Page 31 of Nineteen Seventy-Six

Soren rolled forward. “I know because we can do things, too.”

“What? Who is we?”

“My family.”

Could he be telling the truth? “Prove it.”

Soren sighed. He lifted one hand in the air and with a bored look, summoned his drink from the kitchen and into his palm. He slurped the dark liquid through a straw, never taking his eyes off her.

Maureen was astonished.

“I showed you mine,” he said playfully.

She was too shocked to respond appropriately. Here was someone, someone not related to her, who was a witch! Someone who could do what her family could do and wasn’t the least bit bothered by it. She never dreamed anything like this was possible, let alone so close to her. The same city, the same circles. That the universe would connect them, in a world where billions went about their lives entirely in the dark to magic…

“Maureen?”

“I…” she exhaled. Dizzy. Overcome. “I can’t show you mine.”

“And why not?”

“It’s broken.”

Soren laughed. “Broken?”

“It’s not funny.”

“Then explain it to me.”

Maureen drew her feet back, tucking them under her. She ignored his wounded look, too overwhelmed to explain it wasn’t about him, that what she’d explored to satisfy her needs had turned into so much more… something far harder to define. “I used to be able to talk to the dead. It went away when… well, I’m not entirely sure, but I think when I married Edouard and became the mistress of Blanchard House. I couldn’t talk to all of them. Just some of them. I don’t know why. I never had time to learn the rules, and then it was gone.”

“What an incredible gift that must have been,” he mused. “But also unsettling.”

“It was both,” she agreed. “Wonderful and terrible. There were so many times I wanted it to go away, and then when it did…” She hesitated not from emotion, but from the sudden realization that this conversation was really happening. Someone who was not her blood relative had revealed his own supernatural gifts, and a discussion was taking place about them. Never in all her wildest fantasies did the idea of meeting someone like her ever appear. Waking up one day a princess in a foreign land seemed far more feasible than meeting another witch.

That she should meet such a person when she was already married seemed so unfair.

“I’m sorry,” Soren said. “I’ve never known anyone who lost their ability.”

“Me neither,” Maureen said, breathless. She needed to get ahold of herself; to be as calm as he apparently was. “How did you know about me?”

“I knew about your family,” he amended. “Because my family knew.”

This seemed like the kind of thing the Deschanels ought to know. Maureen made a mental note to tell Colleen later about this, but she’d forget to do this, as she forgot most things she told herself to remember later.

“Is that why you agreed to meet me?”

Soren inched closer and rested his head against her shoulder. “I suppose I thought if there was anyone else in the world who might understand isolation and loneliness, it would be someone from a family like mine.”

“It’s time, isn’t it?” Noah asked, though it wasn’t a question at all. Colleen appreciated his delicate phrasing. He didn’t normally treat her so gently, but he seemed to know when to ease into a subject rather than barrel through.

“Soon,” she replied. She watched Amelia sleep in her cradle. Amelia, with the white hair, that so few Deschanels had. Anymore, at least. The white-blond hair was a signature trait of the French Deschanels, but somewhere the genes dwindled from their makeup, choosing to make scattered appearances. Next to Nicolas, with his dark chestnut waves, and Anasofiya, with her wispy strands like fire, it was as if they were made to represent the entire Deschanel spectrum. It made Colleen wish she understood more about her ancestry beyond the proud French roots. Surely other backgrounds had married into the family many times over the years, but no one talked about them.

Would Amelia outgrow it? Some babies did, but Colleen could see her daughter clearly, as a teen, as a woman, hair still as pale as her skin.

And what gift has our bloodline given you, dear one?

“Fall term, then,” Noah said. “It’ll be a cleaner start for both our programs.”

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