Page 39 of Truly Madly Magically

“Yes, Elizabeth. I do.” I swear that Azrael, the dragon newel post, is smirking at me. “That’s why I’m wearing it.”

Then I walk through her some more as I meet up with everyone else in the foyer so we can head outside together, into a quickly falling night that gets chillier by the minute.

October is nearly upon us and fall is coming in fast, like it or not.

“I do not understand these descendants of ours,” Zachariah says grumpily, though he’s not looking at Elizabeth as he complains. He’s just floating stiffly beside her, his umbrage perfectly visible even though I can see the lampposts along Main Street through him, wrapped with the apple boughs. “These garments aren’t even suitable to cross the river in.”

“Good thing we’re not crossing any rivers, then,” Zander mutters, his hands stuffed in the pockets of his jeans.

“Dungarees,” Elizabeth said in amazement and horror back at the house. “Like a sailor.”

As if that was a terrible insult.

Zander and I exchange a look and mutual rolled eyes, but that feels like dangerous ground, so I look away again as we walk past Holly Bishop’s coffee shop and bakery, moving along the street toward Confluence Books and then, farther down, Tea & No Sympathy. The entire town is dressed up for Mabon in the form of the Apple Extravaganza that Emerson put on the same way she does every year, impending war be damned.

How do you have time to put on a festival right now? I asked her when I’d gone into the shop the other day to see the whole town transformed.

I have magic now, Ellowyn, she’d replied serenely. I can do twelve times as much and I don’t even need help. It’s awesome.

Because I guess we’re always who we are.

Tonight we’re all walking together. Actually walking, not magicking ourselves to and fro the way we might normally. This is also Emerson’s idea.

We’ll arrive together, she said last night. A little procession of community business leaders, stalwart members of the wider witch community, and actual friends.

It will make a stark contrast to the Joywood’s usual dramatic appearances, Jacob added. Because the Joywood have never met an entrance they couldn’t make as elaborate as possible.

It gets colder as we walk. By the time we reach the community center, I’m wishing I wasn’t showing so much of my glamoured midriff, though I will die before I admit such a thing in Elizabeth’s hearing.

That’s how I know she really is family, I guess.

Tonight’s meeting is the typical quarterly witch town hall that I would normally avoid like the plague, because we’ll all hear about it whether we attend or not. The Joywood send out tedious scrolls that are charmed to report back if we don’t open them, so no one can claim they missed out on any important witchdom happenings.

These witchy “town hall meetings” in St. Cyprian are the heart of the magical government that operates here, where no humans ever think to look for us. Meetings like this are enchanted so that even if humans manage to find the right room at the right time, what they hear are boring blatherings about dull subjects no one could possibly care about.

Mostly, humans don’t make it here for the quarterly meetings that the Joywood preside over. I don’t come either, because what’s the point? No one’s listened to a Good about town business since the legendary night Mercy Good stood up to the tutting pearl clutchers who wanted her bordello closed and told them all what their husbands really liked.

No point trying to beat the master at her own game, in my opinion.

As we walk into the overheated room, Sage comes over to greet us. He gives Georgie a little rose that she looks happy enough to receive as she tucks it behind one ear.

Clearly I’m dead inside, because I don’t find this at all sweet. I should. I should wonder when I’ll meet a guy who’ll shower me in roses and ask me, gently, how my day has been. Then listen with rapt attention.

I try to imagine Zander doing any of these things but I can’t, because Zander is too hot and knows me too well, and if he has ever asked after my day in our lives, it was with the express purpose of getting me naked.

Also, Zander is not wearing one of those strange three-piece suits with a bow tie that Sage likes so much, claiming his job as a high school teacher lends itself to this choice. The only sartorial choices Zander makes involve whether to wear a Henley or a T-shirt, both of which show off his 100 percent unglamoured and athletic abs at all times.

Not that I look. Not that I can picture, perfectly, the selkie tattoo on his very impressive shoulder.

I order myself to stop comparing Georgie’s perfectly nice boyfriend to my toxic ex as Emerson marches us all into the front row of the meeting. We file in and sit while she moves around the room, talking to pretty much everyone who comes in. She makes it back up front with the rest of us by the time the Joywood appear on the stage at the front of the room with all the expected pomp and circumstance.

Assholes, I think, and hope they can all pick up on it.

Carol Simon, who is the most powerful witch in the world by virtue of leading the ruling coven, dresses like she invented frump and has the most bizarrely frizzy hair. It’s not that frizzy hair doesn’t come for us all—this is Missouri, where the frizz is free—but she is powerful enough to not only make herself look like Grace Kelly if she wants, but make everyone who sees her think that Grace Kelly copied her. That she doesn’t do this, that she never has, is just one of the things about Carol and the Joywood that I spent my life pretending didn’t creep me out.

Maeve takes her place on the stage and makes a point of smiling down at me benevolently. I make a point of remaining deadpan. Elizabeth and Zachariah mutter to each other about it, Zander makes a gruff sort of sound I think only I hear, and farther down the row, Rebekah sits forward from where Frost’s arm is slung over the back of her chair to raise a brow my way. In solidarity.

Carol titters in that way she always does, always so creepy, and starts the meeting. There’s an agenda, which she reads out as if we can’t all see it hanging in the air on one of the screens someone has magicked up there. There’s a robust discussion about street cleaning. There are several rants from the community about improper uses of gardening spells, attempts at love potions, and the odd wannabe-curse between drinking buddies and a whole book club.

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