Payback's a Witch (The Witches of Thistle Grove #1)(56)

“You could have visited,” I whispered, though I knew even as I said it that it was not just a miserable cop-out, but a flat-out lie.

She turned to look at me head-on, wet green eyes glittering like peridot, lifting one hand to rest it against my cheek.

“You know we’d never have done that,” she said, with a terrible, quiet kindness. “Not when you made it so clear that you didn’t want us there. Your father and I . . . No matter how terribly we missed you, we’d never have wanted to foist ourselves on you if the feeling wasn’t mutual.”

I bit my lip, swimming in sticky shame. It was true. They would have come, had I ever invited them with any real sincerity. But I couldn’t have withstood it, their presence in Chicago, their magic radiant and inescapable when mine was dark and guttered and echoing as a long-empty house. They would have reminded me too much of what I’d given up, of what I missed down to my bones every single day I stayed away.

No matter that it was me who’d willingly left it all behind.

“I did miss you, Mom,” I whispered, hanging my head, so beset by misery my body felt like lead. Talia had struck much closer to home than she might have thought that afternoon in the coffee shop, when she wondered how I managed on my own, so far from family. And she hadn’t even known just how often and hard I’d pushed them away from me. “Of course I did. I should have invited you for real. I should’ve . . .”

“And we should have come even if you didn’t. We should have, because discretion be damned, Emmeline Constance, you’re my daughter,” she said, overbright eyes shifting between mine, the corners of her mouth quivering. “My first and only, my absolute beloved. I should never have just let things sit and fester in the first place, I should have asked you before it was far too late . . .”

Her voice broke, and she subsided with a shaky sigh, turning away from me and closing her eyes. I hugged myself hard, wondering how many more people I loved were going to cry in the near future because of me. I’d been so caught up in my own pain, in the reasons for my flight from Thistle Grove, that I’d given shamefully little thought to the scars my departure must have carved into the ones I’d left behind.

My horoscope app had not seen fit to warn me of this incoming emotional reckoning—one star.

“It wasn’t your fault, Mom,” I said, low, my own voice wavering. I reached out blindly, without looking at her, fumbling for her hand. “None of it was. I’m the one who pushed you away whenever you tried to come close. And you’re right, Gareth did damage me. Maybe . . . maybe more, and worse, than I ever even gave him credit for.”

“Will you tell me now, love?” she said, so plaintively my heart quaked for her. “What happened to you back then? Why you thought you couldn’t stay?”

My insides felt like they were constricting, like a snake had snuck down my throat and coiled around my rib cage, a slow and awful suffocation. This kind of vulnerability between us felt uniquely terrifying, completely uncharted terrain. I loved both my parents, but we had never been the kind of family that delved into one another’s feelings deep enough to really hash things out. When it came right down to it, I just didn’t know how to talk to her this way.

But I did know that I wanted to try.

“Of course I will. I should have told you back then, too,” I said, stumbling my way forward like I had the first fucking idea how to do this. “Or anytime since. Not knowing how to say it to you . . . that’s a shitty reason not to give it a shot.”

“It doesn’t matter, my love,” she said. Her hand tightened on mine, and just like that, the buckling pressure in my chest began to taper, until I thought I could remember how to breathe again. “As long as you’re letting me in now.”





20





Now That’s What You Call an Apple Corps


As was traditional, the next challenge took place by twilight.

The skies above the Honeycake Orchards had gone the colors of bruised fruit; tiers of peach and apricot and indigo seamed with lines of molten gold, streaks from the slipping sun as it ducked behind Hallows Hill. I stood in the broad concourse in front of the Welcome Center barn, before it forked off into dirt roads that led toward the orchard’s attractions. The central spot where tourists would’ve flocked for doughnuts, cider, and ride tickets on a normal day.

Except that this was anything but a normal day. Talia, Rowan, and Gareth stood at attention before me in their ceremonial garb—Gareth with a suspicious glower and darting eyes, comically out of place on his cookie-cutter Abercrombie face. At my back swarmed an expectant mass of founding family members, gathered to watch. The pervasive hum of tension felt almost electric, like tangible potential hovering in the air, some creation magic with a sparking power of its own to manifest.

It felt, like I’d said to my mother just yesterday, like anything could happen.

The Grimoire pulsed once from its pedestal before me, giving me a gentle nudge. Then it cracked itself open, pages whipping back and forth before they settled, glowing words inscribing themselves on the blank parchment as if drawn by an invisible, fiery quill:


Though the blood of magic may course through your ancestral tree,

True power is not given but won—and never won for free.

When monsters made of magic threaten to take their toll,