Page 4 of Big Little Spells
MY SUGGESTION IS MET with the kind of silence that could freeze waterfalls in place.
Carol’s gaze turns to me, and that’s when I realize she hasn’t really looked at me until now. Too busy playing games with Emerson, I guess—and I remind myself that it doesn’t matter if nothing ever changes and everyone still treats Emerson like she’s the only important Wilde sister. Because I don’t live here and the way these people behave reflects on them and has nothing to do with me.
Not my circus, not my monkeys.
I have to chant that a few more times as Carol curves her mouth into a benevolent smile that makes my blood run cold. “And what about you, Rebekah?” she asks.
“Me?”
“You were warned not to use any witchcraft during your exile,” she says, so very softly, and I don’t know what Emerson sees when she looks at the creepy head of the Joywood, but all I see is my own impending death. I always have.
It’s one of the reasons I knew I had power all along. And more, that I was a Diviner. I could see even the futures I didn’t want to see.
It makes me shiver, though I fight it back, to realize the future I see in this woman hasn’t changed at all since I was a kid. It’s the same bleakness.
But I spread my arms wide and smile as if she didn’t just threaten me. “And I haven’t,” I say. “I assume you already know that or I would have been called before you long ago. But this is home. Does participating in coven magic in St. Cyprian actually count as breaking the no-magic-in-exile rule?”
Clearly, I catch Carol off guard with this. It’s far more satisfying than it should be. I like to talk a lot about active recovery. I like to consider myself clean. I put magic behind me, which, not to brag, I doubt any of the witches on this field tonight could do. I call myself a cycle breaker and I mean it.
But that old drumbeat of revenge still exists inside of me. The desire to take Carol Simon down every last peg and dispense some much-earned justice to the rest of her coven too, while I’m at it.
Collectively, they’re responsible for almost all of my trauma. It would give me nothing but joy to return the favor, which I know is disordered thinking and sickness reasserting itself and so on. That doesn’t make it any less true.
“I’m more than happy to head right back into exile, actually,” I say as mildly as possible, as if I’m not emotionally invested in anything that happens here.
But I know I am, because an emotionally uninvested person wouldn’t go to all the trouble I do to keep from looking over at Emerson, Ellowyn, or any of the rest of them. Including the glowering immortal witch standing almost directly across from me, the dark night draping itself around him like a cloak, not that I should notice or care.
Sadly, noticing him is an old habit and it makes me furious at myself, because I should know better.
I don’t need to look at any of them anyway. I can feel their disappointment in me just fine. I should be used to it by now. I smile at Carol and remind myself that I’m not responsible for anyone’s feelings but my own.
“Exile is always a choice,” Carol agrees. But there’s something in the way she studies me—in the way her dangerous, insidious magic swishes around me, looking for a way in—that tells me there’s a catch.
Or maybe it’s just that I know her and her cronies.
“You may choose it again, if you wish,” she tells me. Then her eyes gleam with what is clearly malice. “After the pubertatum.”
“I’ve already taken and failed the pubertatum,” I point out, trying to sound anything but terrified. Because I choose my goddamned emotions and I choose not to be terrified by that stupid old test I couldn’t pass when I was actually prepared for it.
“You were part of this.” Carol waves her arm at the river flowing calmly before us, like it was all some childish prank here tonight. Not, you know, my sister sacrificing herself to save this stupid town that only cares about witch hierarchies and power. “You and Emerson exhibited power, according to your own accounts of what happened. You yourself suggested retaking the test, Rebekah.” Carol studies me the way a scientist might study a corpse. A cold chill starts at my chest like corpse is a premonition. Maybe it is.
“I’m afraid we cannot let you back out into the world again without the proper test to check the extent of any abilities you might have,” she says, sounding almost sorrowful, though I can see she’s no such thing. “It wouldn’t be safe. We must keep witchkind safe, Rebekah. You know as well as I do what happens when witches expose themselves.”
No one says Salem. The pitchforks and hysteria are implied.
Still, I try to argue, because apparently I’m not that evolved after all. “You can’t just—”
Carol sweeps her hand up and I cannot speak. She literally hexes me mute.
“You’ll both be tested,” Carol is saying, as if she regrets the necessity, yet thinks it’s for the best. As if this is a kindness. “We’ll investigate this river business. And we’ll come to a verdict that, as ever, keeps witchkind’s best interests at heart.”
If you don’t know Carol, you might think she sounds relatable and sweet. Humans think she’s the best head of the town council they’ve ever had. But everyone here tonight is a witch, and we know who Carol really is.
“Then let’s take this test,” Emerson pipes up when Carol finishes speaking. Always ready to slay the dragon, no matter the cost.
“Em,” Georgie says softly. Her voice is quiet, but there’s a power in it. She’s not the same shy Georgie I remember from high school. She lays a hand on Emerson’s arm, and her gaze feels like the same kind of touch on me when it meets mine. “The adult test is different.”
It’s a warning.