Chapter 20
Gwen
My heart skipped a beat when I pulled out Sabine’s note. Meet me in the boat shed at midnight.
My limbs were buzzing for the rest of the day, my chest fluttering as nerves wound my muscles tight.
I lay in my bunk, staring up at the ceiling above me while I counted down the minutes.
I knew whatever was about to happen between us would be incredible—and there would be no going back from it.
Something would change, and I wasn’t sure if I wanted it to.
I didn’t want to be in a coven. I didn’t want the Maple Hollow life.
. . or did I? And if I did and Sabine didn’t, would we wind up being two ships in the night, swapping places, only ever able to be together for this one summer?
I slung my forearm over my eyes. Catastrophic much?
Butterflies danced low in my belly. I’d never been with a girl before. Well, unless I counted the time I’d kissed my friend on a dare during sophomore year. Granted, it had been a dare that I had proposed because I’d really wanted to kiss her, so . . .
But everything with Sabine just felt so right. She made it easy. The way I’d just grabbed her and kissed her like I’d done it a million times before, the way she’d reciprocated without missing a beat, and now this note?
My body thrummed in anticipation of what might happen this time.
Whatever it would be, I knew I didn’t need to second-guess it.
With Sabine, I could just be myself, and even if I didn’t fully understand who that was, she seemed to like it, which was such a radical notion that I couldn’t quite believe it.
Normally, I felt like I was always trying to perform the role of the person my boyfriends wanted me to be, but with Sabine, I was simply me, flaws and all.
When the analog clock on the wall finally ticked to 11:52 p.m., I couldn’t contain myself any longer.
I sleuthed out of bed, using the quieting spell that Faith had shown me during our hex class.
Not bothering to change out of my sleep shorts, I grabbed my new Lake Nevermore hoodie and slipped it over my crop top.
Then, I picked up my shoes. I’d wait to put them on until I was outside.
At least then, I could drop them in a nearby bush if I was caught and pretend I’d suddenly picked up a sleepwalking habit.
The normally creaking floorboards beneath my feet didn’t make a sound as I tiptoed out the door and into the night without so much as a change in breathing from my bunkmates.
Apparently, it was unusual for witches to be asleep before the witching hour, but at camp, they shifted to more human hours to accommodate all of the summer activities. I wondered if my night-owl tendencies all these years were actually due to the streak of the paranormal in me.
I snuck through the night, pausing when Hera flew overhead and landed on a nearby branch.
I sucked in a breath. Now that I knew she was Dagmar’s familiar, I waited until she flew off before I moved again.
Hera would rat me out to the head witch for sure, and getting in trouble with Dagmar sounded like a nightmare, especially if I decided to come back for the next three years.
I paused halfway to the boat shed, collecting the threads of those thoughts and weaving them together in my head.
Was I planning on coming back?
I hadn’t even expected to make it through the entire summer, and now my subconscious was planning for three more years?
I didn’t know which factor had me reconsidering: my friendship with Faith or the fact that my bunkmates had accepted me.
On some level, both were true, but I knew the real reason, and she was waiting in the boat shed for me.
I took off through the forest in a half tiptoe, half run. The silencing spell was wearing off, so every step I took got louder and louder until I finally reached the small shack’s door.
Panting, I searched for any sign of Sabine through the darkness. My heart faltered as I thought that she forgot or worse . . . what if she got caught?
My heart pounded harder. I was debating going back to the cabins to check on her when I heard “Psst!”
I looked over to the edge of the water and saw Sabine in a canoe.
The moon shone just enough that I could see the toothy grin on her face.
She raised one arm and waved me over as she steadied the boat with the other.
I panned the clearing one last time for signs of any lurkers before I dashed through the last stretch of shadows.
The long, oversized wooden vessel made Sabine look much smaller.
It was one of the counselors’ canoes, so it had space between the rows of seats for life jackets, bags, or whatever else they might need to transport across the lake.
Tonight, there was only an extra life vest and her backpack.
“A moonlit paddle?” I whispered. “But won’t we be seen?”
“We’re heading that way,” Sabine whispered back, tipping her head toward the town end of the lake. “Into the swamp that leads through the dark forest.”
I wrinkled my nose at the word “swamp,” my mind conjuring images of old monster movies like Creature from the Black Lagoon.
Sabine grinned. “Just trust me, okay? It’s not what you think.”
I relented, deciding she knew this place better than I did.
I took the other paddle, and we stuck to the shadowed overhang of the trees until we were far from camp.
The lake curved and narrowed, the edges undulating until we were paddling through tall reeds and around small islands that seemed to sprout up in the shallows.
The foliage grew spookier and more magical as we passed through a heavy shroud of mist: twisting, bare branches, spiky, black plants, dripping moss, and elaborate spiderwebs that stretched between them.
It was something straight out of a horror film, but all I could think was how beautiful it was.
This otherworldly, secret place—haunted or no—made my magic buzz.
