Page 82 of That Ain’t Witchcraft

“Thank you,” I said, and the room was silent.

The wards on the boathouse were good enough to keep Bethany from finding me, but there weren’t any seats, and the air was already getting cold. We couldn’t stay out there forever, no matter how convenient it might have been. In the end, the best solution was for Sam to swing me over his shoulder, shift into fūri form, and cross the yard at a speed some motorcycles couldn’t match.

By the time we hit the porch, the wind had been knocked out of me from jouncing up and down, my hair was a wind-swept disaster, and I wanted nothing more than to go for another run. When Sam dropped me back to my feet, I was grinning broadly. He raised an eyebrow.

“You are so weird.”

“Nice way to talk to your girlfriend, monkey-boy.” I took a step away from the door, putting myself more firmly in the kitchen, and patted my pocket to be sure that the spirit jar hadn’t been dislodged. Cylia, Fern, and James were trudging across the lawn toward the door, all of them looking solemn and more than a little dispirited. What we were doing … it was big, it was stupid, it was relatively untested, and it was likely to get one or more of us killed. At the very least, it was going to get James stabbed, and while I knew I was telling the truth when I said I was only planning to stab him a little bit, he didn’t know that. Not for sure.

“Speaking of talking …” I said, and took a deep breath. “I need to talk to James. Alone.”

Sam blinked at me, nonplussed. “Mind if I ask why?”

“His father was here,” I said. “While you were getting the ritual circle ready. I learned a few things, and James needs to know them, but they’re … they should be private. I shouldn’t know them.”

“Family secrets,” said Sam. “Yeah, I can understand those.”

“I figured that might be the case.”

“Yeah. I mean, my family has plenty. I just …” He shook his head. “Is it always going to be like this? Are we always going to be just … just lurching from one disaster to the next, like some sort of fucked-up horror franchise in slow motion?”

“Maybe,” I said. It felt like a great admission, like I was betraying myself and my family in a single word. “I mean, I do stuff. I’ve gone months without anyone or anything trying to kill me. We have fun. We have lives. My sister had time to go on a reality dance competition, and my brother flies to Australia twice a year. But still, maybe. I sort of have an addiction to wandering past the warning signs in order to poke the potentially dangerous things with a stick. Is that a problem?”

“I don’t know.” Sam shook his head. “I want to say it isn’t. I want to say this isn’t exhausting. But it sort of is exhausting, you know? It shouldn’t have to be you all the time.”

“It isn’t,” I assured him. “It’s just that this sort of thing happens a lot more often than anyone realizes. There’s not a chosen one. There never was. There’s just people, all over the world, trying their best to make sure the sun comes up tomorrow. We do the job because we know the job exists, and once you know the job exists, it’s hard to pretend it doesn’t matter. Does that make sense?”

“Yeah,” said Sam, his tail sliding around my waist and pulling me closer as he spoke. I went without resistance. “I guess it does.”

“Is that okay with you?”

“I don’t know, but I’m going to find out.”

He leaned down and kissed me. He was still kissing me when the others reached the back door. Fern giggled.

“Oh, my sweet Lady Luck, can you people get a room?” asked Cylia. “Should you be making out with the monkey while you have your babysitter in your pocket? Because I’m not human, but that feels wrong to me.”

“We have a room,” said Sam, breaking away in order to turn and smirk at her. “It’s upstairs, remember? I just figured you wouldn’t want us running off when there’s work to do.”

James looked back at the boathouse through the open back door. Then he grasped the knob and pulled it shut, bowing his head, not looking at any of us.

“We’re actually doing this,” he said. “This is actually going to happen.”

“Tonight,” I said. I stepped away from Sam. He unwound his tail, letting me move freely. “Are you ready?”

James laughed. The sound was thin and strained, the laughter of a man who didn’t know what else to do. “Does it matter? This is happening. This has been happening for my entire life and longer. Someone has to do it.”

I glanced at Sam. His expression was grim. He was hearing the same thing I was, the echoes of our earlier conversation spreading through the room from other sources, from lips other than my own.

“When a thing is right, and you know you have the power to do it, backing down is wrong,” I said, and touched the spirit jar in my pocket. It was cold against my fingers, colder than it had any right to be, chilled by the circling spirit of a teenage girl who had never been given the chance to grow up. “Can I talk to you? Alone?”

James gave me a startled look. “I—why?”

“I’ll explain upstairs.”

Sam waved. “If you’re worried about that head-twisting thing I mentioned before, it’s cool. I’m not in a decapitating mood.”

“All right,” said James warily. “Annie, lead the way.”