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“Then we’ll do it together.” She covers my hand. “Magic isn’t all bad, Rowe. It can be beautiful, too.”
“I know.” Without magic, I wouldn’t have met Haut, Owen, Tris, or Ambros, and I wouldn’t give them up for anything. “But Aspen sure makes me hate it.”
“He just needs to be reminded that life is about more than power.” She stands and offers me her hand. “Ready to go back inside and dry off?”
“If you insist.” I let her help me up and shiver. “That storm really came out of nowhere. The weather app promised clear skies until tomorrow afternoon.”
She studies me for a moment before she rolls her eyes. “When have weather apps ever been right?”
I walk ahead of her down into the attic. “You know, you still have some clothes here.”
She chuckles. “I was just thinking the same thing.”
Mel and I make our way back to my bedroom, where we find Haut waiting for me with a towel.
With a small smile, Mel leaves us to go find dry clothes, shutting the door behind her.
Haut steps forward and envelops me in warm terrycloth. He pats the water from my hair and face before dropping the towel to my shoulders and kissing my forehead. “Do you need me to bury him?”
Warmth fills me, and I lean against his warm body, breathing in his comforting scent. “You offering to kill for me is so sweet.”
A rumble vibrates in his chest. “He made you cry.”
I rear back. “What? No, he didn’t!”
Haut cups my cheeks and tips my head back, kissing the corners of my eyes, which feel hot and puffy. “Of course, he didn’t. My mistake.”
“Damn straight, your mistake.” I lean into him once more, pressing my ear over his steadily beating heart. “What if I can’t learn magic the way I’m supposed to?”
“Then you learn it the way you can. You’re putting too much pressure on yourself to conform,” he says, the words matter of fact. “Your grandma didn’t have a wand, and she was a powerful woman. There’s more than one way to be a witch.”
I turn my head to smash my face against his chest. “Should I take the ADHD medicine? Will it fix my brain?”
He cups the back of my head, and his lips press into my hair. “Your brain is fine the way it is. It works in a way that’s different from others, but that doesn’t mean it’s wrong. If you want to take the meds and see if they help you focus, that’s your choice, but your brain isn’t broken.”
Would he say that, though, if he knew I was hearing scratching in the walls right now?
My arms tighten around him. “Will you rumble for me again?”
Engulfing me in his embrace, he rumbles until the comforting sound is all I can hear.
HELPING MAGIC ALONG
When I go downstairs the next morning, I find the remnants of yesterday’s magic class on the kitchen table.
I’m embarrassed to admit that I let Haut baby me last night, bringing me dinner in bed and watching shows with me on the laptop so I didn’t have to go back downstairs.
The other guys had all popped in to check on me, bringing dessert and hot chocolate, but had otherwise left us alone. When Haut fell asleep, I laid quietly with one ear pressed against his chest and my hand over my other ear, trying to block out the noises in the walls.
Now, I stare with blurry eyes at the wrinkled wreck of our grimoires. A blow dryer lies on the table next to them, giving testament to someone’s effort to save them, but the books will never lay flat again.
Steps heavy, I walk to the table and flip open the cover on mine to find the ink bloomed out in blue, black, and green splotches. I run a finger over my name and smear purple sparkles across the page.
Owen comes over with a cup of hot chocolate in his hands. “I’m sorry, Rowe.”
“It’s okay.” I close the cover. “We have more journals. I can start over.” I take the mug from him and force a smile. “It’s not like I had much in there to lose.”
“I take this as one more sign that handwritten books are bad.” Tris slaps a handful of printouts onto the kitchen table. “Here are all my notes so far that we can use as reference. I’ve been copying them over at night. If we lived in pre-computer times, I’d be pissed, but as it is, this is just an inconvenience.”
