Page 44 of Big Little Spells

“Carol has always been...difficult,” Mom allows. “But she’s our leader, and she makes these decisions because we chose her to be in the position to make them. No one likes a leader all the time. They have to make the difficult choices that don’t please everyone, because they’re for the greater good. Mind wipes and exile of the spell dim are what’s best for witchkind.”

“It did not feel like the best of anything, Mother, I can assure you,” Emerson says with a hint of that uncharacteristic bitterness. She flexes her fingers as if she’s holding herself back from casting a spell, and my mother’s gaze is once again drawn to them...as if she still can’t comprehend that she saw Emerson do magic so easily.

“I’m sure it didn’t, but it was necessary,” she says, almost kindly, to Emerson. Then turns to me with all that ice. “It was also about excising the things that threaten us all.”

But she’s having this conversation. And I can’t help but wonder if there’s a little crack in all that ice.

If there’s a little piece of her that is thinking...maybe.

I need to get away from her before I freeze it back up.

“I have some reading to do,” I announce to no one in particular, desperately trying to reclaim some of the serenity I wear like a second skin back in Sedona.

“The Beltane etiquette—”

“I know the etiquette, Mother,” I say, and at least I sound calm. “But I also know what I need. If you’ll excuse me.”

And then without waiting for her to say more, or for Emerson to make her own excuses, I send myself to my room. Poof.

I wish it felt good. I wish I did. I removed myself from a toxic situation before I lost control of myself. I set a boundary. These aren’t things to be ashamed of. In fact, I should celebrate them. But I feel a certain kind of shame anyway.

A shame that curdles into anger when the dress appears in my room, hanging from its invisible, magical hanger there in the corner. A bright, white, partially ruffled beacon reminding me what I am to these people. Just a symbol, like that dress.

I feel that old fire rising in me. When everything feels hopeless, it seems it’s all I have.

Burn it down, Smudge suggests from where she’s sprawled on the windowsill.

Because she is only the voice of reason when it amuses her to be. Otherwise, she’s an instigator. Because cats.

But when Emerson appears in my room a few minutes later, I’m forced to use all my skill to tamp down the fury that wants to set the town on fire. Again.

I remind myself that I actually have these skills. To burn or to keep myself from burning, and that they’re not accidents. I developed one set of skills in secret before Litha that year. And another set to survive exile.

A few weeks in my childhood home can only get the best of me if I let it.

“That was productive,” Emerson announces. With more optimism than certainty, to my ear.

“If you say so.” I flop back on my bed. Smudge delicately climbs on top of me and settles herself on my abdomen. I slide my palm over her head so I can rub her cheeks the way she likes. She purrs, leans in, and says nothing snarky in my head. There’s not even a stray image of flames.

I eye Emerson as she wanders around my room, almost haplessly. When Emerson Wilde has never been hapless a day in her life. “We got her to sign off, and that’s what matters. They’ll probably leave the morning after the dance, once they’ve made sure nothing chinchilla-y happens. I can’t imagine there’s reason for them to stay.”

I am not in the right frame of mind to discuss chinchillas of yore. “What really matters is that Mom didn’t reject the very idea that the Joywood could be wrong about something out of hand. She considered it. And if Elspeth Wilde has doubts, more people will too. If we show them why they should.”

Emerson nods. “They will,” she agrees. “Because we’re right.”

I wish I could be that certain about anything. But my parents are home, and I don’t have any desire at all to puncture her certainty. I want it to rub off on me.

I expect her to whirl off to tackle a few more entries on her to-do list, or tuck herself onto the edge of my bed like she used to, but she does neither. Smudge abruptly leaps off me, clawing me on the way, so I hiss a little at the sting.

Jerk, I complain.

My familiar ignores me.

So I wait, watching Emerson struggle with whatever she wants to say. She even twists her fingers together, almost like she’s uncertain. Which I would have said wasn’t possible. “So...” She trails off. Says nothing.

I wait. I say nothing in return.

She huffs out a breath and marches over to the window, glaring out toward the river. Or maybe across the river. “I know you and Ellowyn used to sneak out when we were in high school.”

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