Page 11 of Truly Madly Magically

“Even they can’t get away with bald-faced murder?” Jacob offers, with more hope than certainty, and we all laugh. A little.

Because they’re the Joywood. They can get away with anything. If we’re right about them, they already have.

“If they really wanted to murder any of you, or all of you, you would have been dead long ago,” Frost intones. Because the guy might not be immortal anymore, but he hasn’t changed. He is the first, best Praeceptor, the foundation of the witchlore itself, as we were all taught in school. He is also absurdly hot, all aristocratic angles and too-blue eyes, if much more mortal than he used to be.

“Nicholas, you are a constant comfort,” Rebekah says, making a face at him, but it’s a fond sort of face. I support her need to date an age gap beyond comprehension. I just wish the unconditional support flowed to me too. I can feel it doesn’t.

Then again, she’s only known that I’m pregnant—meaning, importantly, that I’ve been sleeping with Zander and not telling her about it—for about thirty minutes. That’s not a lot of processing time, I can admit. I decide to forgive her.

A little.

Emerson sighs. “You and Zander need rest, Wynnie.” She takes my hand and gives it a squeeze, and once again, I allow the touching and the nickname pretty much only Emerson gets away with. “So does Jacob.” The look she gives her fiancé is less coven leader and more worried soon-to-be-wife. “Tomorrow is our usual ascension meeting anyway. Let’s all take what’s left of tonight to gather our recollections. Leave no detail out, big or small, of what you felt, saw, thought, or even imagined at Zander’s. Tomorrow we’ll see if we can’t determine the why we’re missing here.”

No one verbally agrees, but no one mounts an opposition, so Emerson keeps talking. “I think everyone should stay put here at Wilde House for the time being. Until we really understand what happened tonight. No going it alone. No sleeping off the bricks. That wasn’t the hardest fight we’ve ever had, not even close, but that doesn’t mean we can be careless.”

Frost does that thing where he becomes an immensity as you look at him. An immortal party trick, I would have said—but apparently it’s just him. “Surely when you say here at Wilde House, you mean Ellowyn,” he says in his I Am the Greatest and Most Powerful Witch of All Time voice.

Emerson is unmoved. “Wilde House is the most protected option we have.”

Frost blinks. “I have wards on my house that are older than your entire ancestral line.”

“You’re up off the bricks. Jacob and Zander are across the river, also off the bricks.” Emerson shrugs. “I think that at the very least, we all need to stay on the bricks right now. It might not be as protected as we once believed, but it’s harder here. Let’s make it hard on them. At least until we figure out what’s going on.”

I have the terrible feeling she means, until we beat the Joywood. “My apartment is on the bricks,” I point out, because I would love nothing more than to go home to my sweet little apartment above my shop. My bed. My space. Alone and protected against all these feelings jumbling around the room.

I prefer to indulge in feelings exactly once a year, then otherwise pretend I’m immune.

“But alone. So no,” Emerson says, not gently. More General Wilde-y, and a few months back, I would have argued. But we’re the Riverwood now, so I bite my tongue. “Wilde House is the best option until we know what this is. Why this is. And how to protect ourselves against it, particularly if the Joywood aren’t showing themselves. Besides, there’s plenty of room.”

I wait for someone to argue with Emerson, but no one does. I decide that I will—but tomorrow. When I have a little more energy. When I don’t feel exhaustion creeping over me like a weighted blanket.

When I can close my eyes and not see that shadow flying at me. Or feel that terrible clawing over my belly. Or, somehow just as terrible, watch Zander taking those cruel blows from the same shadow.

“Good. It’s agreed. So, we’ll all get some rest and—”

“Is no one going to address the elephant in the room?” Rebekah finally turns and meets my gaze full-on. Then she points at my stomach, theatrically, and she’s always been the most dramatic of us when she feels like it. “What. The. Hell.”

“Cosign,” Georgie murmurs. Not airily.

But that’s not a question I’m going to have to answer just yet, because we all hear the front door slam open.

Hard enough to make the old house groan.

4

“ELLOWYN SABRINA GOOD!” my mother shouts before appearing at the entrance to the living room. She’s in her cheerful sunflower pajamas. Half her silvery-blond hair is up in a band, the other half hanging at her shoulders.

She might have called out my full, hated name, but she’s not looking at me. She’s glaring daggers. I mean actual, real daggers, though they hover there in front of her eyes instead of shooting toward their target.

That being Zander, as ever. She points at him, with a finger that seems just as sharp as the blades floating in midair.

“You’re lucky I gave up curses,” she throws at him, and there are even more edges in her words.

I’m not a saint. I enjoy it. Even if I shouldn’t, because of all the things Zander has done wrong—and there are so many—the thing she’s mad about tonight isn’t one of them.

There’s something in his expression that pricks at me now though. I might not understand it entirely, but I see grief there. A terrible kind of Sure, throw some daggers at me grief. With a little too much of It’d be better than all this.

And as much as I hate to admit it, much as I’d love to rip it out, shred it into a million pieces and send it to the depths of the underworld, I have a heart. I can try not to have any empathy for this man, but it’s not going to work. At least not right now.

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