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“We’re in the right swamp, calm down.”
“Just saying.”
“I’m not sure you’ve looked around recently, but the trees don’t exactly come with addresses on them. And the woman we’re looking for is a very old, very gifted witch who has spent decades in this swamp keeping herself hidden from the casual observer. Tourists never find her and that’s not dumb luck. She lives inside a tree, did I mention that part?”
“I sort of assumed you were being hyperbolic.”
“I am personally offended that you think I’d be hyperbolic enough to make up a story about how I grew up inside a tree.”
“Like a Keebler elf?”
“I’m breakin
g up with you.”
Wilder beamed. It was dark enough now we had to cut the engine down to almost nothing, and as a result the sounds of the swamp grew into an almost deafening buzz over the faint chuff-chuff-chuff of the boat motor.
After about an hour of being snacked on by mosquitos, a few close encounters with curious shoreline alligators, and more than one wrong turn, I was almost read to admit I was lost. Saying it out loud would do a number on my pride, but at least Wilder was the only one here, and it was hard to have a lot of pride around someone who knew me as well as he did.
Everything on the shore had been transformed into faintly glowing outlines, and the setting sun pierced through the trees in slim orange fingers. Soon we’d be alone in the dark, and if we hadn’t found La Sorciere by then we’d be sleeping in the boat with only lifejackets for pillows. Sharing body heat didn’t sound terrible, but there was nothing appealing about the prospect of sleeping in a damp boat in the middle of a swamp.
“Can’t you call her or something?”
“On her tree phone?” I looked over my shoulder at him and he rolled his eyes.
“I meant magically. Like, put out magic feelers or something. If she’s as powerful as you say, maybe she’ll feel you and come find us.”
I pursed my lips. She would have put up safeguards against things like finding charms or other trackers, but maybe he had a point. Could I just ask her to show herself? It seemed counterintuitive, especially considering how secretive she was. But there was always a slim chance she might actually want me to locate her.
I didn’t consider La Sorciere to be a sentimental person by nature. She never saw her own children, never asked about my Grandma McQueen, her daughter who also carried the natural witch gene. I often wondered if she’d loved me at all in those years I’d spent here. She wasn’t a particularly warm woman, but she’d made sure I was fed, clothed, and sustained. She’d not only kept me alive, but helped me learn how to take control of my powers so I would no longer pose a threat to myself or others. There was something in that to consider, I don’t know, caring?
“Stop the boat for a minute,” I instructed.
He didn’t ask me why, just turned off the motor so we were sitting in silence, with the water licking the hull of the boat in a steady lap. I closed my eyes, breathing in the muddled scents of bog water, damp moss, and motor oil. It was, in a small way, not unlike the smell of Wilder himself.
This deep into the swamp there wasn’t so much a breeze as the feel of the trees and water breathing together. The small hairs at the back of my neck stood on end, the air around us whispering into my ear.
Wilder sucked in a breath.
I opened my eyes and realized my hands were glowing. It wasn’t until the moment I saw it happening that I really felt the magic moving through me. My palms were tingly, as if they’d been asleep and were just now coming back to feeling.
My hands were alight in the same yellow-green as the fireflies I used to chase through my backyard. It was a soft, pretty color, and one that didn’t spook me the way I’d been thrown for a loop by my own powers in the past. Right now I was in control. This wasn’t magic being fed by rage or fear, this was just me tapping into my natural gifts to meet a need, and it was as simple as breathing.
I lifted my hands, looking at them front and back, smiling to myself.
“That is so cool,” Wilder whispered.
“It’s magic.”
“I just forget this part of you sometimes. You’re so much the wolf to me, the Alpha, I completely forget you’re this whole other person, too.”
That he was able to forget so easily after some of the things he’d seen me do with my powers was comforting. I sometimes worried I’d step over an invisible line one day and Wilder would never be able to look at me the same way.
Right now he was staring at me like I was pure magic, and it made the tingle spread from my hands all the way through me and down to my toes.
This stupid jerk really did love me.
I thought my heart might swell to bursting in that moment. I had heard him say the words, and I’d said them back, but a little voice in the back of my head had kept telling me he didn’t really love me. That he loved the idea of me. He loved the princess, the Alpha, the pretty girl. But I’d always worried that the second he knew about the darker aspects he’d realize he didn’t love me at all and would run for the hills.
