Chapter 5
5
WHEN I WAKE UP, sunlight is streaming through the windows. I’ve slept pretty hard, which hasn’t been the case for a while. I’ve been blaming the pregnancy, and it’s certainly contributed, but there’s also been the issue of my intense guilt at keeping the pregnancy secret.
Now everything is out in the open.
And Rebekah is sitting at the foot of my bed.
I push myself into a sitting position, and she hands me a mug of tea without saying a word. Once I’ve taken a few sips, I give her a nod. Ready.
“What. The. Hell.” She bites the words out even more pointedly than she did last night.
I nod again, accepting the pointedness. I’ve earned it. “I’m only telling this story once, so you might as well call the crew in.”
Rebekah blinks, and Georgie and Emerson immediately appear, like they were just waiting for the okay.
I’m not going to cry.
“Yes, I’m pregnant,” I say, blunt and to the point. Always the best way forward. “Yes, Zander’s the father. No, we’re not together, and we have no plans to change that, praise the fire goddess. And no, I didn’t tell anyone until last night, which is when I finally told him.”
I can’t bring myself to mention Zelda right now. That feels...raw. Private.
“You guys...had sex?” Georgie says, hesitating over the last word, which makes me wonder if she’s ever had sex herself. The fact that she currently has a boyfriend suggests yes, but Georgie has always been tighter with Emerson than me or Rebekah. She could live whole lives I know nothing about. Not that I’ve ever heard of Historians doing anything but burying themselves in books. “Like...recently?”
I gaze back at her. “Are you expecting me to say that, actually, we conjured a demon baby out of the confluence?”
“Not funny,” Emerson says with a curve of her mouth from where she’s leaning against the wall, and maybe she’s right. Demon babies, once a reliable source of gags around these parts where demons are little more than a punch line, feel a little too possible these days. Just like everything else this long, strange year.
But I’m here to give them facts, not feelings. “Yes. We had sex. On Beltane.”
Emerson frowns at me. “You were sick! We took you back to Wilde House. Jacob told you to rest.”
She looks at Rebekah, as if for confirmation, but Rebekah only stretches. A little too smugly, wordlessly reminding us all that Beltane was the night she and Frost first got together. “I came later,” she says, intimate things like a current of laughter in her voice. “You were better.”
“I was sick at prom.” As I had been off and on last spring, which is the reason it took me so long to accept that there was something else going on. Well. One of the reasons. I take a sip of my tea. “Then Jacob helped me feel better. So later...”
It’s ingrained in me to keep this to myself, but what does it matter now? Next Beltane is going to be different, what with a baby . It’s not a dirty secret anymore because it’s over.
Everything has changed.
I can’t possibly mourn the end of my dirtiest secret...except I think I do.
“Zander and I have an arrangement,” I say, and then sit back, because there. I answered them.
The four of us stare at each other. The sunlight seems to fill the room. I start to think, idly, about work things. Like my new herbal concoctions that I’m planning to bring out for autumn, positively bursting with fall vibes, harvest charm—and magic.
“Are you going to explain this arrangement?” Rebekah asks, shaking her head at me, when the silence drags out.
I clear my throat. “Beltane has been a sort of get-out-of-jail-free card for us. If we want to get a little naked, on Beltane and only on Beltane, we do.”
Again, a too-long silence. It’s clear I’m not the only one who wishes I didn’t use the word naked at this hour.
“Any Beltane? Not just this last one?” Georgie asks, looking like she’s trying to find a way to access the rationale behind this. Bless her.
Emerson looks as if she has images in her head she would rather not. Rebekah just looks speculative.
“Yes. Any Beltane we like.” All the Beltanes since we broke up, actually, but who’s counting?
Emerson considers me. “Then you wake up the next morning and get right back to hating each other for the other three hundred and sixty-four days out of the year?”
“Just because people have sex doesn’t mean they don’t hate each other.” I have to say it like that. People. Because I don’t hate Zander, even when I want to.
