“Love is a goal most people have, Miss Brandeau.” Prospero shifted Ellie slightly, so she could cause a door to sweep open.
Ellie burrowed her face against Prospero’s throat.Lavender and vanilla.She brushed a kiss onto her skin. “Do you?”
Prospero said nothing as she lowered Ellie to a bed. She said nothing as she pulled a sheet and duvet up over Ellie. She said nothing as she looked down at her.
Already half asleep, Ellie caught her hand. “Do you?”
“What I want is immaterial,” Prospero said. “I will do anything to save my home.”
“But youlikeme,” Ellie said. “I bet I’m not the only one thinking about that kiss.”
Prospero looked guilty for a moment. “I apologize for that, Miss Brandeau. I was impatient with you, and… I shouldn’t have come there or kissed you.”
“I can’t pass out if I’m already in bed,” Ellie said, rather sensibly.
Panic flashed on Prospero’s face as Ellie pulled her down, but this time there were no electric currents or fluttering hearts. Just a brush of lips too quick to even be an open-mouthed kiss.
Prospero pulled away quickly. “For now, Miss Brandeau, rest well. After you nap, we will try to save the world.”
Then she was gone, and Ellie let sleep claim her.
14Ellie
Ellie looked around the room. She was in a four-poster bed; overhead was a white canopy with what appeared to be tiny flowers stitched on it. Ellie fingered the matching bedspread. The flowers on it were lilac thread. The room itself was tiny, not much more than closet sized really. A washstand with a bowl of water sat to the left. A wardrobe with spirals and vines carved into the trim was to the right. A doorway led to a bathroom, and the partly open door revealed a massive black tub.
Curious, Ellie pulled open the wardrobe to see Prospero’s clothes hanging there. “She gave me her room.”
A smile came over her. The witch who had brought her here had deposited Ellie not in a guest room but in her own bed. Maybe it was a small gesture, but it made Ellie feel warm inside. She flipped past a number of rather austere trousers, jackets, vests. Prospero favored black, gray, purple, and deep blue. Not a lot of variety. All of it old-fashioned to the point of somber.
“And none of it fitting my shape,” Ellie muttered. Prospero was lean with a few delicious curves. Ellie was rather soft in comparison. Not pinup curvaceous, but not hangs-out-at-yoga thin.Average.
Wearing the same clothes she had in the accident, after the hospital, and to sleep in was gross. Ellie took a sniff of herself, certain she smelled of hospitals and sweat. “No wonder she doesn’t want to kiss me.”
She closed the wardrobe and went to the bathroom. At least she could freshen up.
After a lifetime of not thinking about what she wanted, what she could be, all of it was swept away by the sense that every one of Ellie’s cautious choices had been futile. She was exactly where she’d been trying to avoid, even after a life of caution, and it made her strangely reckless.
Impulsive, even.
She stood in a witch’s bathroom, in a witch town, and tried to freshen her appearance, using a far-less-than-modern bathroom that had a vaguely eggy smell. The water from the sink, as she scooped it up to wash her face, had an unpleasant scent, and she wasn’t sure what she could do about that. Bad waterwasthe crux of the problem.
Fixing a world seemed impossible.
Ellie felt adrift even thinking about the problem that she was… kidnapped?… to help with in Crenshaw. How was she to ponder that when she couldn’t fix her own life—or know what needed fixing! What she wanted, needed, craved—none of it was the same today. She was a witch. Magic was under her skin, and the possibilities felt immense.
Whatever I do now is not about staying uninteresting, not about avoiding going missing.
But Ellie had exactly zero experience in thinking about what she wanted out of life. Not a career. She liked being a librarian. Not a move. She had, apparently, done that accidentally. What she wanted, what she had always secretly dreamed, was tomatter,to make a difference in the world. Well, that and fall in love in some sort of made-for-television overly dramatic affair.
As if Prospero would be dramatic.
Ellie stopped herself mid-thought. One kiss, despite being a knock-her-on-the-floor kiss, was not grounds for dreaming of romance. Ellie ran her hands through her hair, staring in the old mirror on the wall. Itlooked like an antique, silver framed, oval, and pitted with age in a few places.
“Miss?” A hob—not Bernice—had popped into the room. Levitating in front of the hob was a pair of black trousers and a gray sweater.
Ellie glanced over her shoulder.
“Lady P sent these for when you woke. I altered them for your shape,” the hob announced and then vanished with an audiblepop.
