Page 94 of Big Little Spells

It’s like the Teineigen on Beltane that made me new—but that was my magic. It was a new start, but I hadn’t forgiven the old mistakes yet.

I don’t know what forgiveness feels like, but this seems like a good start.

“Do you still wish to leave?” he asks me as I draw near.

Because it’s my choice. It always has been. There might be consequences to choices, but there are always choices.

I think of hanging so high in the air, looking down at the lights of this haunted river town I still call home. And how even then, my eyes were drawn to the place that’s always haunted me the most.

And the man who lives there still. The man who’s lived forever.

The man I’ve loved so long I never thought I was falling in love at all, until I fell from the sky. And he caught me.

So I choose. Finally, I choose.

I’m all about listening to my grandma today, so I lift up on my toes. I slide my hand up to smooth over his jaw, catching him the way he caught me, in the best way I can right now. Because if I told him I was leaving, he would take me wherever I wanted to go. He might have a few cutting things to say about it, but he would do it.

I know that as surely as I know him—inside and out, mistakes across the ages—and I do.

So I make him a vow too. “I’m not going anywhere.”

25

I GIVE MY FRIENDS until morning.

I send off little magical messages to all of them, all tucked up in their various beds before dawn, while I fly across the river to the North Farm where I know my sister is snuggled up with her Healer. I could be in bed with my favorite immortal right now, mind you, but we spent the whole night using up our silences.

All that’s left are the words we don’t say, and no one wants that. Much better to head off to face and fix the mess I made, buoyed with my grandma’s love and each and every one of the things Nicholas does not say to me.

I feel them all the same.

Once I land I set off toward the cozy-looking farmhouse where Nicholas actually sat and had dinner, like a regular old mortal witch. It’s a cool morning, out here before the sun, and the ground is damp. Something makes me stop as I make it to the yard and I look around, a kind of awareness prickling over me. I tense—

But then I see the huge stag standing where the yard fades into the trees.

Watching me.

“Murphy,” I say softly, and incline my head in his direction. I’ve known Jacob’s familiar as long as I’ve known Jacob, but that doesn’t mean he’ll let me approach the house if that’s not what the occupants want. For all I know, they told him to keep me away.

I’m not afraid of that—because I’m a little sister who’s perfectly capable of getting my big sister’s attention when I want it—but I realize I’m holding my breath as I wait to see.

Across the yard, Murphy dips his antlers, then seems to let the trees suck him in whole.

I blow out the breath I was holding and start moving again.

I march up to the door, but pause once I climb up on the porch. I suck in a cleansing breath. Or five. I can’t change what she saw. What I did. I can’t take back my feelings, or my fear. But I can be honest. I can ask for help.

I think, I have to.

Panic beats inside of me, but it’s the same as outside the cemetery last night. I didn’t want to face my grandmother. Or really, her disappointment. I was scared to see my own feelings reflected back at me, and that was wrong. Because it was wrong to think so little of her.

Just like it’s wrong to think so little of Emerson now.

So, I knock on the door. It takes a few minutes, including me sending a little zap into the house in the hope of waking its inhabitants up.

When the door opens with a creak, Emerson is standing there in her pajamas, with a robe and slippers that I don’t think are hers. Maybe she’s commandeered them. She yawns, her eyes barely opened. Though she jolts when she finally sees me. “Rebekah.”

I sweep in. Even now, I feel the need to lead with brazen indifference, because I might have cleared out a lot of mess within, but I’m still me.

---