“It’s called hate sex, Em,” Rebekah says in that languid way she has, designed to needle her older sister as only she can. “You should try it.”
Emerson rolls her eyes.
I can tell my friends don’t understand. I expected that from Emerson and Georgie, because they’ve always been more private and possibly choosy when it comes to sex. Assuming Georgie even has sex. But I expected something from Rebekah. She went out and lived an entire non–St. Cyprian life for ten years. She used to send me hilarious morning-after texts, with details.
“I don’t know why you didn’t tell me,” she finally says.
I could feel guilty about that, but why bother with guilt when I can be mad instead? “We both had our secrets, I guess.”
She laughs. “I’m not sure my psychotic teenage attempt to raze the town of St. Cyprian with the literal flames of my fury is the same as you banging your ex, my cousin , on the down-low, Ellowyn.”
What I would like to burn to ash here and now is this conversation and the fact that I have to have it. What I would like to say is that it was nothing, but I don’t bother to try. I know those words won’t come.
“Four months,” Emerson says. “And you haven’t told anyone ? Please tell me you got the necessary checkups, though?”
I can see a rant brewing on her face, likely about women’s health care and access thereto.
“I went to a doctor.” Then, as she frowns, I clarify. “A human doctor.”
The expressions on my friends’ faces are really something then. Like they’re disappointed in me.
The surge of indignation feels cleansing. “I am partly human. So is this baby.”
“Barely,” Rebekah says as she pushes herself off the bed.
“You and the baby are also partly witch,” Georgie says, reaching out and giving my arm a squeeze.
“ Mostly witch,” Rebekah throws at me. “You are both mostly witch, no matter what mean kids said while being mean, the way kids are, a million years ago.”
“It wasn’t only kids, Rebekah,” I tell her, and it feels a lot like ripping off a scab, the pleasure and pain of being able to say it out loud. Not only because it’s true, but because it makes Rebekah the unshameable look slightly abashed.
Georgie squeezes my arm again, but this time it feels reproving. “No matter how much witch, you are a witch and so is your baby, and that means you should see a Healer as well.”
I’ve been telling myself Jacob would sense if something was wrong, but that isn’t the same as having a full workup, I guess. “Our Healer said everything was fine last night.”
“That was about the attack, not the pregnancy ,” Emerson says with great authority. “We need to make sure everything is okay. That you’re eating right and taking the right supplements.”
“Emerson.” I stare at her. “I am literally an herbalist. I make medicines and sell them as teas to witches and humans alike. When it comes to supplements, I am covered.”
“We need books,” Emerson says to Georgie, ignoring me. “We need to plan and prepare.”
Georgie nods, waves her hand, and a stack of books appears on my bedside table, towering so high that it would topple over if another stack didn’t appear beside it. As if books will solve this problem.
“I’ll see a Healer,” I say, and manage to make it sound as if I’ve been planning an appointment since conception. “Obviously. Not Jacob though.”
Emerson frowns at me. “Jacob is the best Healer—”
“I know how good he is,” I say, laughing. “I’ve known him since we were kids, Em. How are we going to sit around talking about what toppings to put on our next pizza order from Redbrick after he’s all up in my womb ?”
Everyone flinches at the phrase up in my womb , as I hoped they would. A girl’s got to make her fun somewhere.
“We’ll make an appointment with Jacob’s mother or one of his sisters,” Emerson says after a moment.
It’s a concession, but what I focus on is the we . That this isn’t a me thing any longer. It isn’t even just a me and Zander thing.
This is how Emerson would be about it even if her magic memory was still wiped and there was no unwinnable ascension looming. She’d have action items and books on her nightstand. She and Georgie would research the best baby items, Rebekah would insist on going to every appointment with me, and they’d probably fight over who gets be my birth partner or whatever else I might need. It’s just who they are.
My family, whether I like it or not, no blood required. Taking care of me and my baby because of love.
Not coven duty.
I could tell them what I told my mom last night—that I should bow out of all of this since I’m only ever going to hold them back—but I don’t want to see their looks of disappointment.
