Witcha Gonna Do? (Witchington #1)(39)
“Both of our families.” She slips her hand into mine, looking at our joined hands as if she can’t quite believe she did that either.
“Exactly,” I say through gritted teeth, because that’s all that’s keeping me from completely coming clean and spilling my secret that I cursed her into wanting me.
While telling her the truth seems like the most urgent thing in the world, I know I can’t. This isn’t the kind of world where people trust each other. In Witchingdom, there are alliances, not friendships. To pull this heist off, Tilda has to trust me, and the duíl makes that possible. She could hate me for it later. Now, I need her to look at me like she is at this moment, as if I am capable of planning this heist, as if I’m worthy of her.
So I do the only thing I can. I pull my hand from hers, glare at the trio of faces aimed my way, and stalk out of the room to go walk the grounds until I can look at Tilda without wanting to believe that the thing building between us is real.
Two hours later, I have myself under control and have just stopped outside the library and am wedging a foot into the slightly open door so I can walk through with the tray laden down with elderberry tea and lemon coconut macaroons when Tilda’s voice stops me dead in my tracks.
“I’m telling you,” Tilda says, her voice an urgent whisper, “we can trust him.”
I edge closer to the door while using a quick quiet spell to silence my steps.
“He works for the Council,” Birdie says. “Which I still can’t believe is real, by the way.”
“I get that,” Tilda says without hesitation. “Validate a thousand times. Buuuuuuut he’s here, he’s helping us, and he is giving it to us straight.”
“Do you really think so?” Eli asks.
“I do,” Tilda says.
I can picture her without any aid of a magic seeing incantation. She’s twisting her red hair around her pointer finger while gnawing on her bottom lip and looking at her friends with those big eyes of hers made even bigger because of the thickness of her glasses. Guilt plucks at me. Letting her go to bat for me when I’m holding back the truth about the curse and what her powers really are is a shitty thing to do, and yet here I am. It’s for the greater good. My family. Her family. All of Witchingdom.
Yeah, and it still sucks hairy werewolf balls on a full moon.
“And if he’s not?” Birdie asks, her voice soft. “There’s a lot riding on all of this. It could be a trap. The only way a spell can be reversed is with the help of the person who called it. You. And if you’re out of the way, then your family stays frozen and any threat they offer disappears.”
“That only counts if you aren’t an outré. Let the Council grab me, as long as you all have The Liber Umbrarum then you can bring everyone back. My mom will save me once she defrosts.” Tilda lets out a self-deprecating chuckle that doesn’t hide the nerves. “I mean, she’ll be pissed enough at me that I may not want her to defrost, but she won’t leave me with the Council. If nothing else, she won’t want the bad PR of a Council prisoner as a daughter.”
I’m white-knuckling the tray, guilt rising like bile burning the back of my tongue, when my Council phone vibrates in my front pocket.
“Shit,” I mutter under my breath as I back away from the door and hustle back to the kitchen, where I leave the tray on the island before answering the call.
“What’s going on with the Sherwoods?” Cassius barks out the second I swipe answer.
“They’re not up to much of anything.” My heartbeat is erratic, but the words I’d planned for the call I’d known was coming sooner or later are calm and a little surly per usual. “As far as I know, they’re all at the house.” Not a lie. Not the whole truth, but not anything that will set off the falsehood detector on the phone.
“Well, something is going on. No one has heard from them in more than a day.”
“I’ll see what I can find out.” Again. Not a lie. Just not all of what I know now.
“Do that. The Council is getting antsy to make their move against Izzy Sherwood,” my handler says. “You need to find out what’s going on or you and your family can look forward to an eternity freezing your ass off in The Beyond.”
I’m clenching my teeth hard—cracking a molar isn’t out of the realm of possibilities—but I still manage to get out, “I said I’ll look into it.”
“Good, because you can’t afford to fuck up now. The Council is watching your every move.”
Which is exactly what I’m counting on, because then they aren’t watching Tilda.
Chapter Nineteen
Tilda . . .
Packing to go steal the most valuable spell book in all of Witchingdom isn’t like throwing shit in a bag for a girl’s weekend at the beach. For one, I wasn’t offering up my eternal services as a rooster babysitter to my sister so she’d magically make my travel-sized bottle of SPF four billion into a never-ending supply of sunscreen. For the other, I had to figure out how to sweet-talk my way into bulk orders of juniper berries without Orwell at the alchemists’ club telling everyone I was up to something—or more likely that my family was, and then everyone would be trying to get in touch with my mom to see what was wrong.