Page 40 of Truly Madly Magically

The Joywood look as bored as I feel, and behind us, I can hear far too many people shifting restlessly in their uncomfortable fold-up chairs. Another Joywood rule is no magicking in of actual, comfortable chairs or that hammock my mother once claimed was orthopedic to have an excuse to get in a fight with them.

Look, I don’t come from thin air.

“I see these haven’t gotten any more interesting in the past century and then some,” Zachariah mutters from where he floats behind Zander, practically on Bernie the cheese guy’s lap—not that he knows a ghost is hovering in front of him. Probably too busy visualizing his cheese boards for next Saturday’s farmers market.

“Perhaps interest is in the eye of the beholder,” Elizabeth says pompously, but she has the same sort of glazed-over look of boredom I’m sure can be found on my face and every other face in the vicinity.

Almost like the boredom is the point, Emerson points out in our all-coven internal chat, directly into our heads.

That she’s almost certainly right doesn’t make me any less bored, though.

The droning goes on and on. It’s interminable, and the Joywood are staring down at us, so I know I’m not the only one using magic to prop my eyelids open. Even as I want to take a nap, there’s this prickly feeling along my skin, and I have to shrug on my jacket. It’s too warm in here, but something is making me feel cold.

Finally—finally—there’s that shuffle and buzz that signal the torture is about to be over, but Carol hasn’t called on us yet. She hasn’t even pretended to mention what should be the key part of this meeting—the presentation of our sponsors, which is our formal entrance into a bid for ascension.

There’s a part of me, and not a small part, that is much happier about this than I should be.

But Emerson isn’t about to let them exclude us on a bureaucratic technicality. She gets to her feet and doesn’t wait for Carol to formally grant her permission to speak. “Carol, you’re missing an item on the agenda.”

There are whispers as Carol pretends to study the agenda that we can all see before us, absent any ascension items.

“Always very confident,” says an older witch, sniffing to her friends.

“Does she ever think of anything except attention?” mutters a younger one, and he glares so hard at Emerson that we all bristle a little.

“You’d think North would keep her in line with that ring on her finger.” This one is followed by a nasty round of snickering from the middle-aged group of men in the corner who do not appear to notice the dark way Jacob looks at them.

I glance around at the people talking quietly behind their hands—or not quietly and not behind their hands—while glaring at Emerson. Who pretends not to notice.

Or maybe she really doesn’t notice. That’s one of her charms. With her memory or without it, she is cheerfully immune to the opinions of others.

Because none of it is true, or even really about her, so why should she care? The angry things people say behind your back and even to your face have more to do with them than the person you are.

Or the truth.

When I look back at Carol, she’s squinting down at us, her face wreathed in that saccharine disappointment that she wears almost as often as that frizzy hair. “I don’t see any sponsors, Ms. Wilde, which is what your little makeshift coven will need to progress toward ascension past Mabon. Was that not made clear?”

“That’s incorrect, Carol,” Emerson is brisk, not rude, as often accused. “We have sponsors.”

“She’s such a bully,” someone whispers, sounding personally affronted. I would recognize Gus Howe’s querulous voice anywhere. “Why can’t she be polite?”

“Don’t you wish someone would take her down a peg—or three?” someone else mutters as the rest of us climb to our feet to take a stand next to Emerson.

She counts, calmly, in our heads where only we can hear her. Then we turn to face the crowd, as one. The Joywood aren’t the only ones here with magic and a flair for the dramatic.

And there are people here who support us too. My mother and Mina, of course, holding hands in their row—to keep Tanith from charging the stage as much as any of their usual affection, I’m sure. The entire North clan, who almost never venture to this side of the river, since Healers tend to keep to themselves. Corinne Martin, who runs the Lunch House. Keely Chung, the chef at Nora’s—the finest restaurant in town. Witches who stood with us at Litha.

Even Zander’s father ducks in the door—late, but here.

I can’t help but notice it’s very divided. And I know why.

There are a lot of people who are afraid of the ruling coven’s power and vindictiveness, which is fair enough, but there’s a whole other group of people who aren’t supporting the Joywood because they’re afraid of that power, but because they get off on it. Who like aligning themselves with the powerful group so they can look down at people and whisper about all the ways someone else doesn’t fit their definition of what good and right is.

Who do everything they can, as that woman behind me said so we could all hear it, to take us down a peg.

It’s sickening when you think about it. When you see it firsthand. They can’t just support the Joywood or disagree with us for any number of real reasons—like that we’re all young and one of us isn’t even a full witch.

They don’t just want us to lose. They want us to suffer.

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