Chapter 22
22
IT’S WEIRD HOW doom is easier to bear with regular sex, my life settling back down to something almost like normal, and waking up every day to a man who refuses to be needled.
No matter how I try.
And I try a lot.
To call this unsettling is an understatement, because antagonism is what we do, but it’s not such a bad unsettling . Not compared to the fact that we all expect the next trial to begin in a few days, at most, and have no idea what it will ask of us. Every day we brace ourselves and wait for the Undine’s call.
It doesn’t come.
Meanwhile, Jacob keeps telling me that if I’d give him five minutes, he could poke around inside of me and see if there are any of those blocks we all read about in a children’s book.
I don’t believe I’m blocked. I’m all for risking myself and donating my blood to save the other Summoners out there, but wasting everyone’s time on a fairy tale is going to give me hives.
So I throw myself into work, into herbal alchemy and accounting, and yes, into Zander.
At first we expect the next trial to commence the following week, but ten days pass and nothing happens. Except we all get wound tighter and tighter. Even the ghosts seem on edge.
I try to make myself relax by spending a late afternoon taking Sadie around St. Cyprian for her thirteenth birthday. Sadie and I take a tour of October as interpreted by St. Cyprian. A delightfully autumnal mess of pumpkins and hay bales, scarecrows, and a preponderance of crow figurines. Face paints, apple cider, and dancing humans dressed in witch costumes.
We end up wandering lazily through Confluence Books for ages. Just me and her, like the fellow family introverts we are.
When I drop her off, Rebekah in tow for our safety-in-pairs deal, I dodge Stephanie’s twenty questions on pregnancy and Zander-related things as best I can. Then Rebekah and I drive out of their neighborhood, debating whether or not we should go out to Forest Park and take in the art museum, maybe get a snack—
Obviously, that’s when we get the next call from the Undine.
Joywood. Riverwood. Your second trial is imminent.
I glance at Rebekah as the summons booms through us both. She shrugs, then handles the transportation spell herself since I’m driving the car. She pops us—car and all—into the parking lot along the river. We climb out as Jacob and Zander are walking over from the ferry. Once the four of us hit the grass, we see that everyone else is already on the dais, waiting for us.
The Joywood are dressed in new, bright red cloaks that I think are a misfire. A little Handmaid’s Tale , no? I ask on our coven channel.
Under His eye , Georgie replies dryly.
Too creepy , Emerson says. The Joywood would like that a little too much.
Blessed be the fruit , Rebekah replies, earning the glare she was clearly after from her older sister.
Then we all settle in.
“Today you will indicate the contours of your brand of justice,” the Undine intones once there’s the appropriate silence.
The sun is setting, a riot of colors over the confluence. It’s chilly at last, and the smell of October bonfires lingers in the air. The leaves in the trees are starting to turn. The grass is no longer the bright green of spring or the deeper green of summer. The gathered crowd whispers and murmurs, no one daring to speak at a normal decibel level with the Undine’s eyes glowing.
I tell myself what I feel is excitement , not dread and anxiety.
“Both covens will discuss Skip Simon,” she pronounces at last.
A rustling goes through the crowd. It turns into a murmur. The Joywood almost look flummoxed. I’d feel smug about that if I knew what the hell this was. I don’t really remember what happened to Carol’s son after high school. Why would someone I barely remember have anything to do with an ascension trial?
In our heads, I hear Frost’s voice: Reveal to thee what you must see.
The spell sweeps through me, into my head. I blow out a breath. Then, on the next inhale, it all comes back to me.
“In the spring, the witch known as Skip Simon bartered his blood for dark magic with the express intent of causing harm,” the Undine pronounces, as my memories flood back. “Each coven contended with this witch. One ignored his offenses. One fought him. Which approach will witchdom favor?”
She’s speaking to the crowd, but then her sharp, soulless gaze turns to us. “Riverwood. Explain to those you wish to rule why you believe your brand of justice was correct.”
For a moment, we all stare at each other. Explain our brand of justice ? What justice was there? I can remember it now. Skip came at us. We fought him off. I don’t remember all the details, but I remember that.
Vividly now.
We don’t need to discuss this one to know that Emerson is the one to address the crowd. He attacked her first. She called to us, and we helped her fight him off.
Rebekah hadn’t been back in town then. It seems like a lifetime ago now—but as I think that, I remember something else. Skip’s black magic felt a lot like the shadow that came after Zander and me a few weeks back.
