Chapter 11
11
BY THE TIME the town hall finally rolls around, I’m looking forward to it. It’s action , when everything about the past few days has felt like waiting.
Besides, it’s an opportunity to dress to kill, as is always my preference. Black. Leather. Skin. Hell yeah. I wear Zander’s pendant, though it’s hidden. I haven’t taken it off once.
Protection. For the baby .
I have to ask Rebekah for some help with my hide-the-bump glamour. The Joywood might know that I’m pregnant, and why they care about that I can’t begin to fathom, but I can’t help but feel like it’s best if they don’t know that we’re aware of their interest. Secrets have power, so why not keep ours?
Elizabeth does not approve of my outfit, something she makes clear by telling me she does not approve. Repeatedly. Five days of sepia-tinted judgment has gotten old, I will admit. I’ve enjoyed conversations about my witchy ancestors and St. Cyprian’s older days, but I’m not sure I’m going to be entirely sad that she’ll be heading back to the spirit world tonight.
“You consider this appropriate dress?” she’s asking me as I head down the stairs, as if repeating the question will change my mind. “For anything at all, but particularly for an ascension ritual?”
“Yes, Elizabeth. I do.” I swear that Azrael, the dragon newel post, is smirking at me. “That’s why I’m wearing it.”
Then I walk through her some more as I meet up with everyone else in the foyer so we can head outside together, into a quickly falling night that gets chillier by the minute.
October is nearly upon us and fall is coming in fast, like it or not.
“I do not understand these descendants of ours,” Zachariah says grumpily, though he’s not looking at Elizabeth as he complains. He’s just floating stiffly beside her, his umbrage perfectly visible even though I can see the lampposts along Main Street through him, wrapped with the apple boughs. “These garments aren’t even suitable to cross the river in.”
“Good thing we’re not crossing any rivers, then,” Zander mutters, his hands stuffed in the pockets of his jeans.
“Dungarees,” Elizabeth said in amazement and horror back at the house. “Like a sailor.”
As if that was a terrible insult.
Zander and I exchange a look and mutual rolled eyes, but that feels like dangerous ground, so I look away again as we walk past Holly Bishop’s coffee shop and bakery, moving along the street toward Confluence Books and then, farther down, Tea & No Sympathy. The entire town is dressed up for Mabon in the form of the Apple Extravaganza that Emerson put on the same way she does every year, impending war be damned.
How do you have time to put on a festival right now? I asked her when I’d gone into the shop the other day to see the whole town transformed.
I have magic now, Ellowyn , she’d replied serenely. I can do twelve times as much and I don’t even need help. It’s awesome .
Because I guess we’re always who we are.
Tonight we’re all walking together. Actually walking, not magicking ourselves to and fro the way we might normally. This is also Emerson’s idea.
We’ll arrive together , she said last night. A little procession of community business leaders, stalwart members of the wider witch community, and actual friends.
It will make a stark contrast to the Joywood’s usual dramatic appearances , Jacob added. Because the Joywood have never met an entrance they couldn’t make as elaborate as possible.
It gets colder as we walk. By the time we reach the community center, I’m wishing I wasn’t showing so much of my glamoured midriff, though I will die before I admit such a thing in Elizabeth’s hearing.
That’s how I know she really is family, I guess.
Tonight’s meeting is the typical quarterly witch town hall that I would normally avoid like the plague, because we’ll all hear about it whether we attend or not. The Joywood send out tedious scrolls that are charmed to report back if we don’t open them, so no one can claim they missed out on any important witchdom happenings.
These witchy “town hall meetings” in St. Cyprian are the heart of the magical government that operates here, where no humans ever think to look for us. Meetings like this are enchanted so that even if humans manage to find the right room at the right time, what they hear are boring blatherings about dull subjects no one could possibly care about.
Mostly, humans don’t make it here for the quarterly meetings that the Joywood preside over. I don’t come either, because what’s the point? No one’s listened to a Good about town business since the legendary night Mercy Good stood up to the tutting pearl clutchers who wanted her bordello closed and told them all what their husbands really liked.
No point trying to beat the master at her own game, in my opinion.
As we walk into the overheated room, Sage comes over to greet us. He gives Georgie a little rose that she looks happy enough to receive as she tucks it behind one ear.
