Page 24 of Truly Madly Magically

As she charges toward us on the sidewalk, Maeve squints at me, clutching her panda purse to her side. I can feel her magic slithering over me. I’m tempted to send out a little zap in return to make her jump, but Zander puts his hand on my arm.

No magic needed to zap me when it comes to Zander. Just his big hand, a great, glad warmth that holds me in place like an anchor.

“Maeve,” he says in a hearty sort of voice that is perhaps the fakest personality he puts on. “Imagine seeing you here without Carol. I thought you two were joined at the hip.” He barks out an obnoxious, frat boy laugh at that.

It isn’t him. It’s an act. One that threatens to make me laugh myself, rather than contemplate shooting daggers at Maeve. Almost like he knew it would.

Maeve sniffs. “Word on the street is your little group of deviants and outcasts is having a bit of a hard time finding a sponsor.”

I smile at her. Fatuously. “What streets are you working these days, Maeve?”

She glares back. “It’s a shame your parents couldn’t stay married. They’d be just the sort to stick up for your fool’s errand. Oh, but your father...” She trails off. Purposefully. Pretending like she forgot for a moment.

She didn’t. Not one member of the Joywood would ever forget my father is so resolutely human.

“Well,” she says, with great satisfaction. “I think we can all agree that your stepmother is very pretty. For a human.”

I can feel my temper skyrocket, and even knowing that’s what she wants doesn’t help me claw it back—

“Is it a shame my mother’s dead and can’t help us out too?” Zander asks.

That stops me and my temper mid-flare. The way he says that. The way it’s clearly what she meant to say next.

Maeve gets very huffy and pinched-looking. Her horrible familiar—a blind pigeon with flightless wings that sits in her bag, wearing a diaper and poking its creepy, red-rimmed eyes out—makes a malevolent cooing sound.

“Best watch out,” Zander says, sounding something like friendly when I know he would tear Maeve apart with his hands if he could. He’s probably imagining something like that right now. Then he nods at the scraggly pigeon. “Storm likes snacks.”

Somewhere above us, Storm lets out an affirmative screech.

Maeve clutches the purse closer to her side. “You’ll never find a sponsor. Your bid for ascension will be over before it begins.”

I let out a laugh at that, almost as hearty as Zander’s whole act. “Surely you’re not underestimating Emerson, Maeve. We all know how that ends.”

“What we know is that she’s overestimating you, Ms. Good.” Maeve smiles. Then she begins to walk past me. She says something as she does—and it’s quiet and crackling enough that I don’t know if she says it aloud in a weird whisper or sends the message into me.

You will be their downfall.

I know she’s messing with me. That’s what the Joywood do. Hit where it hurts, again and again.

Turns out knowing what she’s doing doesn’t make it hurt any less.

“I don’t trust that woman,” Zander mutters, frowning after her, clearly unaware of her parting shot.

“Oh really? You aren’t going to suggest we name our kid after her?”

I say that to make him laugh, but when he looks back at me, our gazes seem to tangle, and then drop to the belly I tucked away in the usual glamour before we left Wilde House—because telling my friends and mom is one thing, but the greater world where the Joywood walk and breathe is another—and neither one of us is laughing.

We move on instead, making it to the ferry parking lot—a little breathlessly—and he waves at Finn, one of the recent Guardian graduates of St. Cyprian High who voted for us at Litha. He was one of the votes that saved us from the execution the Joywood had planned, so we like him for that alone. We also like him because Finn picking up shifts on the ferry is the only thing that’s kept Zander and Zack from keeling over this summer.

Zander pauses before we head onto the low, flat boat. His hand closes over his Rivers pendant—three pieces of metal hanging from the leather chain that he always wears around his neck, except when he gave it to Emerson earlier this year. For protection.

The only other time he’s taken it off was when he tried to give it to me that Beltane prom. For protection then, too, but a much different kind. The setting free kind of protection.

It feels like stepping on another too-sharp memory.

Clearly for him too, because he says, in a low voice, “I know what happened the last time I tried to give this to you.”

“You mean when you were breaking up with me like a coward?”

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