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Mom had a sip of coffee and then said, “Well, this is a good sign.”
“A good sign?”
“You’re talking to me. And bringing me food. Does this mean you aren’t mad at me?”
I put my head on her shoulder. “Oh, I’m definitely mad at you. But I can’t yell at you before you’ve had your breakfast. It wouldn’t be fair.”
Mom rested her head on mine. I couldn’t see her face, but I could tell from the sniffing that she was working through some tears. So I just sat quietly and let her get a grip on herself, stealing a bit of cinnamon apple from her plate. Then I let her eat in silence until her plate was nearly empty.
“Better?” I asked when she had drained the last of her coffee.
“Better,” she sighed, and turned to me. “All right, then. Let me have it.”
But I couldn’t yell. She looked so tired, so defeated. Besides, I’d done all my yelling last night. “I just… I wish you would have told me.”
“I meant to,” Mom said. “But I kept putting it off. At first, I told myself it was because you were still too young. But then as time went on, I got too comfortable. With each passing year, I told myself, well, I’ve gotten away with it this long. What’s one more year? By the time you were ten, I was in full-panic mode. I knew at that point that I had run out of excuses. But when your grandmother showed up with Freya, well… I freaked out. Just as I was deciding you might be ready for the truth—or at least part of it—Asteria swept in like a tornado and whipped up every fear I had. Instead of inching the door open wider, I slammed it shut. It wasn’t right, and I’m sorry. All I can say is that I was scared.”
“Okay, fair enough, but I don’t understand what it was you were afraid of,” I said.
My mom was silent for a long moment. “Witchcraft is a complex thing. It can be beautiful and powerful. It can be healing and exhilarating and joyous and scary. It can be deep tradition, and it can be wild experimentation, and it can be all these things at once—so that you don’t know who or what you are without it. But being a witch is also like walking on a knife’s edge. It would be so easy to fall to darker intentions if you aren’t vigilant.”
“What do you mean, darker intentions?” I asked, a shiver coiled in my spine.
“I mean that wielding any kind of power can be dangerous. There is always the chance that you will slip, that it will control you rather than the other way around. Witchcraft has a dark and constant shadow, and the temptation is always there, to walk in the shadow rather than in the light.”
My exhausted brain dragged up the words I’d heard last night:And then others came, drawn by the same promise of power. Some came with good intentions, and others with dark.At the time, I’d barely absorbed them, and now as I tried to interpret them, the best I could do was drag up a line from one of my favorite childhood movies:Are you a good witch, or a bad witch?
“So… you were worried that if you told me about our family, that I might turn out to be an evil witch, or something?”
“No!” My mother’s voice was sharp, but she softened the word at once by wrapping her arm around me. “No, that’s not what I mean at all. It’s just… Sedgwick Cove has attracted witches of many traditions and backgrounds. It’s been a haven for us, a place where we knew we were safe and, later, where we were, if not always safe, at least understood. But there is much power here, and not everyone walks in the light all the time. Not everyone is good at avoiding the temptation and excitement that hides in the darkness. So, that makes Sedgwick Cove a bit more dangerous than your typical small town. That’s why we left. I couldn’t bear the thought that I’d put you in danger simply by being who I was. So I decided to leave myself behind and become someone new, someone who could keep you safe. I should have realized I couldn’t run from it forever, but at the time, I was willing to try.”
“But it wasn’t when I was a baby, like you told me,” I said. “It was later, wasn’t it?”
What little color her breakfast had put into her face drained out at once. “How do you—?”
“People keep saying it; ‘thirteen years ago.’ And I… I think I might even have a few memories of this house. It feels familiar to me. I wasn’t three months old when we left Sedgwick Cove. I was three years old, wasn’t I?”
She took a breath to steady herself, but the breath itself was so weak and fluttery that it seemed hardly to help. “Yes.”
“What happened?”
She pressed her lips together. “I don’t know.”
“Mom—”
“Truly, I don’t. This isn’t me trying to protect you again. One night, soon after you turned three years old, your grandmother was watching you while I met some friends for dinner. When I came back, she had you in your own protective circle. You were wet and sandy and smelled of the sea, and you were sound asleep. She wouldn’t tell me what happened, only that you were safe now. But I looked at her and I looked at you and I knew you weren’t safe. I packed our things and we left that night.”
“And Asteria never told you what happened?” I asked.
“No. She refused. She didn’t want to scare me, I think, but her refusal to tell me the truth scared me even more. She let us go, Wren, rather than explain to me what happened that night.”
She smiled sadly, and I felt the cold lump of my anger melt away. How could I stay mad at her for wanting to protect me? How could I blame her for loving me too much?
“But we’re here now,” I said, my voice a gentle nudge. “And thanks to Asteria’s will it seems like we need to stay—at least a little while.”
“It… it’s not just Asteria’s will anymore. After last night, it’s more than that.”
My heart began to pound. “What do you mean?”
