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“Jesse okay?” she asked after we’d relaxed long enough for her patience to wear thin.
“He is.”
“The girls?”
“Good, too.”
“Work?” Her tone was identical to the first questions, but I saw her hands tighten around her cup.
“It’s good, Mama.” I reached out and took her hand. “I’m safe. Careful. I have Eli helping, too.”
I didn’t feel compelled to mention that I’d rejected Eli’s help for months, or that it was just recently that I gave in. There were things best not said, and any version of what she’d hear as “I’ve been being reckless” was always on that list. In this, Sera and my mother saw eye-to-eye.
“Eli? The bartender?”
“Bar owner,” I corrected. “He’s strong.”
My mother nodded, and I would typically leave it at that, but I couldn’t ask more if I didn’t come clean. She was the only person other than Eli who knew of otherworldly things. Witches weren’t exactly common, and everyone said that the true fae were all tucked away in Elphame.
“He’s half-fae,” I whispered.
Mama Lauren made that humming noise in her throat. “He is?”
I nodded. “I’ve needed him to help because . . . my magic is off.”
My mother leaned back in her seat and smiled at me with the same look that she gave her prize vegetable or moonshine. “Well, then. It’s about time!Eliexplains why your magic is off, doesn’t it?”
“Eli’s ancestry?”
“No, dear. The feelings you have for him.” She walked over to a short citrus tree, plucked a hybrid fruit of some sort. She stood staring at the fields and holding this bright pink thing that was lime-sized. Her back was to me, and I felt that she’d just used some sort of magic.
“Mama?”
She tossed the remains of her tea into the garden and refilled both of our glasses with moonshine. She looked at me. “I’m guessing you’re feeling erratic? Magic surges? Waking up corpses by accident?”
“Yes.”
“Mmm.” Mama Lauren tore the rind off the fruit and squeezed the pulp into my glass of liquor. “This calls for being a little tipsy.” Then she lifted hers and said, “To secrets unveiled. Goddess have mercy.”
I drained my glass, and she did the same.
“Baby girl, you’re going to be upset with me, but” —she looked away for a moment, cleared her throat, and met my gaze again as she announced—“hear me out. I made a bargain. It was the only way to keep you safe when you were younger.”
I refilled my glass and dropped the rest of the weird pink fruit into it. “What sort of bargain?”
“I tamped your magic down until you found a real partner,” she said shakily, not looking at me as she spoke. “I meant to tell you, and eventually, I would have. You know that . . . but you said you weren’t dating. I ask Jesse’s parents every time I see them. I used to think it would be him, you know? Close as you two were? I was afraid I’d done all that only to have you find your intended as a teenager. Most people never find their perfect mate, Gen.”
“My perfect . . .Eli?” I was careful as I explained, “We’re friends.”
She smiled.
And I laughed. Despite the sheer exhaustion of my mother’s overprotectiveness, I could still laugh at the idea of Eli and I as perfect mates. We were something, but perfect? I could never give him what he’d need. I wasn’t that person. I never would be.
The thought, though, of having Eli in a permanent way did weird things to my heart.
I looked at my mother and explained, “We might be compatible in bed—although I don’t know because I haven’t gone there—but he’s half-fae, Mama. He’ll want children. Hehasto have at least one child of his blood.”
“You might be able—”
