Chapter 23 #2
I scoff. “I may have been clueless before, but I’m not now.
I’m Poppy-freaking-Hallowind, Emberwood Elite, and heir to the Hallowind ancestral powers.
I know what I know, and if you’re too wrapped up in Laurel’s lies to see what’s actually happening here, you might as well return to base and report me as a danger to the coven and all you stand for. ”
Wylder stiffens. “That’s not fair. I’m here, aren’t I? I’ve trained you and remained objective despite the demon mark and everything that happened.”
I laugh, all the hurt and frustration of his disapproving looks and disdain finally breaking free. “Objective? Do you think cutting me down with every look, and sneering at everything I’ve said for two weeks was you being objective?”
“Poppy, don’t,” Orion says, interrupting. “You only have half the story. This hasn’t been easy for either one of you.”
I meet Orion’s concern and don’t understand it. “Oh? And what’s the other half of the story? What gives him the right to treat me like dog shit stuck on the bottom of his boot?”
“That’s bullshit,” Wylder snaps. “I’ve treated you better than anyone else would have in my position. Do you know what it cost me?”
“Not a clue. Time away from your lying mentor? A drop in popularity points for lowering yourself to be seen with a pariah? Oh, is that why Amber was so hostile toward me? Did I get in the way of the two of you becoming the ‘senior volunteer super couple?’”
He makes a face as if that soured his stomach. “What? No. Amber has nothing to do with anything.”
“Then I don’t understand any of this, least of all why anything that’s happened to me should piss you off.”
Wylder puts his hands on his hips and takes a deep breath.
“Having you back here, defending your mom and Sebastian pissed me off because my mom was one of the coven elders killed that night. Your mother lost control of that ritual and killed her. Laurel was the one who took me in and helped me pick up the pieces of my life.”
My world spins as all the blood drains from my head. I play back the vision Mom showed me and try to envision the other three witches there. I can’t.
They hadn’t mattered to me because I was solely focused on my mom and her suffering.
As he would be solely focused on his.
I swallow and meet his glare. For the first time, I look past the hostility and see the anger and pain that he carries. “I, uh… I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
He shrugs. “How could you? Since you got back here, you’ve only cared about yourself, what you’ve lost, and what you’re going through. Even when you were told that three other coven members died with your parents, you never once asked about them or their families.”
Heat flushes my cheeks. He’s right. I’ve felt so vulnerable and victimized since I got back, I didn’t stop to consider what bringing all this up again would mean for other people.
Hell, Orion told me that my return was stirring things up for Wylder, and I never cared enough to question it.
I open my mouth to acknowledge my poor behavior, but I don’t get the chance. Wylder is already stomping past the tree line and into the woods behind my house.
“Well, hell.”
I’m annoyed at myself as Rowan, Orion, and I follow the familiar path through the forest and back toward my house. Branches catch at my jacket, and I twist to gain freedom, annoyed even more at how overgrown the landscaping has become over the past five years of neglect.
Everything looks the same, and yet it’s all different.
I find the crooked oak where Lily broke her wrist trying to build a treehouse.
The flat boulder where Mom sat and read while we practiced taking cuttings of moss and roots is still there, but covered in fallen leaves.
And I already know Aunt Aggie is here somewhere, even though I didn’t recognize her when she was foraging a couple of weeks ago.
My gaze is drawn to a gap between tree branches where I can glimpse the kitchen windows of the house beyond. It’s all still here.
But it feels wrong…
The energy crackling in the air makes my skin crawl. It feels heavy, thick and viscous, like spilled molasses.
If Mom were here, she would know what to do. In my mind’s eye, I see her standing at those windows, backlit and beautiful, watching over us playing in the backyard. Logically, I know she didn’t have all the answers, but as a kid, it always felt like she did.
The ache in my chest threatens to crack me open.
“Poppy?” Orion’s hand finds my elbow. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah.” I swallow hard and keep moving. “Just lots of memories hitting at once.”
