“Creepy,” Rose murmurs.
“Oh, stop it.”Ivy swats at her sister.“It’s fine.It’s just the compulsion spell.”
“Yeah, and it’s creepy as hell,” Posey adds.
“It is necessary.We need everyone to have taken the potion.”She glares at Posey, then Rose, who holds her hands up in mock surrender.“It will protect them,andit adds power to the whole thing.”She exhales noisily in frustration.“You already know this, I don’t know why I’m bothering to explain it again.”
I nudge her with my shoulder.“Because we’re nervous.”
“I’m not nervous,” she yells.
Right.
Rose gives me a meaningful look.
“She’s never nervous.”Posey laces her fingers together and stretches them out in front of her, then stoops to pick up the weird little gadget she made.“Let’s get this show on the road.”
“Literally,” Rose says.
The three Romantic sisters look at me.“Ready?”
I raise my chin and take a deep breath, Prudence winding around my ankles.
“I’m ready.”
I kind of have to be ready, at this point.
It’s now or never.I rub my hands together, hope blossoming when Aiden makes eye contact with me through the crowd.
“Let’s banish us some ghosts.”
21
Aiden
“Iwant to make a drinking the Kool-Aid joke, but it doesn’t feel like now’s the right time,” I tell Jack.
He gives me an exasperated look, one Em and I are both intimately familiar with, and I laugh, drinking my own Fire Cider potion.
“Bottoms up,” he says, and with that, we’ve both, well, drunk the not-Kool-Aid potion.
Around us, everyone is talking and laughing normally, and there’s a festive mood that fits with the sunshine-y, cool fall morning.The witch hats and brooms are a fun touch, and Em’s playing a mix of Halloween music that several people are dancing along to.
There’s no sign of anything truly magical, no sign of the horrifying ghost presence that’s been driving my girlfriend to tears, no sign of anything but a community of people from all walks of life brought together to celebrate the changing seasons.
Small though that change still is in Texas.
“Do you get used to it?”I ask Jack, and he doesn’t need to clarify what it is I’m asking.
“More than get used to it.”A thoughtful, happy expression lights up his face, and I see the moment plainly when his gaze lands on his wife.“It’s… unbelievable and incredible all at once.She adds magic to every moment.”A self-deprecating chuckle comes out after that.“That was an unintentional pun.Em goes through the world differently than I do, differently than anyone I know—and for a long time I thought that meant the way she lived wasn’t… good enough.”
My eyebrows rocket up, because that’s an admission that catches me by surprise.I mean, I’ve known Jack for years, so I’m well aware of just how far he’s come since his corporate days.I just didn’t know he was aware of it, too.
“It’s partially her, of course.”He shoots me a half-smile before continuing.“But it’s also just… knowing there’s something else out there, you know?That she has magic in a literal sense somehow doesn’t surprise me at all, after what I’ve seen in the past few years… but she’s always been magic to me.”
It’s a surprisingly poignant admission from Jack, who is one of the most buttoned-up people I’ve ever met.
I clap him on the shoulder.“I’m happy for you two.”
