Page 10 of Truly Madly Magically

“Ellowyn and I were having an overdue discussion.” Zander turns back to Emerson as he speaks. Something’s shifted since Litha, I think. There’s a quiet acknowledgment of the change in our coven situation. Because covens have hierarchies. Emerson isn’t just a friend, sister, or cousin anymore. She’s our leader. “She went to leave, and that shadow thing flew in. So I fought it.”

He fought it. Because of course. Zander the Guardian wouldn’t dare let me do the honors or even help. Disappointing half witches can’t be trusted with simple tasks like fighting off evil.

“Yes,” I agree, making no attempt to sound anything but mad. Because I am. Because maybe that’s more easily accessible than all the other, messier things I also feel. “He fought it because he put an unwanted safety spell over me. But I watched. It was the same dark shadow you all saw. No real shape. Just...power, I guess. Dark, ugly power. With claws.”

Zander nods. “Dark, yeah, but different.” I can’t let myself nod along. Casual agreement is a slippery slope to our particular brand of toxicity. “It definitely wanted to take a chunk out of me.”

Me, he says, so matter-of-factly. As if it didn’t slash a shadowy claw across me too.

Typical. “And when Zander was in over his head, I called you guys.”

I can see he wants to argue that he was never in over his head or anywhere near it, but I said it. So we all know it’s true. I accept his glare as tribute.

Emerson ignores our silent battle of one-upmanship. She’s frowning. Thinking. “You don’t have any clue what prompted it?”

Both Zander and I shake our heads. I can’t imagine the Joywood or anyone else cares that I got myself knocked up. The timing doesn’t make any sense.

“What were you guys talking about?” Georgie asks, and the thing about Georgie is that I’ve known her my entire life. She grew up next door to Wilde House. I still can’t tell if she’s as dreamy and otherworldly as she seems, her face always in a book—or, lately, talking about seemingly very boring things with her high school teacher boyfriend, Sage. Who...seems nice. Enough.

For a moment, the entire room is silent, like maybe none of us can tell if Georgie is really asking that question either.

I point at my expanding middle. “Hi. Hello.”

“So it is Zander’s,” Georgie says, almost wonderingly.

“Obviously it’s mine.”

His what the fuck, Georgie, lingers in the air as if he yelled it. Though he didn’t. And I hear an odd creak from the front hall, like the old staircase with the creepy newel post is reacting too.

Georgie only smiles. I can feel everyone’s eyes on me, and I can practically hear the questions they’re very purposefully not voicing. How? When? Where? Why?

“Did something happen at the bar tonight? Anything out of the ordinary that might have caused or hinted at an attack?” Emerson asks Zander, as if oblivious to all of these things going on around her when we all know she’s not. “Maybe a strange ferry passenger earlier?” She turns to me. “A customer at your shop that felt off?”

My customers at Tea & No Sympathy are there for artisan tea blends, my trademark scowl, and no sympathy, as advertised. They’re all a little off, but I don’t say that.

“No,” I say instead, as Zander shakes his head. And I’m mad at him, so I continue. “Maybe something happened while you were busy drowning your sorrows. Hard to see an evil brewing when you’re face down in the gin.”

Not that I care that his grief takes the shape of self-sabotage.

Zander and I get locked in one of those staring battles that only end in Pyrrhic victories, if any, and only after too much history passes between us, silently. Bruisingly.

Years ago we forbade ourselves from taking part in any silent, witch-type talking inside each other’s heads—not when it was only the two of us. Taking private conversations like that off the menu was supposed to make this better.

It didn’t. It doesn’t.

“We’ve been waiting for the Joywood to make a move,” Rebekah is saying, because they all have practice ignoring us. Even the one who was away for a decade.

“Yes, but the fact they’ve waited makes me wonder why now, why tonight. We still have over a month to Samhain, and hoops to jump through yet.”

She’s talking about the ascension rituals.

Everyone in witchdom knows that ascension means we get to choose our ruling coven. No one seems to know the details about how that choice gets made. The Joywood have held their position for so long that no one can recall how they won it in the first place. We originally figured we’d let Frost fill us in, because he’s lived so long and—rumor has it—was once a member of a ruling coven himself.

But it turns out that losing his immortality when he saved Rebekah means he’s lost access to parts of his vast knowledge too. He and Georgie and Rebekah spend hours every day trying to work through the gaps, but it’s hard to chase down things you can’t remember that you ought to know. What we do understand is that we have to appear before the town council—in a shocking coincidence that shocks no one, said council is also the Joywood—to announce our intentions, complete with certain spells, and the presentation of sponsors. This must take place during the celebration of Mabon, the witch festival that celebrates the autumn equinox.

There’s a human festival too—the Apple Extravaganza that Emerson launched a few years ago, which manages to merge the usually still-hot Missouri summer weather with a little fall goodness that gets people on Main Street and into all the shops and restaurants and U-pick apple orchards across the river. Despite impending war and/or ascension, she’s maintained her typical schedule with her usual summer activities that keep this place humming and full of tourists, human as well as witch.

“Why haven’t they showed themselves?” Georgie asks into the brooding quiet, shaking her head. “We know they’re after us. They’re the ones who called it a war. Why bother with shadows?”

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