Payback's a Witch (The Witches of Thistle Grove #1)(82)

If I’d known, everything might have been different. Maybe I’d never have been the kind of person Gareth could hurt as badly as he had. Maybe I’d never even have left at all, too confident in my own worth to be rattled by someone like him.

And maybe, I considered, thinking about it even deeper, this was why the Blackmoores’ long reign hadn’t caused the Harlows any harm. Possibly, as conduits of the magic itself, we were immune to its Gauntlet-related fluctuations, even if we didn’t get to reap its benefits.

“It’s a bit of a sneaky test,” he admitted. “Elias thought of this role as a great privilege, an unparalleled honor. He didn’t want it squandered on someone who didn’t love this town enough to stay here, even without the communion serving as the ultimate prize for their fidelity. So if a Harlow heir were to leave, before the communion was passed down . . .”

“Then they never got to have it,” I said flatly. “Wow. What an utter crock.”

“My sentiments exactly,” my mother murmured into her cup, speaking up for the first time. “What, James? It’s the very worst sort of archaic nonsense to keep it under wraps, and it always has been. And you know it, too.”

“It’s tradition,” my father argued.

“It’s patriarchal codswallop,” she countered, eyebrows raised over the rim of her mug as she took an emphatic sip. “And it’s as though he didn’t even consider the consequences for his family’s standing. This town, as it is now, wouldn’t even exist without the Harlows—and it would do certain other families a great deal of good to recognize as much.”

“Wait, is this why we don’t compete in the Gauntlet, but only arbitrate?” I asked, even more inclined to fume. “Not that we’d win as often, but still, this is a definite advantage—and we don’t even get to try? Because, what, we’re just supposed to settle for our communion with the town, as if there are no other perks to being the Victor of the Gauntlet?”

“Elias believed that being the voice, the human soul of Thistle Grove, should be more than enough for any witch,” my father said, with a helpless shrug. “I imagine he didn’t think longevity, good luck, or any of the rest of it really stacked up in comparison.”

Unlike the other ancestors I’d been seeing in a new light, Elias Harlow was turning out to be every bit the stick in the mud that I’d thought—and not a very ambitious one, to boot. The communion with Thistle Grove was spectacular, almost unspeakably wonderful, he was right about that much; it was clear how deeply my father would miss it, once it fully passed to me. But why limit his descendants this way? Why hamstring us into being this and only this, never anything more? Who was Elias to decide that this was all any of us might ever want from our lives as witches of Thistle Grove?

I had no doubt I’d have seen and done things very differently, had I been in his shoes three hundred years ago.

But even so, this still changed things for me in a way I couldn’t have anticipated.

“So, if I leave,” I said dully, “I’ll lose it, forever. It’ll go to Delilah.”

“Unfortunately, yes.” My father nodded, glasses slipping down his nose. “That’s about the size of it, scoot.”





31





More Than Enough


I didn’t see Talia again until the Blackmoores’ masquerade ball on Samhain Eve, when she would be formally crowned as Victor.

I’d heard from Elena that she’d recovered well; the last of the shades haunting her had been banished with the dawn. The Avramovs had wrapped up their ghostly exorcism just about when I’d been discovering that I was now in a complicated relationship with Thistle Grove. But Talia hadn’t reached out to me herself, not even to thank me for stepping in for her, or for the proxy victory I’d won. Not that I’d done it for the props, but still; it was telling. It made me think that on her end, whatever had torn between us the night of the séance was still too painful and raw to prod.

And I hadn’t reached out, either. I hadn’t wanted to, not until I was sure I knew what I would say to her.

In the days since the challenge, I’d spent much of my time sitting by Lady’s Lake with Jasper beside me. Watching the sun wheel overhead, letting wave after wave of magic lap over me as I inhaled its incensey scent on the wind. Communing with the town below, until the soil felt as familiar as my own skin, the many breezes my own breath, the trees’ slow sap like my own blood, except blood that I could actually feel as it ran through me.

Was this enough for me, I kept wondering. Could it be enough? And if it wasn’t, and I decided not to stay; how could I ever forget how wonderful it had felt to be back, to find things both old and new to love about this town, before choosing to leave it behind all over again? But if I did stay, I still wouldn’t get to work anything like the kind of magic the other families could make—and I knew myself well enough to know how this limitation would continue to rankle me. Especially now that I was aware of my own contribution to their strength.

And there was, of course and most of all, Talia to consider. If she hadn’t changed her mind about me, after everything.

The day before the ball, I’d twitched in surprise as Delilah dropped down to sit beside me, having snuck up on ghost-quiet feet; even Jasper hadn’t noticed her approach.