Page 94 of Truly Madly Magically

Zander and me. Our ghosts. The baby girl inside me who’s still moving around like she’s the one making room for all of us.

Elizabeth comes over and sits on the bed with me. There’s an expression on her face that reminds me of the night I was poisoned. The night she cried over the curse that kept her from the motherhood she wanted. But this feels more...bittersweet. A gladness with threads of sorrow woven through it.

Maybe because she’s been leading me here all along, to this understanding of who I am and what I can do.

“You were right,” I tell Elizabeth, and we both smile, because I said it. Out loud. “You know I don’t admit that lightly.”

She has her hands folded in her skirt, and she looks down at them. “I was right, this is true, but you had to believe it yourself. It was easier in my time, I suppose, when Revelares were common enough. It was a natural part of growing up to have one sight stronger than the other. The opposing sight came later. With work, with acceptance, with belief.”

That makes sense. I feel it in a way that seems new and solid, like a foundation I’ve been standing on all this time but never knew was there.

Yet I can’t let go of that children’s book. Over near the window, Zachariah is reading the book himself now, using ghost energy to turn the pages.

“What about the story?” I ask.

Elizabeth lifts a shoulder. “We’re familiar with the story, but it was no more than a fairy tale in my time too. The meaning I would take from the similarities here is that we should always heed the messages that come to us, no matter how it is they arrive. It is the message that matters.”

I’m not so sure I believe that. But I glance over at my Guardian, so like the one in that odd little book. He’s still standing there with his elbow propped against the wall as he stares hard out the window, even though it’s now dark outside.

So the things he’s glaring at must be internal.

In the past—maybe even yesterday—I would have decided I knew the reason he was brooding like this. I would have centered it on myself. He thinks I’m weak, so he’s going to make some grand proclamation about protection, I would have thought. He’s changing his mind about messing around with a targeted half witch, I would have seethed. I would have made sure to work up my temper so whatever he might say couldn’t hurt me.

Because I liked to hurt me first.

Then whatever he said hurt me anyway.

Maybe the brand-new gemstone eyes are helping me see what a waste of time this has always been.

“Good night, child,” Elizabeth says to me.

There’s something about the way she calls me child that once felt dismissive but now feels...important. Maybe it’s because I can see that bittersweetness in her gaze. Threads of joy and sorrow, light and dark.

“I am your child, Elizabeth,” I tell her. “You led me here. You’ve been here, every step. You’re part of this. Part of me.”

She strokes a ghostly hand over my face, much like a mother would. Much like my own mother did before she left tonight. I know I shouldn’t be able to reach out and touch her, because she’s a spirit. She isn’t here as a physical body, but there’s so much she’s done that ought to be impossible, so I think...why not try?

I reach out and curl my fingers around the appearance of her wrist. I don’t feel anything except a kind of cold air pocket, but I know that’s her. I guide it toward me until her hand rests on my bump. “And part of her.”

Her visage kind of...throbs then, or flickers. A sort of ghostly emotion, I think.

Because it’s amazing the lengths a person can go to, to convince themselves that all this love is fleeting. That there’s a scarcity of love in the first place. I’ve been supported from so many angles for so much of my life, but it was always the people who were mean to me or the people who pulled away that I focused on. I rested my self-worth on whether or not they loved me when I knew they didn’t.

I think of the Joywood, these men and women that we’re all supposed to look up to. These witches who are meant to protect us and keep us first in their thoughts, so they can do right by all of witchdom. When instead they focused on the threat of us to their power—instead of what we could offer our community, our world. When instead of helping us, they spent years trying to crush us.

But won’t, I think now. Without the faintest hint of anything bittersweet.

Because I’m done worrying about the love I don’t have. There’s too much love right here. Too much support. With my baby, too much to fight for.

Life hurts. Love hurts.

Maybe hurting is how you know it’s working, like every Healer’s cure I’ve ever taken. The ache is how you heal. The pain is the whole point.

This is how a person is alive, not numbed into nothingness. Not hiding and ignoring and twisting all that hurt into anger. Anger is heavy, and sometimes, it doesn’t serve. Just as Elizabeth once said herself.

I don’t intend to forget that again.

“Thank you, Mama Elizabeth,” I say, feeling a lump in my throat. It’s not that I’d be horrified to cry in front of her, because I’m not that person any longer. It’s more that I think we’re both trying to be strong. Strong Good women.

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