Page 82 of Big Little Spells

“Hope you’re hungry!” I chirp at him, like I’m auditioning for a seat in Emerson’s chamber of commerce.

This breaks the ice enough for everyone to file in and take seats around the dinner table. Maybe inspired by my rendition of her, Emerson finds her voice and natural leadership skills again. She gets most of us to laugh at a funny story about one of Happy Ambrose Ford’s diatribes at a chamber of commerce lunch. Then she assigns us tasks for the upcoming German Heritage Festival, though we’ll all be busy Litha-ing with her. All the while she briskly passes the bowls and platters around the table. By hand instead of by magic, for that homey feel. Zander chimes in, telling his own tales of the strange and entertaining people who show up on the ferry or in the bar. There is a clear attempt to make this night as friendly as possible.

Even though Nicholas sits there at Jacob’s table, quiet and severe, seeming not to notice the way everyone darts veiled looks at him.

I wonder if mingling with mortals feels to him the way contending with all his ancientness does to me. A little breathtaking, a little sad.

He does not speak throughout dinner, but he stays into dessert. Then into a natural move to the living room, with the fire burning low and various familiars inside and out. The windows are open to the spring evening, crystals and herbs hanging at all of them.

I sit next to Nicholas on the couch and smile at him—challengingly—until he relaxes. Slightly.

When the discussion quiets, and Emerson stares at Nicholas long enough to be obvious, he inclines his head toward her. “Ask, Warrior.”

“You know things we need to know.”

“I know a great many things. What you need to know are but a few of them.”

“Yet you won’t tell us.”

“Won’t. Can’t. I suppose it doesn’t matter which.” There is an aura of detachment or nonchalance around him, his words, but sitting this close to him I see that it’s a mask. Armor, with something simmering underneath.

I’m tempted to imagine it’s the emotion I’ve only seen in him when we’re naked.

“Why be here if you can’t help?” Zander returns, eyeing him suspiciously.

“For your scintillating company, of course.”

Ellowyn and I are the only ones who laugh at that, which at least feels like old times.

“You could tell us some things, if we ask the right questions,” Georgie says, more a statement than a question.

Nicholas’s expression is almost approving. “Not all questions have answers, but there might be some.”

Ellowyn studies him. “Like a troll under a bridge handing out riddles?”

“Whatever suits your impressive imagination, Ms. Good.”

She barks out another laugh. Zander narrows his eyes.

“What about the illnesses?” Jacob asks, clearly not interested in laughing, or riddles. Zander gets poker-faced. “Can you tell us why so many witches are getting sick? And if it relates to all of this?”

“There’s nothing to be done,” Nicholas says in that quiet way he spoke to me on the stairs. And I understand now that this is his kindness. It makes my heart beat wildly in my chest, even though his answer isn’t exactly helpful. “Some things, once begun, cannot be stopped. But I can give you this. Yes, it does relate.”

This is not what anyone wants to hear. I reach for my phone like a text might prove that Nicholas is lying, when I know it’s just a text. Zander stands up abruptly and moves to the coffee table, where a platter of brownies is waiting for him to grief-eat them. Which he does.

“There has to be something we can do,” Ellowyn surprises me by saying.

Nicholas looks at everyone and no one, it seems. He stays seated beside me, but it’s as if the idea of him grows, taking over the room. Leaving us in no doubt of his power and otherness.

But somehow I take comfort in the fact that he has to put it on, like a costume.

Like he wants to be here more than he wants to admit.

“Here is what I am able to tell you,” he says, and now he sounds like an oracle from on high. His voice echoes off our very bones. “They will seek to divide you. Your power is both individual, and a unit. There are prophecies, and there is magic, all meant to help you along this road. There are steps they must take that you must stop. Quests like this are not won alone, and they are not won without sacrifice. Fate, destiny, it only goes so far. You have to choose the right paths, or we’re doomed.”

It takes a moment for the tolling bells to recede enough that we all seem to realize that he’s stopped speaking.

Zander, who froze along with the rest of us, shoves the last of a brownie into his mouth and swallows it down. “Some speech,” he mutters.

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