Chapter Nineteen
I didn’t realize how tightly I’d been holding myself together until my mother hugged me back.
After that, everything was… softer. I wouldn’t say it was easier.
No one had turned off Gideon, the priestess, or the hunger path like a light switch, but softer around the edges.
My mother joined Miora in warming the kettle.
She argued with my dad about the best way to charm a window.
She asked me about the Academy in a way that made it feel like she wasn’t just checking for fires, but proud.
And the more she stepped toward this world, the more a hollow inside me made itself known.
Celeste-shaped. My daughter.
It hit me later that night, when the cottage had finally gone quiet.
Miora had gone to bed with a book and a hot water bottle.
My dad took his bulldog form and patrolled the perimeter with solemn snuffles.
Mom lingered by the sink, rinsing mugs and humming under her breath, her magic still humming faintly through the house like a new instrument trying to find its part.
I sat at the table, phone in hand, thumb hovering over the screen.
The cottage felt full in a way it hadn’t in months—parents, warmth, gargoyles, Keegan in the next room pretending not to listen, but there was an echo in the fullness. It felt like there was one more seat that needed to be filled.
My daughter was several towns away, buried in finishing the summer classes she’d signed up for at the last moment.
She was grown, busy, building her own life.
She’d planned on coming to Stonewick earlier in the summer, before the Malore battle, before Gideon’s escape, before Shadowick tried to eat the sky.
I’d told myself it was safer this way.
Now, with my mother’s magic glowing quietly through the rafters, I found I didn’t believe myself as much.
I unlocked my phone and stared at the empty message bubble.
What was I even supposed to say?
Hey sweetie, how are your classes, also your great-grandmother is technically dead-but-not and your other great-grandmother might want to recruit me into a death cult? P.S. I learned to fly and set myself on fire.
“Texting your bookie?” Keegan’s voice drifted in from the doorway.
I jumped a little. “Wear a bell.”
He crossed his arms, watching me with that irritatingly perceptive gaze. “That never works out for the bell,” he said. “What are you plotting?”
“Not plotting.” I glanced back down at the phone. “Texting.”
“Ah.” He crossed the room and slid into the chair beside me. Close, but not crowding. His presence was warm enough that the cottage light seemed to pool around him. “Celeste?”
“Who else?” I said lightly, even as my chest tightened.
He angled his chin toward my screen. “You’ve been staring at that blank bubble for ten minutes.”
I winced. “Observant.”
“Accurate,” he said.
I sighed and dropped the phone on the table, screen-down. “I’m… thinking of inviting her out. Again.”
“That’s good,” he said immediately. “You miss her.”
It wasn’t even a question.
“Of course I miss her,” I said. “I’m contractually obligated to miss her and worry about whether she’s eating enough and if her roommate is secretly a cultist.”
He huffed a laugh. “Is she?”
“I checked the roommate’s Instagram. She rescues feral kittens and posts about study playlists. She might be a cultist, but at least it’s the cozy cardigan kind. Not that we guessed right about her last boyfriend, though…”
His mouth curled. “So what’s the problem? Ask her to come. Everything will be okay.”
I rubbed the heels of my hands over my eyes. “Describe ‘okay.’”
He paused, the humor draining a little from his face. “You’re not okay,” he said quietly. “Getting her here might help.”
“Which part gave it away?” I dropped my hands.
“The nearly being shattered in the mirror corridor? The priestess trying to hijack my grandmother’s projection?
The new sigil in the glass no one can identify?
Or the fact that in a few days we’re going to stand in a circle with Gideon and attempt to end a generational hunger curse and revert things back to the original ancient rites of the shifters? ”
“All of the above,” he said.
“Exactly.” I picked up the phone and turned it in my fingers. “So what does ‘okay’ even mean right now? ‘It’s safe enough?’ ‘We’ve had only small haunt problems this week?’ ‘No one has thrown weather at my head in the last twenty-four hours?’”
He acknowledged that with a tilt of his head. “I think ‘okay’ means you want her here and you’re terrified she’ll get caught in the crossfire,” he said.
I made a face. “I hate that you’re good at this.”
“I had a lot of practice,” he said simply. “Wolf senses. Plus, I listen when you mutter to the teapot.”
“Traitor,” I muttered.
His hand brushed mine under the table, just for a moment. Just long enough to say I’m here without words.
