Page 37 of Truly Madly Magically

For once she sounds dead serious.

No pun intended.

“It’s a little late for that warning,” I say, waving at my belly. I stop walking, even though I know I could plow right through her if I wanted. “But thank you.”

“Their honor always gets in the way,” she tells me, her violet gaze seeming to glow brighter than the rest of her.

Blaming honor doesn’t make any sense. Or it makes too much. Either way... “What’s wrong with honor?”

“Nothing, until it’s the sword cutting everything in half.” She makes a cutting in half motion, and I don’t know if that’s some kind of memory charm, but I see that Beltane prom night ten years ago. Zander handing me not a ring or a promise, but his pendant that I’m currently wearing to protect me. Back then, it was to go be free.

Somewhere far away from him, was what he meant.

It is not a great memory. Not just because of that moment, but my reaction to it, which was almost as bad.

I walk through Elizabeth then, with prejudice.

Georgie’s door is open at the turret end of the hall. I take this as an invitation and walk right in to find Georgie pretty much how I expected to find her. Sitting in the middle of her wooden floor meditating, her crystals floating all around her while the light from outside her bay windows pours in.

I want to interrupt her immediately so I can start firing questions at her and escape my own head, but I don’t. I take a deep breath and try to sort myself out.

I am an adult.

Maybe someday I won’t need to remind myself of that fact.

The crystals gleam, then hum a little as they float to the ground. I choose to take that as hope.

Georgie opens her eyes and smiles at me, then stretches as she gets to her feet. “No glamour today? And you look like you caught up on some sleep. You look good, Ellowyn.”

I don’t do well with compliments, so I make a sort of grunting noise to acknowledge what Georgie said. And I figure I might as well dive right in. “Ghost Elizabeth here says she wasn’t a Summoner or a Diviner.”

Cue an instant judgmental sigh from the spectral audience who followed me in here. “I summon. I divine. I do not understand why this is such a hardship for you to understand.”

I ignore her since Georgie can’t hear her anyway. “She says she had premonitions. She summoned with the best of them. She calls herself a Revelare.”

“I don’t call myself anything,” Elizabeth grumbles irritably. “That’s what I am.”

Georgie is frowning at me, her big Historian brain clearly turning this over. “I don’t think I know this word.”

“You don’t?”

She shakes her head. “Not in any kind of historical aspect. Certainly not as a designation. I’ll ask Frost, of course, but... Well. I have seen the word once...”

She trails off. Then she shakes her head and gets that dreamy look about her that I’ve come to realize is her disguise. I used to think she was an airhead. Now I think she likes people to think that she is.

“I’ll ask Frost,” she says again.

But she’s lying. “Where have you seen that word, Georgie?”

She reaches out and gives my arm a squeeze. “It won’t help us.”

“You know this for certain?”

She sighs and walks over to her bookcase. She has an entire room across the hall filled to the brim with books and scrolls and odd objects she claims are of historical significance, but this bookshelf is about her own personal history. The books she read as a kid. The books she reads now. All well-handled, with spines creased, unlike the historical tomes she treats like a stray breeze might destroy them forever.

She pulls out a ratty paperback, sized for the children’s section. “It’s not a text or a codex or anything. It’s a cute kids’ story.”

I accept the slim volume. There’s a very intricately drawn illustration on the cover. A dragon, a crow, and a redheaded princess with a shining sword. Ribbons of water, almost like rivers, twine around them and into the background.

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