthly fees don’t help.
If only we didn’t need her to shield us against tracker witches. She’s needed, and she knows it, so she charges grossly for her service.
I can barely make enough cash to keep up with it all, the groceries, the rent, the fees, the bills.
My only day off in two weeks, and I get stuck with Sal and a parade, and that didn’t go well.
It’s not like Serena can work. Not while she’s constantly teetering so close to her lassitude limit, since she keeps us both under illusions most of the time.
If she rests some now, she might be able to illusion the pages of the bible on the nightstand into hundred-dollar bills.
I reach into my back pocket, the denim of my jeans scraping against my fingers.
I pull out the watch, then toss it onto the mattress. It jingles faintly, a sound that sweeps me back home for a heartbeat.
Serena stares down at it for a long moment.
The television blares on, flashing blues and reds and oranges all over the motel walls.
I glance at the other bed.
Sal has fallen asleep. Or passed out, since he’s sort of folded over and rolled onto his side.
Serena reaches for the watch.
Her fingertips glide over the smooth, polished gold. “Is this a Jacob?”
“It’s Oliver’s.”
I can say it now that Sal is asleep. There are things we don’t talk about around him.
Serena’s sharp grey eyes lift to mine. “How did you get this?”
“He gave it to me.”
She blinks, once, a stunned look, confused, and then her face hardens into something dangerous.
“Oliver caught me.” I glance at the sleeping boy on the other bed. “Us. He caught us.”
Her olive complexion pales into something ashy. And, as I tell her everything, her face is more and more horrified.
It takes everything in me to hold onto that numbness I find solace in. A numbness that I think I live in every day.
An echo.
I live in it, and I fight to stay in it, because if I don’t, I cry.
I cry a lot. At night, in the car, in the bathroom of whatever place I work at in whatever town we pick.
Just as I weep now, and Serena merely stares at me.
Blank, unmoving, just staring.
Then she looks down and runs her thumb over the face of the watch.
After a beat, she says, “He let you go.”
I shift on the mattress, leaning against the wall. Slumped, I nod and pick at the bedspread.
Serena’s shoulders relax with a whooshing sigh, an exhale so loud and raw that it’s undeniably guttural.
The only thing I keep from her is the last words he said to me, ‘Call when you are ready to come home.’
If Serena knows I’m miserable here in this little life with her, she doesn’t acknowledge it, and I don’t either.
Maybe it’s something unsaid between us. But to tell her what Oliver said would be to shine a light on it.
Because even Oliver knows I’m unhappy.
Serena lets the watch fall to the mattress. “It doesn’t surprise me.”
I turn a faint, tired frown on her. “What doesn’t?”
“That Oliver let you go.”
A heartbeat passes.
I level my stare with hers. “It surprised me.”
Serena cuts her gaze to the TV glare stretching up the wall. “Oliver always talked about you in a way that… that made me accept you would be living at Elcott Abbey for the rest of your life. He spoke about it as though it was a given.”
That frown cuts deeper into my face. “But I had offers.”
A faint scoff pushes out of her.
“Oliver did a lot to kill those offers,” she says.
“He was in your father’s ear almost every day.
I think Oliver wanted you to stay at Elcott.
Forever. So when Dray put an offer on your contract…
” Serena exhales with dread, her slim cheeks puffing out, “Oliver was livid. He left the academy for a whole weekend to argue with your father.”
I make a face, all frowns and creases and pouts.
It doesn’t make sense.
Oliver was a part of it.
He was always part of it…
He wore his mask.
He played his part.
And I’m supposed to accept that he’s been working behind the curtain to save me?
I rub my temple, hard, and my face twists.
“I asked him once—” Serena gently nudges the timepiece, watching how the gold dances in the light “—why he was so intent on isolating your whole future. And truthfully,” she adds with a grimace aimed at me, “I didn’t love the idea of living with you for the rest of my life.
That motivated me to be in Oliver’s ear and help push you into a marriage. ”
I drop my hands to my lap and turn my cheek to her.
I stare at the wall sconce, dusty and dated.
But my mind tumbles back to Bluestone—to Serena pulling me into a game of Truth or Dare, knowing Dray was coming down to the parlour room to join, and dragging me along to a party with the promise of Dray not attending, but of course he did show up.
Serena’s motives were far more layered than I ever gave her credit for.
She was doing the most.
She was pushing me and Dray together, aligning herself with me, and also grooming me to run—all at once.
