She opened the door as I got out of my car, beaming at me.
“Danica. I was just thinking about you.”
I couldn’t help but smile. There was something disarming about Selina’s friendliness. I relaxed fully in her presence, which was something I didn’t do around most people.
“How do you look so good all the time?” I asked. She was wearing a turquoise dress with purple flowers dotted across it, dangly earrings which almost brushed her shoulders, and her hair was in a simple messy bun. Her dark skin glowed, and her feet were bare— toenails painted a bright coral.
She reached out to hug me as I made it to her front door. “I’ll take the compliment. Come in.”
Selina turned and gestured for me to follow her inside. She bypassed the stairs and instead chose the kitchen. I took a seat at the counter and frowned. Selina hadn’t just been thinking of me, she’d obviously known I was coming.
She poured me a glass of sweet tea and offered me a plate. “Help yourself.”
“You didn’t need to do this.”
“Something told me you hadn’t eaten lunch.” She took her own plate and we both loaded up on fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and green beans.
“You need my help.”
I gave her a hard stare. “You know it’s really annoying when you do that.”
She burst out laughing. “Give a witch some credit. You look exhausted, and you’re attacking that food like you’ve never eaten before. You have a grim look about you, Danica. What happened?”
I filled her in, starting with the way I’d threatened Gary. She waved her hand. “He obviously forgave you if he asked you to take care of his boys.”
I shook my head, reaching for my tea. “He had no choice.”
“He could’ve asked you to take them somewhere else. The very power that scared him also gave him the certainty that you’d keep his children safe.”
“Mmmm.”
Selina shook her head at me, her long earrings dancing. “You’re having control issues.”
“Yeah. When I first realized I had this power, I didn’t want it. As soon as I find whoever killed my mom, I’m out of here, and this amount of power is wasted on me, you know? And then I realized I could use it to help me search, and to protect me along the way, and I started thinking ‘hey, maybe it’s not that bad after all.’” I used my finger to draw a star on the condensation forming on my glass. “But I don’t want to be this person.”
“You don’t want to be feared for your power.”
I nodded.
“When I was a kid, no one knew I had any power,” she said.
I angled my head. “I can believe that.” Even now, Selina kept her power tucked away so tightly that I couldn’t sense if she was a gray witch, or wholly white. I occasionally got a glimpse of a deep well of power, but only if I was paying attention.
“My power manifested young, but it wasn’t celebrated. My mother had fallen in love with my father at a young age. She was black, he was white. She was a witch, he was a human. Their differences were stark, but they had a deep love for each other. Unfortunately, while I still have a deep respect for my father, I can recognize that his ignorance around power did no one any good.
“He’d insisted that my mother break from her coven. We weren’t living with them, but he didn’t approve of her visiting, even weekly. Once she left, he made it clear that he was completely disgusted by magic. Any urge she had to use her power was met with disdain and revulsion.”
“I can’t imagine how hard that must have been.”
Selina nodded. “My mother was a powerful witch. To her, using that power was as natural as breathing. When I was born, she couldn’t feel any spark of power within me. For a while she mourned, wondering if her insistence on never using magic while she was pregnant had magically crippled me. After a few years, she had decided it was a gift. She had moved far from her coven, and we lived in a human neighborhood, close to where my father worked. Everything was great. For a while.”
Selina swallowed, briefly closing her eyes. “My mother was a smart woman, but she was young. Her parents had been abusive— her father an alcoholic, and when she met my father, she’d fallen so deeply in love that she’d lost all reason. When he decided I would be sent to a human school, she didn’t object. After all, it seemed likely that I had no power.”
My lips went numb. “But you did.”
“Yes. I was small, shy, and one of the few mixed kids in my neighborhood. I was confused, torn between different worlds— my father was a human, my mother was a witch. My father was white, my mother was black. Every question I had about magic went unanswered. Every concern I had was swept under the rug. By the time I went to school, I felt like I didn’t belong anywhere.”
“Let me guess, the little psychopaths made it worse.”
