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“Well, before they come, there is something I need to do,” I said. “I have to talk to Peter. I’ve got to try to set things right between us. Now, in case the families don’t want to give me the luxury of a later.”
“Don’t you worry, Gingersnap. We will handle the families together. Right now, you get over to that boy’s house and put him out of his misery.”
“How do I know if he even still wants me?”
“An empty fifth of whiskey and a hole in the drywall told me everything I needed to know on that subject. Go on now.”
I showered and stood before my closet, pawing through all the new maternity outfits my aunts had treated me to. What color is best for apologizing to the man who caught you cheating on him? I settled on the simplest of the dresses, a white sleeveless one with a modest scoop neck and a daisy print around the waist. Nothing screams “I’m not a whore” like embroidered daisies.
Peter’s house was in Sackville. Before my pregnancy, I used to grab my bike and pedal over, but I’d already been forced to bid a temporary adieu to my faithful two-wheeled friend, and my stomach had grown another inch since then. I didn’t want to use my magic. I didn’t want to show up on his doorstep suffering from the more and more familiar sense of disorientation. Instead, I called a taxi.
I spent the ride trying to pull my words together. I couldn’t take the tack that Emmet and I hadn’t truly been together, at least physically. Peter knew better; he knew that I had cheated. In the bright light of day, I did too.
We pulled up in front of the small wood-frame house. Even though Peter only rented the place, he had recently given it a fresh coat of paint, a silvery gray color to offset the pewter shutters and door. The house stood next to a towering live oak that hung over it as if it were trying to keep its companion safe. Peter’s truck stood in the drive. I knew he’d be home today. No way would he ever go to the Tillandsia house again, not after what had happened. I doubted that either of us would ever step foot near there again. I paid the driver and got out. Then I stood there and watched as he pulled away, trying to work up my nerve to climb the steps to the door and knock.
“You gonna stand out there all day, or you coming in?” Peter called from the doorway.
“You sure you want me to?” I asked.
He walked away from the door, but left it open. I climbed the few steps and stuck my head inside. He was sitting in the beat-up easy chair he’d bought at Goodwill the day he signed a lease on this place. I stepped in and closed the door behind me, unable to read his expression because my eyes had not yet adjusted to the somber light in his living room. Almost as if I had asked the question, he reached out and flicked on a table lamp.
Dark circles carried his reddened eyes, and sparks of fiery red whiskers lined his cheeks and chin. He still wore the jeans he’d had on last night, but a different T-shirt. Last night’s shirt lay on the floor, now a bloodied ball of rag. “How’s your wound?”
“I can barely see where she stuck me.” He shifted in his seat. “Ellen does good work.”
I stepped up closer, moving into the circle of light. “Peter, I am so sorry.”
“For the injury?”
“Yes, and for everything else too.”
“Pretty convenient summary you got there.”
“I’m sorry.” I took a breath. “I’m sorry for the wound. But so much more than that. I am sorry for the hurt I’ve caused you. I am sorry I cheated on you.” He looked away from me, tears forming in his eyes. He didn’t even brush them away. “I was trying to get ahold of the magic that Emily had stored up in Tillandsia. I convinced myself that we were just performing magic. That it wasn’t physical. It wasn’t about me, and it wasn’t about Emmet. It wasn’t sex.”
“What I walked in on, it looked even more intimate than sex. The two of you seemed to be bonded together.”
My pulse raced as I thought of the union. It had felt exactly like that, and in those few moments before Emily’s evil magic had started to flow between us, it had been wonderful.
I knew if I shared this with Peter, I’d crush him. I’d lose his heart forever. “I’m sorry. I truly am. I’ll admit, not only to you but to myself, that it was an act of intimacy. That I did cheat on you.”
He leaned in toward me, his eyes imploring. “But if you needed sex, if you needed intimacy to do what you wanted with Tillandsia, why wouldn’t you come to me? And why would you want to take magic from that place anyway? I felt it, the second I walked in . . . That kind of magic isn’t right. It isn’t . . .” He paused, as he looked for the word. “Wholesome.”
I went and sat on the footstool before him. I’d answer his second question, and pray that the first went away. I could never explain to him why I’d been afraid to expose him to an unknown magic for fear that he’d discover his own true nature and become lost to me forever. “My family has been lying to you. I’ve been lying to you about Maisie. She isn’t in California.”
“I suspected something was up. Every time I asked one of you about her, I’d get the same exact information, like it had been rehearsed.” He had hit it dead on; it had been. “Where is she?”
“She’s trapped. It’s hard to explain.”
“She was practicing some bad mojo, and it got the best of her, right?”
I nodded. “Close enough. I had hoped I could use the power in Tillandsia to get her out of the trouble she’s gotten herself into.”
“But seriously”—he shook his head in amazement, and then reached up to brush the copper curls from his eyes—“you’re telling me that you and your family, you don’t have enough juju to take care of things?”
“We have been . . . forbidden from doing so by the other families. They could sense it if we used the line’s power to try to rescue Maisie. They could and most certainly would shut us down, maybe even permanently.”
“They’d better not try doing anything to you,” he said, the words almost like a reflex. I couldn’t help myself. I reached out and touched his unshaven cheek. He took my hand off his cheek, but he didn’t push it away. He held it in his own. “So you thought you could get your hands on power they couldn’t control. Get the job done yourself.”