But there’s something about it that doesn’t sit quite right in me.
Oliver’s protection.
I ask, “Why wouldn’t he want me to marry Dray?”
Serena shrugs, but gives an answer, “Oliver said the same thing every time I asked. He doesn’t think that anyone deserves you.” The bitterness on her face startles me. “Truly, it made me hate you for so long.”
“What did?”
“How much Oliver worked to protect you—and how much he cared about you,” she sighs, shaking her head. “I would have given anything for him to love me half as much.”
I’m completely unmoved.
Or in shock, it could be either, it could be both.
My tone is monotonous as I retort, “It’s not exactly how I remember it.”
Love and care and protection?
No one deserving me?
Oliver running off to battle Father and save me from Dray?
That was not my experience.
“You weren’t in it,” Serena tells me, and there’s a sharpness to her voice, like the edge of a blade.
“You don’t know what went on in our group.
You don’t know what my relationship with Asta was like, or that your brother was always chasing her, my best friend—” She spits the words out, and they strike me.
“You don’t know that Landon was always on the outs, and future plans were being made right in front of him, but they all excluded him, too.
You don’t know that Oliver and Dray would openly discuss who would replace the Barlows in the coven. ”
Her eyes are alight now, both with ferocity and tears that she fights back, stubborn.
All of these feelings and resentments have been buried for years.
Our rule to not speak about the past, about the coven, about Bluestone, or anything to do with the Videralli, means we bury things and they spoil.
They rot inside of us.
And that’s exactly what’s being unleashed in front of me.
Rot.
Serena’s face reddens, and she hisses out the words between clenched teeth, “You don’t know that, after Oliver failed to convince your father to reject Dray’s offer, he came back to the academy—and jumped Dray in the middle of the parlour room.
You don’t know that the fight was so bad that Oliver’s arm was broken, and Dray had to have some teeth put back in. ”
She strikes the pile between us.
The money flitters to the wall, and the watch jangles.
I don’t flinch.
“You don’t know the pain you caused Asta, that she would cry on my shoulder because of you—that her boyfriend pursued you, her fiancé loved you, and that all those times I had to comfort her, the man that I loved was chasing her and protecting you.”
I watch her unravel.
The words don’t hit me as they should.
Numbness.
I hold onto it.
Like a rope in the dark, a tether in a storm.
“You think we had perfect lives and you were the only one suffering,” she goes on. “We all had our pain, but you were the only one who could pout and cry her way into favour.”
Serena’s scoff is harsh, the tears on her blotchy cheeks are angry—and it’s all aimed at me.
She spits, “Do you think for a second that if Desmond found me, he would give me a watch and let me go?”
I look at the watch, crumpled against the wall, partially buried by the dollar bills that she hit aside.
“If you hate me so much,” I say, soft, “why did you bring me into this?”
She couldn’t stand the thought of living the rest of her life under the same roof as me.
Maybe more than she hated me, she hated my brother’s alleged favouritism of me.
But either way, she chose this—to live with me.
“Who else would come?” Serena runs her dark gaze over me.
A snivel shudders through her before she swats at her cheeks.
“You were the only one who hated her life enough to run. And I…” Her lips suck inwards for a beat, before she adds, “I can’t do this alone.
I can’t take care of Sal, and work, and run, and keep myself illusioned all the time. ”
I nod, faint. “You’re right.”
My words startle her.
She blinks—and waits for me to continue.
So I do.
I turn a look on her, unkind, and my lashes are low over my eyes.
I say, “I did look at your group and think it was lovely and perfect. I was jealous. For a long time. But you’ve just made me realise something.
I looked at you and saw a witch who knew her value, who was self-assured and commanding.
” My smile is bitter. It’s cruel. “But you are nothing more than a scared, insecure, jealous little girl—who fucks made ones and has their babies.”
Serena’s face hardens to stone.
The outrage is steel in her eyes.
A look I’ve seen before—seconds before she lunges.
But she doesn’t, and she won’t, because she can’t risk my leaving, and she can’t wake up Sal to a brawl.
So I spare her a cold glare, then slip off the mattress. The base creaks under my shifting weight.
Sal is deep in that comatose sleep of his, the kind that comes with open-mouthed snores and drooling.
I push him to the edge of the bed, then climb in beside him.
It’s a tight fit, and Serena’s molten gaze burns into my back, and it’s all so claustrophobic.
I stare at the back of Sal’s head—and wish I’d let Oliver take me home.