“I’m hungry,” I announce. Because I am and also because I know it will spur Emerson into action.
It does. She marches for the door. “We’ll have our ascension meeting over breakfast. Then we’ll get you an appointment with the best Healer around who isn’t Jacob.” She looks at her watch. “I’m glad it’s Monday and our shops aren’t open today, because we’re going to need to work out a schedule. No one should be alone until we get to the bottom of this attack. And counter it.”
She’s already out the door and halfway down the hall, mostly talking to herself as Georgie follows. Rebekah doesn’t move. She gives me a look .
“Did you want an apology?” I ask. Defensively.
“Do you want to give me one?” Rebekah returns with an arched brow.
I do, but that feels a lot like a slippery slope, and there are too many of those around these days. I say nothing.
She shrugs in that languid way of hers that I know is calculated to be annoying.
It works.
“Then that’s that, I guess.” She doesn’t seem particularly mad as she leaves my room. She’s not pissed at me the way she seemed last night. We’re not fighting .
But there’s a rift all the same, and I don’t know how to mend it. Or maybe I don’t want to mend it because that would require acknowledging my feelings. Feeling my feelings.
I’ll pass .
Before I follow everyone downstairs, I throw on a glamour, but not to mask the pregnancy. That ship has well and truly sailed. Just enough so I’m dressed nicely—by that I mean layers of black—and looking well-rested whether I feel it or not.
With the gleam I wish I’d been sporting last night and my knife on my hip.
I regret it immediately when I walk out into the hall and see Zander—or, you know. Maybe I don’t regret it at all.
His expression, already kind of stern, goes entirely grim at the sight of me, but he doesn’t slow down or change course. He’s clearly on a mission. To see me, I have to assume, since when he crashes here he usually does it on the couch in the study downstairs that is supposed to stand untouched unless his uncle is here to use it.
“We need to talk,” he tells me as he draws close.
It’s annoying that he clearly didn’t bother with any sort of glamour, because he never does. He looks grumpy and moody, rumpled and good .
“Yeah, but ascension meetings and Emerson’s timetables.” I wave a hand toward the stairs as if these things are set in stone, impossible to rearrange.
They’re Emerson’s plans, so that’s not entirely untrue.
I go to move around him, but he stops me. Just by stepping in front of me. I skewer him with a look, tempted to spark some magic at him that might throw him down the length of the hallway, but that would be rude.
And would result in feelings I am avoiding .
“Ellowyn,” he says. Quietly. Shit. “You have to deal with me at some point.”
“I...” A million excuses dance on my tongue, but I know I can’t get any of them out of my mouth.
If I could curse the damn curse, I would.
“After,” I mutter, focusing on a point near his eyebrow.
Because I can’t deal with real Zander. Not yet. Not today. Not with Rebekah not-exactly-mad at me and the plans Emerson wants to make for the coming ascension that she thinks we’ll win and a baby everyone now knows is coming. I feel as if all my edges have gone soft, and I hate it.
Edge-free Ellowyn is nobody I want to meet. Much less be . That’s got disaster and disappointment written all over it.
“Zander,” I say, and I hate that there’s even the faintest bit of pleading in my voice. I try to make it firmer. I’m so busy doing that, I accidentally look him full in the eyes, all thunder and hard rain and too many other things I don’t want to see. “We can talk after breakfast. I’m hungry.”
That’s true. I said it. I also make a vague sort of gesture toward my belly, as if the baby is demanding I feed it immediately or risk...something. Which is not true.
Given my unsolicited and unwanted relationship with the truth, I usually take it as a win when I get away with stretching it.
Today I just feel like a jerk, because Zander steps out of my way immediately, looking alarmed and concerned and cute and... I can’t start thinking of him as cute . That’s a surefire way to sand off all my trademark edges entirely, and I can’t let it happen.
I feel a little too shaken—and maybe a little ashamed of myself—as we head downstairs. Maybe that’s why it feels like the unsettling dragon-shaped newel post at the foot of the stairs is glaring at me as I pass it.
