Page 122 of Truly Madly Magically

“This is impossible!” Carol screams, her hair looking electrocuted, her eyes bright and furious. Her veneer is gone. She’s practically foaming at the mouth with rage. “I won’t allow it!”

Then, without warning, Carol shoots something at us. A bolt of dark, oily magic, no Skipweasel required.

There’s the sound of screaming from the audience, but we can’t look to see if they’re reacting to Carol or fending off their own attacks, because we have to throw up a protective shield to fend off all that nasty black magic—

Emerson is the one who leaps out in front of the rest of us, like she wants to take the hit herself—because we’ve all got a little martyr in us when it comes to the people we love.

The Undine cries out, another booming sound, and the bolt of oily black turns to stone, then explodes, showering down on the dais between us like an ugly hailstorm.

For a moment it’s like we’re all frozen. Staring at the black rocks, everywhere, that prove, once and for all, the Joywood are agents of evil. Black magic and power trips, no matter what they try to pretend.

If they were ever good, they turned away from it a long time ago.

I scan the crowd, relieved to see that no one looks attacked. That must mean the screaming was in shock at the Joywood’s attack, or, knowing my mother, a little battle cry of her own.

“Joywood,” the Undine booms, so loud we all cover our ears. Some people in the crowd even cower. Every single Joywood member freezes. “You have disgraced yourselves.”

They do not look as if that bothers them much. Maeve is glaring directly at me, and if I didn’t know her sickly pigeon familiar was blind, I’d think he was too.

“The laws of old are clear in this,” the Undine intones. “You must accept the choices of your fellow witches or forfeit everything you have achieved, everything you are. Should you persist, you will be judged—not by your peers, but by me.”

I’m sure I’m not the only one who believes her. Completely.

Across from us, black stones scattered before them and all around Happy Ambrose’s body, the Joywood—no longer the ruling coven—seethe. Gil Redd and Felix Sewell are muttering to each other. Festus Proctor and Felicia Ipswitch are huddled together, looking hollow-eyed.

It’s Maeve and Carol who look unhinged, but they do not try to take us out again.

Not here. Not now.

Not in front of witnesses both on the green and watching from afar.

I wouldn’t say Carol remembers herself, but it’s as if she suddenly remembers that she has an audience. Even her staunchest supporters can’t seem look her in the eye after such a childish tantrum. After such a loss.

Or maybe everyone is as stunned as we are that everything in St. Cyprian has changed.

Just like that.

This, I think, is why ascensions used to be more commonplace. So it didn’t feel like the world turned upside down—and on Samhain, of all nights, when the veil is so thin we can feel the ghosts of every witch who ever was crowding in to bear witness.

“Very well,” Carol says after a moment, so regally, as if we didn’t all just see her basically stamp her foot like a child. A murderous, black magic-y child, that is. She turns to the audience, and I blink, because she changes as I look at her. Everything...smooths out. She looks taller. Almost elegant. She inclines her head. “Witchkind, you have made the wrong decision, and I am terribly afraid you will live to regret it.” She sounds so caring. So concerned—but I take this as what it is: Carol signaling that she might be down, but never out. “When these children with delusions of grandeur have run witchkind into the ground and subjected us to trials far worse than Salem, letting humans run roughshod over all of our lives, you will rue this night. And you will cry out for a deliverance that will not come.”

“That sounds a lot like a curse,” I say, as the reigning expert in curses.

But it’s drowned out in the loud bang that sounds when the whole of the Joywood disappear. I’m surprised an actual puff of evil smoke doesn’t follow in their wake, but it doesn’t. There’s just moonlight on black stones, down on the green near the river.

The Joywood are gone.

Maybe not forever—I can’t quite believe that—but for now feels pretty good.

Because we won. We’ve ascended. We’re the ruling coven.

This little band of misfits has done the unthinkable and the impossible.

We had our families and each other and Emerson’s unwavering faith to lead us here, but I know I still had my doubts.

Everyone looks as dazed as I feel as we turn to each other, pulling together in a kind of huddle. Even Frost, usually too prickly for such things, looks...as mortal as the rest of us are.

We don’t say anything, not even Emerson. No speeches. No fist pumps.

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