Page 43 of Truly Madly Magically

My mother walks up, takes one look at me, and knows something is wrong. She and Mina exchange a look and put themselves between me and the people who want to talk to me. Jacob’s mother and sister, both Healers, close in too. Soon enough, this little group of determined women is moving me toward the door. Once again I feel like I can’t actually walk, but they’re moving me anyway with their considerable magic. Helping me project a strong image while getting me out of this place.

Still Zander does not let me go.

I’m not reading into that. It’s just a fact. Dimly I hear him attempt that laugh he loves to trot out when he’s bartending.

I also know that the laugh doesn’t land. I know it’s wrong.

Is everything wrong?

I have a hard time concentrating on anything but making it to that door and getting out of here before I collapse, but there is something happening beyond this wash of poison inside me, and it makes the pain easier to handle.

Because the rest of my friends form a loose circle around me, and even I am forced to recognize that there’s a long line of people who want to help. They don’t want to help because they’re the sort of people who always help others, though the North women are certainly that. They want to help me. Specifically.

I know this is true in the same way I know that the poison inside me was put there.

Again.

This little group of people making it seem like they’re casually, happily walking out the door wants me to be okay. They would be doing it whether this was a normal meeting or not, whether I’d succeeded or failed tonight. These same people would be right here, helping me.

How can I keep having such a high opinion of all these people around me and such a terrible one of myself? I decide to ponder that later.

My mom relinquishes my arm to Jacob, and I can feel his magic. That deep, true Healer magic fights its way through me, into the heart of the poison, even as we walk outside and head down Main Street once more.

“I could magic us back,” Jacob tells me in his low, serious way. “I have a feeling the Joywood are watching though. We’re going to have to do it the long way.”

I nod. Or I think I nod. My mother laughs at something Mina says. Jacob’s younger sister, Evie, is talking loudly about tea and acting as if I’m engaged in this conversation with her. When it’s all I can do to keep from succumbing to that dark thing inside me.

Maybe because of that, it takes me a long time to realize that they’re all making it look as if I really am having that tea talk with Evie. Anyone passing by on their own way home—witch or human—will see a happy group of people, comfortably talking about nothing in particular as they walk home on a night that smells of fall, like leaves set to turn and a hint of woodsmoke on the breeze.

The walk goes on and on. I feel the pendant against my chest, a cooling force in all this heat. I feel Jacob’s magic mending and fighting, pushing toward the poison and cleaning up the damage, but it’s slow. As slow as the usually easy walk down Main Street feels to me tonight.

We eventually make it back to Wilde House, the sounds of friendship and merriment hanging in the night air. The minute the front door closes behind us, the complicated glamour of it all drops.

Just like I would if Zander wasn’t holding me up.

Jacob and the rest of his family start belting out orders. It’s like a scene from one of those human medical shows, but we’re in Wilde House, not an ER.

For once, Emerson isn’t the one taking charge. Jacob is. There’s something about how okay she looks with that. It worms its way into me, like I should be paying more attention to the two of them, to who they are, to how they work together—

I’m too loopy to hold on to it. Or to anything else. Because someone pulls Zander away from me, and I want to reach for him. I would if I could. If I was anything but limp.

I find myself in my room, now containing only my bed and no conjured monstrosity with a canopy and a ghost. I think, to my surprise, that I’m going to miss Elizabeth after all. That thought leaves as quickly as it comes, and what I notice then is that the lights are lowered. That it’s nice and dim. My mother puts me to bed like I’m five again, then moves out of the way so the Healers can take their spots around me.

I know they’ve already done some work on me, but that they’re settling in to do more. They’ll fix me. I know this because it isn’t the first time this has happened.

“Did we do okay?” I ask Jacob, because everything is fuzzy and spinning now.

“You did everything you needed to do,” he assures me. “The ghosts did great. The Joywood were pissed. Emerson can brief you on the details when you’re a little stronger, but everything went the way we wanted it to. Except this.”

There’s no arguing or getting more information. Not the way he says it. Healer declarations are what they are.

Evie is at the foot of my bed, playing the part of a bouncer, but it’s no surprise to me that she doesn’t see Elizabeth or Zachariah when they appear in the room, then move right through the other witches surrounding me.

Elizabeth leans in close, and I can feel her hand on me when—once again—that shouldn’t be possible. “Tell them to let Zander in.”

The Healer spellwork surrounds me. I can’t think of a single reason I shouldn’t do what this ghost is telling me. Not when Zachariah’s gray gaze looks just like Zander’s, like he’s concerned too.

I turn to Jacob’s mother, not Jacob. Because this feels like girl stuff. “If you’re going to check the baby, Zander should be in here.”

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