Page 16 of Big Little Spells
It’s for me, and I hate it.
“Emerson,” I say, trying to sound all the things I’m not in this moment—at peace, calm, one with what’s happening to me, and in no way a sulky teenager. “Congratulations. I’m happy for you both.”
“Thank you,” she says, marching forward, still so...Emerson.
It releases that hard grip on my heart, just a little. I swing my arms more than necessary and question why I thought I needed to feel the cold morning breeze all over my abdomen. I look up at the bluff before us as we walk and tell myself the sudden chill I feel is my dedication to the crop top, nothing more.
That’s not entirely true. I can see Frost House sitting there at the top of the bluff, perched so it can look down on the town and the rivers and probably the whole world. It has the glamour to end all glamours on it, making it look like the sort of disreputable, falling-down Victorian that scary Halloween movies are made about. Everyone knows that the immortal likes it to stand there like a festering eyesore. No one knows why.
I don’t want to think about him. Or face him. At all. Here on these magical bricks of my hometown where the bricks aren’t just cute, they also stand as a safe space for any and all magical beings.
Ten years of being away hasn’t changed any of it. Ten years of Emerson not knowing hasn’t changed anything for her either, it seems. Except...
“Do you ever feel...” The words come out before I can think better of them.
“Do I ever feel what?”
There are a thousand things I want to ask her. A thousand more I want to know that I don’t know how to ask. I settle on the most obvious. “Ten years were stolen from us.”
Emerson’s expression goes dark. It surprises me, the strength of the bitterness I see on her face. “That’s not a feeling. It’s the truth. That’s what they did.”
“But you were here.” I can’t help but point out the difference. Maybe she didn’t know what happened to us, but she wasn’t an exile.
“I was. And I wasn’t.” Her eyes narrow as we reach the stairs in the hill that will lead us up to the fake eyesore that is Nicholas’s mansion—because underneath that witchy glamour is a glorious, immortal-worthy mansion. He would never live rough. “I’ll never let them take anything away from me again, no matter if they think they’re doing the right thing.”
Do they think they’re doing the right thing? I wonder. Or are they, for all their magic and years, just like humans. Absolute power corrupts absolutely and all that. It’s a tale as old as time.
We’re walking up the steps that seem to grow in height and number as we go, slowing our progress until I’m nearly out of breath by the time we reach the top. And even though there’s no way anyone can sneak up on an immortal witch like Nicholas Frost—something I know from personal experience—the glamour is still in place now that we’re standing before it. Wheezing.
Up close, it looks even more like a haunted house.
Inside, I feel a kind of ticking. That restlessness that’s chased me all over the country, most recently to Sedona. I was thinking it was time I headed around the globe, but the Joywood intervened.
I glare at the rotted-looking front porch. I note the fine touches of spooky mist and a potential incoming storm in the sky directly above it. Only in the sky directly above it.
“You can’t accuse the guy of subtlety,” I point out. “Why not just put up a neon sign that flashes A WITCH LIVES HERE? It’s basically the same thing.”
“When I was spell dim and came up here, I didn’t think witches,” Emerson says, and she says that in such a matter-of-fact way that I wonder why I’ve never really thought about what a vile term that is. Spell dim. I didn’t like it when people said that’s what I was. But I was sure they were wrong, so that was different. It actually wounds me to hear Emerson call herself that. It makes me want to...break things. Like this whole town.
“It was just unsettling. I never wanted to linger, despite the fact there’s such a pretty view from up here. It just felt wrong. I think the haunted house thing is amped up for witches.”
“I almost admire the lengths he’s willing to go to for a fuck you,” I say, and I mean it. “And the commitment to keep it going.”
“He’s had a lot of practice, presumably.” We grin at each other. Then she holds her hand out to me. “I can tell you that it takes a lot of effort to make the glamour fall. Say the words with me. Because our magic is here, Rebekah.” She spreads out her free hand. “And here.” She points to her heart, then mine.
I wish I knew how to resist that simple order, but no matter how clean a girl gets herself in human Narcotics Anonymous circles, there are some addictions that come with the thorny twists of family, of prophecy. Of who I really am.
“Reveal to me, what I should see,” I say in time with Emerson.
She’s right. The magic is deep within us. Unlocked at last for her, untamed in me. But our magic twining together is beautiful. It’s that elusive peace I’m always seeking. Bright and golden, like hope and love and joy threaded together in goodness.
If we’d known all along we could do this, even with something as simple as this unmasking spell, what else could we have accomplished?
In the echoing glory of it all, the house’s glamour falls, shimmering away into the April sunlight.
Instead of the skeleton of an old river Victorian, there is now a gleaming, stately brick three-story with ornately carved trim and rounded windows. Below the house is the river, flowing lazily toward the confluence, looking particularly pretty this morning.
Probably because we took the darkness out of its center.