Page 19 of Truly Madly Magically

I want to say yes. I can’t. Damn it. “Did you know men see fewer colors than women, on average?”

No one is amused or deterred by my favorite evasion tactic.

Emerson is shaking her head at me in a manner that will very likely lead to motivational posters all over my borrowed bedroom the next time I go upstairs. Worse than that, motivational chats, starting now. “There have been some bumps in the road, but you’ve been part of every ritual, every fight. When are you going to trust that you can do this?”

How about never? But how can I say that in the face of Emerson’s boundless optimism and endless belief in her friends?

Everyone is looking at me for an answer, so I make a noncommittal sort of noise, meet no one’s gaze, and ride it out.

It takes a moment, but Emerson moves on. “So Georgie will do some genealogy legwork. Look into the founding families and a couple who might fit the bill. We’ve got plenty of options if we include the dead. All sorts of ancestors if we only use ours.” She starts counting off the family names. “Wilde. Rivers. Pendell. Frost—”

“I outlived my bloodline,” he says. “I am the only Frost left.”

“Thank the gods,” I mutter, earning me a low laugh from Zander.

I pretend I don’t hear him. Just like I pretend it doesn’t make me...warm.

“North, but they’re all Healers. Have there ever been Norths who were a different designation?”

Jacob shakes his head. “Not since we came to America, to my knowledge, but I can ask around to make sure.”

If you think it sounds like the deck is stacked against us, you’d be right. Yet no one else seems to be as worried about that as I am.

“We can also look at the ancestors of various Joywood members,” Rebekah offers. When she gets a few looks for that suggestion, including from me, she crosses her arms. “Just because they’re evil doesn’t mean they came from evil. People aren’t all one thing.”

There’s a pause.

“Oh, and the Goods!” Georgie adds.

I smirk. “Come on. No one views Goods as founding anything.” We might have been here from the beginning, but mostly we were here causing trouble.

“Your family was one of the original families,” Emerson insists. “That’s just a fact.”

“Mercy Good was the scarlet letter who tagged along with that convoy from the Massachusetts Bay Colony,” I remind them. “The Good name has managed to be a harbinger for all sorts of scandal ever since she decided that while the settlers here were laying down protective bricks, she’d be better off opening a bordello.”

Something my friends should remember from school. Not from classes, but from the way that history was tossed in my face by the likes of Skip Simon, Carol Simon’s son who was once the mayor and now...went away, I think vaguely. That kid was always such a weasel.

“It doesn’t matter.” Emerson says that with finality, as if she can make centuries of a bad reputation disappear with a wave of her hand, like the breakfast dishes. “A Good was with the original group that settled St. Cyprian. So, they count. The sponsorship rules that we’ve found and that Frost remembers only say it has to be a married couple made up of descendants of any two of the founding members of St. Cyprian. Any descendants from that group count. We just need to find married ones who might be on our side, then summon them here. Easy.”

“Twice,” Zander says. Everyone looks over at him in confusion.

Except me. Because I know what he means.

Maybe that’s my real curse.

“Twice?” Emerson echoes.

“We’ll have to summon them twice,” Zander says, too quietly for my taste. He does not look at me while he says it. “Once to explain and get them to consent, and then once again to stand in front of the town hall so they can give their sponsorship speech.”

I don’t want to do it. But I don’t want him questioning whether or not I can.

“So we’ll do it twice, then,” I say as if I have the same confidence in me everyone else pretends they do. “You’ve just got to find the ghosts first.”

And I can’t lie, but I know how to keep my mouth shut. So that’s what I do, instead of saying what I’m thinking:

I hope like hell you don’t.

6

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