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An icy shiver ran down my back. I hadn’t even known how hard she’d worked to control my life back when I was a teenager. I’d thought she’d eased off when we arrived in Portland, but clearly that wasn’t completelytrue.
So maybe a better question right now was, a magicking to use on whom? And what were the chances itwasn’tme?
Chapter Six
Rose
Igrimaced, bracing my elbows against the top of the picnic table on the Bluebell Café’s back patio. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be coming to you with this. But you’re the only people I could come to that my stepmother has no influenceover.”
“It’s fine, Rose,” Kyler said. “Of course we want to help, any way wecan.”
He, Seth, and Jin were sitting around the table in much the same positions we’d all taken that first reunion. But the tone of this get-together felt much more serious. And I was pretty sure Damon wasn’t joining us even for a brief appearance. He hadn’t bothered to answer mytext.
“It could have nothing to do with you, or your fiancé, or your father, right?” Jin said in a soothing voice. “Maybe she wants to, I don’t know, bind the drapes or the hedges or something. She wouldn’t really tie one of you up,right?”
I wet my lips. I was already skirting the line of what I should and shouldn’t tell these guys. But Celestine’s magic had bound them once, if only in a literal sense for a minute or two. They knew she hadpower.
“Maybe,” I said. “But I think she’d know how to do something that simple on her own. This sounded like it has to be a more complicated… scheme. More of a metaphorical binding? Or she wouldn’t need outsideadvice.”
“If you don’t think you’re safe there, Rose—” Seth started, and then hesitated. Because what could he suggest? That I run off to their house and hide away there? Leave my father and Derek wondering where the hell I was? If my stepmother meant me harm, trying to hide wasn’t going to work. She could track me down with her magic if it came to that. She’d reminded me of that justyesterday.
“I hope I’m just being paranoid,” I said. “It just was too much to try to think through on myown.”
Philomena was hovering behind the twins, her expression more solemn than usual too. Even she could tell this wasn’t the situation for jokes. And as much as I liked to pretend, I wasn’treallyany less alone with hercompany.
“What would you like us to do?” Jinsaid.
I dragged in a breath. “Nothing—nothing big. But she was talking to James Cortland, who lives in that property on the edge of town? If you could just… happen to swing by there, whenever it’s not too inconvenient, to keep an eye on what he’s doing. And keep an ear out for anyone talking about what he’s doing. If you see my stepmother visiting him or get the idea he’s up to anything that seems strange, even if it’s small, just text me. I can take things fromthere.”
“That sounds easy enough,” Kyler said. “I can set up some spiders to watch for any online activity too. We’ll keepwatch.”
Seth and Jin nodded too. I smiled at them, but the gesture felt weak. “Thank you. So much. I wish I didn’t have to ask you foranything.”
“Hey,” Seth said firmly. “Ky is right. We’re happy to be here foryou.”
We all got up. The guys headed back to the hardware store’s back entrance. Philomena sashayed closer to me as I ducked through thecafé.
“Three heroes, all looking out for you,” she said, attempting a cheerful tone. “You’ve come a long way from the Portlandwallflower.”
“It’s not like that,” I said. But it wasn’t her comment that had brought an ache into my chest. I crossed my arms, rubbing them in the April damp outside. The churn of gray clouds overhead suggested it was going to rain againsoon.
There wasn’t meant to be only four of us. The ache was the hollowness of something missing. Someone. Damon had drifted away. Gabriel was who-knew-where.
It was Gabriel we really needed. Gabriel would know how to make any challenge feel conquerable. He’d smooth whatever chip Damon had on his shoulder with a few perfectly modulated remarks and the unshakeable confidence he’d brought toeverything.
But we didn’t have him, and I had no way to reach him, not with my spark unlit. When we’d been forced to part ways, when the boys had given me those woven ribbons, I’d given them a gift too. Pages torn from the book that had been my childhood favorite,The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Pages I’d thought would keep me connected to them in some way. But not with no magic at my disposal. I scowled at the concretesidewalk.
When I reached the estate, Meredith was out in the front yard, talking to one of the garage staff. Maybe the man who’d taken Mr. Lorde’s place. My lungs tightened for a totally different reason. I still had one very important question to ask our estatemanager.
I dawdled by the front garden until Meredith finished her conversation. She started toward the manor, and I moved to intercept her. She stopped before I reached her, folding her worn hands in front ofher.
“Rose,” she said. “You look like you need something fromme.”
Her smooth face was as calm as always. My gaze twitched to one side and then the other to make sure no one else was close enough to hear our conversation. “Meredith, I want to know—right after we left here, eleven years ago, you were instructed to fire certain members of the staff. Who gave you those orders—who picked thenames?”
The manager’s thin eyebrows arched. The wind ruffled the white and gray strands of her hair. “Your father told me as he was packing up that we’d need to reduce staff. But the list of names, those I was specifically requested to let go, those came from your stepmother. I assumed with hisapproval.”
One of the knots in my stomach released. It hadn’t been Dad then. Celestine had wormed her way in there too, carried out her bizarre vengeance without him realizing. But the pain in my chest sharpened at the sametime.
