“Come home without fighting me, Ellie.” Prospero’s voice was remarkably close to begging. “I don’t want to threaten Hestia. She was my friend. You know that.”
“Ellie?” Maggie walked into the kitchen, Sondre behind her. “It’s okay to go back if you want. They’re letting me bring Craig and—”
“Oh?” Prospero stared at Sondre. “We are?”
“Chief Witch said, ‘Any means necessary.’ Maggie will come home as my wife if her son comes, too.” Sondre draped an arm over Maggie’s shoulders, and Ellie knew without asking this was a softer version of the plan they’d had in place.
Prospero pressed her lips together. “I still need to…”
“Erase my escape from memory?” Maggie said cheerily. “Fine. As long as I have my kid, I’ll go along with whatever you need.” She shot an apologetic look at Ellie. “This whole mess was my fault. You can stop fighting with them, Ellie. It’s this, or I lose my son, so…” Maggie shrugged like everything they’d said and done was gone.
“So they lied, but you’re fine going back to a poison-filled town—and you’re fine taking your kid there?” Ellie shook her head and walked away from all three witches in the kitchen.
Hestia looked up. “Are you quarreling with her, lovey?”
When Ellie sighed, Hestia held out a hand. Ellie took it and let her aunt pull her in close. Ellie flopped on the sofa. Then she glared at Daniel. “Scat or else.”
“I’m not your enemy,” he said, but he still stood and fled to the kitchen to join the rest of the home invaders.
“Can you love someone you can’t trust?” she whispered against her aunt’s shoulder as Hestia pulled her in as if she were a small child with a scraped knee. “I want to trust her, but I don’t know…”
“Is the thing you’re fighting over a small thing? Your mother, bless her heart, used to get upset over ridiculous things. Toilet lids up or shoes left in a tumble outside the closet. Beds unmade and toothpaste uncapped. All the little stuff was really about your father’s forgetfulness, though. He’d get absent-minded, but to her, it seemed like he expected her to tidy up after him. Whatheexpected was that he’d get to it when he got to it.”
“It’s not little stuff.”
“Ah, well…” Hestia craned her neck to look into Ellie’s eyes. “Is the sex good enough to forgive whatever it was?”
Ellie closed her eyes even as she muffled a laugh against her aunt’s shoulder. “You’re incorrigible.”
“True.” Hestia patted her absently, swaying slightly even though they were seated. “Good sex and not sharing a house were how my best relationships worked. Can’t stand a man in my bathroom or mucking up my kitchen. My space. My things.”
“I’ve missed you,” Ellie whispered.
“No one says you need to stay married,” Hestia whispered back.
And that, of course, was part of the problem. It took no effort for Prospero to alter Hestia’s mind. How was Ellie to trust someone like that?
“Ellie?” Prospero came and kneeled in front of her. “There are no options here. What if Hestia came with us? Would that help?”
“Would she be safe?”
“We figure out how to make that happen, and then bring her to live where we are,” Prospero countered. “I want to find a solution.”
Ellie closed her eyes. “No. Just siphon me already. I’m not going back. Take Maggie if she agrees, but…” She took a breath, opened her eyes, and stared directly at Prospero. “You, Crenshaw, magic, none of it is what I want. I’m sure of it. I’d rather risk death.”
“Worst breakup ever,” Daniel muttered from somewhere in the room.
Prospero said, “I wish there was another option. I have orders, though.” She glanced over her shoulder. “Daniel.”
Behind her, Ellie felt Sondre’s hands holding her still, preventing flight. Maggie started crying, and Hestia asked, “What’s going on here?”
But then Hestia was asleep, and Prospero was holding Ellie’s face in her hands, speaking softly.
Ellie felt her world shift. “You lying bitch,” she managed to say.
And that was it. Everything shifted, and Ellie couldn’t speak anymore. She pushed back, tried to hold on to reality, but Prospero’s magic was too much to resist when Monahan was there feeding her boundless magic.
Remember, Ellie. Remember,a voice ordered.