“She can still be safe here,” he said. “Safer than some places. The Wards love you. The cottage is anchored six ways from Sunday. Your mother could apparently arm-wrestle the priestess in a warding contest. Nova, Stella, Ardetia, they’re all watching. And I’m not going anywhere.”
My throat tightened. “I don’t want her to be bait,” I whispered. “I don’t want my grandmother, or Gideon, to use her to get to me again. I—“ The memory of Celeste’s face as Shadowick rose up to draw her in, raw and too bright. “I can’t do that again.”
His hand turned under mine, fingers curling, offering. I let my palm rest against his.
“You won’t,” he said. “You’ve learned since then. We all have. And Celeste isn’t helpless.”
“She’s nineteen,” I said. “She oscillates between brilliant and occasionally forgetting that water can boil over the pot. The last time she was here, everything went sideways. She barely got out of Gideon’s path.”
“And she chose to go back to classes anyway,” he said. “She didn’t stay and hide. That counts for something. And since when have you excelled at boiling water?”
“Very funny.” The knot in my chest loosened a little, but not much. “You’re awfully calm about inviting more people into the mess.”
“I’m not calm,” he said. “I’m just… resolved. We can’t freeze our lives until the curse is over. If we wait for a perfectly safe moment, you’ll never see her.”
That landed like a stone.
“If the roles were reversed,” he went on, eyes on our joined hands, “and my mother were over there”—he jerked his chin toward the couch where the Silver Wolf had saved him weeks before—“relearning her magic, and I knew I could come home, but she didn’t ask me…
I’d come anyway. And I’d be a little angry over getting no invite. ”
“You’re saying Celeste might show up even if I don’t invite her.”
“I’m saying she loves you,” he said. “And she knows enough to suspect when you’re hiding something for her own good, and that could put her in more peril.”
I sagged back in my chair, the fight bleeding out. He had a point. A miserable, correct point.
“What if it’s the wrong call?” I asked. “What if she comes and my grandmother decides to send a storm just to make a point, and I can’t stop it? What if Gideon uses the joining circle to pull something I can’t see, and she’s standing right there?”
“What if she doesn’t come,” Keegan countered gently, “and you win, and she’s not here to see the world you saved?”
Silence stretched between us, filled with crackling fire and the faint clink of my mother putting mugs away.
I stared at the phone, the little waves of anxiety radiating out like ripples.
Celeste’s contact photo smiled up at me—a candid shot Skye had taken last fall, my daughter mid-laugh, hair wild, eyes bright, fingers stained with pumpkin guts.
She looked like she belonged to a world where the worst thing that happened in a day was a midterm or a friend’s drama.
But she also belonged here. To Stonewick. To this strange, magical legacy I’d only just started to claim. To Elira. To the line my grandmother and the priestess and I were all currently arguing over.
“Fine,” I said. “I’ll text her.”
Keegan’s hand squeezed mine. “I’ll be right here.”
I took a breath. Flipped the phone over. Opened the message thread.
Hey bug, I typed, then deleted bug because she’d told me last winter that it made her feel like a Pokémon.
Hey love, I tried again. How are classes?
Three dots appeared almost immediately.
hi mom!! Classes are a lot, but one of my professors quotes Kierkegaard in a way that makes me want to drop out, but other than that, it’s fine.
I smiled despite myself. Classic Celeste.
Sounds intense, I wrote. No dropping out over Danish philosophy. That’s in the student handbook.
A beat.
Lol. What’s up?
The question felt bigger than the bubble it sat in.
Keegan’s shoulder brushed mine. “You don’t have to tell her everything in one text,” he murmured. “Just open the door.”
I was thinking, I typed, if you wanted to come up for a bit? Before fall term starts? I know you took summer classes instead of visiting like we planned. No pressure if you’re too wiped, but I’d love to see you.
My thumb hovered over send.
My brain suggested twenty-seven additional qualifiers:
if it’s safe
if you feel up to it
if you’re not too mad I didn’t tell you about Malore until after
if you’re not secretly traumatized by the Moonbeam
I ignored all of them and hit send.
The three dots appeared again.
Stopped.
Appeared.
Stopped.
I exhaled, shoulders knotting.
“What if she says no?” I asked.
