Page 115 of A Winding Wave of Magic
He shrugged. “Habit.”
“I told you it wasn’t pretty.” Sybil was watching us both with that same jaded gaze that I’d seen after my father’s death. “If you didn’t want to See it, you shouldn’t have come.”
“And you’ve Seen mine,” I said. I didn’t need to ask. I already knew. “How about Jonathan’s, for that matter? Your clients? Do you See every person’s death you pass on the street?”
My limbs were tensed like springs.
She didn’t answer, instead looked down and toyed with her rings. Her nails were bitten to the quick, just like mine. For Some reason, that made me even angrier. Everything about her was making me angrier.
“What kind of power is that?” I demanded with a shaking voice. “What good does it do? Why didn’t youdoanything?!”
Sybil just eyed me placidly. “We’re not given this gift to change things, Cassie.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Cassandra, then.” She took a breath, pulled off one silver ring with a large turquoise stone and replaced it on her other hand. “Named for what you are, and what you’ll be. Fate gives me a glimpse and a chance to prepare. That’s it.”
“Go to hell,” I growled through choked, angry breaths. I had nothing else to say but that.
Sybil stood with a screech of a chair leg, as passive as ever. “Oh, don’t you worry, little blackbird,” she said, resentment dripping from each syllable. “I’ve been there for a long, long time. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need some dinner. Stay if you want. Or don’t. It doesn’t matter to me.”
Without a word, I got up and stomped to the front room, barely listening to Jonathan make our excuses as I pulled on my jacket, then headed out into the night mist of fog and rain. My breath clouded the drizzle. I could barely see and found it was to my liking.
“Cass!”
Jonathan jogged out of the little orange house while zipping on his own coat. I waited for him on the front walk, halfway between the house and the sidewalk.
“I don’t know what Penny was thinking when she wanted me to come here,” I said bitterly. “The entire world already felt like a minefield, but she sent me right into the center of it all over again. First, her death, watching my dad leave me again, then I have to See her attacked how many times over? What’s next in Ireland? The rest of her childhood trauma? I just want to go back to my own life, back to my home.”
Even as I said it, the truth rattled.
I had no home to go back to. My life in Boston was over, my job deferred, and my childhood home burned to the ground.
There was nowhere to go but forward. And at the moment, it seemed all but impossible.
Jonathan shifted between his feet and gave me a half-smile that seemed twisted between two ends of remorse and relief. “I don’t know what’s waiting for you in Ireland, but I do know you’ll be safe. That I can promise. Perhaps this was Penny’s way of helping you cut ties. She was good at that, you know. She had some practice.”
I looked back at the house, where Sybil’s silhouette bustled around as if she hadn’t just broken my heart all over again.“What about her? Do I have to bring her too? She deserves to know who her mother was, doesn’t she?”
Jonathan shook his head. “Sybil should stay here.” His eyes blazed as he looked around the yard. “You Saw what he Saw. Penny had already wiped almost all her own memories of the two of you, and I suspect she has taken a lot of your mother’s too. There was nothing to give you up, even though people have been looking for an heir. Your mother is safe. And she needs to stay that way.”
I shivered, but not just because of the cold.
“Go to Ireland, Cass.” Jonathan’s words were soft as he looked up at the trees surrounding the yard and brushed away some of the drizzle on his brow. “No one knows who Sybil and you are but me. I’ll keep her safe. I’ll protect you both.”
I gritted my teeth. “I never want to see her again.”
“And maybe you won’t. But it’s like you said. Sheknows, Cass. We’ll need her if and when Caleb Lynch is ever brought to justice. No one will believe us, but they will believe a banshee. She can’t lie about a death. To do so would be to kill herself.”
I recoiled. “Seriously?”
He nodded. “It’s their purpose to their very core. When we deny the calling of our power, we deny our very existence.”
Our eyes met then, and for a moment, I was taken back to the night by the fire. The night when I’d kissed him.
Why, I couldn’t say.
Ridiculous. That’s what I was. Trouble with my mother, and all I wanted was for the handsome boy I liked to give me some solace.
