Chapter 11
ELEVEN
Joan dreamt of a garden, halfway up the mountain on a strange small island, and woke to an empty mattress beside her.
She rolled, the taste of salty ocean air fading, and was met with a pair of golden eyes.
“Good morning,” Billy said, leaning over the mattress to stare down at Joan.
Joan’s yelp was involuntary and loud, and her bladder was so full that she feared she’d pee right there in that bed.
The door slammed open to CZ, Grace behind him with a spatula in her hand, wielding it like a weapon.
Joan thumped back on her pillow. “False alarm,” she said. “Billy scared me.”
Billy had her arms folded, one hip cocked to the side as she looked at the two of them in the doorway. “I think it’s about time you all get your little show on the road,” she said. “Metaphorically—Mik really shouldn’t go anywhere.”
Grace lowered her spatula and turned back to the kitchen, grumbling. “Nag.”
“You have work!” Billy said, drifting through the wall to follow Grace.
CZ offered Joan a hand up. He didn’t really sweat, but both of them were grimy from the events of the previous night. Joan realized as she stood up—but luckily before she stepped into the hallway—that she was dressed in only her underwear and one of Grace’s borrowed shirts.
“Clothes,” Joan mumbled. “Then peeing.”
“Grace is making pancakes,” CZ offered.
“Then pancakes,” Joan added, yanking on last night’s jumpsuit. “Then Grace does the memory thing?”
“Then Grace and I go to work,” CZ finished, leading her out the door. “And you?”
“I don’t know,” Joan said truthfully, stepping into the neat little bathroom.
She’d been blowing off job interviews her dad had set up because she was determined to find her own thing, but it felt like it fell to the bottom of her list of worries when she had a house and didn’t pay rent and someone else bought groceries, and oh, she was currently trying to figure out how to keep Mik safe.
She exited the bathroom after splashing water on her face and, back in the kitchen, accepted a plate of pancakes from Grace, blowing her a kiss, which Grace made a show of slapping out of the air. Mik was already chowing down on their own stack, seated crisscross on the floor of the living room.
“You need a dining table,” Joan remarked, sitting beside Mik. “And a couch. Please. Oh, and plants!”
“Joan pretends to choke to death in any room without plants,” CZ said.
Joan dug into her food. “They make a real difference in oxygen levels.”
“Everyone’s a critic,” Grace said. She pointed her spatula at Mik, who was scrambling to pull out Joan’s credit card. “No. Don’t even think about it—I don’t need a load of brand-new garbage. I intend to thrift what I can.”
“I respect it. If someone would allow me a device, I can get on my thrifting sites,” Mik said, licking syrup off their fork. “I’m kind of a savant at finding stuff secondhand. Or I was, before my whole life ended.”
Joan paused with her second bite of pancakes partway to her mouth and looked up to see Grace and CZ already exchanging a meaningful look.
Mik had stumbled into CZ’s arms sans phone or computer, and CZ didn’t exactly have spares, and it had really been less than three days in total since he’d found them, so Mik had not had access to a device in that time.
They’d all agreed it was likely best they didn’t contact anyone from their old life (yet) and tell them they were alive.
“I promise I won’t text my parents,” Mik said, sitting straighter. “Despite the fact that they’re probably out of their minds with worry. Look, I know I’ve made some escape attempts.”
“Several,” CZ said.
“And I know I’ve been vocally against my lockup,” Mik continued, unbothered.
“As anyone would be,” Joan reassured.
“But I’m feeling better about the whole situation, so I’m going to be better at being a team player while we sort this out,” they finished. “Stockholm syndrome is setting in.”
“That’s not real,” Grace murmured. “Cops made it up to be sexist.”
Now Joan and CZ were doing the telepathic-communication thing.
Grace is so smart and sexy, Joan imagined CZ was saying.
Is Mik trying to trick us? Joan asked back.
CZ shrugged. We’re easily tricked.
Grace stepped in again, turning back to the last of the pancakes she was flipping.
“Last night CZ had to literally run to Manhattan because we thought you were being attacked, as a result of Joan being attacked, and now you’re in some stranger’s house in Brooklyn, where that stranger is preparing to delve into your memory.
And all that is making you feel better about the situation? ”
Mik got up to put their plate in the sink and leaned against the counter, arms folded. “Yup,” they said, popping the p at the end. “When it was just CZ and Joan, I knew you guys meant the best, but I could see how panicked you both were, and that didn’t inspire a lot of confidence. No offense.”
