Page 25 of Big Little Spells

I’m not sure if I’m supposed to be excited by that. I’m not. Because when strange things happen to me, it doesn’t lead to calm, peaceful happy-ever-afters in cozy farmhouses. Strange things involving me in St. Cyprian tend to end in shame, exile, and scorching fire.

Still, the way Jacob says the name Frost, like it’s a curse, makes me think this brother-in-law thing is going to be all right. “Do you think he did this to me?”

I know he didn’t. But I wouldn’t mind someone to blame—and he has it coming.

No, that isn’t healthy at all. Yes, it’s 100 percent backsliding into old, terrible habits that did me no good. Today, following my faint, I’m okay with it.

“He wouldn’t,” Emerson is saying, and it takes me a minute—a cottony sort of minute that makes it clear I’m not right—to track that she’s talking about Nicholas.

“I’m not so sure he wouldn’t, just that he didn’t.” Jacob sounds grim. He does that intense looking thing again, like he can literally see my cells. I can’t remember enough of my lessons on the Healer designation to be sure, but I think he probably can. “I don’t see anyone else’s magic. What happened to you today feels internal.”

I nod sagely, but I’m remembering that crack. The water, the pain. The burning.

His fathomless gaze.

“Frost could have put it there,” Jacob continues. “But mostly what I saw, what I healed, was your magic reacting with something. I’m afraid I don’t know what it is just yet.”

“Not just yet,” I echo, because it sounds more hopeful than I feel.

“I’ll consult with my grandfather. And we’ll have Georgie look through her books. We’ll see if we can find something that gives us answers.” He smiles a little, in a way that feels like every doctor I’ve ever seen in my life. It’s more soothing than I want it to be, I have to admit. “But for the time being, you should rest. Take it easy.”

“I’ll go make some tea,” Emerson says, already on her feet before the words are out of her mouth. “You stay right here, Rebekah. I’m serious. Don’t move at all. I know you hate being taken care of, but too bad.”

I watch her charge out of the room, then turn to Jacob. “That doesn’t get old?”

Jacob’s brows raise. “Her taking care of the people she loves?”

A gentle admonition, and if I didn’t love my sister so much, I might take against him for it. But I’m glad he’d take her side over mine. That he’d defend her like that, as if it’s a reflex.

I smile at him. “So you’re marrying my sister.”

Maybe with some emphasis on the my part.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Jacob’s expression cools ever so slightly at the question. I take that as another admonishment and smile wider, channeling daisies.

“I suppose the simple answer is I love her,” he says. Almost formally. A faint smudge of color appears at his ears, but he doesn’t look away. His gaze is direct and steady. “I always have.”

This time my smile is full and real. “Good.”

And I get a full, real smile from him in return.

Something deep and aching that has nothing to do with magic twists inside of me. My visions aren’t getting any clearer so I don’t see anything now, smiling at my future brother-in-law, and I wish I did. I wish I could tell him, and Emerson, how it’s going to go for them. I can’t.

Still, there’s something hovering at the edge of what I can reach. I just wish it didn’t involve dark blue eyes that have already seen a millennium.

I’d rather think about that thing that burned me up and spit me out than the future anyway. “Okay, so we don’t know what happened to me at Frost House. But I’m good to go? No wacky magical time bombs or anything?”

Emerson returns with a mug of tea. “It’s one of Ellowyn’s blends with Jacob’s herbs,” she says, all but shoving it at me. “Drink up.”

I take the mug and stare down at it. “I need a drink, Em. A real drink.”

“This first,” Emerson says, instead of what I expect—a lecture that will likely be both earnest and stern and all about the perils of using alcohol as a numbing agent, complete with spreadsheets and articles. Like the ones she used to give me all the time when I was sixteen and, granted, a little too rowdy.

“Then something hard?”

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