31. THE WHIMS OF A WITCH’S HEART
THE WHIMS OF A WITCH’S HEART
IT TOOK THE ENTIRETY OF HOME ALONE PLUS EMbrY’S GENEROUS offer to play his favorite movie of all time—Dead Poets Society, naturally—before Rye finally succumbed to the fact that he was human and fell asleep.
Okay, well, that and that when she’d offered to make him tea, Embry had dropped in the same sleeping draught he’d joked to Lazarus about using on her earlier that evening.
“Thanks for the idea, Knighton.” It was indulgent to whisper those words, but considering she’d had very few wins over the last several days, Embry indulged.
She patted him on a scruffy cheek, before slipping upstairs to change into another black pair of tights, a midnight quarter zip, and pull her now-dry hair into a ponytail.
She wasn’t sure what Rye had done with the retired phone she’d used that morning, so she kept her current one for emergency’s sake, then snuck out the conservatory door and into the night.
Rye was right about many things, but he’d been wrong about the plan hatching in her brain. Instead of downtown, Embry pointed herself toward the route she took almost daily after putting Daddy through his paces and setting out high-fiber breakfasts: Raven’s End.
She slipped into the woods, past the gate, and saluted the statue of Hiram Woodcross before continuing her brisk pace down the path winding from one end of the cemetery to the other.
But just as the canopy of half-bald red maples opened to frame the spires of Old Main in the distance, came a sound Embry did not expect.
“Woodcross! Wait!”
The yell was muted, not so much a shout as a whisper that traveled long distance. Some trick of magic, surely. Embry was too panicked and determined to take the same precaution and instead hissed over her shoulder. “You should be asleep. Like, sound asleep.”
Footsteps came closer, at a fast clip. A run. She started running, too, the wrought iron gate leading from Raven’s End to the grounds of Raven’s Head catching moonlight along its sharp black edges.
“Insomnia knows no bounds. Even with magical enhancement.”
Gosh darn him—she should’ve used that one immobilization spell Daddy taught her for self-defense. Rye was gaining on her, even though she was the one who held several middle-distance marks for her magical designation in the Raven’s Head record books.
“You’re not supposed to be here.”
“Well, I am.”
Rye’s voice was close now, and Embry suddenly found herself pinned between the cemetery gate and his incoming form. So she hit the brakes and whirled on him, ponytail whipping so hard it slapped against the metal bars and skidded to her opposite shoulder.
“How? Did you trace my phone like a creep?” She tossed the accusation at Rye with all the force she could muster, even as her heart surged at the fact that he was here. Even though she’d done nearly everything she could to prevent him from following her and thus incurring the wrath of Daddy.
“Your phone? Jesus. No.” Rye’s face was truly horrified at the notion. “I just know you.”
Embry scoffed at him and wound her arms across her chest. He’d said that many times, most especially lately, and it was much easier to push back against what that could mean than to accept it and dare for something good. “That’s not an explanation.”
Rye cleared his throat, looked away. Toward the statue of Hiram Woodcross, standing tall and ever adventurous, looking toward a new, witch trial–free life in Maine.
Putting down roots that apparently could be upended four hundred years later by his many times great-granddaughter and the unfortunate murder of a vampire.
When Rye looked back, the horror had fled his features, replaced with… sheepishness?
“I woke up, and I immediately knew it was because you’d left.” Embry could picture him, bolting upright on the couch the moment the conservatory door snicked shut.
“That still doesn’t explain why you’re here and so quickly.
” Her fingers dug into her biceps as her forearms pressed in on her rib cage.
“I could’ve just gone to my own bed to sleep.
” Now Rye scoffed back. She was Team No Sleep just as much as he was.
“Or I could’ve taken your handy suggestion and gone for the Ravenwood PD evidence locker. ”
Rye took a step closer, and Embry was surprised that the sheepishness etched deeper into his features. So deep that his perpetual pout turned upward again, bashful.
“We both know if it’s between my suggestion and your own independent idea, I’ll lose every time.
” They both did know that. “I knew where you’d gone because you’re willful enough to toss yourself into the fire after we’d had an entire conversation about how this killer might want you not only blamed but dead. ”
It wasn’t an accusation, but she handled it like one. As if they were on Jonesy’s stage, playing improv, trying to keep each other on their toes.
