Three deep breaths later and Katherine’s mind had cleared enough for her to make her way across the room. She sat across from Lily and picked up a spare fork, gesturing to the cake. “May I?”
Lily nodded. Katherine took a bite, the lingering stress turning the cake tasteless on her tongue.
“Sylvia will be ready to drive you down to Oak Grove in a few minutes,” Katherine said. Lily nodded, but she didn’t look up from her plate.
“You had a call with George earlier, right?” George was the head teacher at Oak Grove, a friendly older witch who made sure every one of his charges left the camp knowing how to knit a sweater that was far too warm to ever wear in Los Angeles. Lily nodded again. “He’s nice. He’s going to take good care of you.”
“Yeah.” The cake had been reduced to crumbs, which Lily pushed across the plate with her fork. Katherine reached over to Lily, brushinga lock of hair behind her ear. Lily looked up at her. There were tears in the corners of her eyes.
“This isn’t the end, Lily. It’s just the beginning.”
Lily surged toward her, pulling Katherine into a tight hug. Katherine held her close until she was ready to let go.
Once she was freed, Katherine reached into her pocket and pulled out her phone, then AirDropped her contact information to the new cell phone that Fiona had picked up for Lily that afternoon. “There,” she said. “Now you have my number. Call or text anytime, okay?”
Lily nodded and smiled as Sylvia walked out of her office. “Ready to go?”
Lily took a shaky breath as she stood, picking up the backpack of clothes and toiletries Katherine had put together and throwing it over her shoulder. She waved at Fiona and Tess, then turned back to Katherine again.
“A beginning,” she said, before following Sylvia out the door.
CHAPTER TEN
Lily was very grateful for the hangnail on her left pointer finger.
Staring at the hangnail gave her something to look at other than the only city she’d ever known, streaming by her window again for what might well be the last time. No matter what Katherine said, she didn’t believe that she’d ever be able to safely be around this many people again. Not with this power banging on the walls of her mind, demanding to be let out.
Staring at the hangnail gave her something to occupy herself with other than thoughts of her brother, sitting in a hospital bed, hating her. Her whole family had to hate her now. She was violent. Unstable. Unlovable.
She pulled at the bit of skin, relishing the stinging pain as it ripped away.
Sylvia had the air-conditioning in her BMW blasting. Lily’s parents would never run the A/C like this—her dad would call it a waste of money, and her mom would say they could use that money to run their A/C at home where there wasn’t a free fan right outside. Lily wondered if Sylvia’s car even ran on gas. It was probably another spell. Everything with these people was a spell.
None of it was necessary. And all of it came at such a high cost.
Lily decided in that moment that she hated magic. All of the books she’d read as a kid sold magic as a cure-all, something to make life easier, but all it seemed to do for these people was make things harder. She didn’t want to be someone who was willing to bleed to save a few bucks.
She hadn’t realized how much she valued her body, how unwilling she was to mutilate it at the service of this power. So she hated her nose, and the fat that had appeared on her hips after she got her first period, and the way her shoulders looked in tank tops. But none of that mattered, because it washers. She wished she’d realized that, before all of this. She wished she’d appreciated it more.
Even if she gave up her magic after she settled, she was stuck here for years, in this world where the morals were so skewed. She didn’t see how she could go through this and come out as herself on the other side. She would be some other Lily, a stranger from a different world.
With the hangnail gone, Lily couldn’t help but flick her gaze to the window. They were on Hollywood Boulevard, surrounded by people in Halloween costumes. Lily and her friends had planned on dressing up as the witches fromHocus Pocus. The irony of that was not lost on Lily.
That felt like another life. Now, she was trapped in this car, permanently separated from the people outside. Other, taken away from mainstream society and put into her own small box, where she’d never be able to be normal and free again.
“This must be hard for you.” It was the first time Sylvia had talked in the forty minutes it had taken them to get here. She tapped her fingers against the steering wheel as they waited in traffic.
Lily wasn’t inclined to engage in pointless small talk at the moment. “Must be.”
Sylvia laughed at that, a melodic chuckle. “Sorry. Empty platitudes aren’t what you need right now.”
Sylvia turned to Lily, the planes of her face shining red from the lights around them. “I know it’s hard to leave your family. I know this whole situation is… unsettling, for lack of a better word. But it’ll be okay.”
“People keep saying that.” Lily pulled out the string of beads from Katherine’s car and wrapped it around her fingers. She was not going to cry about this. Not again. “But I don’t see how. I don’t see how I’ll get to see my family ever again.”
“If you want to see them, you’ll find a way.”
“Katherine didn’t. That guy I met, Casey, he didn’t. Unsettled witches don’t get to see their families anymore. Tell me I’m wrong.”
