Page 34 of Big Little Spells

I stare at him. I almost laugh. All those years I would have given anything to hear him say that. Now that I don’t want it...

Well, that makes all the sense in the world, doesn’t it? Men being men.

“But this is not special in and of itself,” he continues, in case I’m tempted to go for that big head all of a sudden, after all these years of every single person I know making sure I hold myself back from the egomania that clearly waits for me, just out of reach. “Anyone can be born with a gift, an innate talent, a power. What matters is what you choose to do with it. Ten years ago, you chose to save your sister—but only in a way that made you feel good. Not in a way that might have actually helped her.”

I cannot believe how patently unfair that is on so many levels, not the least of which is I was seventeen and had just had my entire life stripped from me. The injustice of it actually takes my breath away. Of course I was helping Emerson. I was proving something for us both.

But Nicholas has introduced a question inside me. Were my motives pure? Is my memory flawed? Were the Joywood more right than I’d like to believe with their accusations that the only power I’ve ever had is borrowed black magic?

If they weren’t, would I still feel that ribbon of shame every time I think of what I did that night?

Would I still keep it secret from the people I love most?

“This morning confirmed some suspicions that what happened ten years ago did not,” he’s saying, like he doesn’t know that he took my knees out from under me.

On the off chance he really doesn’t know, I refuse to show it. “Like what?”

He does not speak. While usually that’s some kind of mind game, there’s something about his silence that reminds me of Ellowyn when she wants to lie. But can’t.

I know Nicholas can tell all sorts of lies. If he was cursed like Ellowyn, someone would have mentioned it before now in the endless lore about him. Then again, there are all kinds of curses out there.

Isn’t immortality itself a kind of curse? Who knows what other things might be holding him back?

But I nearly laugh out loud then. Surely one of the most feared witches in the universe isn’t being held back by anything.

“It will need to be you,” he tells me. In that way he has, like if there was a stone circle handy his words would carve themselves into monoliths and stand guard across centuries.

“What will need to be me?”

I’m more familiar with the look he gives me now. The one that suggests that I’m very, very dim, but he’s too polite to mention it directly. “The book I gave you. It will need to be you who finds what needs to be found. You must be the one to prove what needs to be proven.”

“Be more cryptic,” I invite him with enough sarcastic bite to give the April wind some competition.

Nicholas lifts a shoulder that should not seem so elegant when it’s also so muscly. “I will be what I must.”

But that’s a much-needed wake-up call. I stop perving on his shoulder. I need to start picturing the troll that is clearly beneath all his centuries of magic and misdirection.

I shake my head. “You know what? No.”

“No,” he repeats, as though I’ve begun speaking in tongues.

“That’s what I said. Would you like me to repeat it? Maybe in a few different languages?”

“I would like you to explain, please, just what you think you are refusing.”

I make a face. “You. This whole thing. Books and special powers I magically have now that I didn’t before. I’m not interested. You want someone to save the world, talk to my sister. I am here for me and me alone, because the goal here is not dying, pure and simple.”

“You are, as ever, completely off base.”

“Yeah, well, my prerogative.” I move to walk away, but I realize too late that I should have simply disappeared the way witches do, because he stops me.

Not with his hand—why be so prosaic—but with his magic. A cushioned wall I bump into when I turn away from him to storm off, because I can’t see it. I also can’t get past it.

I look over my shoulder to glare at him, and still there is no humor. Not even the comfort of his derision. Just a black seriousness that makes me...afraid.

And damn it all, I don’t want to be afraid.

I refuse.

---