Page 79 of Big Little Spells

“There is a time for everything. Your sister isn’t out there Warrioring all the time.”

It’s like he’s never met Emerson. “Isn’t she?”

“The Healer doesn’t heal all the time, the Summoner rarely summons, half witch that she is. Even that Historian of yours isn’t always buried in her books.”

“It doesn’t matter that Ellowyn is part human.” I never liked the term half witch. She’s not half of anything.

“It will matter,” Nicholas says, but I realize it’s not a judgment, like when Carol says such things so snidely. He makes it sound important.

I think of steps again, but it’s not the time to mention them.

Because maybe I’m imagining that there’s some approval in his blue gaze today. I used to imagine it when I was younger, and I know it was never really there. This is...different. “One step at a time. Now, let’s practice your balance.”

We do practice. Again and again, and it’s much better than that classroom this morning. Nicholas explains many of the same things Sage supposedly went over earlier, according to the notes Emerson magicked into my notebook. But Nicholas explains things while we’re working through the actual spells and rituals. Somehow, it makes more sense when I can see them, say them, let them flow through me and out into this domed room.

“You’ve done well, Rebekah,” he says once I’ve held the light and dark in perfect balance over and over again. “Should you fail the practicum, know that it isn’t your failure.”

I want to believe that. I really do. “You sure about that?”

“I am certain,” he says in that forbidding way that even I don’t feel compelled to argue with.

We both fall silent. We’ve been practicing for hours. I feel electrified and a little burned out, but in a good way, like all my muscles—magical and physical—have been through a tough workout.

Yet we stand here, the air around us seeming to hint at all the things we don’t say.

But I have my pride, and he has a thousand lifetimes’ supply of his own, so I move to leave. After only a couple of steps, before I make it off the rug where I sobbed out his name and he held me in his arms like we were made for each other, his voice stops me.

“I’ll see you at dinner, witchling.”

I don’t turn to face him. I’m afraid my smile would blind us both, and it has nothing to do with daisies. Because I know that term was once meant to create a distance. To remind us both that I was beneath him.

But I’m not now. And witchling has turned into an endearment. Just for us. Once I’ve gotten ahold of myself I give him a little over-the-shoulder smirk. “If you’re lucky.”

I don’t stay. If I do, I might be prone to giggle or something else equally embarrassing, so I hightail it out of there. I don’t particularly want to head home, because my parents are likely waiting to grill me on my first class. Maybe I’ll swing by Nix, grab a burger, and check in with Aunt Zelda—still only by text, but she told me she’d be waiting to hear how high school went today—while trying to figure out the truth of her condition from Zander’s general unforthcoming stonewalling. I could go to Confluence Books and curl up on one of the sofas and do some work. I could hang out in Tea & No Sympathy and make Ellowyn laugh between customers.

It warms me, all these options. All the ways this place could feel like home again if Litha wasn’t hanging over my head. Not to mention other things, like my parents. Penance. Lingering shame...

As if the thought of all those things conjures the woman I least want to see, Felicia is waiting at the bottom of the stairs to Frost House. Like...clearly, creepily, waiting for me and not even trying to pretend otherwise.

The closer I get, I begin to realize she can’t go farther than that little bit of bricks that dead-end into the first step. It’s like there’s a wall and she can’t get through it.

I think she wants to. I think she’s trying to. I know she started trying before she saw me, because I can see it in my head like an instant replay, even though I’m only supposed to see forward. But I ignore that part and concentrate on the fact that whatever power Felicia has as member of the Joywood, Nicholas has created some kind of barrier that even the most powerful witches in the world can’t pass. Not if he doesn’t want them to.

I feel like sobbing out his name all over again, but I don’t.

Instead, I stop walking on about the third step and stand there, protected against this woman who’s supposed to be the best representation of a Diviner in all the land. This mean, petty woman who made my life hell and is red in the face because she can’t loom over me the way she liked to do when I was a kid forced to sit in that torturously uncomfortable chair in her office.

I make a show of sitting down, just out of reach and still above her.

Because I really do love a power dynamic.

Felicia vibrates with that temper of hers I recognize all too well. I find myself thinking the same thing I always did in high school. That she should have helped me. That she was a Diviner, something I could feel hum inside me without anyone ever needing to tell me we were the same designation, so why couldn’t she? She’s always acted like I was conceited and getting above my station to imagine I was anything like her. And yet she was and is my counterpart. Not only that, if we follow through with Emerson’s insane idea to officially start our own coven and pit ourselves against the Joywood in an Ascension, I’ll take her place.

That doesn’t bother me one little bit today.

Though it does occur to me, suddenly, that it clearly bothers her. And did even back then.

“Good morning, Felicia,” I offer brightly, then make a big production of looking at the sky, where the storm is now off to the east and the sun is high. “Or afternoon, as the case may be.”

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