Page 44 of Truly Madly Magically

“He can come in eventually,” Jacob’s mother, Maureen, assures me in her calm, earthy sort of voice that makes my whole body feel like a sweet, cool rain is moving over me, quenching poison fires wherever it touches. “Once he calms down a bit.”

“I’ll take care of it,” Elizabeth insists. “Just let him in.”

“He’ll be okay,” I say, not sure why I’m listening to this ghost or taking up for Zander when what I’d like to do is lean into that blessed rain and maybe sleep for a week.

Maureen nods over at Evie, and she does something with her hand that lets the door fall open. The moment it does, Zander is right there. All fury and fire and hot.

Hot and not poisoned. So hot I shouldn’t notice, not in this state, but I do.

Before he can say or do anything, Elizabeth puts a ghostly hand on him. Zachariah frowns sternly at him, as if the two of them are working together.

Hush.

He blinks once as that word seems to dance in the dim light, then says nothing. I’m not sure if it’s a spell—another thing Elizabeth shouldn’t be able to do—or reasonable astonishment at being told what to do by an ancient ghost.

Who isn’t supposed to be here, but still is.

“Sit, my child,” she tells him, and Zachariah points him to the armchair by the window. Then Elizabeth perches next to him on the arm of the chair, and Zachariah takes his place like a sentry behind them both. I can’t hear what they say to Zander, but it seems to calm some of the fury radiating from him.

I can see it, and I don’t ask myself how that’s possible either.

“Baby is just fine,” Maureen says in a voice that is filled with both Healer and mother assurances as her hands move over my bump, and I can feel that rain wash deep into me, then all over the baby too. “We’ve got to make sure all the poison is out, and then we can do a little projection.” She must read my confusion at that, because she smiles. “Consider it a witch’s ultrasound.”

Ultrasound. I’ll get to see my baby—

But.

She said poison.

“Poison.” I say it out loud, though it’s a raw scrape against my throat, like all that acid ate away at my insides. There’s something we all need to know, and I need to say it before it slips away like everything else tonight. “The Joywood keep trying to poison me.”

I attempt to sit up in my bed at the truth of the revelation, but Jacob shakes his head, and his mother holds me in place with an easy murmured word. “You’re not to move yet,” she tells me gently.

I want to argue, but I don’t. Not while Jacob’s Healer magic does all sorts of things inside of me that hurt—really hurt—but then feel much better.

I look at her, then over at Jacob. “It’s like Beltane prom. Only worse.”

Jacob lifts his gaze to mine, and his eyes glow with all that power and focus, but he nods. “Yes. Much worse.”

“I don’t understand.”

He shares a look with his mother. Like they understand.

“What?” I demand, looking back and forth between them. Zander and my mother ask that question too, in tandem.

“We have a theory, but let’s fix you up first, okay?” Jacob spares Mom and Zander a look. “Go on and sit down now.”

I’ve never once seen my mother obey an order so quickly. The ghosts and Zander stay in their chair. Tanith sits on the small chest in the corner. At the foot of the bed, Evie starts to lay out spellwork, like she’s acting as an extra magic generator for her brother and mother tonight.

Jacob and his mother put their hands on me and weave their magic together as they go back inside, deeper this time. Maureen is a soothing rain. Jacob is warm, rich earth. Slowly, slowly, they repair me.

I’ve been healed before, many times, but this is something so deep, so gross and so wrong, it takes time. Energy.

High-level magic.

After what feels like forever, and maybe it is, both Jacob and Maureen take their hands off me and slump a little as they sit there on the bed beside me. They look almost as wiped out as I feel.

“Jacob.” Zander might be sitting still in that chair, but his voice is as intense as if he’s spent the last few hours punching holes in walls. Or people. “You said you have a theory.”

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