The house comes into full view, and my heart does a complicated flip. Home. My actual, honest-to-goddess, home. The wraparound porch still has Mom’s hanging baskets, though the flowers have gone wild without her careful tending. The blue shutters need paint.
But it’s home and it’s mine.
No, ours.
I lead them across the back patio to where the glass French doors open onto the kitchen. Before I can reach for the handle, it swings wide on its own. The house knows I’m here.
“Hola, casita.” I step inside, smiling as I picture Lily dancing around the kitchen when Encanto was first released. That was right before everything fell apart.
She had just turned eleven then. She’s sixteen now. The loss of time with my sisters hurts my heart. There’s nothing to be done about that now, not until I find them and bring them home.
The kitchen smells like hazelnut coffee, and relief floods through me. He’s okay. He’s here.
“Hey, where’s my bestie welcome wagon?”
Thundering footsteps answer, followed by the scrabble of tiny claws on hardwood. Asher rounds the corner at a near-run, Nobuddy and Somebuddy yapping and waggling their entire back ends in pure joy.
He sock-slides into the room like Tom Cruise in Risky Business, but instead of only wearing boxers like Joel Goodsen, he’s also wearing a t-shirt that says, ‘Love is a four-legged word,’ and Violet’s puffy purple tutu from when she went out for Halloween as Ace Ventura.
“Poppy!” He catches me in a hug that lifts me off my feet, spinning once before setting me down. The chihuahuas dance around our ankles, demanding attention. “You’re back! How’d training go? Did you learn to shoot fireballs out of your eyes? Please tell me you learned to shoot fireballs.”
I laugh, pressing my face into his shoulder to breathe him in. “Man, I’ve missed you.”
He pulls back far enough to study my face, his hands still on my shoulders. His eyes narrow. “Are you okay? You look different.”
“Different good or different bad?”
“Different... less sad.” He tilts his head. “What happened?”
Where do I even start? “The biggest news is that about an hour ago, I got my memories back.”
“All of them?”
“Yeah. My mom visited me in this spectral vision thing, and she showed me everything. I remember, Ash. I remember Orion and my sisters and Christmas mornings and broken wrists and Dad teaching me how to ride a bike and everything.”
His expression cycles through several emotions at once: joy, relief, and something that might be grief. “Poppy, that’s incredible. We need to celebrate.”
“Maybe later, but right now…” I gesture toward the others filing into the kitchen.
Rowan, Orion, and then Wylder bringing up the rear.
I have no idea where he came from. I thought he had stormed off.
Apparently not. “Things are a mess. The ley lines that make Emberwood a supernatural mecca are unstable and apparently there’s some worry it might be the demon rift thing happening again. ”
Asher’s expression shifts to business mode. “Sebastian said it was happening again. Dude’s got his finger on the pulse.”
He does. I gesture for everyone to come deeper into the kitchen. “So, Rowan, this is Asher, my best friend and soul brother. Asher, Rowan was one of my roomies in Arcana. She saved my ass when someone ambushed me, and she’s come to help us with shadows and hexes and all the dark and dirty.”
Asher grins and extends a hand. “Thanks for saving my girl. Welcome to the mayhem of our lives.”
Rowan accepts the greeting and smiles. “It’s certainly never boring.”
“And you might remember Orion. Tiger shifter, childhood best friend, and an absolute god if you get the pleasure of seeing him wearing only a pair of gray track pants.”
Orion snorts. “Wow, that’s quite an intro, Popstar.”
“And he’s single,” I add.
“Excellent to see you again.” Asher looks him up and down and waggles his brows. “Looking forward to seeing even more of you.”
I laugh as the two of them clasp hands and turn back to Rowan.
“Come on. I’ll take you upstairs to the guest room so you can drop your bag.
Fair warning, the house is enchanted and has opinions.
” With that in mind, I smile and extend the intro.
