Chapter 13 #4
She wanted to drop to the rich carpet and melt into the fibers. The knife was in her apartment, wrapped in a plastic bag inside an old shoebox so she wouldn’t accidentally touch it. If there was one thing—one thing—she forget today . . .
“I don’t have it with me right now,” she finished lamely.
“Bring it in when you can,” Elder Ranna said, although her fake fucking smile was far louder than her attempt at placation.
“We can do some tests, see what the poison is.” She didn’t believe the knife existed.
Elder David certainly didn’t, what with his expression hovering between annoyance and boredom.
But still, there was hope, even if it was just a splinter. She held onto that hope as they asked if she had anything else to say, and clutched it close and firm as she bowed her head in goodbye.
But before she closed the door behind her, she heard Elder David’s exasperated groan, and that splinter was just a splinter, nestled under her skin and aching.
There was a small bathroom in this hallway that she’d used to compose herself after a meeting before, and she managed to hold herself together until she entered and locked the stall door.
Pippa collapsed onto the toilet seat and screamed silently into her palms. She just had to keep going, fight through this frustration and the groans and the false smiles.
They were right, in a way; she had managed to handle all of the attacks in some fashion (maybe not well, but she wouldn’t be here in a bathroom fighting tears if she hadn’t been able to handle it).
The knife would help. Once she brought it back, the Ash Coven would be able to see that there was an honest, genuine threat—not just to Pippa, but to anyone who used Natural magic in New Hawkshead.
The bathroom door swung open and two women entered, chattering to each other. Pippa recognized the low rasp of Elder Ranna, although the other, higher voice belonged to someone she’d never met.
“. . . doesn’t sound like there’s much to it, but it wouldn’t hurt to see,” Elder Ranna said. “Who knows? The warlocks down in the basement would love to have something to do. If there even is anything.”
The woman with the higher voice chuckled. “If there is even anything. She just keeps coming back. It’d be funny if it wasn’t so sad.”
Pippa’s stomach lurched in that awful, sinking mortification of knowing exactly who the two women were talking about.
The stall next to Pippa opened and a pair of heels clacked inside. From within, Elder Ranna chuffed. “Harsh words, Colette.”
“I don’t know why you don’t just . . . keep her out.” Colette sounded as if she was standing at the mirror and opening her mouth wide to fix her eye makeup. “Why even let her in the building? It’s not like she’ll ever wear Ash robes.”
Pippa clenched her jaw so tightly that pain shot through her teeth. Should she say something? Announce her presence? No, then they would stop talking. And no matter how close she felt to vomiting, something told her that this was a conversation that she needed to hear to completion.
“Well no,” Ranna said. “But she’s just trying so hard. All we need to do is give her the thin hope that if she keeps going, she might get in. Which, of course, won’t happen.”
“That magic,” Colette said, in the same way someone would say, “that cockroach.” “Could you imagine how it would look to have her here?”
“I know. Awful. But meanwhile, she’s been doing wonders on the local demon population. The Coven’s duties have been halved. More than halved, actually. It’s been so nice. I’ve gone to the cabin, oh—what, it must be three times last month? You should come with me next time.”
“Is the kitchen done?”
“Almost. We’re still waiting on the marble.”
“Oh, Ranna, you know how I feel about kitchens.”
“You hardly cook.”
“That’s not the point. If anything is unfinished, I just feel . . .” Colette made a sound that implied she’d shuddered.
It would have been amusing in a different situation that this world-rattling conversation was happening between one woman adjusting mascara and another relieving her bladder while Pippa sat, shaken, on a toilet that likely cost more than her monthly rent.
Pippa’s vision swam before her as she listened to Ranna flush and wash her hands, all while she prattled on about stainless steel appliances and whether or not the arches in the hallway fit the feeling of the rest of the house.
The two women left, and then it was just Pippa, alone, feeling like all the air in the bathroom had vanished.
So it had never mattered. None of it. Every late night she dragged herself back to her apartment covered in sewer stink and demon blood, every bit of joy she ignored in favor of working, of hunting, every second spent at a job she used only to scrounge a living in a life that left no time for anything she really, truly wanted.
It had all been absolutely, extraordinarily useless. She had spent every year since she was fifteen focused on pleasing this building of pompous assholes in the hope that they’d forgive her for something she’d never done.
All this time, only one person had fully believed in her. One person had wanted to help her, and she’d repaid him with horror.
She needed to apologize to Maxim. She needed to find him, but she’d never been to his home, and had no idea where he lived. And even if she did, how could she even think he’d want to see her after how she’d treated him?
Pippa sat up straighter and ripped off sheets of toilet paper to soak up the tears.
That hurt was too much to focus on right now.
In this moment, she needed to get the hell out of this shithole of a bathroom and this shithole of a building which could have served as a witchy daytime sitcom backdrop.
There would be no more desperate attempts to work her way into a place she’d never truly felt comfortable.
Pippa stood and smoothed the creases from her skirt. She needed to refresh Mary’s wards anyway, and while she was there, they were going to have a conversation.
She strode out of the bathroom and down the hallway. A new Pippa Beverly emerged from that toilet stall, and she was mad. This was her rebirth. Kind of an underwhelming rebirth, but didn’t all great realizations happen in a bathroom in some fashion?
Before she left the Ash Coven for the last time, she made it down a few stairs, then paused, trotted back up to the landing, and twisted magic around the sacred and preserved hand so only its middle finger remained extended.