I know the dragon has a name. Azrael. That doesn’t make me feel any better about his gleaming onyx eyes. I murmur a protection spell as we make our way into the big, cozy kitchen.
Emerson and Jacob and Georgie are whipping up a huge breakfast spread, clearly trying to outdo each other as they magic their favorite dishes into place until it looks like the table might collapse under the weight of all those sweet carbs and bacon. Rebekah and Frost are sharing a chair and a coffee mug, clearly having one of their private, silent discussions that I assume must be about the things they get up to in bed, which, mercifully, she no longer shares with me. He looks entertained, something he really only does when he’s around her. She just looks...happy, even with everything we have to face.
I tell myself happiness is for other people, and Rebekah certainly deserves hers. Some of us don’t get that gift, and that’s okay. Here we are, showing up anyway, because that’s what matters in the end. What you do , not how you feel while you’re doing it.
We gather around the table. Rebekah takes her own seat and starts passing the plates around. Emerson starts us off by asking Zander to recount what happened from the moment he got home until the moment we got to Wilde House last night.
Zander’s explanation matches mine almost exactly, except I add a few digs into the whole protective bubble situation and what I think of his bullshit, and with every word I feel more like myself and less like that...soft thing upstairs.
I decide I might make it through this pregnancy after all.
Zander stabs a sausage link with his fork. “It’s the Joywood. It has to be.”
“It doesn’t have to be,” Frost says mildly. “There’s no shortage of evil.”
That puts a decided pall on the conversation, but not for long, because Emerson won’t be deterred. “The most reasonable conclusion is that it is Joywood and ascension-related,” she says. Decisively, as always, and the thing about Emerson is that she’s usually right. “So we’ll continue with that theory until we can figure out what and why, or learn something new that changes the conclusion. We need to be careful. I want to keep everyone close. We’ll stay here as long as we have to, and no one goes anywhere alone.”
That doesn’t go over well.
“I have a ferry and a bar to run,” Zander says gruffly. “Dad wants to pitch in, but he’s not up to it all the time, and I’m not going to push him on that. We’ve got Finn helping, but he’s still new.”
I think of Zelda sitting on my bed last night. Of the look on her face. My throat feels so tight that I don’t dare try to eat anything else, in case I choke.
“Rebekah can work anywhere,” Emerson says, very calmly, nodding at her sister, who nods back. “Frost has no job other than to research with Georgie.”
“Some,” Frost says repressively, “consider that sort of research the only job.”
“Yes, Nicholas,” Rebekah murmurs, and pats his arm. “You’re very important.”
“Jacob goes all over the place to heal witches in need, but he can also transport them here if necessary.” Emerson exchanges a look with Jacob, who smiles, a fond look in his eyes that feels too intimate to share with a whole tableful of friends and family. It also indicates they’ve already worked this out. Emerson turns to me. “The bookstore and the tea shop are closed today, so Ellowyn and I are available to make sure no one with outside responsibilities is alone.”
“It didn’t attack when Zander was alone,” Rebekah points out. “What’s moving in pairs going to do?”
“Help,” Emerson says as if she predicted that question. She probably did. “Ellowyn said it herself. Zander noticed the shadow a second or two before she did, and that second or two made all the difference.”
“Because I put a safety spell on you,” Zander mutters to me.
I wish I had a ready comeback for that, but I’ve had a night’s sleep, and I have to admit that it’s true. He protected me. And because he did, I had the presence of mind to reach out for our friends so we could all fight off the attack. Together.
Maybe I don’t want to wander around St. Cyprian in pairs, but it seems obvious that it’s the safer option, and we have to be safe. For the baby if nothing else.
No one said I had to like it. I feel like that’s a parenting lesson right there.
“The next order of business is almost as pressing. We’re running out of time to find our sponsors,” Emerson says, and everyone groans a little and shifts in their seats.
Because everything in the witching world can’t be fun magic and flying. There are always rules and steps and hoops to jump through. That’s what spells are . That’s what has to happen if we want to continue to keep our existence hidden from humans, who have a tendency to revert to torches in the night and unpleasant witch hunts.
