Page 42 of Enspelled

I straighten from the wall, making my expression as passive as I can. “Mom, we’re not talking about this now. Briar is my friend, and she willalwaysbe my friend.”

Her hazel eyes crease at the corners as she studies me with confusion. “Butwhy? All she does is cause trouble.”

“Maybe,” I murmur, lowering my voice when more of the women dart glances toward us, “I appreciate having someone in my life who accepts me just the way I am.”

Before she can find something else to blame on Briar, I stalk across the room, my biker boots echoing in the hollow space, drawing more attention that I don’t want.

I settle in the back row of wooden chairs that Vera must have had one of the women line up for her. If Briar’s aunt was still alive, that person would have been her.

Poor Mel. No wonder she spent more time in the community center kitchen than in this room.

Vera, one of the many women who took the time to pretty herself up, clears her throat, and as one, the women standing around the hall drift toward the chairs and sink into them.

Mom takes the seat beside me, the only person who joins our row. Everyone else sits in front, and none of them so much as turns around.

Grown women, and they’re acting like cliquey high schoolers. What a joke.

I can feel Mom frowning at the slight, but I occupy myself by scanning the room.

Where is Layla? Surely she should be the one leading this meeting.

“It’s good that so many of you could make it on such short notice,” Vera begins.

I eye her defined gray curls.Short notice, huh?

Old age hasn’t made fifty-year-old Vera any less vain than she’s always been. Only the Callas cared more about their appearance—or maybe Bullhorn Ellie, with her fondness for loud clothes at the exclusion of all taste.

“I’m not seeing Fiona.” Vera’s glacial blue eyes probe the seats, her sharp nose pointing the way. “Fiona!”

Her gaze sweeps over me and returns to the front row. “Estella, make a note that Fiona has failed to attend the meeting.”

The mood in the room turns ominous, because you don’t miss a coven meeting without asking for permission first. Sometimes not even then. Maybe next week it will be Fiona sitting in the back row on her own, as all the women do their best to ignore her.

A woman clears her throat, and I can almost feel her reluctance to speak. “I think her eldest son was sick. I remember she said something about—”

Vera’s eyes snap to the female voice in the middle of the room. “A sick child is no excuse for failing to pick up a phone.”

I’d disagree. I think it’s a legitimate reason to miss a meeting, and not an excuse.

But even though I know I can’t be the only one who thinks so, the room is silent. All except for the sound of a pen scratching against paper.

Vera’s nose points even higher now that she’s proven her point. “I called this meeting because—”

“Where’s Layla?” My voice cuts through her businesslike tone, and her face stiffens the second before she swings her gaze toward me.

It’s not like me to speak up in meetings, or do anything to attract notice—but ever since this town turned against Briar, I’m finding it harder and harder to be the same Sera Mitchella I’ve always been.

“Layla,” Vera says, her eyes narrowed in disapproval. “Is currently occupied with a private matter. I will be in charge until she’s completed it.”

It sounds like something she made up, and I straighten in the uncomfortable hardback wooden chair. “So this meeting is for us to honor Briar’s aunt the way we would any other green witch who died, then?”

Silence.

And that’s when I realize I shouldn’t have come, because the lack of a response is stirring my anger, something I rarely let anyone see. If any other green witch had died, we would organize a wake. We would all bake and cook something for the grieving family. We’d offer them comfort and companionship as they mourned their loss. Without exception.

At night is when we green witches would truly honor her, meeting in the Madden Grove Wood to join hands and lift our voices—and our spells of remembrance and sorrow about her sudden parting—into the air.

“Well,” Audrey, a witch who never misses an opportunity to kiss either Layla or Vera’s ass, says. “I wouldn’t exactly call Mel one ofus.”

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