Page 122 of Big Little Spells

Nicholas takes my hand.

We are a coven. Together, we will defeat the Joywood.

Because we have to.

Emerson lifts her chin at Carol. We all back her up. “Then, Carol,” she says quietly, but with all the power of the Warrior she is, “a war is what we’ll have.”

32

THE JOYWOOD SLITHER OFF to lick their wounds, and slowly, almost accidentally, the Litha ritual turns into its normal party. A celebration of newly minted witches, poised on the cusp of the rest of their lives.

No one talks about war. Even the good guys get a minute to breathe, celebrate, regroup. And Emerson and I are two of the newly minted witches here. We earned this celebration. We didn’t get one last time.

We dance. We eat too much sugar and chase it down with bubbly things that make us all giddy. We laugh too loud.

We live.

Not just with each other and these good people who voted to let us stay alive, but with the spirits of those already gone. Those who helped us today, including Aunt Zelda.

I dance with her to an old song I remember her singing when we were small. Later I see her with Zander and Uncle Zack, all holding each other close. She’ll cross over soon, but she’ll always be part of us. Here, in the way spirits are. I look farther and see my grandmother sitting near the stage, tapping her feet to the music and laughing along with a whole group of fearless Wilde women, stretching back through time.

She nods at me, looking proud.

The night wears on, but no one seems inclined to leave.

Emerson and Jacob are swaying in the middle of a group of teenagers who were eager to tell Emerson they voted for her and will support us come Samhain. Georgie and Sage have their heads together over a book. But they smile at each other as they flip pages, and maybe it isn’t the kind of amazing, all-encompassing love I think Georgie’s capable of, but it’s nice. Sage is nice, and he helped us.

Maybe I need to remember that I used to tell anyone who would listen that I wasn’t one for big emotion or high drama. For all I know, watching all the fireworks around her is what convinced Georgie that she needs someone safer. Quieter. Less...immortally melodramatic, possibly, and who can blame her?

Then again, maybe I put a lot more stock in nice tonight—and unseen acts of goodness, even—than I did before.

Later there’s my best friend. And my cousin. There’s no dancing for the man who lost his mother this morning and spent his evening with her ghost. But Ellowyn is sitting there talking to him, there’s almost a smile on his face, and it feels right.

And that vow Zander made, that I made myself, doesn’t sit heavy on my heart. Because some things are necessary and meant, no matter how they hurt. We will get to the bottom of what happened to the eight witches who died this morning too young. It lies somewhere at the bottom of the Joywood.

This was a battle, and there’s a war still ahead.

But we’ll celebrate the eight young lives we saved, and our own, and all we might save in the future.

Eventually we all congregate together while the teenagers carouse. We tell happy stories about Aunt Zelda. We make grand plans for Ascension. We laugh, we love, we grieve.

And we even choose a name.

We decide to call ourselves the Riverwood, because we’re right here at the confluence, where the three rivers meet. Where we came together as a coven the first time.

Where we will no doubt fight again, in the heart of St. Cyprian’s power and influence, for the right to use all that might and magic for good.

But we don’t talk about the Joywood at all.

Not tonight.

Much later, Nicholas and I dance in the moonlight, until loss feels like a song someone sang long ago and fear seems a distant future, too far away to touch.

We dance and we dance, until we feel like us again.

Or for the first time.

No prophecies. No death of me. No pretending I’m going to leave this place when every last part of my heart is here.

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