I made a face. “I hate that you’re good at this.”
“I had a lot of practice,” he said simply. “Wolf senses. Plus, I listen when you mutter to the teapot.”
“Traitor,” I muttered.
His hand brushed mine under the table, just for a moment. Just long enough to sayI’m herewithout words.
“She can still be safe here,” he said. “Safer than some places. The Wards love you. The cottage is anchored six ways from Sunday. Your mother could apparently arm-wrestle the priestess in a warding contest. Nova, Stella, Ardetia, they’re all watching. And I’m not going anywhere.”
My throat tightened. “I don’t want her to be bait,” I whispered. “I don’t want my grandmother, or Gideon, to use her to get to me again. I—“ The memory of Celeste’s face asShadowick rose up to draw her in, raw and too bright. “I can’t do that again.”
His hand turned under mine, fingers curling, offering. I let my palm rest against his.
“You won’t,” he said. “You’ve learned since then. We all have. And Celeste isn’t helpless.”
“She’s nineteen,” I said. “She oscillates between brilliant and occasionally forgetting that water can boil over the pot. The last time she was here, everything went sideways. She barely got out of Gideon’s path.”
“And she chose to go back to classes anyway,” he said. “She didn’t stay and hide. That counts for something. And since when have you excelled at boiling water?”
“Very funny.” The knot in my chest loosened a little, but not much. “You’re awfully calm about inviting more people into the mess.”
“I’m not calm,” he said. “I’m just… resolved. We can’t freeze our lives until the curse is over. If we wait for a perfectly safe moment, you’ll never see her.”
That landed like a stone.
“If the roles were reversed,” he went on, eyes on our joined hands, “and my mother were over there”—he jerked his chin toward the couch where the Silver Wolf had saved him weeks before—“relearning her magic, and I knew I could come home, but she didn’t ask me… I’d come anyway. And I’d be a little angry over getting no invite.”
“You’re saying Celeste might show up even if I don’t invite her.”
“I’m saying she loves you,” he said. “And she knows enough to suspect when you’re hiding something for her own good, and that could put her in more peril.”
I sagged back in my chair, the fight bleeding out. He had a point. A miserable, correct point.
“What if it’s the wrong call?” I asked. “What if she comes and my grandmother decides to send a storm just to make a point, and I can’t stop it? What if Gideon uses the joining circle to pull something I can’t see, and she’s standing right there?”
“What if she doesn’t come,” Keegan countered gently, “and you win, and she’s not here to see the world you saved?”
Silence stretched between us, filled with crackling fire and the faint clink of my mother putting mugs away.
I stared at the phone, the little waves of anxiety radiating out like ripples. Celeste’s contact photo smiled up at me—a candid shot Skye had taken last fall, my daughter mid-laugh, hair wild, eyes bright, fingers stained with pumpkin guts. She looked like she belonged to a world where the worst thing that happened in a day was a midterm or a friend’s drama.
But she also belonged here. To Stonewick. To this strange, magical legacy I’d only just started to claim. To Elira. To the line my grandmother and the priestess and I were all currently arguing over.
“Fine,” I said. “I’ll text her.”
Keegan’s hand squeezed mine. “I’ll be right here.”
I took a breath. Flipped the phone over. Opened the message thread.
Hey bug,I typed, then deleted bug because she’d told me last winter that it made her feel like a Pokémon.
Hey love,I tried again.How are classes?
Three dots appeared almost immediately.
hi mom!! Classes are a lot, but one of my professors quotes Kierkegaard in a way that makes me want to drop out, but other than that, it’s fine.
I smiled despite myself. Classic Celeste.
