Page 74 of Counting Quarters

She opened her mouth to object, but stopped when I held my hand up in front of her face, a move I’d learned from her.

“My point is that I don’t know how much time we’ve got left together in this lifetime, and I’m tired of wasting it. There can’t be any more secrets between us. I want to know everything. I need to know all of it, so I don’t end up scrambling for answers about myself the way Storie has been.”

She released a breath. I knew her instinct would be to argue with me. To list off a million reasons why I wasn’t ready. But they were all wrong. If I’d done anything in the past few weeks, it was that I’d proved how capable I was. She couldn’t ignore that anymore.

“Fine. If you think you’re ready to hear it, then I’ll tell you.”

“Fine. Let’s start with where the Grangers fit with the Quarters.”

A look of warning. That wasn’t where she wanted to begin, but she wasn’t calling the shots anymore. I was in possession of the gifts now. It was only right for her to tell me what that entailed.

“I told you, our ancestors received their gifts at the same time. The Grangers had to hide theirs after it became too dangerous for others to know.”

“Why do I feel like that’s only half the story?”

She rolled her eyes. “That’s all that matters. The Quarters are no strangers to corruption and growing hungry for more power than they were blessed with—look at this last generation, for instance. The Grangers were given their gifts with a heaping load of humbleness to go along with it. That’s why we’re able to harness all the elements, along multiple generation lines at once, and they only get one.

“Unsurprisingly, they weren’t happy about that. They wanted the same abilities, and they began hunting Grangers to figure out how they’d managed to ‘trick’ the gods into doing it. And we had to lie and say we lost our power. It was mortifying for them. They laid down their egos to protect us and were nearly cast out of their homes for doing so. That’s why we’ve kept the secret generations later. To make their sacrifice worth it.”

“Why reveal it to them now, then?”

Grammy thought about that for a moment. “This generation is different from the ones that came before it, just as you’re vastly different from me. I knew they would take the information and use it for good.”

“That was a gamble.” I rolled my eyes, remembering how disrespectful they had been upon finding out that I was their fifth Quarter.

“They came around eventually. They’re not bad people, Blaire. They’ve just been raised by them.”

“Why did I have to complete that spell with them to activate my gifts? How did you get yours if they were supposed to be kept a secret from them?” That had been bothering me since it happened.

“Yes. Ordinarily, we would complete a spell on the Mabon, when we knew the Quarters would be lifting their own. It was a way to practice alongside them without their knowledge. Now that they know about you, there was no use hiding it from them. No use in waiting.”

“Okay, so the secrets are out. We’ve been training to fight Rayner and the Movement. Why are you and Lux still buried in those books?”

She hesitated, warring with herself over revealing her plans. But we were moving forward, and she couldn’t expect me to be on her side when she was working behind my back.

“There’re still things we don’t understand about the Quarters and their Counters, especially since things got so mixed up. Look at you and Kyle, for example.”

She gave me a knowing look, and I blushed. We had yet to broach the subject of him, but now that we were, I realized that maybe she had been keeping him involved in all of this for a reason.

“They haven’t been so lucky. I kept my records and had my theories about who their Counters were based on birthdays, but that obviously isn’t a hard and fast rule anymore. Lux wants to find their Counters before they take over Watchtower again.”

That was unsurprising. Lux hardly spoke to me, but I knew he was fiercely loyal to his brothers. Of course, he’d want them to be at their full potential before they took on such powerful roles.

“There’s also the issue of Rayner. We don’t know how he’s been able to override our wards and spells. How he was able to use that magic to weaken them last year.”

“It was black magic, wasn’t it? The sacrifice of those girls' lives?”

I thought about Hailey, Toni, and all the other lost souls who had found me throughout the months since Rayner left. But if Kyle is right, maybe they aren’t dead after all. Maybe he’s using their life force to fuel his power, and that would be a completely different type of dark magic. I wasn’t ready to ask her about it yet, though.

“Yes, but it seems like there’s more to the story. How was he able to erase a spirit’s memory? How did he manipulate the afterlife so heavily without the gifts?”

She was right. This was all so overwhelming. It was a heavy burden to carry on her own, too. It made sense that her and Lux had grown so close over the past year. They each needed someone to lighten the load, and neither one wanted to rely on the people they loved.

“Did you have a Counter?”

Grammy’s face immediately fell, and I knew the answer.

She did. Past tense.

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