“And I don’t want to be blamed or dead. I can’t sit still and just let Daddy’s lawyers handle it.
” She thrust a hand toward the house beyond the trees for emphasis.
“Thanks for showing me I had agency in this because on Sunday night I was ready to just wallow in wait. But now? Now, I have to do something. Even if it’s stupid. ”
Rye didn’t flinch. He just did his patented direct stare and agreed, “It is stupid.”
“Then I’m stupid!” Embry was stage-whispering now, the words churning forth like a firehose.
“I always thought people actually liked me. Not because of my last name, but because I’m smart, friendly, and kind.
But maybe I was never any of those things.
I was a stupid, vapid, self-absorbed nepo baby who made a good mark for some Disney villain out here, killing my friends and blaming me for it.
First Oakley, next will be Balthazar. And until I have proof Alistair is holed up on his mothers’ Christmas tree farm, I’m going to lump him in, too.
Surely three dead bodies will be enough to bring down the great, terrible, stupid Embry Woodcross! ”
She was breathing hard now, half horrified, half relieved that she could be this raw with Rye out in the open. Embry slunk away from him, from her outburst and the ugliness of her fury.
Rye accepted her anger, mouth resolute even as his expression was tender. Not combative or fearful or shielded in any way. But soft, vulnerable, true.
“Woodcross, you are smart. You are kind. You are lovely.” Rye paused, throat working, and added with an audible rasp. “You are beautiful.”
Embry’s breath caught. She felt his words as much as she heard them. Rye told her he cared about her all the time. He’d even said it in the middle of their first fight about Balthazar.
I think about you because I care about you.
But somehow, this felt different. It was different. Maybe because she was different.
Embry’s cheeks immediately flushed. Her intestines knotted. Her fingers tingled with the sudden need to touch his face.
Instead, she balled her hands into fists. Took a step back and bumped into the solid iron of the fence. Planted her gaze firmly on the sliver of brickwork between Rye’s battered Docs and her spotless running shoes.
“I know I messed up with Oakley on Friday night. I know I did.” Embry nodded and willed her voice not to crack. “You were right—it was badly done. I was a non-shifting bitch.”
Rye pressed a palm into her shoulder. Embry didn’t look up at him, though. She couldn’t. She had to keep talking. She had to say this, mostly because he was the one who always heard her, even when she was, as he’d pointed out, putting on a front.
“Maybe I messed up our entire relationship, from the moment I met Oakley—thinking I was doing the right thing, helping this clueless, friendless girl in my benevolence.”
Embry laughed at herself, all the fight in her tone gone.
Tears were welling. She didn’t bat at them.
She deserved every terrible, mortifying, shameful feeling pushing them to the surface.
“Yeah, that was a shitty thing for me to think. That I was so high on a pedestal that it would be a gift—a little craft project—to help this poor soul. Oakley was right. I did think I made her.”
She dug furiously for the remains of her courage. “I did want to control her, but only because I wanted her under me. And I didn’t want her to want you because—because I didn’t know what I would do with myself if she managed to have you.”
Her voice broke on those final words—the truest of the bunch. Even if she wasn’t exactly sure why she felt that way. Pulse pounding in her ears, Embry waited, head bent, eyes scrunched closed, for Rye to say something. Instead, he closed the space between them and wrapped Embry in a bear hug.
It was the tightest embrace she’d had in perhaps years.
Different from when they’d been smashed together in the drama closet.
Rye’s hug had the effect of a weighted blanket.
Every ounce of apprehension, anxiety, fear, shame, disappointment, and insecurity melted away at the pressure of his body against hers, his arms caging her spine, his stubbly cheek pressed into her tearstained skin.
“I’m here. No one has me but you, Em.”
It wasn’t dramatic. It wasn’t like the scenes they’d manufactured on the stage at the Marlow Theatre. It was a whisper.
But it meant everything.
Embry’s lips dropped open, and a sob burst out. She shifted to press her face into him to muffle the sound. Rye only, impossibly, drew her tighter. Her tears slid down his neck.
When she pulled away, Embry realized she’d actually stained his skin. There were magical ways to fix this—to prevent it, even—but she was all out of sorts and panic-blotted at his throat with a thumb. “This mascara isn’t as waterproof as advertised. Sorry.”
