Page 14 of Truly Madly Magically

Only then I realize how badly I needed to hear that.

“Go home, Mom.” I say it with a smile, with all the love in my heart.

She smiles, and Tanith Good doesn’t leave anything to chance. Not these days. She leans over to kiss my cheek, whispering words of encouragement that are also a spell. “Yes, my darling child, I will go home and you will stay. And you will be well.”

5

WHEN I WAKE UP, sunlight is streaming through the windows. I’ve slept pretty hard, which hasn’t been the case for a while. I’ve been blaming the pregnancy, and it’s certainly contributed, but there’s also been the issue of my intense guilt at keeping the pregnancy secret.

Now everything is out in the open.

And Rebekah is sitting at the foot of my bed.

I push myself into a sitting position, and she hands me a mug of tea without saying a word. Once I’ve taken a few sips, I give her a nod. Ready.

“What. The. Hell.” She bites the words out even more pointedly than she did last night.

I nod again, accepting the pointedness. I’ve earned it. “I’m only telling this story once, so you might as well call the crew in.”

Rebekah blinks, and Georgie and Emerson immediately appear, like they were just waiting for the okay.

I’m not going to cry.

“Yes, I’m pregnant,” I say, blunt and to the point. Always the best way forward. “Yes, Zander’s the father. No, we’re not together, and we have no plans to change that, praise the fire goddess. And no, I didn’t tell anyone until last night, which is when I finally told him.”

I can’t bring myself to mention Zelda right now. That feels...raw. Private.

“You guys...had sex?” Georgie says, hesitating over the last word, which makes me wonder if she’s ever had sex herself. The fact that she currently has a boyfriend suggests yes, but Georgie has always been tighter with Emerson than me or Rebekah. She could live whole lives I know nothing about. Not that I’ve ever heard of Historians doing anything but burying themselves in books. “Like...recently?”

I gaze back at her. “Are you expecting me to say that, actually, we conjured a demon baby out of the confluence?”

“Not funny,” Emerson says with a curve of her mouth from where she’s leaning against the wall, and maybe she’s right. Demon babies, once a reliable source of gags around these parts where demons are little more than a punch line, feel a little too possible these days. Just like everything else this long, strange year.

But I’m here to give them facts, not feelings. “Yes. We had sex. On Beltane.”

Emerson frowns at me. “You were sick! We took you back to Wilde House. Jacob told you to rest.”

She looks at Rebekah, as if for confirmation, but Rebekah only stretches. A little too smugly, wordlessly reminding us all that Beltane was the night she and Frost first got together. “I came later,” she says, intimate things like a current of laughter in her voice. “You were better.”

“I was sick at prom.” As I had been off and on last spring, which is the reason it took me so long to accept that there was something else going on. Well. One of the reasons. I take a sip of my tea. “Then Jacob helped me feel better. So later...”

It’s ingrained in me to keep this to myself, but what does it matter now? Next Beltane is going to be different, what with a baby. It’s not a dirty secret anymore because it’s over.

Everything has changed.

I can’t possibly mourn the end of my dirtiest secret...except I think I do.

“Zander and I have an arrangement,” I say, and then sit back, because there. I answered them.

The four of us stare at each other. The sunlight seems to fill the room. I start to think, idly, about work things. Like my new herbal concoctions that I’m planning to bring out for autumn, positively bursting with fall vibes, harvest charm—and magic.

“Are you going to explain this arrangement?” Rebekah asks, shaking her head at me, when the silence drags out.

I clear my throat. “Beltane has been a sort of get-out-of-jail-free card for us. If we want to get a little naked, on Beltane and only on Beltane, we do.”

Again, a too-long silence. It’s clear I’m not the only one who wishes I didn’t use the word naked at this hour.

“Any Beltane? Not just this last one?” Georgie asks, looking like she’s trying to find a way to access the rationale behind this. Bless her.

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