Page 124 of Truly Madly Magically

Inside, all the girls are dressed up and vibrating with excitement at the dining room table. Brynleigh is dressed like an angel, but it’s kind of a slutty angel. Madyson is in the same costume she’s worn the past ten years—an Albert Pujols baseball jersey—the only other detail some baseball eye black under her eyes. Sadie is wearing a little pair of antennae and a T-shirt that reads, bookworm. Avery is dressed up like some Disney princess I’ve forgotten the name of, and Gigi is a cute little scarecrow.

So cute that I think I might melt, until she looks right at me and says, deadpan, “I have a knife in my bag.”

I want to laugh, but I remember that my sisters are as cursed to tell the truth as I am.

“That’s terrifying,” Zander mutters as Stephanie serves up big bowls of chili and slides them in front of us.

Sadie keeps staring at me from across the table. I stare back, trying not to be worried. “Everything okay?”

She frowns. “I think I must have had a funny dream about you, but I can’t remember it.”

“Then how do you know you had it?” Brynleigh asks like a smart-ass.

The girls start sniping at each other, good-naturedly enough, and I reassure myself that she’s okay. Maybe she remembers more than I’d like her to about the ordeal she went through, no matter if it’s just a feeling and a dream, but she seems okay.

Especially when she lights into her older sister.

While the two of them poke at each other, Madyson rolls her eyes and swipes up more corn bread from the platter in the middle of the table. “They always do this. It’s so annoying.”

I have to accept that everything is good here, and I find that harder to take than another round of bad stuff. Like I’m primed and ready to fight another wave of Joywood nonsense—but the possibility that we not only won, but everyone I love is okay?

That’s almost too much.

“Love is the only lie you tell, but it will claim you in the end,” Rebekah told me a long time ago, and I get it now. And I have to allow it to claim me, in all its forms, or it was nothing but a lie all along.

I can hear Elizabeth’s voice, almost as if she’s standing there beside me the way she used to. Legacies are choices, Ellowyn.

Maybe the thing about really, truly being okay is choosing to be. And the doing it.

Maybe it’s that simple, and that complicated.

I decide, then and there, that it is.

“What happened to your arm?” Gigi asks, poking at Zander and the jagged pink burn scar running down the length of his forearm. A parting gift from the Joywood.

“Just a little bar accident,” he lies easily.

Brynleigh’s eyes widen in a mix of horror and delight. Her angel halo vibrates with her excitement at something so ghoulish, and the rest of the sisters follow suit, until we’re having a frank and fairly gross conversation about scars and wounds for the rest of dinner.

Perfect for Halloween.

We finish dinner, and even though Stephanie begs us to stay and enjoy trick-or-treating, we can’t. We have our coven to get back to.

But what I say to Stephanie is, “Thank you. For everything.”

When she hugs me, I hug her back. Hard.

Then Zander I climb in his truck and head for St. Cyprian. Because Emerson decided we should all meet at Nix and celebrate. Even though I’m not sure how any of us are standing, no one objected.

I’ve been magicking everyone herbal pick-me-ups all day, and I do it again now, so Zander and I have something to sip on for the drive.

The Missouri highways spread out before us, strings of light against the October night. Zander has his hand on my leg and the music playing loud, and it could easily be any night from back in high school. Ruth’s flight ahead of us is occasionally illuminated by the headlights or the moonlight. She stayed with my sister until I had a chance to see her myself.

You’re welcome, Ruth offers.

And instead of joking, I answer in our heads emphatically. Thank you.

Uncharacteristic vocalized gratitude aside, this has been a very normal day. After all the melodrama of last night, today has just been...like any other Samhain.

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