Witcha Gonna Do? (Witchington #1)(17)

“None.” She dumps her tea into the cast-iron pot already at a rolling boil and pours a shot of whiskey for herself, shooting it back in one gulp. “Do you know how rare a spellbinder is?”

I trace the skull-and-crossbones pattern on the teacup, needing to do something to ease the worry and guilt starting to hiss through me like steam escaping the kettle. “One every generation.”

Griselda snorts. “Try one or two every three generations—out of all of Witchingdom.” She pours me a shot and pushes it across the island. “Do you know what happens when one is found? Chaos. Every powerful family and the faction they control would try to get the spellbinder on their side.”

“Tilda is a Sherwood.” They aren’t like other families, they sure as hell aren’t like mine. They have power, money, connections.

“Her last name won’t protect her from this,” Griselda says.

That’s when I see it, the nearly imperceptible flinch as she considers the what-ifs. In The Beyond, they tell stories about Griselda and the Resistance, about how they’re fearless. That isn’t what I’m seeing now—and that worries the shit out of me.

I toss back the teacup shot, the peanut butter flavor masking the burn I need to feel at this moment. “So you and her parents have let her spend her entire life thinking she was an outré rather than letting her make her own choice about how to handle who she is?”

Her eyes narrow at me. “We’ve protected her the best we can.”

Now it is my turn to scoff at a bit of bullshit. “She’s an adult. She should get to make her own choices.”

Griselda doesn’t say anything for a few seconds. She just stares at me with that look that makes the back of my neck sweat. Then she smiles, and that’s when I know I’m fucked.

“And when you were smuggled out of The Beyond,” she asks, her tone as sweet as the expression on her face is not, “how did you do it?”

“That’s different.” It was. The Council hadn’t given me a choice.

Griselda lifts a silver eyebrow. “You let your parents think you’d willingly gone to work for the Council so they wouldn’t endanger themselves by voicing their objections.”

“It’s for their own good,” I say, my voice rising enough to make raccoon Newt let out a protective growl.

“Exactly.” She pours each of us another shot. “And if Tilda uses the power she has, the Council’s magic spectrometers would pick it up right away. They wouldn’t stop until they figured out who was making the numbers spike. Your little spikes in juice have been bad enough; if she were to amp up an intentional spell, it would only be a matter of time before the Council brought the hammer down on her.”

“If she’s so powerful, can’t she just zap them?”

“That’s not the way a spellbinder works,” Griselda says. “She has to work with the right partner to do an epic-level spell. If she does it with a witch who isn’t prepared to act as a kind of conduit, the spell will go pear-shaped.”

“I can’t keep playing double agent with Cassius.” I’ve been walking that line since I showed up in Wrightsville and had my first meeting with Griselda. The Council is watching me. Cassius is watching me. Griselda is watching me. Tilda is the only person who isn’t, and she’s the one who should be. “He’s suspicious. I know he is. I have to help my parents get out of there before it’s too late.”

“You don’t have to worry,” Griselda says with a happy little twirly dance in the middle of her kitchen. “Smuggling witches out of The Beyond takes time, but they’re almost free and clear. I promise.”

Can I believe her? I want to, but at this point everyone is lying to everyone else about nearly everything. But this is my parents. I have to be sure. “I need to talk to them.”

“Soon. Right now, they’re in a safe house. Give it a couple of days to move them to a place where the Council can’t reach them first.” Griselda takes her shot and stares at me until I do the same.

I have to weigh my odds.

The Council doesn’t give two shits about my family beyond how they can be used to keep me in line. The Resistance, though, isn’t like that, at least not according to the stories my mom used to tell me, but all of that could be nothing more than wishful thinking, which is why I’m going forward with both eyes open and ready for a double cross.

“Keep an eye on Tilda,” she says, flicking her fingers in the air and sending the shot glasses to the sink, where the clean spell takes care of doing the dishes and putting them away in the cabinets. “Not that you aren’t already, but this time pay attention more with what’s between your ears than inside your pants.”

Guilty as charged, but still. “Griselda.”

“What?” She lets out a lusty sigh that I really did not need to have ever heard. “I was quite the player in my day. I still remember what it felt like when Eliphas did that thing with his tongue. Whew, there are some things that keep an old woman warm on a cold night.”

“I could do without that mental image.” I’ve never turned down a good research project though. Maybe Eliphas kept a journal with technique notes.

“Stop pretending you’re all stuffy.” Griselda rolls her eyes and yanks the flannel tied around her waist tighter as she rounds the island to do a little hovering magic that has her floating up so she looks me in the eye. “You don’t fool me for a minute. I’ve heard what the cards say about you.”