The steps in this case are murky, but the first step to having an actual ascension—instead of the sort we usually have, which involves the Joywood having a party on Samhain and no one remembering when we last chose them—is clear. It was us announcing our decision to go against them in the first place. We did that at Litha.
Despite all the crap the Joywood threw at us to stop us.
Authentic ascension proceedings are shrouded in mystery, given that Frost isn’t the only one who can’t seem to remember how they’re supposed to go. He told the entire town that’s because the Joywood seized power and have no intention of relinquishing it. That they’re making a bid for the kind of immortality he once had, that even the youngest witch learns early on only happens when you’re more bad witch than good.
But they still have control, and they’re ridiculously good at convincing people we’re liars.
Regardless, we have started the ascension proceedings. According to Georgie and Frost’s research, the next step is to produce sponsors. The sponsors must be a magical witch couple—both descended from a founding family—who are prepared to vouch for the new coven. The Joywood, as the sitting ruling coven, are presumed to have already produced sponsors at some point in the past that no Summoner I know can pull up.
Calling it dodgy is an understatement.
The sponsoring couple is required to stand up at the Mabon town hall meeting and give a sort of vocal letter of recommendation. This recommendation needs to act as proof to the wider community that said coven is worthy of taking part in any ascension proceedings.
“Our father continues to flat-out refuse,” Emerson mutters, clearly irritated she can’t solve the problem that is Desmond Wilde. “He and Mom are deliberately not engaging with the discussion every time they come home from one of their diplomatic trips.”
“Which you’ll notice they’ve done exactly once since Litha,” Rebekah says. “When Mom memorably told Dad to shut up.”
She and Emerson share a smile at that happy recollection, but then Emerson moves on. “Georgie?”
Georgie shakes her head. “Every time I try to broach the subject, I get a lecture about danger and shame and the usual Historian thing. Pendells don’t stick their necks out. A Pendell is for history, the present is for others. Blah blah blah.”
“I don’t see why these sponsors have to be a married couple,” I say, mostly thinking out loud. It’s a strange, antiquated, irritating rule. Because if we only needed one person, Emerson and Rebekah’s mother would do it, but it doesn’t count without Desmond agreeing to sponsor us as well. Zander’s father would do it, regardless of how he’s doing, but can’t without Zelda. My mother would obviously be first in line, but she and Mina have never married, Tanith being a little wedding-shy after my dad. Healers not directly involved have to remain exempt from any hint of politics, which leaves Jacob’s parents out. It leaves us searching farther afield and failing. “The whole thing is archaic.”
“The Joywood are that,” Frost agrees, sounding very nearly merry. For him. “They quite enjoy being so. It certainly makes it harder for you, doesn’t it?”
“ Us ,” Rebekah reminds him gently.
“You got any bright ideas?” Zander asks. Demands.
Frost has saved us. He’s fought with us. He is one of us, but there is still some...distrust from some quarters of the coven. The male quarters, mostly.
Because you have to engage in some shady shit to be immortal in the first place.
He studies me, and when he inclines his head, I go a little cold. “There are no rules about the sponsors being living .”
Since the dead are my territory, I have a bad idea where this is heading.
“ Ghost sponsors?” Emerson cries as though we have solved all the world’s problems here and now. I’m surprised she doesn’t fist pump with glee, given her historic love of a good fist pump. “Why didn’t you suggest that before?”
“It’s not a foolproof plan,” Frost replies. “For a great many reasons. But if we —” and I catch his sideways glance at Rebekah, who looks proud “—can pull it off with the right spirits who can fulfill the duties required of them, the Joywood can’t legitimately mount an argument. Not in front of people they need on their side come ascension time.”
Georgie looks the way she always looks when the prospect of piles of books and long days lost in libraries is dangled before her. Delighted. “All we need to do is look through history, find some targets, and then summon them.”
Summon two ghosts to act as sponsors for us. “Who are we going to bring in to do that?” I ask, knowing full well this question will be met with disappointment. In me.
