Page 84 of Dragon Fires Everywhere
Upstairs, Emerson takes me into the guest room. She flings a hand up and murmurs the companyspell, and magic flows out so that everything is instantly dusted, straightened. The bed is turned down, with a stack of fluffytowels and a robe at the foot. Anything else I could possibly need, from hand-milled soaps made right on Main Street, St.Cyprian, to a selection of shower gels and bath salts, is set in a happy little basket on the desk.
But she doesn’t leave me to it. She takes a seat on the corner of my bed, looks right at me with that Emerson battle lightgleaming hot in her gaze, and asks the question I don’t want to answer. “Are you really okay?”
We’re alone. Two best friends. This isn’t coven business now. It’s us.
I let out a breath. “I don’t know what I am.”
“That’s fair.” Emerson frowns a little, reaching for the fairytale, which has apparently magicked itself to the end of the bed beside her. “This book really loves to follow you around, doesn’t it?”
“Yes.” I stare at the book. “I’m being stalked by an unhinged fairy tale.”
Emerson flips through it. “I still feel like there’s an answer in here we haven’t figured out yet.”
I don’t want to look at the book right now. I don’t want to think about dragons at all. But then Emerson kind of jumps toher feet, holding the book open like it bit her.
“Georgie, did you...?”
She doesn’t finish. She just hands me the book. It’s opened to a page in the front that has always been blank. There are onlytwo words there now, small but unmistakable:
For Georgie.
It doesn’t make sense. There’s never been a dedication before.
Certainly not to me.
Then again, it’s a stalkery, magical book. The cover changes all the time. Whyshouldn’tthere be a dedication page?
The bigger question is, why do I see it now? Why have I never seen it before?
I think of the archives giving me what I needed today. I think of the necklace I’ve been wearing since I was sixteen thatFrost destroyed not that long ago at Azrael’s command.
But before I can really sink into all those terrible feelings surrounding my mother giving me a black magic necklace, I noticethat Emerson is gesturing for me to flip the page, so I do.
And pause.
It’s the title page. Where there’s more new information.
There’s an author and illustrator listed when I don’t recall there ever being one before.
Particularly this one.
Lillian Wilde.
My gaze snaps to Emerson. My breath seems to be stucksomewhere between my lungs and an exhale, and I think she’s struggling to breathe too.
“That has to be wrong,” I say, though part of me wants to sob. Because Lillian would have beenmygrandmother too, but if she wrote this to me...
Does that mean she knew? And never told me?
Emerson is shaking her head. There are tears in her eyes, and I know how much she misses her grandmother. We all miss her,but Emerson is the one who walks into her bookstore almost every day. Emerson is the one who took that Wilde family responsibilityon her shoulders.
Even when she didn’t know she was a witch.
Emerson reaches out for my arms. “Of course she wrote it for you, Georgie. Of course she did. She’s your grandmother.”
There is something about the way Emerson keeps that in the present tense that makes me want to sob, deep and hard. But there’sa bigger issue here. “If she wrote it for me, that would mean she knew I was her granddaughter while she was alive... andshe never told me.”
I don’t like it any better out loud than I did when it was only in my head.