“Then you respect it,” Keegan said. “And maybe send more pictures of Frank in dog form.”
“What if she says yes?” I asked.
He smiled. “Then we prepare. And charm. And I make lasagna.”
“You can’t solve everything with lasagna,” I said.
“Watch me,” he replied.
The dots appeared again, then resolved into words.
Omg…i thought you were too busy for me this summer
Lol. I almost texted you like 3x to ask if I could come anyway, but I didn’t want to interrupt Magical Headmistress Business
That sounded… uncomfortably like something I would do.
You are never interrupting, I wrote, faster than I could overthink it. I’m sorry if you felt that way. Things got… hectic. I’d still love to have you here.
Another pause.
Okay. actually yeah. I want to come. I need a break from Kierkegaard and the dining hall soup.
A warmth spread through my chest, loosening something that had been clenched for months.
Keegan read over my shoulder, his breath soft at my temple. “Good,” he said.
when? I typed.
This time, her reply was almost instant.
Soon. I have one more exam to finish, and then I’ll figure out rides
I’ll text you this week with an eta?
Soon.
A nice, elastic, terrifying word.
Perfect, I sent back. I’ll be here. The cottage misses you.
I added a picture of Frank snoring on the rug, tongue hanging out, one paw over his nose. A peace offering. Or a bribe.
A heart emoji came back. Then another message.
are you okay, btw?
you look tired in the last selfie you sent
I glanced at Keegan.
“Describe okay,” I muttered.
He snorted.
I’m… working on it, I wrote to her. We’ve had some.. complicated magical stuff. I’ll explain when you get here. But I’m okay enough. And better at flying than soup now, so that’s progress.
A string of laughing emojis came back, then:
pls don’t die before I get there
I swallowed.
I’ll do my best, I sent.
A beat.
promise? she replied.
The word glowed on the screen, too simple for what it was asking.
“You don’t have to promise what you can’t control,” he said. “Just what you can.”
I promise I’m going to fight very hard to be here when you arrive, I typed, fingers shaking just a little. And also to have cookies. We all need goals.
She sent back a single star emoji, then: love you, mom.
I stared at the words until they blurred.
Love you more, I answered, because you never stop saying it that way, even when they’re grown and living many towns away, and one reality shift away.
The chat went quiet.
I set the phone down, screen still glowing, and leaned back. Every cell in my body hummed with a strange mix of relief and fear. Celeste was coming. Soon. Into a town sitting on a curse, between two grandmothers, under a looming circle.
“Breathe,” Keegan said.
“I am breathing,” I protested.
“Breathe with less panic,” he clarified.
“That’s not how lungs work.”
We sat with the lamp throwing a gentle pool of light over the table, the cottage murmuring around us. Mom hummed in the other room. My dad snored faintly in his bulldog form by the fire.
“Hey,” Keegan said.
I looked at him.
“You’re a good mom,” he said simply.
The statement landed like an unexpected
I blinked against the sting in my eyes.
“You’re biased,” I said.
“Yep,” he agreed. “Still true.”
I gave a watery laugh. “You really think this is the right call? Bringing her here?”
His gaze held mine, steady and sure. “I think you’re stronger with your people close,” he said. “And I think your grandmother will have a harder time pushing you around if she sees what you’re willing to fight for.”
“That sounds like inviting trouble,” I said.
“We already did that,” he reminded me. “With Gideon and the circle. With the Hollows. With the Academy itself. This is inviting love. It feels similar. It isn’t.”
I let my head tip sideways until it rested lightly against his shoulder. He didn’t move, just adjusted enough to support the weight.
“Soon,” I murmured, thinking of Celeste’s text.
“Soon,” he echoed.
Outside, the Ward shimmered. The mirrors in the Academy, cracked and humming, held whatever new sigil had etched itself into their surface. The priestess waited ahead. Gideon prepared for a circle he’d somehow agreed to join. The hunger path coiled in the distance, patient.
Inside the cottage, my phone, facedown on the table, buzzed once more with a message. I turned it over to see a message from Celeste.
btw mom
I had the weirdest dream last night about a woman with dark hair and a circle of mirrors. remind me to tell you when I get there
The screen dimmed.
The kettle, oblivious, chose that moment to shriek again.
And the night held its breath around us, just for a moment, as if acknowledging that the next chapter had already started moving.