Back in a Spell (The Witches of Thistle Grove, #3)(25)
Gareth flushed a full, mottled crimson at that; in this, at least, we were very much alike.
“Okay,” he allowed, looking genuinely chastened as he took a deep pull of his scotch. “So maybe I’ve pulled a slightly sketchy flex or two there, not gonna lie. But I’m really not about that anymore. You believe that, right, Nina? You know I’m working on myself, trying to do a lot better.”
“Then why not do better, instead of trying?” I suggested, not even bothering to dilute the acid in my tone. “Starting now. I promise, it’s not that hard once you commit. No more snotty talk about Morty will be permitted, for starters. Are we clear on this?”
“Crystal,” he allowed, working his jaw from side to side. “So, you gonna tell me what he was doing here?”
“We went on a date last night,” I admitted, feeling heat rise like steam in my own cheeks. “It was a silly dare from Jessa, basically, as one would expect. And it went about as terribly as one would also expect.”
“?’Cause he sucks,” Gareth mumbled, skimming an appraising scavenger’s eye over my food. “And isn’t your type.”
I made a pinching “zip it” motion at him with my hand. “But, something else happened last night, something very weird. And I think it’s having some . . . lingering repercussions.”
I filled him in on everything, from the spectacular display at the lake to my later underwater visitation, to the way even my minor spells this morning had been almost comically superpowered.
“Back up,” Gareth said, scrubbing a hand over his face. “You’re telling me there’s a—there’s a sentient goddess statue in Lady’s Lake? And you’ve, like, been having girls’ nights with her your whole life?”
“Apparently so. Though I never remembered any of them until now.”
“What’s she like?” he said, a tinge of awestruck wonder momentarily displacing the shock. “A whole goddess, damn. I can’t believe it. That’s wild, even for Thistle Grove.”
“I mean, I suppose we can’t be positive that’s what she is,” I replied, though truthfully I hadn’t even really considered any other possibility; I knew what she felt like, what she had to be. Even now, with a little bit of distance from the encounter, there was no true doubt in my mind. “But I’m fairly sure she’s it. The thing that, somehow, makes Lady’s Lake what it is. And Thistle Grove what it is, too.”
“And you’re besties with her, eyyyyyy!” He held out his fist for a bump and grinned at me when I bumped back, he looked dimpled and sweet, a flash of the deeply people-pleasing kid he’d once been—and still often was even as an adult, when he managed to cast all the other encumbering crap our family had saddled us with aside. “That’s pretty badass.”
I looked down, a smile twitching at my own lips—until I remembered that every wondrous moment that had transpired last night had also somehow initiated an ice wraith manifestation.
“I have to go to the quorum with this, right?” I asked Gareth. “To report it? I can’t just keep a bombshell like this secret; the entire community needs to know. Just think how mindblown the Harlows are going to be over this kind of revelation. And it must be connected to what happened today. It has to be, don’t you think?”
“Yeah, most likely,” he replied, a more analytical expression sifting over his face. Contrary to popular opinion, my brother was far from a simple thinker; just intellectually lazy, in the absence of the right motivation. He wasn’t going to strain himself unless the moment really called for it. “As far as the quorum is concerned, something distorted Gawain’s snowfall spell—you know, the one he uses for the winter wonderland scene in Yvain. Some random, huge power flux, essentially. Emmy felt it happen, but doesn’t know what it was.”
“It was me, somehow,” I mused, thinking aloud. “It had to be. Everything was running smoothly at Camelot until I got here.”
“Probably, yeah,” Gareth agreed. “Which is why I’d suggest you not say anything about it right now. Nothing at all, to anyone but me.”
I straightened, every quantum particle of lawful good in my body rebelling against this suggestion. “What do you mean? It’s my responsibility to report something like this! It would be anyone’s responsibility!”
“I hear you, and I get it. But think about it for a second, Nina,” Gareth reasoned, tipping his head. “Ever since the Gauntlet, we’ve been stuck in the doghouse, right? Our whole family. Everyone turning against us, nothing going our way. How could it possibly do us any favors, admitting that one of us might have had something to do with a calamity like this, even if unintentionally? A spell going rogue like that? Normies possibly getting hurt?”
“No one got hurt,” I objected, but only mildly, because that was true by sheer technicality. And I could already see where he was going with this.
“Yeah, because you were there to save everyone’s ass,” Gareth countered. “But if you hadn’t managed to swing a Uriel like that so quick, who knows what could have happened. If there’d been injuries, real ones, possibly even deaths? There’s only so much the oblivion glamour can erase. It’s not intended to tamper with normie minds to that severe a degree. And if it came out that we were behind something like that?”