Page 84 of Truly Madly Magically

Rebekah doesn’t even try to hide her laugh. My mother’s face is conspicuously blank. I want to scowl, but I can’t seem to manage it as I mutter a goodbye to Mom and let Rebekah pull me back up the riverbank to Main Street.

I glance back and catch Maeve’s eye. The look she sends me is pure evil. Hatred amped up about as far as it can go. I brace myself against the nasty slap of magic I see coming when her lips move, but nothing lands.

That’s when I remember that we’re protected by the Undine. By the ascension rules.

I want to believe that will keep us safe and well through Samhain. I glance at Elizabeth beside me, and her gaze is on Maeve as well. She looks concerned. Deeply concerned.

Until she catches me looking at her. Then she smiles.

Bright enough to remind me that hope is a dangerous thing, with treacherous fangs.

And winning battles hardly means winning the war.

21

“CAROL’S FACE! I swear it turned purple.” Rebekah is all but cackling, curled up on a small sofa in the Wilde House living room with Frost. Who almost looks like he’s enjoying himself—or her, anyway. Jacob and Emerson sit hip to hip on the hearth in front of a crackling fire. Georgie and her familiar, Octavius the big orange cat, are lounging in the oversized armchair.

I tell myself that I would be having a grand old time if Zander wasn’t invading my space. If he didn’t throw himself on this couch like I wasn’t already sitting here and throw his arm around me too. Like it belongs here. Like he belongs here.

I intend to set him right. Any second now.

We’re enjoying some posttrial downtime. The ghosts took off early on, and I am deliberately not imagining what they might be up to. Instead, I’m about the food. And a whole lot of dessert. Maybe it’s the sugar, but Emerson’s fist pumps make me far happier than I like to admit. We might be enjoying a premature victory here, but I like having some space to relax with my friends.

Even though I know I need to get out of here before Zander’s arm becomes more, before my friends start oh-so-casually poking into what we were doing last night as I can see they want to, and definitely before Emerson stops celebrating and starts drawing up battle plans for the next trial we can’t predict.

Any second now, right? Ruth asks in my head. Slyly.

I can’t allow a future bowl of stew to challenge me like that, so I decide any second is right now.

That’s really showing me, my unimpressed familiar responds.

I ignore her, but as I get up, something falls behind me as if it dropped from the ceiling. When I look around at the sound, I see that book again. Gleaming at me from right where I was sitting.

Zander picks it up, studying the bright illustrated cover. “You’re carrying this around with you now?”

I frown at him. And the book. Mostly at him. “I didn’t bring it over here.”

I’m trying to remember if Rebekah brought it with her to the trial when I know she didn’t. I distinctly remember her leaving it in the tea shop.

Zander starts flipping through it again. “It’s weird, you know,” he says, not to me but to the group. “This sweet little children’s book is the only known reference to Revelares. It has some eerie coincidences in there too.”

Emerson turns the full force of her attention his way. “What kind of eerie?”

“There’s a Guardian,” Zander says. “A princess who’s drawn to look a lot like Georgie. A Revelare who has one of her sights blocked.”

“It’s a fairy tale,” I return, a weird wave of panic sweeping up inside of me. I’m not a Revelare, I want to yell. But I don’t, because that would be alarming.

And wouldn’t prove anything one way or another.

“It was my favorite book when I was little,” Georgie says, stroking Octavius’s fur. “Possibly because the princess has red hair.”

“Sometimes fairy tales have their beginnings in fact,” Jacob offers. “Humans have tales of witches and familiars and all kinds of magic. To them it’s all a fairy tale.”

“Many facts become fairy tales,” Frost agrees. “Given enough time.”

“Let’s read it,” Emerson says. “Maybe it can tell us something that will help.”

“Like what?” I ask. Possibly too aggressively, given the way Zander’s eyes gleam at me. I clear my throat. “I know for a fact it doesn’t have the Undine’s secrets or a list of the trials in there.”

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