Page 24 of Big Little Spells

But I can’t get the words out of my mouth, or even in the right order in my head. I have the terrible realization that the cracking sound I heard came from inside of me. And all the me is leaking out, so fast it’s like some kind of riptide and I’m an empty shell—

Well, shit, I think again, or maybe I manage to say it, but then the world goes dark.

And not in a good way.

8

WHEN I OPEN MY EYES, I know immediately I’m not at Frost House any longer. The ceiling is a little too simple. No scrollwork. No dramatic domes with frescoed ceilings like a witch’s personal Sistine Chapel. Everything here is too...warm. Homey. I look around.

I’m lying in a cozy living room with a healthy fire flickering in the hearth. I know at once that I’m in a farmhouse. It’s the exposed beams, maybe. All the furniture is oversize, comfortable-looking, and simple.

Emerson is sitting at my feet. I realize I’m lying on a couch. And Jacob is standing at my head.

I want to sit up immediately, but my body still feels... untethered. Yet much too heavy.

Emerson squeezes my ankle. “Don’t try to do anything too suddenly. Ease back in. You fainted. I brought you to Jacob’s so he could heal you.”

“I don’t faint,” I reply at once. It’s a knee-jerk response, sure, but I’m not the type to faint. I’m not all fluttery and fragile, thank you. I scowl at my sister, sure there must be another explanation.

Jacob laughs. “You Wilde women are very adamant about that, and yet...” He glances at Emerson, some secret smile on his face.

I also look at my sister, who is frowning back at Jacob. “You fainted? You?”

“I killed some adlets,” Emerson replies with a tiny little sniff. “A lot of adlets, actually, because it turns out they’re real. Exhaustion overtook me. I’m sure the same thing happened to you.”

I’m not at all sure of that. Something happened inside of me when I looked into the water. When it looked into me. And I have no idea what. I look around the room, this time not to determine where I am, but because—

“He isn’t here.”

My gaze flicks to Emerson. Of course Nicholas Frost isn’t here. I never thought he would be. Honestly. I can’t even imagine him sitting in a comfortable armchair in Jacob North’s farmhouse. Whatever happened back there in his ridiculous hidden palace on the hill was nothing.

I might have failed his test, but I don’t care about that.

“You just sort of crumpled, and he had things to say, but I wasn’t about to listen. I brought you to Jacob.” Emerson is stubborn. Everyone who’s ever met her knows this. But the bottom line is that if Nicholas really disapproved of her leaving, he wouldn’t have let her go.

What could he have had to say?

“So what’s wrong with me?” I ask of Jacob, because I’m sure something must be wrong if I fainted like some corseted drama queen. Besides, scrying magic is supposed to feel good. Maybe a little intense, depending. It’s not supposed to burn.

“That is the question,” Jacob replies, looking at me intently, like he’s looking into me. “I’ve never seen exactly what I saw when Emerson brought you here.”

I want to ask if there’s a better, more established Healer around here. Not someone I went to high school with, because everything in me feels fragile and edgy. But I restrain myself. Partly because I don’t want to be mean to the guy who’s engaged to my sister, even if it’s still a secret. That’s no way to start off as in-laws. But also because he’s always seemed steadier and more controlled than the rest of us, even when he was eighteen. I know without having to ask that if the issue was him not knowing enough Healer stuff, he would have found me a Healer who did. The North family is full of them.

“All the things that happened with Emerson over the past month are things I’ve never seen before,” he tells me, and I don’t love how that sits in me. Making me feel bad that I not only wasn’t here, but I also tried my best to stay away. Even after Emerson asked me to help. But I try to concentrate on what Jacob is telling me instead of my favorite hair shirt. “Things Georgie couldn’t even find in all the books. A mind-wiped witch unknowingly fighting her own obliviscor shouldn’t be possible. If it’s happened before, there’s no record of it.”

Obliviscor is another old Latin word I hate. I imagine all witches do, whether they’ve experienced it personally or not. A spell that wipes you of your magical memories isn’t anyone’s happy place.

But Jacob carries steadily on as if nothing gets to him, an admirable quality. “That’s not getting into what happened to her, body and magic, in the water last night to stop the flood. Whatever’s going on around us isn’t usual. It isn’t common. We have witches who are mysteriously sick.”

Zelda, I think at once. My favorite relative in our parents’ generation. My mother’s sister, but happily nothing like my mother. For one thing, my mother calls me on my birthday and the major witch festivals every year, never more. Doing her chilly duty to her wayward exile daughter.

Aunt Zelda texts me all the time, and always has. Since the day I left home. When she’s not suffering from her illness that no one can name or explain, that is. My hands itch to pick up my phone and tell her I’m home, so I can see her after all this time. So I can assure myself that she’s okay.

But Jacob is powering on. “On the more positive side, Emerson isn’t just a Warrior with a surprise power she’s not supposed to have—she’s a Confluence Warrior. There aren’t too many of those. Throughout history.”

“Pretty sure I’m the only one,” my sister says cheerfully.

Jacob nods. “It stands to reason that what happened to you at Frost’s today wasn’t normal either. We’re not dealing with normal anymore.”