The forest seemed to speak to me as if welcoming me home.
It was like my body knew this place, even if my mind didn’t.
“The haunted woods call to the paranormal,” Sabine whispered, and I jolted, so entranced with my surroundings that her voice took me by surprise.
“I feel it,” I whispered back. “I feel it tugging on me, wrapping me up like a warm blanket, secreting me away into the shadows.”
“It’s promising you that you will be safe here,” Sabine explained, her voice rising from a whisper as we moved farther into the shroud of mist. “It’s why Maple Hollow was founded around these haunted woods. It is a beacon to the paranormal, our very own safe haven, free from persecution.”
“It’s amazing.”
“If you can feel it,” she said a little gentler, “it means you belong here with us.”
I wasn’t an emotional person and had a hard shell of an exterior, but something about that statement made a tight knot lodge in my throat. Clearing the emotions away, I swallowed it back and simply nodded, afraid my voice might betray me.
We navigated through the swamp, the passage narrow, until we came upon the dangling branches of a weeping willow.
“Here,” Sabine said, pulling them back like a curtain.
Fireflies danced in the air all around us as Sabine rested her oar inside the canoe, and we finally came to a halt. My gaze tracked the insects lighting up our secret spot, hidden from the world outside.
My eyes suddenly welled with a surprise burst of emotion.
“You okay?” Sabine asked.
“You know, I always wanted to be Ariel, and this is like a real moment from The Little Mermaid right now,” I said, my voice shaking.
“You are so adorable,” she said, taking my wrist and tugging me onto the seat beside her.
The boat wobbled as I moved. “I’m not adorable. I’m cool and tough.” I sniffed stubbornly.
“Those things too,” she said with a grin, smoothing a hand up my arm. “Here.”
She twisted and pulled out two blankets from her backpack, laying them in the bottom of the boat.
“Come watch the fireflies with me.” She tugged my wrist for me to lie down beside her, and damn if that wasn’t the most romantic request of my entire life.
Was this what it was like to be with women?
Boy requests usually just involved their favorite part of their anatomy.
Brayden never said, “Come watch the fireflies with me.” I realized I hadn’t thought about him in weeks.
I also knew that Sabine would be different.
Whatever happened between us, I knew I’d be thinking about her every single day for a long, long time.
I molded into Sabine’s side, and she wrapped her arm around my shoulders as if I were still too far away.
We lay in silence for a long moment, just watching the yellow-green lights float above our heads.
It was so calm and soothing, something I’d never felt in the city.
Not that there weren’t moments of peace to be had in the concrete jungle, like hideaways on rooftops that overlooked the glittering lights.
But it was like a new life was clicking into place as Sabine and I were gently rocked by water lapping against the boat.
“I don’t know what this place is doing to me,” I finally said with a chuckle. “I have never been the emotional type.”
“You can be anything you want to be here, with me.” She rested her head on the top of mine. “You can be all the things.”
My eyes started to well up all over again. What the hell was happening? Was I getting my period?
“I don’t know who that is,” I whispered to the sky. Never had someone made me feel safe enough to be whatever I needed to be.
“Who do you want it to be?”
“That’s an impossible question,” I said lightly. I changed with every move, every friend group, every situation. I was told who I had to be to survive each new school and town. I never got to decide. That admission was too hard to speak out loud, so instead, I asked, “Who do you want to be?”
“I don’t know either,” she admitted. “I see myself living in the city. Going out to shows and concerts, awake at all hours, exploring the mayhem. Having a cute, witchy girlfriend who can show me around . . .”
“I think I might know someone,” I added with a giggle, even as the thought of leaving this place gave me a sudden flash of sadness.
“Maybe I could see myself doing that too. Doing social media marketing for a company that pays me boatloads,” I said.
“So my girlfriend and I could live in a cute little apartment, and I could take her to shows and concerts. And in the fall, we could go back to her hometown and see the Halloween Festival and be a part of both worlds.”
It hit me all at once that that was what I wanted—to be a part of this world.
Maybe it was the memory of The Little Mermaid, maybe it was the magic of the haunted woods, or maybe it was Sabine telling me that I could be all the things, but I realized the reason I wanted so badly to be invited to join the Sinclair Society was for the very thing that was freely given to me here: I wanted to belong to something more than me.
“Both worlds,” Sabine mused, lazily trailing her fingers up and down my back.
I swallowed back a nervous laugh. “I’ve never had a girlfriend before,” I admitted. “Let alone one who’s a witch.”
She grinned at me, her hand gently squeezing my hip. “You’re a witch too.”
I smiled. “I am.”
“I like seeing you step into that more, accept who you are, embrace your magi—”
A frog gave a loud ribbit beside us. “It wasn’t me,” I said, holding up my hands in defense, and we both laughed.
“You have no idea how glad I am that I’ve met you, Gwen,” Sabine said. “I think you might be the best thing about this place.”
“Funny,” I replied. “I was just thinking the same thing.”