Page 26 of Truly Madly Magically

We stop over on the Illinois side of the river to let the waiting cars pull on—but there are only a few now that it’s mid-morning. I am more familiar with the ferry schedules than someone who isn’t a Rivers should be, so I know there will be a lunch rush soon enough. I know the ebb and flow of ferry traffic like a tide.

That annoys me, so when I find my gaze drawn toward the cemetery, I let myself look. It’s not unusual for a Summoner. We’re all about ghosts. Spirits. The past. All of those things tend to be more potent in the midst of a cemetery, and they always call to who I am, to that witchy thing inside of me.

I see a strange, fractured vision, of a dark world with no green growth fading toward autumn, no famous color-changing redbuds Emerson built an entire festival around, no shining graves—just black and crumbled stone.

I blink it away, because it isn’t the past, present, or future. It’s likely my anxiety playing tricks on me, but it leaves me feeling cold.

I look around to make sure no one is paying any attention to me. Then I reach up and curl my hand around the pendant, feeling the power and the protection of a Guardian.

My Guardian.

I don’t know much about the whole half-witch, three-fourths-witch baby connection, but I give it a shot, talking directly to the little life growing inside of me.

We’ll protect you with all we are. The both of us. Always.

Then I whisper it out loud, so I know.

It’s the truth.

8

“YOU’RE BEAT.” Rebekah makes this pronouncement when she and Jacob tag in at the ferry, Jacob to ride with Zander and Rebekah to buddy me back to Wilde House.

The necklace around my neck heats, pulses. Protections do that kind of thing, but I find myself glancing back at the ferry. Zander is standing at the door of the pilothouse, watching me. He lifts his hand in a brief wave, then turns back to his job, piloting the ferry across the wide river.

I blow out a breath. Safety buddies. Coparents. Adults.

It’s been a big twenty-four hours for Zander and me.

If I’m going to be an adult, I might as well let that bleed into all aspects of my life and deal with my best friend while we walk back to Wilde House.

“I can’t be sorry I didn’t tell you,” I say as we reach the bricks and start down Main Street. “I didn’t tell anyone. Not even my mother. Because you were right this morning, I was afraid. Not of reactions, not of...anything to do with any of you. But because if I told anyone, I’d have to deal with it. Face it. I wasn’t ready, and there was nothing I could do to change it. But I am sorry that keeping a secret hurt your feelings.”

Rebekah studies me for a long minute. “It’s not that. Well, it’s some of that.” She sighs, and throws her hands up for a moment. Frustration, maybe. Drama, maybe. Both. I watch the way her tattoos and rings catch the light, and her piercings too, even though I know they’re all glamours these days. “I was here for the breakup aftermath. I was here, and we were going to get out. You and me, together. Then...everything happened. You didn’t leave.”

“I couldn’t leave Emerson.”

I can’t read the look she gives me then. “I did.”

“You had to. I did not. I couldn’t.” It seems like so long ago and also like yesterday. “Going with you would have put you at more risk, just as much as leaving Emerson would have made her too easy a target. We all did what we had to do.”

“I understand,” she says. Then her mouth curves. “Are you saying you...had to do Zander?”

I hate absolutes, but it certainly felt like it sometimes. It still does. I can’t lie about that, so I shrug. “The point is that I did what I had to to survive, and I didn’t particularly like all of those things. So I kept them to myself.”

She nods at that and we keep walking, finding the same comfortable pace we learned as little kids. At the end of the day, we understand each other. Always have. And will again, even if things feel weird in the moment.

Even if regrets swirl around us like a dust storm just now, threatening to choke us both. If she hadn’t left. If I had. If things had been different, but they weren’t.

I am too connected to the past—events, past lives, spirits, whole worlds gone and forgotten—to wallow in regret. I might not have a lot of hope for the future, but I know the past can’t do anything but sit there. It’s not dangerous.

Not unless you give it the power to eat you whole.

“We can’t go back,” I say matter-of-factly. “You know that as well as I do. You can hate me forever if you want, Rebekah. If you need to.”

She rolls her eyes at me. “Who could stay mad at such a beacon of warmth and sweetness?”

“Bite me.”

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