Page 46 of Big Little Spells

Meaning, I guess, that we’ve grown up.

And because we have, I should tell her. The years working with Nicholas. That while I was preparing to run away, like I told her I was going to do after our failed pubertatum, I felt her be wiped... And launched my own revenge, that Emerson would in no way appreciate.

Which means Nicholas was right—it was for you, not for Emerson.

I push that thought and all the memories away. Just like with Ellowyn a few weeks ago, I can’t find the words to tell her, so I don’t.

“You’ll never know everything, Emerson,” I say instead, all Sedona sage, but this time I annoy even myself with it. Not that I let that stop me. “The less you accept you’ll ever know, the happier you’ll be.”

“I don’t like that at all, and I’m the happiest person you know,” she returns, but she laughs when she says it. She moves to the door, but hesitates, chewing on her lip. “You’re sure that they won’t know if I, like, kidnap a squirrel?”

“What happened to I’m an adult?”

Emerson sighs. “I just want tomorrow to go smoothly. I just want...” She shakes her head. “Okay, I want them to look at me and say, ‘good job, Emerson.’ And I know they won’t. It doesn’t matter to anyone except us that I dove into that flood. And I don’t need it to, not really. I know I did the right thing and we saved the town and St. Cyprian thriving unawares is all that really matters.” She sucks in a breath. “But just once I wanted Mom and Dad to think it was enough. That I was enough.”

The words twist and turn inside me. I’ve been through therapy. I know all the right things to say and feel. And still, everything she says echoes inside me, the ache of knowing it’s stupid to hurt and futile to wish...while not being able to keep from it.

I lived down to every expectation. I embarrassed them—fairly and unfairly. I was and am a stain on the family name. I flaunted being that stain. Still do.

And yet, just once, I too want them to look at me and think I’m enough.

“That’s on them. Not you,” I manage to say.

“I know.” She looks at me. Really looks at me. “Do you know?”

I nod, a little too vigorously, maybe. “Yeah, I do.”

“Good. We know it.” She swallows. “So when are we going to feel it?” Her eyes are suspiciously shiny, and I feel mine getting there. Somehow, in this moment, I miss my grandmother more than I ever have. If she were here, she’d know what to say. What to do.

She always did. She was why we grew up ourselves, not carbon copies of our parents.

But she isn’t here and I still can’t face that, much less the last time I saw her. There’s only Emerson and me now. There’s only this old hurt, shoved into the middle of all this ritual humiliation, like this was the Joywood’s plan all along. I can’t really put it past them.

How can I possibly let them win?

I clear my throat and blink away the tears that want to fall. I meet Emerson’s equally bright gaze. “Go home to your Healer,” I tell her very firmly. “Enjoy yourself.”

She looks around the room. “Wilde House was always home.”

“Now it’s not. Now it’s Jacob. Nothing wrong with that.”

“So where’s your home?”

Something that sounds suspiciously like a raven’s caw sounds within me, but I ignore it and the shiver that goes with it. “Not everyone needs a home.” She looks at me like she pities me. I hate that look. So, I daisy smile at her in all the ways that will make her frown. “Some of us are our own home, Emerson.”

Then I take it a step farther. I summon all of the deepest magic within me and do something I definitely shouldn’t.

I transport her—against her will like Nicholas is forever doing to me, but that’s how I know it works—and while I’m doing it, I magic in a flop-eared bunny that looks like it escaped a Beatrix Potter book in her place.

Have fun! I send her in my most cheerful inner voice.

Try consent, jerk, she replies, so grumpily it makes me laugh. I dispatch the bunny to Emerson’s bedroom before Smudge can get too interested in it, then charm it into sitting quietly on her bed.

And then I spend the rest of the evening staring at the ceiling with Emerson’s question echoing in my head.

When are we going to feel it?

14

---