“Casita, this is my friend, Rowan. She saved my butt a few nights ago, and she is our guest. Please be nice to her and make her feel welcome.”
Rowan chuckles, looking around. “It’s good to be here. Thanks for having me.”
Asher gives Rowan a nod and holds out his hand. “Let me take her up. You look hungry. When was the last time you ate?”
I slide the strap of my bag off my shoulder and hand it to him. “Too long ago. Okay, I’ll get some food set up and meet you both back here.”
Asher gestures toward the hall that leads to the stairs. “Try not to judge the decor too harshly. Poppy’s mom seems to have had a thing for floral wallpaper and mystical tchotchkes.”
As they head upstairs, Nobuddy and Somebuddy trail after them in an excited scramble. I can’t help but giggle. They are little furry bundles of happy.
My stomach growls, and I get back on task and check what we’ve got to eat. “Microwave pizza?”
Orion scoffs. “Sacrilege. I’ll order from Tony’s and have it delivered. Are you still into ham and pineapple?”
I stride over to the small sofa table across the room and pull my phone from the docking station where I left it almost two weeks ago. “You know it.”
“Meat lover good for you, Wylder?”
“Fine.” Only, when he says the word, it doesn’t sound fine.
I turn and straighten under the weight of his dark stare. Having lived through the devastating aftermath of my mom’s ritual gone wrong, I understand Wylder’s anger and self-isolation better than anyone else ever could.
And now that I’m whole and feel the strength of my ancestors feeding my cells, I have enough emotional bandwidth to offer him forgiveness and compassion.
“I’m sorry about your mother. You were right. I didn’t know about her because I was so wrapped up in my anger and loss, I didn’t care about anyone else’s pain. I wasn’t the only casualty left in the wake of what happened. I’m sorry you suffered.”
No emotion shows on his face, so I keep going.
“I’d like to think that over the past weeks, we’ve gotten past the worst of our impulses toward one another.
While we may not be friends, I hope we’re no longer enemies.
I get why you were angry I came back, but I hope that from now on you can take me out of the tragedy that stole both our families. ”
He stares at me, stern-faced and stoic, for a long time before he dips his chin. “It was unfair to blame you for my mother’s death. And though I still think what your mother did was reckless and caused irreparable harm, she wasn’t alone in bearing the responsibility.”
That’s progress, I suppose.
Well, as long as he means the coven members hold some of the responsibility and he’s not just putting the rest of the blame on Sebastian.
Thinking about Sebastian brings my attention back to my phone in my hand. “I need to call Sebastian to see if he can come over and fill us in on what we’ve missed.”
Wylder scratches his jaw. “Are you sure that’s a good idea? We still don’t know if we can trust him.”
I trust him more than I do the Emberwood coven, but don’t think it’ll help to say so.
“I’m not suggesting we start preparations to retry the ritual.
I just want to touch base and see what he knows about what’s happening with the ley lines.
Maybe it isn’t the same rift issue causing the problem.
And if it’s not, we need to find out what it is. ”
When he doesn’t argue any further, I pull up Sebastian’s number and make the call. It rings… and rings…
Worry starts to take hold. “Come on. Pick up.”
The line clicks, and the call connects. “Poppy. When did you get back?”
“Just now. Eliza contacted us in Arcana and said the ley lines are destabilizing and we better get back. There’s a weird light show going on outside. What’s happening?”
Sebastian sighs. “Quite a lot. The rifts are opening faster than I can patch them. There is definitely demon energy breaching the containment.”
My stomach drops. “Can you come to my place? You can tell us what you see happening, and I’ll catch you up on what’s been happening with me.”
“I can be there in ten minutes.”
The call drops, and I turn back to the room. Wylder’s got his jaw clenched so tightly, he looks like he’s about to snap a molar. Asher is back downstairs, and he and Orion are eyefucking hard. And S’Nark is on the counter, his gremlin form perched in the fruit bowl as he chows down.
“Just another Thursday night in Emberwood.”