Chapter Twenty-Eight
‘What is in these biscuits?’ Lydia asked as she grabbed for her third helping of breakfast the next morning.
Just like she always did in times of trouble, Ashley had turned to baking to soothe her soul, filling the kitchen with so much food, we’d been forced to eat at the dining table just to find room for our plates.
‘They’re regular biscuits,’ my aunt replied, watching on while Lydia smothered honey butter all over both halves then sandwiched it back together before taking an enormous bite. ‘They haven’t changed.’
‘It’s your magic,’ I explained, wiping sleep from my eyes, still exhausted.
We hadn’t found Wyn in Hilton Head, we hadn’t found anything save a couple of white-tailed deer and an all-night doughnut shop on the way back to Savannah, and the couple of hours I’d spent tossing and turning in bed weren’t nearly enough to prepare me to deal with my newly minted witch.
‘While everything is in flux, your senses might be more overpowering than usual,’ I told her. ‘It’ll settle in a day or so, or at least it did for me.’
‘It better not. You can’t give a girl turbo-charged tastebuds then threaten to take them away.’ She piled her already crowded plate with more food: pancakes, waffles, bacon, sausage patties. ‘How are you not eating constantly? I have never tasted anything so good. Jackson, you gotta try it.’
‘It’s a biscuit,’ he replied, sullen-faced. ‘How good can it be?’
His sister waited impatiently, holding out her breakfast and waiting for him to take a bite. With a disgruntled sigh, he opened his mouth and she shoved it in, making him splutter and cough.
‘See?!’ she exclaimed. ‘Isn’t it the best damn thing you ever tasted?’
‘It’s a biscuit,’ he said again, napkin held over his full mouth. ‘Excuse me.’
When he stood to leave the table, none of us made any attempt to stop him.
‘He’ll be fine,’ Lydia said, pouring maple syrup all over her plate. ‘He was exactly the same when I got my driver’s licence before he did.’
‘Sure,’ Ashley snorted. ‘Exactly the same.’
Lydia smiled at her sweetly. ‘I’d tell you to shut up but these biscuits may have changed our relationship forever.’
‘Good luck ever getting me to make them again.’
‘When you’ve finished eating and bickering,’ I started to say, wondering if that moment would ever come to pass. ‘We need to figure out how we’re going to tell your mom and your grandmother about all of this.’
Lydia dismissed my concerns with a carefree wave. ‘Don’t sweat it, I know exactly how to do it. I intend to broach the subject with the utmost tact and diplomacy.’
With an uncertain frown, I broke a biscuit in two and swiped on a smear of honey butter.
‘Really?’
‘Really!’ she replied, loud and reassuring. ‘One less thing for you to worry about.’
‘Hey y’all, did you know I’m a witch?’
Alex Powell went still and Virginia dropped her coffee cup, the precious antique rolling off the breakfast table and onto the floor where it smashed into a dozen pieces.
Hovering behind Lydia, I held up a hand as a hello but kept my mouth firmly shut.
‘Mmm, even this toast tastes amazing,’ Lydia gushed, grabbing a slice from her mother’s plate and taking a bite. ‘Em, you want some?’
‘I’m fine, thank you,’ I said, flashing my eyes at her. It was my own fault. I should’ve known better than to let it go when she said she knew what she was doing.
‘Like I was saying,’ she went on as I rushed over to pick up the pieces of Virginia’s broken cup. ‘I’m a witch. Did y’all know or what?’
‘Lydia Virginia Sarah Powell, that’s enough.’
Virginia stood, speaking to her granddaughter but staring straight at me and if looks really could kill, I’d have been six feet under the earth in less time than it took to blink.
‘It’s too early in the day for your nonsense, now please sit down at the table if you’re intending to eat. Miss Emily, I’m sure you have somewhere better to be right now.’
‘Not nonsense and Emily stays.’
Lydia pulled two chairs out from under the table, one for me and one for her. I took mine reluctantly, really not sure where to look.
‘I’m a witch, she’s a witch so you’re a witch.’ She pointed to herself, to me and to Virginia. ‘Witches all the way down.’
‘This is absurd.’ Virginia stood, clutching at the stiff starched collar of her shirt as though it were suddenly choking her. ‘This is absurd and I won’t listen to it.’
‘Anything we can do about that cup? Can you whizz up some magical Gorilla Glue?’ Lydia asked as I assembled all the pieces in front of me.
‘In theory,’ I said, hands hovering over the pieces. ‘It’s only clay, stone and bone ash.’
‘Bone ash?’
‘Animal bones.’
‘That is so not vegan,’ she replied, grimacing. ‘Who knew cups could be so gross?’
