Page 81 of The Witch is Back

“Promise. Hey, you want me to wear jeans?” he teased, provoking a helpless laugh. “I’ll wear jeans in front of your mother if you want. Say the word.”

He’d always been able to make her smile. Any time after a Clarissa bomb had exploded, she’d succumbed to this black, icy feeling that numbed every part of her, like she’d fallen in a dark frozen lake. Bastian had always known how to get her smiling again. He’d brought the sun.

Her heart ached at the memory.

“Emma?”

“Formal’s better,” she said softly. “Thank you.”

“What are fiancés for?” He hesitated. “You sure you’re okay?”

Emma leaned hard against the wall. Was she okay? “I’m fine.”

“Once more with feeling.”

“Thank you,” she said again.

“Not what I meant, but I’ll take it. Are you bringing Chester?”

“Yes.” This was what her familiar was there for, to help her face down threats even if they came in the form of her own family. Their bond would help keep her level. It didn’t matter that Clarissa hated the sight of him, citing his common breeding as unbecoming of a Bluewater. It had been too late by the time she’d laid eyes on him; the binding ritual had been struck. It was one of the only things Emma had come close to battling her mother about.

Speaking of her familiar, Chester was already headed her way from the office. She didn’t like to have him in the kitchen when she baked, unhygienic and all, but her distress had resonated down their bond. The hurried noise of his toenails clattered as he dashed down the hall. Soothing love came down from him, as well as sparks of magic in case she needed a defense. He didn’t realize that it was an emotional attack, not physical.

“Emma?”

“Yeah?”

“Are you still thinking?”

Tension balled low in her body, this one a completely different kind. Her toes curled in her pumps. “Yes.”

“And?”

A flash of his lips on hers. His hands twisted in her hair. “I don’t know.”

“I’ll take that. For now. And then, Emma? I’m going to take you.”

He hung up before she could figure out if she found that statement annoying as hell or unbearably arousing. Chester whined at the door as if sensing her confusion.

Didn’t matter anyway. She had something even worse to do now she’d passed the bad news on to Bastian, and that was break her previous plans with Sloane. Her belly clutched at the idea. Yet more plans broken.

She pressed the cell phone against her mouth as she let Chester in with a sweep of telekinesis. He bounded over on a huffing sound, throwing his little body against her legs. The vibration of his tail wriggled from his body to hers and had a small smile curving her mouth—because who wouldn’t smile at that? She dropped a kiss on his nose and then pressed Sloane’s number.

The teen hated talking on the phone, but Emma felt it was easier to misinterpret a text than a call. Especially with this kind of news.

She winced when Sloane answered, having hoped it would go to voicemail and she could prolong this a bit longer. Coward. “Hey, Jellybean.”

“Tell the truth,” Kole murmured to Emma out of the corner of his mouth. “Tell me you don’t feel like one of the von Trapp kids when she makes us do this.”

Emma stifled a smile, an unbelievable event under the circumstances. She’d been in the Bluewater manor for thirty minutes and had had to endure her mother’s disapproval on her outfit choice—her simple black sweater and pants now swapped for a demure green sundress, despite it being winter—her disapproval of Emma’s Exhibition plans, her disapproval of Emma’s choice of familiar, and her disapproval of Emma’s existence.

Okay, so she hadn’t voiced the last one, but you didn’t need a wand to spell that out.

Having white-knuckled her way through all that, Emma was now lined up with her siblings in the foyer, ready to receive Bastian when he arrived. Clarissa had always thought it showed a unified front, a strong show of both power and class.

But Kole was right. It also made them look like the von Trapp children ready for Maria to step in and make their lives better. If only.

Clarissa was going down the line, starting with the eldest, Johannes, following on to Peter, and now pointing at Christopher’s bow tie and instructing him to make sure Bastian heard about the latest development in his potion research. He nodded with a grim expression. That didn’t mean a lot; Christopher was always grim. But then he’d had to endure more years of living under Clarissa than she had.

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