Chapter Twelve Daisy
Chapter Twelve
Daisy
Even witches have to know their limits.
—Rules for Witches
“Daisy, do you have a moment?”
Daisy had just put her purse over her shoulder and was about to leave Lady’s Mantle for the night, but Aggie’s soft voice stopped her. Soraya and Nora had just left, and she’d stayed an extra hour doing the books and making up for the other nights she’d left early for rehearsal.
She almost wondered if she was in trouble for not doing the spell earlier. It was silly, maybe, but Aggie had gone to all that trouble, and then Daisy had rejected it.
“Of course.” Daisy turned toward the older woman.
“I wanted to give you something.”
“Oh, Aggie, you’ve given me plenty.”
Aggie shook her head. “No, I haven’t given you quite what you need yet.” She reached beneath the counter, took out a box of cards, and passed it to Daisy. Daisy looked at the box, cream colored with holographic beams of light surrounding art deco–style imagery.
“This is beautiful,” she said.
“You have very deep intuition, but I think it is best served with the framework of the cards to help give it shape.”
Daisy laughed. “Are you saying even my intuition needs to be organized?”
“There’s nothing wrong with that. It can make it easier to latch on to.
Soraya’s power is in what she makes—in the herbs, the flour, the magic she puts into her food.
Nora’s is big, profound, creative energy.
Angry, sometimes, and pulls from the moon itself.
Yours . . .” Aggie tapped the cards. “You already know, don’t you?
You’re the one who’s been reading most from the grimoire. ”
“I like to learn everything I can learn,” Daisy said. “Not very magical.”
“It’s extremely magical. It just informs the elements you work with best.” Aggie looked at her. “Go ahead, open the deck.”
Daisy slipped the lid off the box and picked up the deck, going through the cards and looking at the artwork.
“Every reader works with cards differently. Some feel the energy in the cards. Some look for symbolism in the art and read intuitively. Others extrapolate the meaning more closely to the traditional. Some read reversals, others don’t.
Some see reversals as opposite energy to the upright, and others see it as a shadow side, or blocked energy.
There might be rules and a framework, but it’s your own intuition that brings it to life. ”
Daisy shuffled the cards in her hand. “I’m not sure I can trust myself. I feel . . . like I don’t know who I am. I know who I am when it comes to other people. I’m a mom, and a daughter, a granddaughter, a soon-to-be ex-wife who wasn’t enough for her husband.”
“That is not who you are, Daisy. You are all the magic that’s existed inside you since you were a little girl. You used to spin in wild circles and howl at the moon. When did you stop? That girl, that’s who you are.”
She swallowed hard, trying to hold back tears. She hadn’t been that girl for a long, long time.
“What bothers you most right now?” Aggie asked.
An image of Jonathan came to mind, and Daisy pulled a card from the center of the deck, then flipped it over on the counter.
She laughed. “The Fool. My own personal fool is giving me lots of problems.”
“There are layers to that,” Aggie said. “As the Fool is clearly a person. Also the new beginning you’ve been forced into.”
“Hmm.” Daisy picked the cards up and put them back into the box, the Fool on top. She watched him vanish as she closed the lid over him. “Thank you, Aggie. I’ll work with these.”
“You have it all, my dear. It’s just learning to see it.”
The words sat heavy in her chest as she drove home.
She stuck her key in the lock of her front door and turned it, laughing gently. Learning magic. She really wasn’t sure how she felt about any of it. Sure, she liked the idea. Not enough to go out and howl at the moon. Not enough to try to curse the father of her children.
Though it had been tempting. Even as she’d balked at it even being a possibility.
If pressed, she supposed she would say she was someone of a little faith, if not little faith.
When she thought about what would happen when her grandmother finally slipped past life, she couldn’t believe there was absolutely nothing waiting for her.
But she also wasn’t sure what form any of that took.
Soraya believed in all of it, that much was clear. She seemed genuinely afraid of witchcraft, like it had the ability to take control of her life and her eternal soul and send her straight to hell.
But once her husband had threatened to kick her out of the house . . .
Daisy shut her front door behind her and looked around the dark entryway of her own house.
Jonathan could’ve taken the house from her.
He still could. She wasn’t going to be able to afford to pay for it on her own.