Clearly I’m dead inside, because I don’t find this at all sweet. I should. I should wonder when I’ll meet a guy who’ll shower me in roses and ask me, gently, how my day has been. Then listen with rapt attention .
I try to imagine Zander doing any of these things but I can’t, because Zander is too hot and knows me too well, and if he has ever asked after my day in our lives, it was with the express purpose of getting me naked.
Also, Zander is not wearing one of those strange three-piece suits with a bow tie that Sage likes so much, claiming his job as a high school teacher lends itself to this choice. The only sartorial choices Zander makes involve whether to wear a Henley or a T-shirt, both of which show off his 100 percent unglamoured and athletic abs at all times.
Not that I look. Not that I can picture, perfectly, the selkie tattoo on his very impressive shoulder.
I order myself to stop comparing Georgie’s perfectly nice boyfriend to my toxic ex as Emerson marches us all into the front row of the meeting. We file in and sit while she moves around the room, talking to pretty much everyone who comes in. She makes it back up front with the rest of us by the time the Joywood appear on the stage at the front of the room with all the expected pomp and circumstance.
Assholes , I think, and hope they can all pick up on it.
Carol Simon, who is the most powerful witch in the world by virtue of leading the ruling coven, dresses like she invented frump and has the most bizarrely frizzy hair. It’s not that frizzy hair doesn’t come for us all—this is Missouri, where the frizz is free—but she is powerful enough to not only make herself look like Grace Kelly if she wants, but make everyone who sees her think that Grace Kelly copied her . That she doesn’t do this, that she never has, is just one of the things about Carol and the Joywood that I spent my life pretending didn’t creep me out.
Maeve takes her place on the stage and makes a point of smiling down at me benevolently. I make a point of remaining deadpan. Elizabeth and Zachariah mutter to each other about it, Zander makes a gruff sort of sound I think only I hear, and farther down the row, Rebekah sits forward from where Frost’s arm is slung over the back of her chair to raise a brow my way. In solidarity.
Carol titters in that way she always does, always so creepy, and starts the meeting. There’s an agenda, which she reads out as if we can’t all see it hanging in the air on one of the screens someone has magicked up there. There’s a robust discussion about street cleaning. There are several rants from the community about improper uses of gardening spells, attempts at love potions, and the odd wannabe-curse between drinking buddies and a whole book club.
The Joywood look as bored as I feel, and behind us, I can hear far too many people shifting restlessly in their uncomfortable fold-up chairs. Another Joywood rule is no magicking in of actual, comfortable chairs or that hammock my mother once claimed was orthopedic to have an excuse to get in a fight with them.
Look, I don’t come from thin air.
“I see these haven’t gotten any more interesting in the past century and then some,” Zachariah mutters from where he floats behind Zander, practically on Bernie the cheese guy’s lap—not that he knows a ghost is hovering in front of him. Probably too busy visualizing his cheese boards for next Saturday’s farmers market.
“Perhaps interest is in the eye of the beholder,” Elizabeth says pompously, but she has the same sort of glazed-over look of boredom I’m sure can be found on my face and every other face in the vicinity.
Almost like the boredom is the point , Emerson points out in our all-coven internal chat, directly into our heads.
That she’s almost certainly right doesn’t make me any less bored, though.
The droning goes on and on. It’s interminable, and the Joywood are staring down at us, so I know I’m not the only one using magic to prop my eyelids open. Even as I want to take a nap, there’s this prickly feeling along my skin, and I have to shrug on my jacket. It’s too warm in here, but something is making me feel cold.
Finally— finally— there’s that shuffle and buzz that signal the torture is about to be over, but Carol hasn’t called on us yet. She hasn’t even pretended to mention what should be the key part of this meeting—the presentation of our sponsors, which is our formal entrance into a bid for ascension.
There’s a part of me, and not a small part, that is much happier about this than I should be.
But Emerson isn’t about to let them exclude us on a bureaucratic technicality. She gets to her feet and doesn’t wait for Carol to formally grant her permission to speak. “Carol, you’re missing an item on the agenda.”
There are whispers as Carol pretends to study the agenda that we can all see before us, absent any ascension items.
“Always very confident ,” says an older witch, sniffing to her friends.