She felt silly to even admit that she was wearing mascara. Seriously, who takes the time for makeup when their life is upside down? But the truth was it made her feel more like herself. She wasn’t trying to impress anyone—even him. He’d seen her without makeup often.
“It’s fine,” Rye replied, even as he held her face gently in both hands and rubbed his thumbs under her eyes, clearly removing smudges there. “It’ll just improve my camouflage.”
That meant he knew what she was doing and would be going with her.
Of course he was. Of course she was glad.
Embry coughed out a burbling laugh, tears and snot making it a wet sound. She swallowed and caught both his wrists. “Thank you.”
“You don’t need to keep saying that, Embry—”
“No, but I do.” She dropped his wrists but only to shove a lock of wayward hair off her face, strands holding fast to her cheek, dredged in tears.
“Thank you for being here. For knowing me. For seeing every little thing I try to hide, even from myself, and tease it into the light. And I… I need that. I can’t seem to do it myself. ”
Rye’s whole body softened as he looked down upon her. He smoothed away the remaining strands she’d missed. Embry wanted to catch his hand and press it against her face. She wanted to feel the pad of his thumb run over her mouth.
She wanted to kiss him.
She needed to kiss him.
Not like the accidental peck on his palm. No, a real kiss. Hard, long, satisfying.
That breathtaking need surprised Embry as much as the strange suspicion that the need wasn’t sudden.
Embry wasn’t sure when it had started—it could’ve begun the moment Rye arrived not to mock her pain but to declare his intention to help prove her innocence.
It could’ve been lurking under the surface of their bickering for a decade or more.
Maybe her insistence on matchmaking for others but never herself wasn’t that Embry didn’t want the distraction while focusing on her education, but because her heart already beat for someone else.
Rye.
Embry had loved him for a long time as the boy next door. Daddy loved him like the son he never had. But this? This was different. It involved her heart in a different way.
And Balthazar? Embry wasn’t sure why she’d been so drawn to him, other than perhaps she’d been drawn to the things about him—magical, dramatic, gifted him—that she actually liked about Rye. All it took was his clear interest in her to topple every defense she had.
Her confused heart knew exactly what it wanted now.
Exactly what she couldn’t have in this moment—for his sake. For hers. Because if he left her side now because she’d confessed her excavated feelings… that was the sort of rock-bottom loneliness that would stain her heart—and their friendship—forever.
Embry stepped back. Watched as Rye’s arms fell to his sides, his gentle fingers motionless without her to hold.
It was better this way. That they stayed focused.
Embry Woodcross had spent her entire high school career avoiding the whims of her heart. For as much as it hurt in this moment, she could do it just a little longer. To focus on her future. A future where she could tell him how she felt.
And if the Table investigators deemed that future would be behind magical lock and key, she’d tell him how she felt before she went.
Instead, this time, Embry said, “We need to know if my corsage is an actual lead.” She blotted again at the damp under her eyes, took a steadying breath, and asked, “You ready for some breaking and entering?”
“You bet.”
His full mouth pulled up at the corner into a smile she needed to see.
“Good. Now stand still while I cloak you.”
“Cloak me?” Rye squinted at her, clearly waiting for her to produce the breaking-and-entering version of Ames’s Into the Woods Little Red Riding Hood costume times two.
Embry flexed her empty hands. “I may have perfected a magical cloaking spell. It only works for twenty minutes at a clip, but that should be all we need before we’re in my dorm room and it can wear off safely.”
Rye arched a brow. “Where was this magical cloaking spell when we entered the police station? Or when we were locked in a glorified cupboard fifteen feet from Jonesy and Heston?”
Embry felt her cheeks heat at the very mention of their time locked together. The ghost of his finger on her lips was undeniable. She cleared her throat and put on her best exasperated-yet-elegant expression.
“Knighton, you know very well fairies can pick up on magical signatures from a mile away. I wasn’t about to risk catching their attention either place.
” She glanced around the fairy-free graveyard before holding up those flexed hands in a no-nonsense way.
“Well, that, and it might not be perfected exactly, because it’s pretty draining.
But I will perfect it. Someday. Now, hear me this time when I demand you stand still. You’re going first.”