Page 45 of Truly Madly Magically

Jacob rubs a hand over his face and nods gratefully when I magic in three mugs of steaming tea, filled with a special blend I keep on hand for Healers and anyone else who has to fight off the truly dark shit. On or off the bricks.

I might not be able to lift my head from my pillow, but I can still do the one thing I know I’m good at.

“My family and I have been treating a number of witches over the years for a mysterious illness. You all know this.” Jacob looks even more tired than his mother. Beat all the way through, but he doesn’t ask for time to recover. He takes a pull of his tea and carries on.

That’s Jacob.

“You think this is the same illness?” Zander looks stricken. Because he not only lost his mother to it, he made a vow to get to the bottom of what killed her. But there have been so many other things in the way of that vow, and nothing gets to me more than when Zander can’t find his mad. When he can’t hide there.

I have such a lump in my throat that it takes me a moment to fully understand the implication. That whatever I’ve been poisoned with—twice now—is the same thing that killed Zelda.

As well as seven other witches the day of the Litha celebration. Eight Summoners total. Like there’s something in particular about us that poses a threat to the Joywood.

“Yes and no,” Jacob is saying. “What happens to Ellowyn has all the same characteristics of what Zelda had. It’s also a good match to what we know has been hurting a great number of Summoners for the past year or so, but it doesn’t function in Ellowyn the same way. Not at Beltane prom. Not tonight.”

“Let me guess,” I manage to croak out through my suddenly too-tight throat. “I’m special.”

I shrug as my mother glares at me, but when Jacob turns to me, I hold his patient gaze.

“You fight it off. It hurts you, yes, gets around your protections, because that’s good magic,” he says, nodding toward Zander’s pendant, visible to everyone. “This is dark magic. Still, after some time, after some healing, something in you...eradicates it. A lot like when Emerson broke Carol’s obliviscor.”

That nasty spell the Joywood subjected Emerson to for ten years, taking all her memories of magic and her true witch heritage from her. But sure. Those people back in the meeting who think she needs to be humbled are so right.

This is not the time to rage about the way people talk about one of my best friends. “How?”

Jacob takes another big swig of the tea, and immediately looks a little less gray around the edges. “Well, here comes the theory. We don’t know for sure, but based on what we’ve seen, the people who’ve been affected, who’ve died...” He glances at his mother, who nods. “We think it’s your blood, Ellowyn.”

“My blood,” I repeat. I look at my mother again. At Elizabeth. “Is it that troublesome Good blood making waves again? The way it has been since Salem?”

Both Mom and our ghostly ancestress make a noise at that, but Jacob shakes his head. “It’s your human blood.”

It sits there in the middle of the room like those smoke spells they teach us when we’re kids, a small explosion of pink light and fragrance that takes over everything for a solid ten minutes.

This feels at least that long.

“It also explains the pregnancy,” Maureen says after a moment, when no one else seems capable of speech. “Your magic is what’s being targeted. They can’t touch the human part of you, but they can mess with your magic and warp it enough that they can, eventually, use it against you if it takes hold. A full witch is too much magic to withstand it, but you’re not a full witch. You have weapons. You fought this off on Beltane, enough to feel better. You survived, but we think your magic wasn’t at full strength to act as birth control the way it normally would.”

That all of this is a topic of conversation is so embarrassing that I have no choice but to pretend it is fine.

“You think her human blood is an asset?” Mom asks softly, her voice laced with wonder. I listen for the bitterness. I look at her face, watching for that little twitch I usually see when she thinks of my father.

I don’t see it. Not the faintest trace of it.

Jacob is nodding. “It’s the only thing that sets her apart from the other Summoners we’ve dealt with.”

“You’re not a Summoner, Ellowyn.” Elizabeth’s voice is very stern and serious.

I sigh at that, happy I can rest my head back against the pillows. “We don’t have Revelares,” I mutter at her. “Not a one. No one’s even heard of it, not really.”

“It doesn’t matter,” the ghost shoots back. “You are one. Your mother ought to be one too. I don’t know why she isn’t, but you’re much, much stronger. Don’t you see?”

“Why isn’t my mother sick?”

“We have a theory on that too,” Jacob says as if I was asking him. Because he doesn’t see or hear Elizabeth. They must think I’m still loopy from what happened tonight, and I’m happy to let them think that.

“All sorts of theories I’ve never heard about until today,” I say, but I keep my eyes closed for an extra moment or two because even my eyelids feel weighted.

“Sometimes it takes a while to put together things that are happening in real time, and then to make sense of the data,” Maureen tells me. “Particularly when the Joywood are involved.”

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