Emerson looks out over the crowd, and I wonder if this is hard for her. It’s not really discussing a justice we chose. It’s discussing what we did in response to someone going against all we stand for—and striking out against us.
But she manages to look unruffled, and she begins. “Starting last Ostara, Skip Simon used dark magic to try and hurt me. He lured me off the bricks and across the river so that adlets could attack me.” A shocked sound runs through the crowd at that, because adlets are old monsters that shouldn’t exist. “He branded me, without my consent, when he thought I was spell dim. He tried to get physically rough with me one night.” She looks at Carol when she says that, for a beat or two. Then she squares her shoulders and faces the crowd. “When all else failed, he attacked me himself. Out in the open, on the hill in front of Frost House.”
There’s a little tittering sound. A sound everyone in St. Cyprian knows all too well. It sends the usual prickle of apprehension down my spine, and we all look toward the source.
Carol Simon sits back in her chair with her red cloak flowing and her messy hair dancing in the evening breeze. “This is all very convenient, isn’t it? You claim my son attacked you. Alone. No one can vouch for this, but we’re meant to believe you had no choice but to kill him?” Carol looks meaningfully at the crowd. “This is justice?”
The crowd is muttering again, but Frost laughs. Not nicely. “The black-magic-tainted witch did not die that day, woman. What kind of mother does not know her child yet lives?”
“Give them proof of what happened, Ellowyn,” Elizabeth says in my ear. She’s clutching my shoulder, almost as if she’s hiding behind me, and I get it. Everything about these trials and the Undine feels terrifying.
“How?” I ask her, under my breath, because people can hear me.
“Revelare, you can show the crowd the past,” my ancestor tuts at me. “Just as you showed them Zachariah and me at the meeting where we declared ourselves your sponsors.” She grips me harder. “Do not tarry.”
I personally try not to think of that night, because it was extraordinarily painful. The Joywood tried to kill me—again. I remind myself that I’m protected now. Thanks to the Undine.
Still, while I know I can see the past, connect spirits to the living, create a historical retrospective for ghost sponsors, and so many other things, I’ve never tried to project an event to a group of people. I was there for part of Skip’s attack, but not for the whole thing, and I’m not sure I can show things I didn’t see. Things that don’t connect to me.
I showed Zander his mother by holding his hand. Maybe, if I hold Emerson’s hand now and connect into her, I can show the crowd what happened to her before the rest of us heard her cry for help.
We can show them , I say, not just to Emerson but to our whole coven. We can show them what happened. Just like last June when they showed everyone Rebekah’s past.
Best night ever , my best friend says darkly.
You can do that? Emerson asks me. Not in disbelief, exactly—more like I’ve been holding out on her.
I can , I say, as if I know this for a fact.
I step up and take Emerson’s hand in mine. I listen to Elizabeth’s whispered instructions on how to cast the spell. Then I address the crowd, because apparently that’s something I just do now.
“Earlier this year, the Joywood showed you Rebekah’s adolescent transgressions.” Most of them saw the show even if they weren’t in the high school gym with us, forced to relive our teen years because the Joywood wanted to embarrass us. “They added their own twist, of course, but I have no twists. I can’t project a lie. I can only show you what actually happened.” I realize I’m not 100 percent sure about that until I say it, but I nod as if I knew I could all along. “This, then, is the truth.”
“As I said,” Emerson says, glaring at Carol. “Skip Simon attacked me. Alone. While I flew.”
I hold on hard to Emerson’s hand. I take a deep breath, center on the magic inside of me, and say the spell words Elizabeth feeds me.
“The sphere of time, tangled and mine, show the memory, for all to see.” I may or may not lift a theatrical arm on the other side, like a witch you’d see dancing up on Main Street.
Above us, like some human drive-in movie, the entire crowd can see Emerson being slapped out of the air by Skip’s slimy magic.
I suck in a breath, hard, but Emerson is calm and collected beside me. Even if her hand trembles slightly in mine.
“He attacked me,” she says again. Her words are measured, her gaze steady. Every inch of her the leader, even as we see Skip and all that nasty, obviously black magic go at that earlier version of her. “When I realized I couldn’t hold him off alone, not when his magic was so dark and wrong , I called my friends for help.”
A murmur snakes through the crowd. I can’t be the only one who thinks it makes her seem even more powerful that she could ask for help. That she did. That she wasn’t hampered by that ego everyone likes to say she has.
I shouldn’t be surprised that the Joywood feel it too.
