Page 26 of Big Little Spells

Emerson sighs and shakes her head, as if despairing of me, but I know she’s faking. Emerson Wilde does not despair. Not even of her baby sister.

“We were thinking about going out to Nix tonight,” Jacob says. “Everyone can have a drink. A kind of welcome home.” He shares a look with Emerson.

“And an engagement announcement,” I offer. And that is what I actually want. Not a welcome home. Not any talk about what happened to me or Emerson or all of us last night. Or back when. Not even the Joywood’s high school punishment. Just friends getting together to celebrate something good.

“Maybe we shouldn’t,” Emerson says, looking at me worriedly. “You should rest. Settle in. Besides, there’s all this studying—”

“No, Nix is just what I need. If you can convince Ellowyn.”

Because Nix is a local bar down by the ferry, and the Rivers family has always run it, meaning Zander bartends most nights. And Ellowyn and Zander may have broken up in high school, but they still don’t get along—or even try, if they don’t have to, according to everything Ellowyn’s told me over the years. Fighting off impending evil floods counts as having to. I’m guessing a random night out won’t.

Emerson makes a face. “I was going to leave that to you.”

I laugh a little. Because, like it or not, the way things around here don’t change is comforting. I’m still in charge of convincing Ellowyn to do things. Emerson still thinks we should stay home and study. She just got engaged and I’m home for the first time in a decade, but everything else might as well be us at thirteen. Fifteen. Seventeen.

Even me getting hurt by a simple spell feels a lot like me messing things up back in the day. I sit up and wave a hand—the charred and yet not charred hand—over me, the blanket, the couch. “We don’t have to tell everyone about this, of course.”

Emerson’s mouth firms in that way she has that reminds me a bit too much of our father. Not fair, because Emerson has all the warmth and care that Desmond Wilde IV lacks, but she sure can be rigid, just like him. I keep that to myself.

“I understand why you’d want to hide it,” she is telling me. Rigidly, in my view. “Believe me, there were things I wanted to keep to myself these last few weeks.” Jacob clears his throat and Emerson wrinkles her nose. “Okay, I did keep things to myself and that’s why I can tell you that together is better than alone.”

“That sounds like a slogan,” I point out. “Did you put that on, like, town posters?”

She does not confirm or deny that. “We have to work together, Rebekah. And we have to know what we’re working with.”

“Or against,” Jacob adds.

Or against. I think about the way something reached inside me, seeming to burn everything away. Was it real or a premonition? Was it the Joywood? Nicholas? All of them together? Or was it something else entirely? I don’t want to ask, but Jacob’s or against rings in my head like its own bad omen.

“Was I...” I clear my throat. “When you healed me—even if you don’t know exactly what caused it, what were you healing?”

Jacob takes his time answering. When he flicks a quick, almost unnoticeable glance at Emerson, I get the sense he’s trying to find words that won’t freak her out. That he wants to cushion her a little bit.

I like that for her. She deserves a little softness after ten years in the dark.

“It’s hard to explain,” Jacob says. “Because it’s the effects of magic, and while it might be like things we know or understand, it’s also...not. In a way, whatever happened when you were scrying caused a kind of combustion, I suppose.”

“Like...a burn?” I ask tentatively. My hand flexes on its own, as if testing for charred flesh.

He considers. “Sort of. Though, if I’m being honest, it was more like a...detonation spot.”

Emerson gasps, dramatically of course. “Like an explosion?” she demands.

Again, Jacob hedges. “Yes and no. There was a reaction between two forces that caused something. Something magical, not of this world. So, I could liken it to an explosion, but it’s not the same. It didn’t blow up parts of her insides. It caused some damage, but it was healed easily enough, and likely she could have healed on her own, without me, if at a much slower rate. So, it wasn’t a fatal reaction. Just a big one.”

I don’t like this no answers thing, but I look at Emerson, because no answers is her particular brand of nightmare. As expected, her eyebrows are furrowed. She has her arms crossed over her chest. Her toe taps against the wood floor.

“I don’t like that at all,” she says. “Frost will have to be way more careful about his little tests.”

“You could also just avoid him,” Jacob says, like this is a bone of contention. An older, more private argument. “And his tests.”

Emerson does not respond. Because clearly she does not agree. “I have to go open the store.” She frowns down at me, clearly still worried that I’m not all right. “I can drop you off at home, or you can come and stay with me at the store. I can have Georgie—”

“I think I’ll head to Tea & No Sympathy and work on getting Ellowyn to come to Nix tonight,” I say serenely, as if that was an option she offered. I turn to Jacob, because I know Emerson won’t trust me that I feel fine. “I’ve got a clean bill of health, right?”

Jacob nods, but speaks to Emerson—not me. Another thing that maybe shouldn’t irritate me, but it does. “She’s good to go. Promise.”

I am my keeper. Not Emerson.

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