He could afford to pay for both houses. He could afford to pay for two women.
Maybe that was where she had made the mistake. A man who could afford two lives . . .
He’s really just living the one.
She took a breath and flicked the lights on. The kids couldn’t come home to a place looking like a mausoleum where the remains of her old life were trapped for all eternity.
She also wasn’t entirely in the mood to see her ex. She felt complicated about him right now. Today, when she’d been faced with the thought of cursing him, giving him his just deserts, her old feelings for him held her back, and it had her mixed up.
Anyway, it wasn’t like he would know she had opted not to curse him, and he wouldn’t thank her if he did know.
If she asked Jonathan, he would absolutely say magic wasn’t real.
He didn’t like to entertain the idea that Bigfoot might exist (Where are the bones, Daisy?) or that intelligent life might be out there (Who cares?
Even if there is, maybe they don’t know about us either) or that the B it was creaky).
It had always annoyed her, mainly because it just felt arrogant.
Jonathan McNamara, always with the answer. Always logical.
Not that Daisy considered herself overly whimsical. But she wasn’t . . . Jonathan. Jonathan liked what he could see. What he could touch with his hands.
Including other women, it turned out.
She resented that whenever she thought of him, she thought of her. Of the betrayal. Their relationship didn’t and couldn’t stand on its own. They’d had so many years where he hadn’t had affairs and—
Had they? That insidious thought burrowed deep into her brain and wouldn’t let up.
He was her high school sweetheart. The love of her life. She’d thought she was his.
What did she actually know about him at all?
What did she know about her own life? It was such a humiliating thought.
She didn’t have time to marinate on it, though, because almost the moment it occurred to her, she heard tires in the driveway.
She pasted a smile on her face, turned around, and put her hand on the doorknob.
“Someone, something, give me strength.” Then she pulled the door open, attempting to smile as brightly as the sun. Her smile faltered, only a little bit, when she saw Amberly sitting in the passenger seat looking perky from her smile to her boobs.
Daisy locked her back teeth together and tried to come up with a mantra. She liked a mantra. She didn’t like feeling out of control.
I can’t control anyone but myself. I can’t control anyone but myself.
Jonathan got out, and thankfully Amberly stayed put even as she waved wildly.
She was just . . . obvious, that woman. Like it didn’t seem to occur to her that Daisy might not want to be besties with her—not that they’d ever spoken alone.
But she had once commented very sincerely that she took the role of bonus mom very seriously, and Daisy’d had to stop herself from saying something heinous.
Even so, Daisy couldn’t help but wave back, then lowered her hand like it had betrayed her, as the kids tumbled out of the pickup one by one.
Maybe tumbled was the wrong word. They practically levitated. The kind of energy that spoke to sugar and Red 40 vibrating their tiny bodies straight from the truck into the house.
“Dad got a VR!” Avery shouted on his way past her.
“I played it.” Wren hopped over the threshold and kicked her mismatched rain boots off (it wasn’t raining).
“I don’t feel good.” Alden staggered after his siblings, clutching his stomach in an overdramatic fashion.
“Hello to you too,” she said. “I hope you had a good day.”
“The best.” Alden grinned, suddenly just fine, the red ring around his lips confirming what she had thought. Sugared up. And returned home. Definitely responsible for whatever tummy ache he was currently stricken with.
Then Alden disappeared around the corner after his siblings, leaving her with their dad.
She peered past the kids, at Jonathan, who was standing there with his hands in his pockets, looking so familiar and handsome it made the back of her throat ache.
But just behind him in the car, staring at her phone, was the woman he had chosen instead of her. Instead of their life.
She was . . . taking a selfie, her head pressed to the back of the passenger window as she pursed her lips into a pout and held her phone up at an angle.
Daisy gazed back at Jonathan.
How could it still hurt this bad to look at him when Amberly was sitting right there?
Why did she still love him?
Daisy blinked and hoped he didn’t see any of the emotion in her eyes.
I can only control myself.
“They had a good day?” she asked.
“Yeah. Monsters.” He shook his head, the affectionate smile on his face so . . . him. “I think they ate an entire bag of Swedish fish in like an hour.”
“So I can expect for them to be very hungry for dinner.”