“A whole coven arrayed around one misguided witch?” Felicia asks, sounding startled.
“Seems a bit like bullying to me,” Maeve agrees, and she should know, as one of the biggest bullies who’s ever lived.
“Not a whole coven,” Emerson says, in that way she has, as if she feels compelled to correct errors when she encounters them because, surely, everyone wants to correct errors . “We were just friends. And a not-so-friendly immortal witch who helped us for his own reasons. My sister was still in exile. Still, we fought. All of us in the light against one in the dark.” She looks over at Carol. “We knew he’d bartered his blood, Carol. But we had no idea what kind of power that would give him. How could we? But look.”
In the image, where Emerson stands holding a sword of light given to her by Jacob, a Healer, Skip pulls together a sword of his own from the swirling, oily mess of vile black that surrounds him. It’s obscene. It’s horrifying. It makes my gorge rise to look at it, and I already know how this ends—
Before I can show everyone what else happened that day, a terrible pain shoots through me. It flares up along one side of my body. My leg gives out. I nearly tip over, but Emerson’s beside me, holding me up. Then Zander’s arm is wrapping around me from the other side, though I don’t see him move.
It doesn’t help. I can’t maintain the spell, and the images fade. I’m upset about that, but I can barely stand up. I thought they couldn’t do this again.
I realize I cry that out to the rest of our coven.
Jacob surges to his feet and crosses to me, and I can tell it’s not exactly the same as before, because I’m so much more aware of what’s happening. This is no blessing. Jacob puts his hands on my back, and I feel his magic wind its way into me, trying to heal me.
“They’re doing something to her,” he says, but in a ringing voice so everyone watching this can hear.
“Again,” Zander growls.
I breathe through the waves of agony, but I can feel Jacob’s magic. It’s cool, almost sweet, and it works. The bright, hot hurt begins to recede into a fading kind of ache. After a moment or two, I can take a full breath.
It isn’t like the poison from before, but that doesn’t make me feel better. Maybe this is the one that will kill me. I slide my hands over my stomach, concentrating all the magic I’ve got into protecting this baby.
“If I recall correctly, the Undine said we cannot harm one another.” Carol smirks while she says this.
She’s lying. I don’t know how, but the way she phrases that makes it clear enough to me. Somehow they got around the Undine.
I think, this is it . I am going to die. Right here on a dais next to a sentient stone, even as my friends—my coven—surround me and the ghosts float above us, all of them chanting and trying to help.
I can’t imagine what the audience thinks, but it’s amazing what clarity your own fast-approaching death can give you. I realize in that moment that I don’t care what the audience thinks. I don’t care about St. Cyprian because of a bunch of judgy witches. I care about the people surrounding me, holding me. I care about my family. I care about Zander and our baby and the future I suddenly want more than I can remember admitting to wanting anything, ever.
I never should have cared what all these random people thought of me. Another wave of pain sweeps through me, and I can’t recall why I ever did.
“Joywood,” intones the Undine as if my death at her stone feet is as meaningless to her as anything else, “it is your turn to explain your take on justice.”
“This is quite the story and performance,” Carol says, her voice smooth and calm, rippling out over everyone on the dais and off.
A spell in and of itself.
“My son made poor choices,” she says, in what seems to me—even through the haze of pain—to be a direct response to Emerson’s show of approachable leadership. She sighs. “Skip was dealt with, as you saw. He can no longer hurt us. He can’t even tell us what drew him to the dark.”
She’s way too good at that , Rebekah says internally. Loudly. Making it somehow sound like it’s Emerson’s fault her creepy son bartered his blood and tried to kill you all with black magic.
I remember this is her first time seeing this.
He became the weasel he always was, witchling , Frost says.
“Rather than dwell on these unfortunate events and let those who would strike out at the heart of our government make up stories to win petty points, I decided to use a memory spell. This choice is within my rights, under witch law and as your leader. I cannot deny what he did, without my knowledge or approval. It shames me to this day. But Skip was punished by their hand, was he not? So, I thought it best we forget. I still do.”
She stands there, looking brave . No one says anything, and yet I know that everyone watching her is tutting a bit internally, thinking we did something unseemly , if not outright rude , by saying true things out loud.
It’s only a curse because no one wants to hear the truth, I think through another wave. Not because there’s anything wrong with the truth itself.
Not because there’s anything wrong with saying it.
“She’s a liar,” I grit out, because that’s another truth, and I just proved it—but I’m in so much damn pain, and whatever Jacob is doing isn’t quite as helpful as it usually is.