“Does she ever think of anything except attention ?” mutters a younger one, and he glares so hard at Emerson that we all bristle a little.
“You’d think North would keep her in line with that ring on her finger.” This one is followed by a nasty round of snickering from the middle-aged group of men in the corner who do not appear to notice the dark way Jacob looks at them.
I glance around at the people talking quietly behind their hands—or not quietly and not behind their hands—while glaring at Emerson. Who pretends not to notice.
Or maybe she really doesn’t notice. That’s one of her charms. With her memory or without it, she is cheerfully immune to the opinions of others.
Because none of it is true, or even really about her, so why should she care? The angry things people say behind your back and even to your face have more to do with them than the person you are.
Or the truth.
When I look back at Carol, she’s squinting down at us, her face wreathed in that saccharine disappointment that she wears almost as often as that frizzy hair. “I don’t see any sponsors , Ms. Wilde, which is what your little makeshift coven will need to progress toward ascension past Mabon. Was that not made clear?”
“That’s incorrect, Carol,” Emerson is brisk, not rude, as often accused. “We have sponsors.”
“She’s such a bully ,” someone whispers, sounding personally affronted. I would recognize Gus Howe’s querulous voice anywhere. “Why can’t she be polite ?”
“Don’t you wish someone would take her down a peg—or three?” someone else mutters as the rest of us climb to our feet to take a stand next to Emerson.
She counts, calmly, in our heads where only we can hear her. Then we turn to face the crowd, as one. The Joywood aren’t the only ones here with magic and a flair for the dramatic.
And there are people here who support us too. My mother and Mina, of course, holding hands in their row—to keep Tanith from charging the stage as much as any of their usual affection, I’m sure. The entire North clan, who almost never venture to this side of the river, since Healers tend to keep to themselves. Corinne Martin, who runs the Lunch House. Keely Chung, the chef at Nora’s—the finest restaurant in town. Witches who stood with us at Litha.
Even Zander’s father ducks in the door—late, but here.
I can’t help but notice it’s very divided. And I know why.
There are a lot of people who are afraid of the ruling coven’s power and vindictiveness, which is fair enough, but there’s a whole other group of people who aren’t supporting the Joywood because they’re afraid of that power, but because they get off on it. Who like aligning themselves with the powerful group so they can look down at people and whisper about all the ways someone else doesn’t fit their definition of what good and right is.
Who do everything they can, as that woman behind me said so we could all hear it, to take us down a peg .
It’s sickening when you think about it. When you see it firsthand. They can’t just support the Joywood or disagree with us for any number of real reasons—like that we’re all young and one of us isn’t even a full witch.
They don’t just want us to lose. They want us to suffer .
I can’t deal with how gross this all feels tonight, or how little I want to see some of the things I can see on the faces of people I know will smile and say hello to me on the street tomorrow. I have to gear up for a Summoning.
In front of everyone .
Lucky for me, spite is a great motivator.
“By all means,” Carol says with a titter, aimed toward her supporters in the crowd, who all laugh along. “Please produce these invisible sponsors of yours.”
She might as well have called us kindergartners with invisible friends.
Focus , Frost tells us all, every inch of him the first, best Praeceptor who taught everyone in this room everything they know, directly or indirectly.
So that’s what we do.
We don’t do a full ritual. We don’t pull out candles or draw runes on the ground. It’s not necessary with our ghost friends already on this side of the veil. We still do everything needed to protect me and our ghosts in the center of our circle.
It’s even hotter up here in front of everyone. Like the lights have been amped up or the heat is suddenly on full blast. Tricks I would not put beneath the Joywood, so I let that feed the spitefulness inside me. I feel a trickle of sweat trail down my back, but I shrug it away while Emerson explains what we’re doing to the crowd.
Despite my effort to cuddle on up to that spite and make it work for me, I can’t seem to focus on her words. Because I’m starting to feel wildly nauseated.
I tell myself it’s panic, but the breaths I take to calm myself down only seem to make it worse. Then much worse , like I’m really going to be sick right here in front of everyone.
It has to be nerves. I keep telling myself that, but it reminds me of something.
This year’s Beltane prom that we were all forced to attend, as grown-ass adults. Where I felt really sick. Like I’d been poisoned.
