Page 20 of Truly Madly Magically

THERE’S MUCH EXCITED talking about family histories and available ghosts at one end of the table. The Emerson and Georgie end, with Frost offering dry commentary on their different ancestors. That he met. In person.

Zander mutters something about ferry schedules and heads outside, rolling his eyes when Emerson reminds him to stay in the yard.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he growls, then lets the kitchen door slam behind him.

Rebekah sits across from me, not even pretending to pay attention to her boyfriend’s tales of ye olde forebears and the many tankards of ale he hoisted with them all, when not battling them around this or that ritual fire. She is too busy eyeing me.

“Just say what you want to say,” I tell her, in as measured a tone as I can manage.

“You were afraid,” she says, very deliberately, her dark eyes on mine. “You were afraid to tell me. Do you want me to tell you why?”

“I absolutely do not.”

She folds her arms. “Because you know what I’ll say.”

Rebekah has always been a Diviner, even when the Joywood claimed she had no power. And back in our senior year, between Beltane when Zander broke up with me and Litha when everything changed and we lost Emerson and Rebekah for ten years—in one way or another—she had a vision.

I don’t like to talk about it.

“The future is never set in stone,” I say now, the way I always do. “You know that as well as anyone.”

She doesn’t deny that. And I refuse to engage with that vision of hers when it’s been haunting me for a decade already. Destiny dances like flames, she’d told me. Though you will call it a lie.

Thanks, Rebekah, I’d said, heartbroken and furious and still clinging to every word she said like she could lead me through the dark woods of it all. I can’t lie. So there’s that.

Love is the only lie you tell, but it will claim you in the end, she said. It already has.

We stare at each other across the kitchen table in the same house where she told me these words, upstairs in her old bedroom with her stained glass window letting the moonlight in but turning it red and green and gold.

Where I made her promise to never, ever speak of it again.

“You’re afraid,” Rebekah says again, softly, and it sounds like prophecy.

Come outside.

Ruth’s voice in my head is a reprieve, and I am not too proud to take it.

Especially when Georgie, who’s conjured up her usual pile of books, starts talking about some Rivers connected to a Good, of all things, and I am delighted to remove myself.

“Ruth is calling me,” I say, and Rebekah sighs, but she knows I’m not lying. My curse for the win.

I have to keep myself from running to get out of there.

Out in the backyard that rolls down to the whispering river, it’s bright and sunny. It’s thick and hot enough in September to make anyone daydream about a good blizzard, but it will be cold soon enough. The gardens are already looking a little tired, more than ready to settle into their fall slumber.

Ruth and Storm sit together on a branch of one of the tall, ancient cottonwood trees that is littered with Georgie’s crystals and ribbons. It’s Zander my gaze goes to, like we’re magnetized. He’s standing in the shade of the old tree, frowning down toward the water.

I have the childish urge to turn and walk back inside, but I don’t.

That feels like a victory.

Thanks for the warning, I snipe at Ruth.

She turns her head all the way around to give me a pitying look, then turns it back toward the river, disdain in every feather.

Owl assholery is something to behold.

I don’t say anything. I magic one of the soft chairs from the patio to a sunny spot and settle myself into it. Rebekah’s cat familiar, Smudge, appears and hops up into my lap, and I stroke her soft black fur. A few moments later, Emerson’s dog familiar, Cassie, pads outside and curls up next to Zander’s feet.

---