Back in a Spell (The Witches of Thistle Grove, #3)(75)

Emmy recrossed her legs again, leaning forward slightly over her thighs. Somehow the change in posture instantly lent her more gravitas, an almost frightening amount of authority; she clearly wasn’t trying to disarm me anymore. A faint blue light had begun glowing in her eyes, something I’d seen happen sometimes during ceremonies. It was part of her connection with Thistle Grove, the magical energy that ran through her and connected her to the town itself.

“Nina, I know you were there,” she said quietly, and I could hear that magical thrum in her voice, too, laced with a hint of unmistakable threat. “You and Gareth both. There’s an alert spell on the door, but it does more than notify the storekeeper—it also records visitors, keeps track of them. A safeguard, in the event of situations like this one. It was one of the few spells to escape erasure, due to its placement, probably. Far enough away from the heart of the store where the worst of the damage was done.”

I froze, unwilling to confirm or deny, uncertain what to even say.

“I know you were there,” she repeated, raising an eyebrow, “and that’s why I’m coming to you first, instead of raising hell with Lyonesse—as I’ll admit was my first instinct. From everything I’ve heard about you, you’re the bulwark here, the reliable one. The reasonable one. And I need to understand what happened, Nina. What Gareth did, and why in the world he’d ever have done something like that.”

I choked down a semihysterical laugh, because of course Emmy would think that whatever had befallen her cousin and the store, it must have been Gareth’s fault. Given their history—and to be fair, his reputation—it was a rational enough assumption.

“Is she alright?” I said, unable to help myself. “Delilah? How . . . how is she doing?”

“She’ll recover her memory, in time,” Emmy said, her tone still even, though I could see a dark new glimmer of suspicion in her green gaze as she reconsidered me. Her eyes narrowed further as she appraised me more closely; maybe she could sense some hint of that goddess ember, even if it lay dormant when I wasn’t casting anything.

The starstruck coin glowed even hotter in my pocket than normal—as if it could feel her, too, was responding to her scrutiny.

“She’s still groggy, no recollections of the day,” Emmy continued. “Fortunately, all Harlow recordkeepers are imbued with an anti-oblivion charm when they begin working at Tomes. Again, it’s to safeguard against situations exactly like this. The possibility of someone ill-intentioned breaking in to steal a powerful book or an artifact. If that’s what we’re dealing with here.”

I hadn’t known this, obviously, but it made sense. Of course the Harlows would have protective fail-safes in place, when they’d been in charge of keeping our history for centuries.

“That’s the puzzling thing—an oblivion glamour of any kind shouldn’t have worked on her in the first place,” she continued in that whetted tone, glinting with careful menace. I didn’t remember Emmy Harlow as being quite so terrifying, but that was before she’d become both Victor and Voice, the first ever such mingling in our history. “It would have had to be a tremendously strong casting, far beyond what Gareth’s working with, even as a Blackmoore. So, how? And again, why lash out at Delilah like this? What could she possibly have done to him?”

I sat for a moment, like a statue myself, mind whirling at what felt like the speed of light. This was it, the moment of truth. There was no way to stall, nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide.

My clock had run out. It was time to decide.

I remembered Morty’s passion, the gleam of conviction in those radiant eyes. This is not you, he’d insisted. It’s not who you are, what you stand for. You’re better than this. Stronger, wiser. So much kinder and more compassionate.

Whether this was true, I wasn’t sure. But I did know that I wanted it to be.

And if I did, I needed to start now. Take that first step toward a different me.

“Gareth didn’t do anything,” I said, almost surprised at how steady my voice emerged. Not Nineve Blackmoore, Esquire’s frostily competent tone—but not Nina’s wavering uncertainty, either. Something entirely new; something in between. “It was me. I cast the oblivion glamour. I erased Delilah’s memory. The damage to the wards . . . that was an accident. I didn’t realize anything like that could even happen.”

Emmy rocked back in her chair, nostrils flaring, something between shock and vindication flashing across her face. The blue glow in her eyes intensified—maybe she was readying some defensive magic as well, drawing on her connection with Thistle Grove in case I turned on her—but beyond the way her knuckles paled as she curled her fingers tighter around the chair’s arms, she didn’t betray any further reaction.

“Why would you do something like that, Nina?” she said, much gentler and more tempered than I’d been expecting. “I might not even be surprised, if it had been someone else in your house. But you? Help me understand, here.”

I closed my eyes for a moment, letting myself sink into the surprising relief of my admission, tinged with pure terror at what I was doing. Because this was a line I could never uncross; there’d be no coming back from here. This was the sort of treason my mother and grandmother could never forgive.

But maybe their forgiveness—their acceptance and approval—wasn’t something I needed anymore.