I couldn’t have been pregnant then, is the thing. That happened later that same night.
At the prom I felt as if I had acid inside me. In my blood, beneath my skin. Throbbing at the backs of my eyes.
I feel that way again now, so bad it makes me think back almost fondly to the bouts of morning sickness I had earlier in the summer that I thought were somehow related to all that. Morning sickness was a holiday on the beach next to how terrible I feel now—
Emerson looks to me, the sign for me to begin the Summoning.
Like it or not, I have to reveal Elizabeth and Zachariah to the crowd here tonight. I have to make this happen, even if it kills me.
So I ignore the cramping and nausea sweeping through me. I focus .
I say my words quietly. There’s magic, there’s power, and then there’s that sickening thing inside of me, growing stronger. Nausea, pain, exhaustion. Like something bad is working its way through my body, and fast.
It feels black. It feels thick and oily, and it leeches into my bones.
That’s almost a good thing, however awful it makes me feel, because it reminds me of that shadow outside Zander’s apartment. It makes me think black magic , and if I know anything about the Joywood, it’s that they aren’t afraid of using a little black magic when it suits them.
Since they are the law, they can also hold themselves above it.
This seems so obvious to me that I almost laugh. Why wouldn’t they poison me with this unfurling black that’s sucking me under? I’m only surprised they haven’t targeted all of us yet.
I remind myself that I’ve fought it once already. I lived through Beltane prom. I lived it up Beltane night—hell, I have the baby to prove it.
The baby.
They came at me once, and it was bad, but I won’t let them get at my child.
I decide this, like a prophecy, at the same moment I lift my athame toward the sky and reveal Zachariah and Elizabeth to the crowd. I use my other hand to grip Zander’s pendant, like a promise that the baby will be okay.
Everyone murmurs, shifting in their seats, as the ghosts begin their speech. Like whatever Emerson said beforehand, I can’t concentrate on any of their words. It’s taking all I have to hold my baby safe inside me and to make sure the ghosts stay visible and audible to all.
Meanwhile, that darkness rolls through me, hot and boiling and mean .
My strength is wilting, though I fight for more. I hear Elizabeth say something about a group of special young people with an imperative message. Was that part of their script? Imperative again.
I can’t focus on that. I have to focus on staying upright instead. On keeping my connection to the two of them, and broadcasting them to the witches gathered here tonight. On doing what I can to protect my baby.
I’m going to beat you, you evil fuckers. I don’t care if I send that thought out into the Joywood’s consciousness. To the whole damn town.
I hope I do.
“Ellowyn.”
Zander’s voice cuts through the dark. I can feel his hand on the small of my back, like he’s holding me up. Maybe he is, but I’m not done. I shake my head at him, concentrating on the connection. Keeping my athame high above me. The pendant in my other hand pulses. Nothing else matters in this moment.
I’ve accepted that someday, I will be my coven’s downfall—but not yet.
Not tonight.
Not until I’ve given it everything I’ve got.
A few seconds later, I feel Jacob’s hand on my shoulder. There’s a little ribbon of respite. He’s trying to help.
I concentrate on that. On the small feeling of relief. On Zander holding me up.
Then on Elizabeth, because her face is hovering in front of mine.
“You’re special,” I hear Elizabeth whisper at me, and she’s the only thing I see at the moment, which feels like an epically bad sign. Then even she is fading. “Don’t forget it. You are special . It is imperative you don’t forget again, Ellowyn.”
Imperative. That damn word again.
Then, for a moment, there’s...nothing.
But I feel a kick, deep inside.
Like the baby is fighting too.
I don’t let the dark claim me. I don’t let it win.
I stand up straight, like I don’t need Jacob’s or Zander’s help at all, and I smile straight up at the Joywood like I’m giving them the middle finger. I can’t feel my hands, so maybe I am.
“Elizabeth Good and Zachariah Rivers have offered their sponsorship in the traditional fashion,” I say, letting my voice ring out so they can whisper that I’m a very confident bully too, and dressed so abominably besides. “I think we can all agree that they fit the requirements. Or do you need me to bring them back?”
I sheathe the athame, and then I fold my arms across my chest like I’ve never been healthier or felt better, and challenge the entire ruling coven to come at me.
If they dare.