Better now than when I fail to summon a damn thing. Or when I summon everything all at once. Or, like last spring, when I’m rendered nearly catatonic by the pain of it all. I have power, Hecate knows. I passed my pubertatum. I’ve done my share of a lot of magic.
Control is the issue.
In all things.
Obviously.
“Why do you think you can’t?” Rebekah asks, her eyes narrow as she studies me. “Because of the pregnancy?”
I want to say yes. I can’t. Damn it. “Did you know men see fewer colors than women, on average?”
No one is amused or deterred by my favorite evasion tactic.
Emerson is shaking her head at me in a manner that will very likely lead to motivational posters all over my borrowed bedroom the next time I go upstairs. Worse than that, motivational chats , starting now. “There have been some bumps in the road, but you’ve been part of every ritual, every fight. When are you going to trust that you can do this?”
How about never? But how can I say that in the face of Emerson’s boundless optimism and endless belief in her friends?
Everyone is looking at me for an answer, so I make a noncommittal sort of noise, meet no one’s gaze, and ride it out.
It takes a moment, but Emerson moves on. “So Georgie will do some genealogy legwork. Look into the founding families and a couple who might fit the bill. We’ve got plenty of options if we include the dead. All sorts of ancestors if we only use ours.” She starts counting off the family names. “Wilde. Rivers. Pendell. Frost—”
“I outlived my bloodline,” he says. “I am the only Frost left.”
“Thank the gods,” I mutter, earning me a low laugh from Zander.
I pretend I don’t hear him. Just like I pretend it doesn’t make me...warm.
“North, but they’re all Healers. Have there ever been Norths who were a different designation?”
Jacob shakes his head. “Not since we came to America, to my knowledge, but I can ask around to make sure.”
If you think it sounds like the deck is stacked against us, you’d be right. Yet no one else seems to be as worried about that as I am.
“We can also look at the ancestors of various Joywood members,” Rebekah offers. When she gets a few looks for that suggestion, including from me, she crosses her arms. “Just because they’re evil doesn’t mean they came from evil. People aren’t all one thing.”
There’s a pause.
“Oh, and the Goods!” Georgie adds.
I smirk. “Come on. No one views Goods as founding anything.” We might have been here from the beginning, but mostly we were here causing trouble.
“Your family was one of the original families,” Emerson insists. “That’s just a fact.”
“Mercy Good was the scarlet letter who tagged along with that convoy from the Massachusetts Bay Colony,” I remind them. “The Good name has managed to be a harbinger for all sorts of scandal ever since she decided that while the settlers here were laying down protective bricks, she’d be better off opening a bordello.”
Something my friends should remember from school. Not from classes, but from the way that history was tossed in my face by the likes of Skip Simon, Carol Simon’s son who was once the mayor and now...went away, I think vaguely. That kid was always such a weasel.
“It doesn’t matter.” Emerson says that with finality, as if she can make centuries of a bad reputation disappear with a wave of her hand, like the breakfast dishes. “A Good was with the original group that settled St. Cyprian. So, they count. The sponsorship rules that we’ve found and that Frost remembers only say it has to be a married couple made up of descendants of any two of the founding members of St. Cyprian. Any descendants from that group count. We just need to find married ones who might be on our side, then summon them here. Easy.”
“Twice,” Zander says. Everyone looks over at him in confusion.
Except me. Because I know what he means.
Maybe that’s my real curse.
“Twice?” Emerson echoes.
“We’ll have to summon them twice,” Zander says, too quietly for my taste. He does not look at me while he says it. “Once to explain and get them to consent, and then once again to stand in front of the town hall so they can give their sponsorship speech.”
I don’t want to do it. But I don’t want him questioning whether or not I can.
“So we’ll do it twice, then,” I say as if I have the same confidence in me everyone else pretends they do. “You’ve just got to find the ghosts first.”
And I can’t lie, but I know how to keep my mouth shut. So that’s what I do, instead of saying what I’m thinking:
I hope like hell you don’t.