Chapter Nine #2
I lean against the doorway as a wave of dizziness makes the room spin, and I raise my voice above the podcast.
“What’d that dough ever do to you?”
“Fucking hell.” Elle whirls around, brandishing the rolling pin like a weapon. When she sees it’s me, she lowers her arm and turns off her podcast. “Pippa. You’re awake.”
“And mobile.” I push away from the door and step farther into the kitchen. “What’re you making, and why does it require such violence?”
Instead of the smile I expected, Elle turns back to her mound of assaulted dough. “Croissants require a bit of muscle to get the lamination right.”
She’s closed off again, like the moment we shared on Sunday never happened. Elle didn’t visit again after that, but I assumed she was giving me time to recover. Every time I woke up, I found something delicious waiting for me.
Did I imagine the way she looked at me? The way she touched me?
“You certainly have plenty of muscle,” I say, trying to draw her back out of whatever shell has formed between us. “And the true crime? Does picturing the dough as the killer make it easier to whack it like that?”
Elle glares at me over her shoulder. “Did you come downstairs to make fun of my baking process?”
Her flat tone cuts deep, and I feel utterly foolish. I should have known better than to assume she had any interest in me. No one ever does, not beyond the solutions my magic can give them. I must have been more out of it than I realized on Sunday to read intention where there was none.
“Sorry,” I murmur, crossing the room to where there’s a bowl of fruit tucked into the corner of the kitchen. “Just looking for something to eat.”
I lean against the edge of the counter to lengthen my reach, and pain shrieks across my stomach.
I hiss in a breath and pull back, sending the apple I was trying to grab tumbling to the floor.
The pain in my abdomen lingers, and my knees threaten to buckle.
I stumble toward the table in the center of the room and catch myself on the edge.
“Pippa?” Elle abandons her partially laminated croissant dough. “Are you okay?”
“Fine.” I push the word past gritted teeth and sink into one of the chairs. The pain is already fading back to a dull ache, leaving only embarrassment behind.
“You’re clearly not fine.” Elle crouches before me, those soft green eyes searching my face. “What happened?”
“It’s stupid.” I lay a gentle hand over the spot where she tased me four days ago. “The pressure from the counter hurt more than I expected.”
Confusion flits across her expression. “What do you mean?”
“Well, you did tase me on Saturday.”
Her brow furrows as she straightens back to her full height. “You haven’t healed it?”
I swallow down the sudden taste of bile on my tongue. “Healing magic isn’t exactly my forte,” I say, pushing against the rising tide of humiliation, the lifetime of deep shame.
“I’ve never heard of a witch who can’t do healing magic.”
“I thought you didn’t know anything about us?
” I snap, my voice harsher than I mean for it to be.
But the longer we talk about this, the more I feel like I’m being dragged into the past. Echoes of old injuries create phantom pains that nestle alongside the constant ache of my back and the fresh tenderness from the Taser.
There were the skinned knees my father tried to teach me to heal. The twisted ankles. The beestings. An entire childhood of injuries that my parents turned into Teachable Moments. Except no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t replicate the healing magic they used.
“Pippa?”
Elle’s voice draws me out of my childhood home and back into the bright kitchen. Back to the present, where I haven’t been anywhere near my parents in five years. Where Elle is currently trying to hand me a fresh apple. I accept the fruit, but I’ve lost my appetite.
“I’m sorry I snapped.” I twist the apple between my hands, trying to ignore the chorus of useless, pathetic, waste of space echoing in my head.
Belonging to this family is a privilege. Not a right.
“I didn’t mean to offend you.” Elle pulls out another chair and sits across from me. “I was surprised. I thought healing was…I don’t know. A given?”
“It usually is.” I trace my thumb along the surface of the apple.
Normally, I don’t like to talk about my family, but whatever icy exterior Elle had up when I walked in is thawing, and I don’t want her walls going back up.
“Most witches can heal themselves. I was never good at it, and until I realized my talent for working with spirits, I didn’t understand why.
I’ve yet to hear of a witch who excels at both. ”
Elle studies me like she’s trying to solve some puzzle. She tilts her head, drawing my gaze to the smooth length of her neck. “But if it’s not normal for ghost specialists to be healers, why did my question upset you?”
Shame drops my gaze to the floor. “If I’d come from a regular witch family, it might have been fine, but my parents…they’re big on tradition, and healing is the tradition. My ineptitude was a stain on the family reputation. One of several.”
That last bit comes out a quiet murmur, overlaying my childhood healing failures with my first big fuckup as a member of NACOW. The unintentional argument I sparked with a dignitary from the UK, yet another traditionalist who insisted a magical application that I’d already invented was impossible.
Elle leans forward, bracing those ridiculous forearms against her thighs. “Why is healing such a prominent tradition if not every witch can do it?”
I shrug, not ready to look up and see what emotion is displayed across her face.
“When witches first came forward in the nineteenth century, they were exceptionally cautious about the magic they displayed. They didn’t want to freak out mundanes and spark yet another round of witch trials, so they focused on healing.
It made them popular with important people and secured legal protections. ”
“Makes sense, I guess.”
“Traditionalists like my parents never let go of that fear, despite nearly two hundred years of being open with the world. They despise progress, afraid that anything new or different might undo all the legal protections we have.” I risk a glance at Elle and find only open curiosity.
“On top of all that, my parents are elitist assholes. They hate everything I do. Even if my work was completely acceptable to mundanes, they’d still think what I do is an embarrassment. ”
I bite my lip, unsure whether I should say more.
But Elle is watching me with that same intense curiosity, her head tilted to the side like she’s urging me to continue.
I find myself compelled to oblige. “At first, my parents would heal me when my own magic failed. As I got older, Nanette decided their help was depriving me of the ‘proper motivation’ I needed to learn. They thought their plan was working, but I wasn’t the one healing myself.
My little sister was. I hated putting Flora in the middle of things, but she insisted. ”
“Of course she did.” There’s a fire in Elle’s voice now. “I have an older sister, and I’d do anything for her. Especially if I had the power to take away her pain. I’m sure Flora felt the same.”