Witcha Gonna Do? (Witchington #1)(33)
Still, I can’t drag my friends into my mess.
Turning to face the two people who were my first magical misfit friends, I take their hands in mine. “I can’t ask any of you to do this, to take these risks.” Because there were always risks when dealing with a spell book like the Book of Shadows. “I can’t—”
“Shut up,” Birdie interrupts, pulling me in for a hug. “We’re in.”
“Exactly,” Eli says as he curls his arms around both of us. “We magical misfits gotta stick together.”
Fuck.
And now I’m crying again, only this time because I realize I’m not alone in this. In a world where so many witches seem to relish the chance to tell me how apart from everyone else I am, how isolated my being an outré makes me, I know they’re full of shit. Eli and Birdie prove that.
“Thanks, you guys,” I say, my words muffled because Eli doesn’t realize his own strength and has me tucked so close against him that my nose is too squashed to take in oxygen.
“You want in on the group hug?” Eli asks over my head.
I can picture Gil’s mortified expression without even having to try.
“Absolutely not,” he says, because of course he does.
It’s like the man comes from a place where witches don’t bond by the power of touch—a reminder that even though he came with Eli and Birdie that Gil is most definitely not a magical misfit. That brings me back to the first thought I had when I opened my front door earlier and found him on my porch. “Why are you even here?”
The expression on his face goes from summer thunderstorm to tsunami at sea. “I have my reasons, but they aren’t important—getting ahold of that book is though.”
I look over at my sister and my stomach twists itself into a triple knot.
Whatever it takes, I’m going to fix this, Effie. I promise.
“So where do we have to go to get it?” I ask.
“The Svensen family is dedicating a new wing of the Marie Laveau Museum at a gala and exhibiting several priceless items from their private collection, one of which is The Liber Umbrarum. The gala is in two days and will take place under the tightest security imaginable.”
“So we’re gonna ask the Svensens—the Sherwoods’ biggest rival in all of Witchingdom—if we can just borrow their old, rare, and priceless spell book to unfreeze my entire family?”
Yeah, that seemed about as likely to happen as me being one of the most powerful witches to have ever witched.
“No,” Gil says with a predatory grin that says Mr. By-the-Book-Know-It-All actually likes breaking a few rules and sends shivers through my whole body. “We’re gonna steal it from them.”
Chapter Sixteen
Gil . . .
Everyone is staring at me. Not in the oh-that’s-an-interesting-idea way, but in the how-many-times-did-he-hit-his-head way. Okay, Tilda might have a dash of didn’t-think-you-had-it-in-you too, but I shouldn’t focus on that. We have a plan to develop, a book to steal, and the entirety of Witchingdom to save.
Not an exaggeration.
But where the ideas should be in my head, there is Tilda.
Tilda, who froze her entire family without even realizing how she’d done it.
Tilda, who is herding us all into the kitchen because that’s where the most important witch business takes place.
Tilda, who is now standing still as a statue in front of her frozen mom, her eyes going all watery, and the upturned tip of her nose turning red.
I’m heading across the stone floor to her before I realize it—to do what, I have no fucking idea—when Birdie whips an oversized purple dish towel off the oven handle and drapes it over Izzy Sherwood’s head.
I jolt to a stop halfway across the room and involuntarily brace for the magical matriarch’s wrath to come crashing down on us—and I’m not the only one.
Tilda’s eyes have gone round and she has a hand pressed to her open mouth. Eli takes a protective step in front of Birdie, who is sucking in great gasps of breath as if she can’t believe she did that.
“Well,” she says, nervously winding a large clump of curly hair around a finger as she peeks around Eli at the now-covered head of the most feared woman in town, “if we can’t see her, then we can’t be scared of her, right?”
If only Birdie knew how many invisible things are out there that can hurt her. Plots, plans, schemes, and spells woven and built in kitchens like this but belonging to the Council. Once you know how to spot the telltale signs of their shadowy interference, you start to see them everywhere: the barely-there scent of charcoal and honey left wafting in the air after a secret spell, or the people left behind who have only a soft-focus memory of what happened, almost like a dream that feels so real when they first wake up but they can barely remember ten minutes later.
Tilda takes a step back from her mom. “Is that like when a dog sticks its head under the bed and acts as if the rest of the world doesn’t exist anymore?”
“Pretty much,” Eli says, still mostly blocking Birdie from Izzy Sherwood’s direct line of sight—if she didn’t have a dish towel over her head.
Tilda chews her bottom lip and rubs her palms up and down her arms. She’s doing that cute thing where she squishes up her nose and cocks her head to the side as if she’s trying to get a look at an intangible idea from all angles. She did it at the beginning of our second date, when she was trying to work out if I was supposed to be there or if she really did just have the shittiest luck. Her gaze skitters over to me and whatever she sees on my face has her cheeks turning pink.