I need to get her somewhere else , Jacob tells us in our heads, and I suspect it says something about my state that he tells me too. Or doesn’t take the time to not tell me, more like.
“Riverwood,” comes the Undine’s impossible voice. “Do you have a rebuttal?”
I know Emerson has a million things she wants to say, but she shakes her head, her eyes flashing gold. “My only rebuttal is this. Justice is taking care of people who are hurting. Not hurting people more.”
The glowing eyes turn to the other side of the dais. “Joywood, what say you?”
They all look at each other, a ripple of bright bloodred. And I know. They’re going to drag it out. I’m on fire from the inside out, but they know that already, and they want this to hurt.
Before I can come up with any strategies to protect my child no matter what they throw at me, I hear my mother’s unmistakable voice, shouting in the crowd. “You end this, Carol. Maeve. I’m not going to stand here and let you hurt my daughter again.”
“Tanith, sit down,” Carol orders her, sounding bored.
“Mina,” Maeve adds, with her particular brand of sniveling malevolence, “maybe you could try controlling your partner. For her own good.”
The sound of Mina’s incredulous laughter is almost as good as Jacob’s Healer magic as it tangles with the wash of pain inside me.
“The covens have spoken,” the Undine belts out in her dispassionate way. “This is how they see justice. Consider this as you make your decision come Samhain.”
“We aren’t finished,” Carol retorts, outraged.
When even I know you can’t argue with a stone statue.
“When you addressed the audience, you ended your time.” Then, with no further explanation and allowing no other hint of argument, the Undine goes dark.
This time, instead of fake-walking back to Wilde House, my coven flies me there, my mother at our heels.
“I’m getting really fucking tired of being everybody’s voodoo doll,” I grit out while they lay me out on my bed. Again. Jacob is still working on me, but this time, everyone else has shoved their way into the room. It’s not big enough, but someone has the presence of mind to utter a spell that makes it bigger.
Everyone breathes. Another wave hits me, I writhe, and it takes a moment to breathe my way back.
“Can you tell me what happened? Or what it felt like?” Jacob asks, his magic probing around inside of me.
“It was like half my body...” I trail off as it dawns on me what Jacob might already know. “The human half.” It all clicks into place, horrible though it is. It even makes a certain, poetic sort of sense, if you’re evil. Human blood helped me once, but it’s also its own kind of target. “I got around the poison by having human blood, but the Joywood can get around the Undine by attacking the nonwitch part of me. The Undine doesn’t care about humans.”
“That’s bullshit. This is bullshit .” Zander shoves his hands through his hair, a whole Midwest summer of storms in his gaze. “There has to be some kind of recourse.”
“The recourse is the people.” Emerson sounds like she’s thinking aloud. “They get to choose what to believe. Who they agree with. The point isn’t right or wrong, or even truth versus lies, it’s that there’s a choice . Once we win—”
“I don’t care about choice or winning or anything else if they’re going to attack her,” Zander roars. Maybe acting so unbothered and unneedled the past few days hasn’t been quite so easy for him. I want to live long enough to revel in that. “This can’t keep happening. We have to stop it.”
“We need to be careful,” Emerson agrees. “What’s the alternative, Zander?”
“I don’t know, maybe one where the pregnant woman carrying our daughter isn’t fending off every single fucking attack?”
“So we should...what? Quit? Let them win?” Rebekah demands. “Do you think that’s what Ellowyn wants?”
He glares at her. “It’s too big a risk.”
“I’m not weak,” I manage to get out. “Or dead yet either, by the way.”
My mother and Jacob murmur words over a mug. My herbs, my mother’s words, and a Healer’s touch. I’ll have to drink it to heal me, because that’s what a human would need.
And hey, that’s half me.
“I didn’t say you were weak,” Zander bites out, but he doesn’t bite my head off.
There’s something about the way he doesn’t that begins to unravel something inside of me. Protections, I think. Armor. We all have to be our adult versions here.
Maybe that’s what a coven really is.
So it’s my turn to step up. Zander and I have a ticking clock leading us straight to parenthood. There’s no time left for maybes .
When I think that, despite the pain inside me and all the many years I’ve beat myself up for all manner of weaknesses large and small, I know the real truth. The one that’s been waiting for me all along.
The one that has never had anything to do with a curse .
