Back in a Spell (The Witches of Thistle Grove, #3)(23)
“Thanks for that,” I murmured, thinking how sad-funny it was that we’d both been doing the same thing, in our separate ways.
“Yeah. I mean, definitely a topic for another time, but anyway.” He took another shuddering breath, gave himself a little shake. “So I slept in this morning, and when I got up I was late to . . . to a thing I really needed to be on time for, so. Then the fucking light in my bathroom died, because of course, why not. So I was just thinking to myself, ‘Really wish I had some goddamn light to shave’ . . . and then, bam!”
He gave a harried, half-hysterical little laugh, staring down at the witchlights still flickering sinuously above his palms.
“And then this happened,” he finished, curling his fingers around them to extinguish them. It was such a natural way to huff out that particular spell that it threw me a little; it didn’t look like something a beginner would have done. The instinct to blow the lights out like candle flames tended to be a strong one. “And I suddenly—I just remembered out of the blue, all these times that fu—your brother Gareth used to come into my bar. Do flashy shit like this like a magic trick, to pull some tourist for the night.”
I exhaled, clenching my jaw, because this tracked, unfortunately. Even with the townwide oblivion glamour in place, we weren’t supposed to cast in public, but that didn’t mean all of us always complied with the prohibition.
And my brother really could be the most spectacular fuckweasel that way.
“But I always forgot,” he said, confusion brewing in his face. “All those other times, I just forgot about it, somehow, almost as soon as it happened. Until this morning. This morning, I remembered everything—and now, I can apparently even do it! So. That’s why I’m here.”
“How did you know where to find me?” I asked, a coal lump of dread landing in my belly with a sickening thud. Because I was starting to get a profoundly unfortunate inkling of what the answer to that might be, something I very much did not want to be the case.
“I don’t even know!” he exclaimed, with another shrill half laugh. “I could just . . . tell where you were? Feel you, somehow? That’s when I got really spooked, like, am I losing my entire mind right now? Do I have a brain tumor or something, am I fucking hallucinating this whole deal? How is that possible—how is any of this possible or real? I didn’t even believe it until I got here, and here you were. Exactly where I thought you’d be. Where I knew I’d find you.”
I took an unsteady breath myself, splaying my hands flat on the table to find some badly needed purchase as panic rolled through me like an avalanche. Because there was a way that some normies were able to come into magic even if they weren’t born into it. There was a way they could come to feel the presence of a certain special witch even from a distance.
It just couldn’t possibly be happening right now, and definitely not to the two of us.
It couldn’t be.
“Nina,” Morty said, half pleading, leaning over the table with distress etched into every fine line of his face. “Just tell me, okay? I won’t even be mad, I swear, I just need to understand. What is this paranormal activity shit? What did you do to me?”
9
The Starstruck Coin, Again
Before I could reply, something small abruptly warmed in my back jeans pocket, like a lodged ember flaring back to life. Frowning, I wiggled around in my seat until I could wedge my fingers into it, my chest clamping down like a vise as my fingers closed around hot metal, familiarly ridged edges.
“No. Goddess-damned. Way,” I breathed, fishing the object out and dropping it on the tabletop. The lake coin—the same one I’d flung into my bed this morning, and definitely left abandoned somewhere inside my sheets—had turned back up in my pocket. It spun on the table for a moment like a top, even though I hadn’t meant to spin it, before it settled onto the wood with a final, feisty glimmer.
So underwater goddesses had jokes, apparently. How whimsical.
“Nina?” Morty said, sounding, if possible, even more beleaguered. “What is it? Why are you staring at that coin like that?”
“Like what?” I managed, furiously regretting the last few bites that were now crowding back up my gullet.
“Like it’s haunted? Possessed? Full of, I don’t know, demons, maybe?”
“I wish it were demons,” I muttered, grudgingly gathering the coin back up and stuffing it into my pocket. Its stubborn reappearance warranted much further exploration, but now wasn’t the time for it. “I could at least call an Avramov for that.”
“Like Talia or Issa, you mean?” Morty’s brow crinkled, his face swarming with even more hopeless confusion. “Or Micah? What do they have to do with any of this?”
Oh, this poor, sweet summer child.
“It’s—look, it’s very complicated,” I said, drawing a breath. “This town . . . you grew up here, too, right? So you think you know it? But you don’t, trust me. There’s a lot going on under the surface here, things people like you couldn’t possibly understand.”
“?‘People like me,’?” he mimicked in a deadpan tone, his face darkening. “And what category of woefully ignorant folk would I fall into, exactly, according to you? Please do educate me on what you mean by that, besides some kind of elitist shade.”