Page 60 of Big Little Spells

“You will walk through the fire and the ritual will be complete. Once it is, your visions should be within your control.” He no longer sounds flat nor looks glittery. I suspect he might have gotten an idea of what was going through my mind just now, so I work on my blocking and attempt to look angelic.

“And what will you be doing?”

“I suppose I’ll ensure you don’t burn alive,” he says, sounding bored.

I wish I could assume the same disinterest in the topic.

“Once the ritual is complete, you will not need to dull yourself with the tawdry accoutrements of spell-less humans, so desperate to feel something they pierce their own flesh and call it transcendent.”

“Or, you know. They like how they look?”

“That is up to you, of course.”

“Funny, I didn’t think anything was up to me.”

A different sort of gleam in his gaze now. “You’re an adult. No matter how you act.”

And the goddess knows that these tectonic situations inside of me are adult enough when it comes to him. This is not the sort of hero worship I had for him as a teenager. Back then he was different and dangerous enough that sneaking around to have strange conversations ripe with portent and doom felt like escape to me. My life was confinement. He felt like flying free.

This is something different.

And sure, he really is dangerous. I know that. On any number of levels.

For all I know, he’s a tool of the Joywood and always has been—yet that’s not the danger I’m most conscious of when it comes to Nicholas. Not even close.

Self-preservation tells me to keep my mouth shut, the way it often does...but as we’ve established, that’s not really my strong suit. “Great,” I say. “We’re both adults. I guess that makes us equals, Nicholas.”

Unlike back when I was a teenager who only thought she was an adult.

I don’t say that part, but I don’t have to. I might be the only one viewing his history tonight, but when it comes to our history, I know he remembers the same things I do. I don’t question how I know it. I just do.

There is a weighted moment. I almost think he’s about to speak—

But instead he steps back and the book appears in his hand. That damn book. I’d be happy to never see it again. Tragically, it’s my experience that magical books never truly disappear. They lurk around, showing up again when it’s the most annoying. With a quick word from Nicholas, the book flips open to a page I actually read the other day, since it mentioned Beltane and that seemed important. Or at least timely.

Of course, in my translation I sort of figured the walking through fire part was metaphorical. I should have known better.

“You will walk through the fire. You will say these words.” He points to the flowing script, obviously in a cryptic, runic script that gives me an immediate headache. He looks at me as if everyone knows how to read it or should.

“You know, it’s been a long ass day,” I tell him, and I don’t even know why I’m suddenly so mad. Just that I am. Or anyway, that’s one way to describe all that shifting heat inside me. “I’m not in the mood to figure out impossible translation spells and then—”

The book is hovering between us now, because he’s stopped holding it. Instead, he comes to stand behind me and puts his hand on my shoulder. Not skin to skin. I have the stray thought that skin to skin would be like taking the brakes off, and we can’t have that. But I can feel his palm through the fabric of my dress. His hand, which is big and not in any way soft.

I’m entirely too aware that he has never touched me like this before. All those years ago when he acted as a kind of secret tutor, there was always distance. The whole thing was very hands-off.

But now it feels like he’s pulsing some power into me. I want it to be as simple as heat, as need, but I know it’s not that. It’s about the ritual, Rebekah, I tell myself. More than once. So I can understand the translation without having to bother with my shaky translation spell.

It’s not that I’m bad at magic, I’ve decided over the past two weeks, despite what Felicia and all my other teachers tried to tell me in school. It’s that I’ve always had so much raw power inside me, all the visions and all the knowing, that I was always more focused on controlling that part of me. And never, therefore, all that interested in learning these staple spells that other witches find about as hard as telling time.

Mind you, that’s also why I prefer a digital clock display.

And I don’t have to tell Nicholas any of this, because I already did. Years ago.

It’s not only that he knows. He remembers.

And his hand is on my shoulder, where it feels raw, like a new tattoo.

“Read,” he tells me, his voice rougher than it usually is. So rough it makes me feel shivery, but I frown at the book hanging in the air before me instead of concentrating on the shivery part.

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