Page 9 of Big Little Spells

That makes me smile.

The one thing that makes me pause is the ring that sits nestled at the bottom of the box. The gold shines as though it hasn’t been tucked up under this floor for ten years. Instead of a jewel at its center, there’s a tiny paper-white narcissus bloom—my birth month flower—encased in some kind of resin.

My grandmother gave it to me the day before my doomed pubertatum. Grandma loved flowers, plants, and herb magic. She had a green thumb, so her flower gifts were always beautiful, full of protection and her special kind of magic. An early birthday gift, she’d called the ring. I was sure it would bring me luck for my test.

But it didn’t.

Because luck isn’t real and magic might as well be a disease, I remind myself sharply. I put almost everything back in the box, shut it with a decisive click, then put it back under the floorboard. I stare at the plank for a moment, then shake my head.

“Let no eyes but my own,

Find this below.”

The wood warps once again, the simple magic spell tingling through me. It’s not strong magic, or much magic at all, and no doubt I’ll be called to do far harder things. Like, say, saving the world, the way we did last night as our own little coven.

Still, doing simple magic feels good in too many ways I’m not prepared to dig into. Not cross-legged on the floor of my childhood bedroom on my first day back.

Smudge waits at the door with her yellow eyes fixed on me, though she could easily open the door herself. And I can practically feel Emerson’s impatience echoing at me from downstairs, because she always did get up at the crack of dawn. On a sigh, I get myself dressed. The nonmagical way, because I actually like putting on actual clothes. That’s revolutionary in St. Cyprian.

I like taking part in as many revolutions as possible.

I open the door and Smudge leaps out into the hall, straight for Ellowyn who’s trudging toward the staircase. Her hair is rumpled, and she’s wearing a colorful teacup-covered pajama set.

She crouches to scratch Smudge behind the ears, then grins up at me. “Seeing the past is generally my thing, but you being here in the present is weird as hell.”

“I think the weird as hell is only beginning.”

She straightens, still smiling. And though she doesn’t say it—because she’s Ellowyn, and she may be cursed to tell the truth but that doesn’t mean she’s keen on voicing emotional truths—I still feel all the ways she’s glad I’m here.

I know it’s not fair, but it doesn’t weigh on me the way Emerson’s glad-I’m-here does. That’s the difference between real sisters and chosen sisters. The real ones have all that family stuff between them, and whether anyone wants it or not, it always gets in the way. But the sisters we choose come without baggage. Where a blood sister might argue with a story you tell about your life, a best friend embellishes it.

I suppose it helps that we’ve stayed in touch this whole time. Testing the boundaries of what exile truly was. We didn’t magic ourselves to each other or send little witchy messages. It was all very human. Texts. Phone calls. Emails.

I feel a pang of guilt at that, because the same can’t be said about Emerson and me, but what could I do? I called once, right after I left, to check in and make sure she was okay.

But she wasn’t my sister. She was what they did to my sister. She was so many parts of Emerson, but she couldn’t remember the most important thing that had happened to us. I couldn’t argue with her fake view of our world.

It broke my heart.

I hand Ellowyn the drawing so as not to dwell on all that old pain. She takes it and hoots out a laugh. “I can’t believe you kept it.” She clutches it to her chest. “I’m going to frame it for my shop.”

“That’ll win Felicia over.”

“Nothing is going to win Felicia over,” Ellowyn returns, then we wrinkle our noses at each other. Because Ellowyn can’t lie, which means she’s just announced that these next two months are already a little hopeless.

But Ellowyn links arms with me, a rare show of physical affection, and moves us toward the staircase. “This could be literally any morning from high school.”

“Except today, praise Hecate, my mother won’t be around for a rousing morning critique of my appearance.” I sigh, only a little dramatically. “It makes me sad she’s not here to enjoy the fruit of my facial piercing labors over the years. I bet she’d love them all.”

We head down the stairs. “Men have pronounced Adam’s apples,” Ellowyn replies, in the way she does when she wants to tell a little white lie. But can’t. “They have larger voice boxes that make the surrounding cartilage stick out more.” She demonstrates a voice box with her hands. Then, when I laugh, she does too. “Your mother would hate your piercings with her whole soul.”

And because she can say that sentence, physically, it means it’s the truth.

This is not a surprise. I try to make that same perpetually appalled face that my mother has always worn naturally. Then I mimic her voice. “‘Ladies, I am certain you do not mean to present yourselves in public looking like you have suffered a hexing.’”

Ellowyn laughs, and I keep up my impression of my mother all the way down the stairs. It helps me continue to ignore the house around me as we go. And all the ways not a damn thing has changed.

Including me.

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