Page 38 of Big Little Spells

Some days I even believe it.

Meanwhile, I have no choice but to surrender to the déjà vu of it all. I’m hanging out with my sister and our friends again—although there’s less sneaking out at night, skipping class, and other teenage shenanigans. For one thing, this time around I’m taking the study sessions Emerson calls meetings much more seriously.

Because it’s life or death on the line and this time, we all know it.

I don’t see Nicholas at all.

One thing I know from all my years in recovery programs is that problems don’t solve themselves. You have to get up when you don’t feel like it, go out there, and do the hard work of solving them yourself.

But I can’t do that when it involves another person.

Particularly when that person can disappear at will.

Every morning I get up and go for a walk, down along the river that runs behind the house. I try to connect with all my Wilde ancestresses who walked this same path, all those tough women who built their lives in this place. Despite what might have been happening to them personally, or in the wider witching world.

I try not to think about my great-great-great grandfather, who woke up one morning and walked into the water, then let himself drown.

And every morning I climb up the hill to Nicholas’s house, but he’s not there.

I don’t know how I know that. It’s entirely possible that he’s lounging about in his shiny mansion while I mutter spells that don’t work, letting the decrepit glamour repel me on its own. I tell myself it’s not just possible, but likely.

But somehow, I know better. He’s not inside while I’m standing at his gates. He’s not here, stuck in St. Cyprian like I am.

There’s just the breeze from the river. The confluence in the distance, a melody that I would have said I forgot—though now it’s in me again I understand it never left me. I know every note. Up on the hill, I sometimes find myself face-to-face with a huge raven I know perfectly well is Nicholas’s familiar, Coronis.

The ancient creature who sometimes condescends to caw in my direction. Only sometimes.

I pretend he doesn’t get to me either.

But I’m always a little colder when I walk back down to Wilde House.

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.

I think about Nicholas’s words far more than I’d like. Especially when I’m up on the hill with his glamoured house looking like an eyesore before me, Coronis peering down at me from the dilapidated roof, and spring coming up green and new in the morning light.

Every night, I dream about eyes too blue, that fire between us in the dark, and a song I can’t seem to help but sing.

The days evaporate quickly. How have I not seen you yet? I ask Aunt Zelda. I’ve been home forever at this point.

Soon, sweet girl, she texts back, the way she always does. Soon.

Soon never comes. But the first of May is tomorrow, and that means a whole host of terrible things are about to happen—like it or not—as the Joywood begin their campaign of humiliation.

Starting off by making a group of adults attend the hideous Beltane prom.

Which is not all that different from your average human prom. There’s a little more pomp, circumstance, and magic, but at the end of the day it’s just a dance to keep the teenagers busy enough that they don’t go sneaking off into the adult bonfires at night.

This afternoon I head down to the river and indulge in my ongoing headache: Nicholas’s ridiculous ancient tome. It took me forever to work up the magic to do a translation spell, because simple translation spells were useless in the face of something so forbiddingly ancient. I get maybe two pages read at a time before I too want to jump in the river and let it take me away.

Meanwhile, no solutions have magically appeared to me. If there’s advice on how to fight the Joywood in this book, I can’t find it. It’s all out-of-date spells and rituals better suited for the Middle Ages than the twenty-first century.

I don’t know what game Nicholas is playing, or if this book is just another smoke screen, designed to make him seem like he’s helping when he’s not. I’d assume that’s exactly what it is, except I can’t think of a reason why he’d bother. Still, I’m thinking more and more that I won’t go to Frost House after prom tomorrow. I’ll stick to one obnoxious event for the evening. I’ll stand Nicholas up, and won’t that be fun?

Sure. You’ll stand him up. You aren’t at all desperate to know what a Beltane ritual with Nicholas Frost looks like.

Since Smudge isn’t around, I have to assume the voice in my head is my own conscience, not letting me lie to myself the way I’m still happy to lie—by omission—to everyone else.

Awesome.

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