Chapter 6
6
THERE’S MUCH EXCITED talking about family histories and available ghosts at one end of the table. The Emerson and Georgie end, with Frost offering dry commentary on their different ancestors. That he met. In person.
Zander mutters something about ferry schedules and heads outside, rolling his eyes when Emerson reminds him to stay in the yard.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he growls, then lets the kitchen door slam behind him.
Rebekah sits across from me, not even pretending to pay attention to her boyfriend’s tales of ye olde forebears and the many tankards of ale he hoisted with them all, when not battling them around this or that ritual fire. She is too busy eyeing me.
“Just say what you want to say,” I tell her, in as measured a tone as I can manage.
“You were afraid,” she says, very deliberately, her dark eyes on mine. “You were afraid to tell me. Do you want me to tell you why?”
“I absolutely do not.”
She folds her arms. “Because you know what I’ll say.”
Rebekah has always been a Diviner, even when the Joywood claimed she had no power. And back in our senior year, between Beltane when Zander broke up with me and Litha when everything changed and we lost Emerson and Rebekah for ten years—in one way or another—she had a vision.
I don’t like to talk about it.
“The future is never set in stone,” I say now, the way I always do. “You know that as well as anyone.”
She doesn’t deny that. And I refuse to engage with that vision of hers when it’s been haunting me for a decade already. Destiny dances like flames , she’d told me. Though you will call it a lie.
Thanks, Rebekah , I’d said, heartbroken and furious and still clinging to every word she said like she could lead me through the dark woods of it all. I can’t lie. So there’s that.
Love is the only lie you tell, but it will claim you in the end , she said. It already has.
We stare at each other across the kitchen table in the same house where she told me these words, upstairs in her old bedroom with her stained glass window letting the moonlight in but turning it red and green and gold.
Where I made her promise to never, ever speak of it again.
“You’re afraid,” Rebekah says again, softly, and it sounds like prophecy.
Come outside.
Ruth’s voice in my head is a reprieve, and I am not too proud to take it.
Especially when Georgie, who’s conjured up her usual pile of books, starts talking about some Rivers connected to a Good, of all things, and I am delighted to remove myself.
“Ruth is calling me,” I say, and Rebekah sighs, but she knows I’m not lying. My curse for the win.
I have to keep myself from running to get out of there.
Out in the backyard that rolls down to the whispering river, it’s bright and sunny. It’s thick and hot enough in September to make anyone daydream about a good blizzard, but it will be cold soon enough. The gardens are already looking a little tired, more than ready to settle into their fall slumber.
Ruth and Storm sit together on a branch of one of the tall, ancient cottonwood trees that is littered with Georgie’s crystals and ribbons. It’s Zander my gaze goes to, like we’re magnetized. He’s standing in the shade of the old tree, frowning down toward the water.
I have the childish urge to turn and walk back inside, but I don’t.
That feels like a victory.
Thanks for the warning , I snipe at Ruth.
She turns her head all the way around to give me a pitying look, then turns it back toward the river, disdain in every feather.
Owl assholery is something to behold.
I don’t say anything. I magic one of the soft chairs from the patio to a sunny spot and settle myself into it. Rebekah’s cat familiar, Smudge, appears and hops up into my lap, and I stroke her soft black fur. A few moments later, Emerson’s dog familiar, Cassie, pads outside and curls up next to Zander’s feet.
Protection. Sent from people who care about us.
I point that out to Ruth. Should you ever feel like doing your actual job.
The way she hoots at me is the owl version of a middle finger. I almost smile.
“I spent a lot of time last night thinking,” Zander says finally.
I focus on the cat in my lap, the sun in my face, the sound of the river in my ears. “Do you want me to applaud?”
“Listen. I’m not telling you what to do. I know how that goes, and this is too important to reverse psychology you.”
I laugh. “Do you think reverse psychology works on me?”
He turns and looks at me, and everything in me...shivers. I know that look. I know it too well. It’s Zander in total control, and I normally only see it when we’re both naked. “I know it does, Ellowyn. You were all ready to give one of your my magic isn’t reliable speeches back there in the kitchen—until I even hinted that two Summonings might be too hard for you.”
I try to tell him I wasn’t set to do anything of the kind, but of course I was. So I can’t say the words. You’d think that by now I’d be a beacon of truth and never even try to lie, since I can’t. But I’ve never done a single thing the easy way, and I don’t start now. “It must be so fun to be a man and know everything. What I’m thinking. What I’m feeling. What I was about to say even though I didn’t.”
This is usually the point where he rolls his eyes and storms away. Or where he throws a barb my way and smirks, depending on his mood.
