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“That was a really adult decision.”
She rolled her eyes.
“I’m serious, Lulu. I mean, not just avoiding magic altogether—the teetotaler’s approach—but putting space between you and your mother. The easy thing would have been ignoring the risk—pretending everything was fine. Instead, you did something hard in order to protect yourselves and everyone else.”
Her cheeks went faintly pink. “Yeah, well. Now she’s gone.”
The statement broke some kind of dam, because the ugly crying began for real.
“Crap,” I said. I moved over and wrapped Lulu up. “Sorry for whatever I just prompted, but let it out if you need to.”
“My mom got caught up with dark magic, but I think she was trying to do the right thing. And now she’s gone.”
“She’s coming back,” I said, fighting my own tears, because shewascoming back, and I’d damn well see to it. “I swear to you on all that’s good and holy, including my OK Kiddo stuff—which my mother nearly showed to Connor, by the way.”
She perked up, wiped her eyes. “Wait, what? She did?”
“Yes, and it was mortifying, and that was the last time I saw my mom or my dad, and that will not be my last memory of them. It willabso-fucking-lutelynot be. We’re going to get them back,” I said again, as if repeating the words could manifest the result.
I let her go and wiped my own eyes. “Why didn’t you tell me? I wouldn’t have cared one way or the other.”
“Because it’s better if you don’t know. It’s better for everyone if no one knows. Because that way, I can’t be used against someone.”
It took me a moment to fully understand what she meant. “You think someone would use you as a weapon.” It was a total rearranging of my world. Of everything I knew, had been told, about Lulu, her relationship to magic, and her relationship to her parents.
“No slip-ups,” she said. “No mistakes.”
“And the fairies?” I asked.
“I was wrong about Claudia. I was scared and I was angry.”
“Downside of avoiding using your magic,” I said. “You aren’t trained to control it. At least, not as an adult.”
“Yeah, well. Hard to tell your mother, a dark magic addict, that you want to learn how to get better at it.”
“I imagine it would be, yeah.”
A flush colored Lulu’s cheeks.
“You’ve told someone else,” I said. And someone she was faintly embarrassed about. “You told... Alexei.”
She cleared her throat. “He was harassing me. I told him so he’d leave me alone.”
“Or you told him because you needed someone to tell, and you trusted him.” I said the words kindly, as I knew her telling him wasn’t a slight against me. Connor, after all, knew about the monster. Ugly truths had to be carefully shared. “I don’t like to ask, but—”
“You can tell Connor,” she said. “And the Ombuds.” She rubbed her eyes again. “If I’m going to help with the work, they’ll all need to know.”
I glanced back at the books. “Have you found anything so far?”
“Some,” she said, “but most of it general. I’ve been researching the process of sealing a demon. The steps, the material, the magic.”
“Good, that’s good. We don’t have anything yet about the actual mechanics of the process. So anything you can find would be great. That way, when we find her sigil, we’ll be ready.”
“Yeah,” she said. “We’ll be ready.”
We sat for a few minutes in silence, adjusting to our new selves. “The magic you described,” I began. “None of it sounded evil.”
She pushed her hair behind her ears. “I mean, that’s the complicated part. Dark magic isn’t, like, inherently evil. It’s just part of the universe of magic. It’s old magic, and yeah, it can be used for very bad things. Evil things. That’s where the problems arise.”
