Page 55 of Big Little Spells

The scent of woodsmoke and vetiver.

And when I step inside, I step back in time.

16

AS I CROSS THE THRESHOLD, I realize immediately I’m not actually slipping through time. It’s a vision—and it feels different from the fractured static I’ve been experiencing since I got back to town. I wouldn’t call it clear, exactly, but for a moment there it really does feel like I stepped into another century. The air smells of roasting meats and is filled with chants in a language I don’t know.

The door swings shut behind me, but doesn’t slam, which is somehow more unnerving than if it did. The foyer I’m standing in is suitably lavish, with a gleaming hall beyond it, filled to the brim with candles. Magical candles, naturally. I would expect nothing less. And as I look around at all the stately, quiet wealth, nothing seems ancient except the statuary.

Until Nicholas appears at the top of the grand staircase. It’s the kind of dramatic entrance that belongs in Hollywood movies about witches, with a swelling score and theatrics. But as he takes the stairs, moving with a glide that makes it seem as if he’s floating toward me, time seems to flicker again.

Different versions of him flash in the static as he moves. I see him striding through towns that are obviously medieval, speaking in languages I can’t understand, yet in the same tone I know all too well. I see him dressed like a Puritan, striding stone-faced through a hard rain. I see unidentifiable woods, dark and deep, and bonfires against the night with him moving in the shadows. I see him in a green and misty place, the hint of the sea in the air, riding a horse as if he’s being chased. I see him in too many different costumes to name, though I know at once that they’re not costumes at all. They’re him. They’re what he wore in this century or that. Immortal Nicholas Frost in all his glory.

I was never in any of those times or places, but I don’t just see them, I inhabit them.

I know things I shouldn’t. Who he was with. What he felt. Where he was running and who from.

In this flickering moment, I can taste the thick green mist, the smoky dark woods. I understand him, deeper than I’ve ever understood anyone. Including myself.

Stranger still, I don’t think he has the slightest idea that I can see into him, into his past. If he knew, he would not continue toward me like this. He would do something to stop whatever’s happening, whatever this is.

I can’t decide if I want him to, or don’t.

Dimly, in the back of my mind, I know I should control my breathing. Work up my trademark sarcastic mouth quirk and something obnoxious to say. But I can only stare, trying to make sense of what I’ve seen. What’s rearranging itself inside of me. Including that glimpse I had of him as a boy, all blue eyes and heat, an unchecked force of nature even then, running wild in some stone city I can’t name.

And then Nicholas is standing in front of me, that blue gaze moving from my head to my toes with absolutely no reaction showing on his admittedly perfect face.

It’s like he’s always been here. Waiting.

“You didn’t change your clothes, witchling.”

I suck in a breath, trying to remind my heart it belongs to me and should stop trying to escape my rib cage. I can’t seem to summon either straight snarkiness or my usual daisy smile and slouch, but I do my best. “Don’t worry. Just like Cinderella, I’ll turn into a pumpkin the minute the clock strikes twelve.”

When I can dress like myself again. I feel certain that will help.

On cue, his overwrought grandfather clock begins to bong from just inside the nearest room, visible from our spot in the foyer.

One, two, three. There’s no reason for me to feel breathless. But what can I say? I’m a witch, born and bred. Even in my most human and magicless periods out there, I always felt the power of a midnight. Particularly on a festival night.

By the time I force a breath or two, we’re halfway there. Both Nicholas and I are standing in this foyer, a little too close for comfort, while the clock strikes. Seven. Eight. Nine.

“Don’t change,” he says, ruining my ability to count entirely. He has not taken his eyes off me this entire time.

And something feels different. It has since earlier at the dance. It’s clear to me that I’m not imagining it.

If only I had any clue what changed. But the visions I can see swirling around us still seem more past than future—which is Ellowyn’s purview as a Summoner, not mine.

And thinking of her seems to conjure the message I get then, from Emerson. Ellowyn is much better and asleep. One of the many knots tied tight inside of me loosens. She’s asleep, resting, better. With all the people who can help her.

I can’t help her, no matter how I want to. I focus on Nicholas instead.

He is watching me, intently. So intently it nearly hurts. I try to refuse to do nerves, but I can’t seem to keep them at bay. My own body isn’t listening to me—at all. Because while this is familiar—standing in private places with this man, trying to read him, feeling things I shouldn’t—tonight I’m painfully aware of the fact I’m an adult. And so is he, a thousand times over.

Everything is different, something in me whispers, and I know it to be true though I still don’t know why.

“You look like you’re waiting for something,” I say, managing to sound as bored by that prospect as he usually looks. “Hate to disappoint you, but I didn’t bring the postprom keg.”

“I have been waiting a long time for you to come to me like this, Rebekah,” he says, and I can’t tell if he’s speaking out loud or inside me. It’s like both at once. Like the tolling of a new bell. “Dressed like a proper Beltane gift from long ago.”

---