“None taken,” Joan said.
“Sooo much offense taken,” CZ countered.
“But Grace and Abel seem to have a better handle on things,” Mik said, and at least their tone was a bit apologetic. “We know what the next steps are. So I’m giving you all a week where I am the picture of obedience. I can be trusted with a phone.”
Grace’s matter-of-fact tone really helped her live up to the has a better handle on things reputation.
“Let’s see if we can get you out of here in under a week, then.
” She set down her spatula and approached Mik.
“Let me try taking a look at your memories to see if there’s anything we can uncover.
And Joan and I will have to figure out if there are any witches we might be able to trust to come over and do a sealing.
Fiona feels like an obvious choice for me. ”
“See,” Mik said. “I am but a baby bird Grace has taken under her wing.”
“Ungrateful,” CZ grumbled, sidestepping Grace and heading to the sink so he could start washing the dishes, a loathsome task.
“Oh, I’ll handle that—” Grace started, looking alarmed.
“Don’t be silly,” CZ interrupted. “You are saving the life of my dear friend Mik.”
“Still a stretch,” Mik said.
“And you let us crash here last night. I’m doing the bare minimum.”
If Grace’s skin weren’t so dark, Joan was roughly 99 percent sure she’d be blushing.
Joan glared at the two of them, sizing them up.
She would love to see CZ fall into a romance; he deserved it.
And Joan admittedly did kind of worship the ground Grace walked on.
But would they work together? They were in the shy early stages, much too soon to tell.
“I think they’d be a good match,” a voice whispered in her ear, and it was a testament to Joan’s adaptability that she only shivered as Billy faded in and then rapidly out.
Mik regained Grace’s attention with a pointed little smirk, and Grace scowled, bringing her hands up. “This shouldn’t hurt, but it might feel a bit weird,” Grace said. “Hang in there.”
She began casting a spell that looked vaguely familiar to Joan, likely some standard memory spell meant to find any blocks. As it had last night, magic danced around Grace, gleaming like bells as she wove a sort of crown and placed it on Mik’s head.
Joan couldn’t see the effects of the spell beyond that, but both of them closed their eyes and stood there, Grace’s hand gentle on Mik’s face.
Enough time had passed that CZ finished with the dishes and was drying his hands when tears began to pour from Mik’s still-closed eyes.
“Is that normal?” CZ asked Joan, tensing like he was prepared to rip them apart.
“I don’t know, but—”
“They’re fine,” Billy said. “And nearly done.” Billy leaned in close to Grace and Mik, admiring them from different angles. “I always love to watch Grace cast. Joan, isn’t it beautiful?”
“I can’t believe she’s considering working in only the human world and leaving spellmaking behind,” Joan grumbled. “She really is a prodigy.”
“She’s seen too much cruelty among witches,” Billy said.
“If you’d watched your mentor kicked to the edges of high society, disrespected constantly by families like the Greenwoods, and kept on the brink of poverty, would you want to join this world?
She’s not alone. So many witches just like her, talented in all sorts of magic, are never given a proper place in your community. ”
That was fair, the Greenwoods were miles away from the normal everyday concerns of working-class witches, and Joan had no illusions about how much her family was liked.
But she also didn’t want Grace to have to give up something she clearly loved, a field she could likely make a real difference in, because Joan’s family had ruined everything.
“Are you a witch?” CZ asked Billy.
“I’m a ghost,” Billy said.
“No, I mean… before you died.”
Billy’s eyebrows rose. “I’m dead?”
CZ grimaced. “No… of course not…”
“I’m messing with you,” Billy said. “I was a witch of sorts. Now I… I can’t touch magic like I used to, not dead as I am. It runs through me like the wind, harmless.” She gave a little smile, meeting Joan’s gaze. “Oh, here we go.”
Grace removed her hand as both their eyes flew open. Mik dashed at their cheeks, laughing a little self-consciously.
“Crying?” they said. “In this economy?”
Grace remained totally silent. Joan didn’t know her well enough to read all her facial expressions, but there was a pinching to her brows that Joan didn’t much like.
“What did you see?” CZ asked, hand drifting up slightly like he could offer some sort of physical comfort to them both.
“Glimpses, not much,” Mik said. “Entering the market, the… the wonder I felt. And I was shopping for little odds and ends to take home, I remember that, and then there was someone touching my elbow, and it felt so cold, my breath was frosting. I turned around to see who it was, and then my vision blacked out.”