Virginia pressed her fingertips into her temples, her face pale and drawn. ‘Excuse me, I feel my migraine coming on. I’m going to my room, please do not disturb me.’
Lydia gave me a look and without moving, I closed the dining room door.
‘So cool,’ she said on a sigh. ‘Can’t wait until I can do that stuff too – and I’ll be doing it soon because, like I said before, I am a witch.’
When she raised her voice at the end of the sentence, her grandmother sank slowly back into her chair. Alex, who had not moved since we walked in, picked up her napkin and I saw her dab a single tear away from her eye, just before it fell.
‘Who wants to start?’ Lydia asked, glancing from family member to family member. ‘Mom? Grandmother? Or do you want to let Em take it from the top and y’all can put your pieces in the puzzle after you hear her story?’
‘Lydia, stop,’ her mother said forcefully. ‘You don’t know what you’re saying.’
‘I know I summoned a lightning storm last night. I know I drew water out of the ocean and turned it into rain to put out a fire set by a demon werewolf.’
A tiny gasp escaped Virginia’s throat as she touched her hand to her chest.
‘Not a demon,’ I whispered. ‘A regular werewolf. As far as we know.’
‘How did this happen?’ the oldest Powell woman asked, fingers fluttering at her collarbone.
‘Which part?’ Lydia replied through a mouthful of toast.
Understandably, her grandmother looked as though she didn’t know where to begin.
‘I understand if this all feels like a lot to accept,’ I told her, no more certain myself.
‘It’s true, I am a witch, so is Lydia. Your family and mine have a history of magic going back centuries.
It’s been dormant in the Powell line for years, decades maybe, but there is a prophecy in my family that says a witch will awaken the dormant magic of her sisters—’
‘Not only in your family.’
Virginia Powell sat up straight and rested her hands on the table, cool and composed. The frail little old lady who’d existed up until one minute ago disappeared, nothing but a lifelong act.
‘So it’s you, is it?’ She stared at me as though she was seeing me for the first time. ‘No wonder Catherine was always so desperate to get you back. You’re the one.’
The slice of toast slipped from Lydia’s fingers and across the table. Tears flowed freely down her mother’s face.
‘You knew?’ I said, stunned. ‘About all of it?’
‘Knowing isn’t the same as believing,’ Virginia replied. ‘When Catherine disappeared so very suddenly after your seventeenth birthday, I remembered the stories and the thought began to prey on my mind.’
‘You’ve always known I was a witch?’ Lydia slammed a fist on the tabletop, making me and the flatware jump. ‘Why didn’t you tell me? Doesn’t that seem like the kind of thing you’d casually drop into conversation, oh, I don’t know, from birth?’
‘Please do not raise your voice in my house,’ her grandmother chastised, not entirely removed from the woman she was five minutes ago. ‘To the best of my knowledge the blessing was dead in our line, but I was concerned enough to encourage some separation between the two of you.’
My turn to ask a question.
‘Why? You’ve been close with Catherine your whole life.’
‘Because,’ she replied. ‘If you were to Become when Lydia could not, I did not want her to spend her life in the shadow of a witch. I know that pain all too well.’
We all sat for a moment, no one sure what to say next. Eventually, it was Virginia who broke the quiet.
‘Not for one minute did I ever suspect I would need to explain any of this, or myself, to any of you,’ she said, addressing the three of us. Alex remained speechless at her side, worrying the opal ring on the middle finger of her right hand.
‘The Powell witches were once almost as strong as the Bells. We have been sisters for centuries, ever since we arrived in Savannah. If a Bell witch died before she could instruct her granddaughter in her ways, a Powell witch stepped in, and vice versa. We have always been close in that way. This friendship,’ she gestured across the table to me and Lydia, ‘is not a surprise. It’s fated. ’
‘But you don’t have magic,’ Lydia said, and I could tell by the yearning in her voice, she desperately wanted to be wrong.
‘Because people do terrible things to protect those they love.’
Virginia tented her fingers under her chin and stared straight ahead.
‘Since before I was born, my existence has been based on a lie,’ she began, absently patting her daughter’s hand, tears still streaming down Alex’s face. ‘My mother, Juliet, was only fifteen when she fell pregnant.’
‘Juliet?’ Lydia interrupted. ‘I thought that was your sister’s name.’
Despite the wistful smile on her face, Virginia looked so sad, I thought I heard her heart break.
‘In 1963, an unwed teenage mother was considered a very shameful thing in polite society. Juliet and her mother, my grandmother, Sarah, left Savannah before she started to show. When Sarah returned, she brought back her daughter’s baby and passed me off as her own.
People believed Juliet died in childbirth, a tragedy that invited no questions about the authenticity of my parentage. ’