“With a full year to look back on, how are you feeling about it? Have you been enjoying it?”
Petra smiles. “I have. It’s hard at times, don’t get me wrong, but I love it,” she says before going into stories about some of the situations she’s had to face in her first year. Daisy knows some of it, but Petra does a decent job of keeping her Premier Witch life out of their regular chit-chats.
As Petra continues to talk, Daisy’s mind wanders. She tries to remember life before her parents were sent away, but there’s not much there.
Daisy Hale hasn’t seen her parents in years, and to say she was looking forward to today would be a gross overstatement. Her insides roll with anxiety, threatening to bring up her breakfast and anything else she’s consumed in the last twelve hours.
Daisy’s good ol’ mom and pop were exiled after it was discovered they were part of a group of witches and warlocks selling dangerous potions and spells to humans. The humans took these potions and fed them to their spouses, crushes, or troubling neighbors, which led to the receivers becoming severely ill, committing heinous crimes, or sometimes even dying. Needless to say, the news that people were being “mind-controlled” created a frenzy in Leeside. As fingers were pointed back at the supernatural community, the council couldn’t risk harm to its people. Thus, any members associated with this group were exiled, stripped of their powers, and, in some cases, memory-wiped. Daisy’s parents were allowed to keep their memories, but they had not been permitted within three thousand miles of Leeside or any of its members since.
Since she was only eleven and still essentially a child, Daisy had no role in their endeavors and was placed into a foster home with another magical family in Leeside. Now, thanks to Petra and Lachlan—Petra’s husband, the demon representative on the council, and Daisy’s boss and friend—she finally gets to see her family again. They’ll have a supervised two-hour visit before her parents are sent back to wherever they’ve been since being banished.
So here she is, sitting on the bench of a picnic table in a park, with supernatural security guards standing a couple of hundred feet away, running the string on her hoodie through her fingers, hoping the repetitive motion will bring some sense of calm to her mind before she sees her parents for the first time in twenty years.
Spoiler: it’s not working.
The tension running through her body creates tightness in her chest and tingling in her toes. Her emotions fluctuate between excitement at being reunited and outright fear—because what do you say after so long apart with no contact? How do you even try and act like you know each other?
As the tension shifts back to fear, her leg bounces, vibrating the bench. Daisy hears leaves crunch in the distance and looks up to see her parents, Norma and Levi, striding toward her. Their paces quicken into a slow jog, then a full-on run. Daisy stands, her head rushing as she’s suddenly overwhelmed and unsure of how she should be reacting. Should she be excited to see them after so long? Angry for having spent over half of her life without them? Or relieved that they appear to be well?
By the time they reach her, with her arms outstretched, Daisy is a mess of tears and snot. Her mother wipes Daisy’s tears away, helping her to see more clearly. Norma looks as overwhelmed as Daisy feels. Her father, ever the stoic, has a single tear running down his cheek, though his nose is rosy as if he is fighting back the urge to weep openly.
“My, how you have grown,” Norma says through tears and sniffles.
“One would expect that to happen,” Daisy jokes, soaking in the feeling of her mother’s hands on her skin and the scent of jasmine as she buries her face in Norma’s shoulder while hugging her.
“You clearly haven’t lost your sense of humor,” Levi says, stroking Daisy’s hair from the side.
Norma and Daisy finally separate, holding each other at arm’s length as they take each other in. Her mother has aged; whether it’s more than would be expected, Daisy can’t say. But she can see the wear of twenty years on her face in the fine lines and added wrinkles. The slight sagginess in her face adds to the mark of years spent away. Daisy turns and gazes at her father, noting his thinner hair, wrinkled hands, and extra hair that has appeared in his ears. All of it is a stark reminder to Daisy of how much time they have missed with each other.
Norma pulls out a packet of tissues from her pocket, hands a piece to Daisy, and takes one for herself. They wipe tears from their faces, mirroring each other’s movements, and laugh softly. Levi sits on the other side of the picnic table, tucking his legs underneath and resting his forearms on top, his hands clasped together. He looks serious. As though he thinks this is a business meeting rather than a reunion with his only daughter after decades of not being able to see or contact each other.
Daisy’s senses are on high alert, as she sits beside Norma, opposite her father.
He takes a deep breath and looks to her mother, who gives a slight nod, giving him permission to say what comes next. “We want you to come back with us.”
There it is.
At a loss for words, Daisy stumbles over her reply. “I… I…” She steals a look at her mother and sees love and longing staring back at her. “I can’t. I live here. I have a life here.”
“What kind of life? Is it a happy one?” her father asks.
“I’m… content.”
“Content is not happy. Are you respected within the community? Or have you been shunned for the past two decades?” he pushes. Daisy’s eyes narrow. He speaks as if they have been watching her from a distance. But how would they ever know? They made choices and left her to fend for herself. “Don’t look so surprised. We may have been exiled, but we have kept tabs on you. You put on a brave face, but we see how unhappy you are.”
Daisy’s mood shifts to anger, her power sparking under her skin. How dare he—no, they—have the audacity to pull this kind of shit after all that they’ve done. How dare they ruin what was supposed to be a pleasant opportunity to reconnect. The spark inside refuses to let her be the meek child she was; instead, it pushes her forward, giving her the strength to stand up for herself.
“You have no right to sit here and talk to me this way,” Daisy says, and cuts her father off when he tries to interject. “No. You don’t get to come here after all this time and shit on my life. The life I have had to live because of your transgressions.” Her magic fires with her anger, violet tendrils launching from her hand before she can prevent it, setting a small bush nearby on fire. The demon bodyguard standing nearby snuffs it out with his own power, covering it in darkness. She’s never been an overly powerful witch with the greatest control of her power—she has enough to get by and use it in her day-to-day life—but when her emotions run high, unfortunately, so do her misfires. She mouths sorry to the bodyguard before turning back toward her mother.
“That’s why we want you to come with us. We can be together again. As a family,” Norma says, placing her hands on top of Daisy’s.
“Even if I could, it wouldn’t be that easy.”
“You have pull with the council now. I’m sure you could talk them into allowing you to join us,” Levi says. Daisy shakes her head in disbelief. Her hands roam over her face, frustration and disappointment building inside her. She has waited so long for the chance to see her parents again, and rather than rejoice in this opportunity, they want her to abuse her friendship with her best friend. “While we are deeply sorry to have contributed to any stress in your life, you know that town will never fully accept you. If they haven’t done so yet, they won’t in the future.”
“Seriously, why do you think talking down about the people I live with and the community that rallied around me to support me after you were exiled is the smart play here?” Daisy snaps back, catching his flinch at her words. They don’t need to know that the rally was more of a single person at the finish line, but the point remains.
“I’m sorry. I see this opportunity for us to be together and can’t stand you returning to a town that will never love you like we do.”