He doesn’t do either today, and that shiver works through me again.
Especially when he faces me, crosses his arms over his chest, and says, “Okay, say you weren’t.”
I blink. That response is a throwback to old-school Zander. Literal old-school, high school Zander. Back when we challenged each other. Stood up to each other and for each other. Back when we didn’t let each other get away with our dumb shit.
Because we loved each other and expected to love each other forever.
His storm cloud eyes are trained on mine, the bastard. “Say, ‘I, Ellowyn Good, was in no way, shape, or form going to remind everyone who knows and loves me and is part of my coven that I can’t do the magic even the Joywood know I can do.’”
I’m too bullheaded for my own good, because I try.
Twice.
And fail, also twice.
Then, because I can’t say it and because I’m a little too tempted to punch him, and we know where punching leads, I flip him off instead. “Fuck off, Zander.”
He shakes his head. “That’s what I thought.”
I consider breaking our rule and getting into his head to tell him what I really feel, but he would view that as another victory. I can already hear it. Is that you coming in hot so you can lie to both of us, Ellowyn? Keep that shit to yourself.
He lets me sit there awhile, fuming.
“This changes things,” he says, in that low, quiet, too real way that makes me...hurt. Even though I don’t know which this he means, specifically. The attack. Ascension.
The baby.
Maybe I don’t want to know.
He keeps that brooding gaze on me like if he glances away for even a second, I might disappear, which is fair. I might. “Like Litha ten years ago. Or the moment my mother died. Now this child’s existence... Nothing can be the same. Nothing is the same. This changes everything .”
I hate the way he says my mother died , like every word is a wound. Like there’s blood pouring from him with every syllable.
I hate it because there’s no fixing it. No one can bandage him up or heal this for him. Some losses are disfiguring, and some grief never fades. Whatever I might like to tell myself about what I do or don’t feel for this man, if I could take this pain from him, I would.
“We’ve got to get our shit together, Ellowyn,” he says, like he’s laying down the law. Like he’s corralling me and my apparently untamed, un-together shit.
“We?” I scoff at him. “My shit is—”
Just fine, just fine, just fucking fine.
I try so hard to get those words out that I nearly give myself an aneurysm.
His gray eyes gleam with a hard sort of triumph that I tell myself is in no way hot.
“The bottom line, the thing you have to understand above and beyond everything else, is this,” he tells me, still not shifting that gaze from mine. “You’re not cutting me out. This is my kid too. I’m in it. All of it, from here on out. That means we have to fix our shit.”
Like our shit is fixable. “Some breaks are irreparable.”
He doesn’t even blink, and I’ve always been pure trash for steely-eyed Zander. “That’s bullshit. We’ve spent the past ten years up in each other’s business in an effort to keep Emerson safe. This last year has amped that up, and we’ve done what we’ve had to do for the people we love. If we can do that without ripping pieces off each other, we can figure out how to parent the kid we made too. Hear me on this, Ellowyn. We will figure it out.”
I wish I had his certainty.
“My parents loved each other,” he continues, and there’s an emotion he’s trying so desperately to hide, but I feel it. Raw and aching like it’s my own, right there in my own chest. “Sure, I saw them fight sometimes, but nothing like what you saw your parents do there at the end. Don’t forget that I was around when your dad left. I watched what that kind of nastiness does to a kid.”
Not just to any kid. To me .
I want to tell him I’m perfectly fine, but I don’t bother to try.
“That’s not going to be our kid,” he tells me, his voice as intense as the way he’s looking at me. I want to protest, but I can’t, because I’m too busy fighting back a sudden case of allergies from the late summer weather. It has to be allergies, because otherwise it’s me trying not to cry. He nods, like he knows that too. “If we have to cast some kind of get-along spell. If we have to wipe our own goddamned memories. We’re done being enemies, Ellowyn, whatever it takes. We’re parents now.”
That word, parents , lands on me, bright and hard.
I hate when he lectures me. Because he only does it when he’s right and I can’t argue. What I can do is evade.
I tip my chin up. “The way I see it, we can keep being enemies—as Hecate intended—for about five more months.”
“No.” He doesn’t even stop to consider that. He certainly doesn’t laugh. That’s party Zander. This is real Zander, and he’s always made me a little breathless. I hate it. He looks away then, scowling out toward the river, but if that’s my chance to run, I don’t take it. “We might not have proof, but I know the Joywood had something to do with my mom dying the way she did. They will pay for that. I’ll make sure of it.”
He turns back to me. “We get along starting now. For our kid, first and foremost. And to fuck the Joywood, because I have to figure they get off on any of us being at odds, and whatever the opposite of that is, I’m all about it.”
