Page 27 of Truly Madly Magically

She laughs, and I think...maybe we’re okay. Sometimes it’s not about how badly you mess up, it’s about facing it when it hurts the people you love. That’s a lesson I don’t want to look too deeply at right now.

So I focus on the way we walk together, like our bodies are extensions of each other’s. It feels like coming home. It feels like a relief so great it’s almost painful, and I find myself smiling a little as we move.

Though I’d deny it if anyone saw.

Wilde House comes into view. We both study it, and I don’t know what she’s thinking, but I know that I, personally, never expected to view the pretty, stuffy old house as a kind of coven dorm.

Maybe she’s thinking something similar, because she sighs. “Change is hard.”

“Who are you telling? You don’t have to worry about keeping a baby alive in five months.”

Rebekah laughs. “You must be kidding. That baby is going to be raised by the biggest committee around. Your mom and Mina. Emerson, Jacob, Nicholas, me. Georgie. The entire Rivers clan. You’ll be lucky to have five minutes alone with your sweet little potential demon.”

It is an oddly comforting thought for someone who prefers, needs alone time. All the places my child will be welcomed, loved, cared for...that’s big. These hormones will be the death of me, because I am not going to cry.

I hug her instead.

She hugs me back, hard. “I can’t believe you’re going to have a baby,” she says into my shoulder.

“You and me both,” I reply, and we both laugh.

Though maybe it’s a little snuffly too. I suspect we’d both die before admitting it.

The front door opens, and we don’t let go of each other, just turn our heads to look. It’s Frost.

He stares at us, the disapproval radiating off him. Which makes me grin, because I think that’s the ancient witch’s version of discomfort. “You want a hug too, big guy?” Rebekah teases him.

He gives her one of his rare smiles, then goes back to dark and foreboding when he looks at me again. That’s Frost for you. “We’ve found your ghosts to summon,” he intones.

My smile dies. Summoning. Great. That always ends well. “Hope you’re ready to get in there and fix what I break.”

Frost looks at me for too long. It’s all much too ancient portent and uncomfortably blue. “My advice would be not to break anything you can’t fix yourself, half witch.”

Weirdly enough, it doesn’t bother me when he calls me that. What bothers me is that he clearly thinks that’s a pep talk, when the idea of not breaking anything is almost as stressful as knowing I probably will. The bull in the Summoning china shop, that’s me.

We walk inside. Georgie and Emerson are hip to hip over a long table they set up in the living room, piled high with old books and elaborate-looking family trees on scrolls held down in the corners to keep the parchment from rolling up.

“You’re never going to guess what we found!” Emerson says as we walk in, excitement radiating off her. That usually means she thinks she’s found a solution. “Back in 1844, a man named Zachariah Rivers and a woman named Elizabeth Good got married right here in St. Cyprian.”

I have never once heard about the Rivers and Good families comingling, and truth be told, don’t want to. That’s a little too close for comfort, thank you.

Georgie jumps in, just as excited. “He died under mysterious circumstances. She was accused of his murder but never convicted.”

“You want me to summon a murderer to be our sponsor?” Because of course she killed him. Why wouldn’t she have? It was probably toxic. Wrong. Maybe even cursed.

It’s part of the historical record that the Good temper has always been something to be reckoned with.

“She was never convicted,” Emerson says again, as if that’s the same thing as being resoundingly proved innocent. “In those days, for a woman not to get convicted of something by the endless parade of patriarchal men in charge of literally everything, I’d say she must have really been innocent.”

In my bones, I doubt it. “Do you really think the Joywood will jump on board with your conclusions there, Em?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Frost says, standing over by the fireplace with his arms crossed. “The rules are the rules. There’s no morality clause on the sponsors. The Joywood don’t have a say in this. That’s why it’s a town hall.”

“Who were the Joywood’s sponsors?”

Everyone’s quiet for a moment. Georgie looks pensive, but Frost scowls. “I can’t remember. And I should.”

He has not taken his inability to access his own memory gaps well.

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