“You don’t understand, Zander,” I say. Gently, so gently, when I’ve probably only spoken to him this gently once before, right after his mother died. “It’s something my mom told me.” I smile over at her, fierce and proud Tanith, who has always demonstrated exactly what kind of grown-ass woman I’d like to be. Not without flaws, but made of love and wit and flames, all the way through. “ ‘A pregnant witch isn’t fragile, she is powerful. Fearsome. Not fearful.’ That means even though they can hurt me—they have—it doesn’t work. Not long-term.”
Jacob hands me the mug and doesn’t have to tell me what to do. I tip back my head and drink the elixir that will heal me, every last acrid drop.
It cools the fire, eases the pain. It snakes through me, fighting back whatever the Joywood sent into the human parts of me, flooding me with relief.
But I have more than relief. I have that truth, at last.
I’ve always thought I was the weak link. Known it. I should feel it even more now. I should be wracked with insecurity that I’m the reason the Joywood could get around the Undine’s protections.
I think they’ve overplayed their hand. Every time I turn around, I’m sick. I’m poisoned. I’m the one attacked. Why me?
I don’t mean that in a self-pitying way. Not any longer.
I look at Elizabeth, my favorite ghost. She’s been right here, urging me toward something all along. She’s told me I’m special. She’s guided me toward almost every choice I’ve made since this whole ascension stuff was triggered.
Almost like she knew where we were headed, because she can see the past and the future.
“They don’t want me hurt, dead, whatever,” I say, while Elizabeth’s violet eyes gleam bright at me. Urging me to take that thought all the way to its conclusion. “Just because they’re the evilest evil to ever evil. They need it.”
Elizabeth clasps her hands before her and beams at me. I sit up in my bed and look around at my friends, my family. My coven.
My man.
“They need it for whatever they’re planning.” I’m not asking. I know . “Immortality, or more. They didn’t want Emerson to remember. They didn’t want Rebekah to come back. If they’d managed those things, we wouldn’t be here, in the middle of an ascension trial. These have been steps they needed to take to get where they wanted to go.”
Frost nods from the wall, where he stands with his arms crossed.
I look at Emerson. Our leader. Our linchpin. But without us , she would have died in that dark confluence. I look at Rebekah, my best friend since we were tiny, and I know she would never have come back here if Emerson had died. Or if she had, if the Joywood had missed Emerson and that flood, she would have fled this place in shame after they unveiled her darkest secrets to the world.
We’re all meant to be right here.
Together.
Each and every one of us belongs right where we are.
“These have all been steps that we’ve kept them from taking. Because we—” for the first time in my life, I count myself in that we , and I mean it with every part of me “—are more powerful than they could ever be.”
And I said it, so it must be true.
Something happens then. A kind of... opening inside of me.
I see a past stretched out, stitched together out of near misses. Sneaky magic slapping at me, and me always more than ready to slap right back. Because I might have had some issues, but I’m always up for a fight to defend myself.
I see all their barbs, all their disgust, specifically designed to make me weak. To make me doubt myself. To make me brood about all the ways I’m less than .
It did, inside, but it never fully took root. Because I’m not alone. I have these people. I have this .
Love.
Support.
The man who’s loved me no matter how many times we’ve broken each other’s hearts.
Tonight, I finally understand what that means.
I am a power in my own right, and it’s no accident I’m in this coven. I’m as big of a threat to the Joywood as the Wilde sisters and their prophecy. I’m the witch they can’t quite kill. I’m the human they can’t erase.
Every single thing I am is a threat. To them .
I am the power , I think, like an incantation .
When I do, something bright appears in front of me, so bright it’s blinding. I have to close my eyes against it.
It’s not a new agony that fills me up this time. It’s uncomfortable, but it’s bearable, and I lean in.
Like it’s just another part of this power I’ve had all along.
There it is , Elizabeth whispers inside my head. Where I didn’t think she could speak. I knew you’d find it. Breathe, my child. Breathe, and when you open your eyes, say what you are.
I breathe in. I blow it out.
I open my eyes, and Zander sucks in a breath.
My mother gasps. “Violet eyes,” she whispers. “Like mine.”
“But ringed in sapphire,” Rebekah says in awe. “Like Ellowyn times ten.”
I know who I am, who I have always been. I see my past. I sense my future, paths stretching out, tangling, and starting anew thanks to the choices we make.
I don’t need a mirror to know myself. That comes from within.
I know who I am.
So I say it, at last. “Revelare. The last of my kind.” But I hold my baby, and I feel her kick. “For now.”