This time, the things that crowd my mouth are things I could say, but don’t.
I won’t.
Because it would be opening doors we closed for very good reasons.
So I go a different route entirely. I know how he’ll react to what I’m about to say, but I can’t seem to stop myself. “Everyone’s excited about this ghost sponsor thing, but you know as well as I do what happens when I start summoning.” I swallow, trying to look very flippant about it. Unbothered, like I don’t care that I can’t control my magic.
He gazes down at me, and only stubborn pride keeps me from looking away. There’s something in his expression, something I haven’t seen in a while. A kind of honesty we stopped having with each other. Because it was that or hurt ourselves on it.
“When I say I know you can do it, Ellowyn, it isn’t for fun.” His voice is hard in a different way now. “It isn’t to be nice. That’s not exactly our MO, is it? And it sure as hell isn’t because you’re pregnant with my kid. Protection spells and sending you to Antarctica, far away from this mess, sound a lot better than that. It’s because you’re a part of this puzzle. Only we can put it together. We wouldn’t have gotten this far if it wasn’t meant for us.”
We. Us. There’s been a lot of that. When I wish I could just be a me .
Something else I don’t dare to try to say out loud, but this time because I’m not sure if I can or not. Maybe I’m afraid I don’t want to know if I can.
Zander is still looking at me in the same way, like he sees the real me, buried down deep, that only he ever has. “You can do it. And you will. Just like you’ve been doing since Ostara. Maybe it won’t be perfect, but who’s expecting that after everything the Joywood has done to us? You’re the only one who holds yourself to the impossible standard of perfection.”
These are words we don’t say. This is...a genuine pep talk from Zander Rivers. Something he would have said to me in high school when I fucked something up because my magic couldn’t hold. Not excusing me, not telling me not to worry, but calling me higher. Telling me I had no limits except the ones I put on myself.
I don’t want to remember that. I don’t want to think back to the time that when we weren’t bad for each other, we were pretty good. It doesn’t do me any good to remember that.
Of course, telling yourself not to remember something is a surefire way to have nothing but that thing in your head. Then all the other Zander things follow, to the point my face gets a little hot.
There’s a little flicker of a moment where I think his mind might be heading down the same path, but he looks away and squints at the river. “I have to get to my shift at the ferry.”
I clear my throat. Virtuously, like my thoughts were nothing but pristine. “You’re not supposed to go alone.”
He doesn’t actually laugh, but there’s the suggestion of it, thick like the humidity between us. “You offering to be my safety partner, El?”
I am not. Obviously I am not. But it’s Monday, so Tea & No Sympathy is closed, like Emerson pointed out earlier. And he says it like a challenge—but this time, one I can handle because it doesn’t get tangled on my tongue. “Sure. Why not? You want us to be buddies now, right?”
He laughs, and it’s not the bitter one I’ve grown so accustomed to. It’s like an old Zander laugh. Fun. Light.
He immediately sobers, like he noticed the difference too.
“This is better, you know,” I tell him. It hurts to say it, but it hurts worse to keep it to myself.
His expression is wary. “What is?”
“You with your fighting spirit back.” He was honest with me about important things, and this is important too. “You’ve been drowning, and that’s okay. I figure it’s part of it all. I haven’t lost my mother, and I know my dad is still alive so it’s not the same—”
“No. It isn’t.”
“It’s grief.” I don’t back down at the harsh tone in his voice. “It’s losing the life you once had and thought you would have for a long time. The foundation you depended on. I think you have to let yourself drown a little before you swim back to the surface, because grief never really goes away. But she’s here in spirit. I saw her myself. Her spirit will get stronger as time goes by, and she’ll visit more. She’ll meet our baby. I’m not saying it’s the same. I know it’s not fair, but she’s here for us, Zander, even if we can’t see her.”
He looks away, but if he can be the bigger person, so can I. “There’s this article about how grief is a five-year cycle.”
He scowls at me, but it’s not with that quiet, concentrated anger that messes with me internally. Just general irritation. It’s almost comforting. “Are you going to pretend you read an article?”
“Did I say that?” I know I didn’t.
“We both know you watched a video somewhere.”
Which makes me laugh because he’s right. Maybe, just maybe, we can do this. This be parents thing without ripping each other to shreds.
Maybe, just maybe, we can do this impossible thing for this kid, our kid, because we know how important that is.
Maybe Zander and I can finally grow up and make it work—maybe not in the way we imagined when we were teenagers, but in a mature, adult fashion that will give the child we made exactly what she or he needs.
For a moment, looking at Zander, and all the familiars around us, and the mighty river in the distance, I believe we can. I believe we actually can.
You know, if we live past ascension.