We still had to get the elements into her system. I tapped against Josephine’s cheeks to wake her. She wasn’t moving! Breathing but unconscious. She could go into another seizure if we didn’t act fast.
I continued tapping Josephine’s cheeks desperately, not wanting to hurt her. Her jaw had locked up, and I grabbed the back of her neck with one hand, squeezing her jaw with the other until it popped open. “Now, Beck!”
Beck unplugged the decanter and poured the magic into her mouth, the liquid turning white as it soaked her face, the pillowcase, the sheets. Gagging, she tried to spit it out, and I pushed her jaw shut, forcing her to swallow. Jojo’s eyes snapped open, and her arm swung into my side. Pain rocketed through my body, and my jaw clenched when I grabbed her arms with my free hand to keep her still.
She held the liquid in her mouth, and I put all my weight on her to keep her arms pinned, kept one hand on her jaw, and with the other, I flicked her throat repeatedly.
“Swallow, Jojo!” My strength was depleted, and we were using borrowed energy.
At last, the lump in her throat bobbed, and I closed my eyes, releasing an exhale. Josephine calmed, and I let go of her, smoothing my palms down the edges of her face.
“Now you can sleep,” I panted, my chest heaving. Beck fell back against the headboard and pulled his hand over his eyes as he tried to catch his breath.
I pat his leg. “You did good.”
He shook his head. “That was too close,” he whispered, pinching the bridge of his nose.
“Is my baby okay?” Mrs. Edwin’s voice shook through her tears from the doorway.
Dropping my head, I let go of a breath before turning to face her, standing tall. “She’s going to be fine. She just needs to get some sleep now.”
Mrs. Edwin thanked me, cried, thanked me, and cried again before she ran past me toward her daughter, coddling her. I left the room, but on my way out, I stopped in front of Clarence.
“One second more, and she could have died. What took you so long?!” I whispered, looking back to make sure Mrs. Edwin couldn’t hear.
“Now’s not the time to discuss this.”
“I’m going home,” I told him. “But I’ll be at Goody plantation at first light to get my rights back. You cannot keep me locked in these woods forever, Goody. I don’t belong to you.”
“You’re not leaving until the night of the Pruitt Ball. Until then, you are bound to these woods.”
Chapter 41
Fallon
The scentof damp and upturned earth filled the morning.
I took a deep breath and plucked Fable’s arm off me, slipping out from under the covers. The coffee table had been pushed to the bookcase, and all the girls were scattered across the living room rug, sleeping with limbs poking out from everywhere, a mountain of blankets and pillows and bodies. Black party cups lined the bookshelf, and the organ-heart-shaped liquor bottle sat empty on the floor next to a heap of brown hair.
I hadn’t been able to sleep, tossed and turned throughout the night.
Julian had been in the mirror.
Realhad been shaped from an apple peel on the floor.
The ache in my chest from missing him would never go away.
Missing him was like missing every missed chance at anything. Standing right in front of me but so far away. I reached and reached, and he slipped and slipped like smoke, like mist. And there used to be a garden in my soul, filled with colors of crimson and midnight and pearl. But now all the flowers were dying.
And I missed him. That was it. I missed him.
The sunrise came as if it had missed the sky too. It settled above the ocean, splashing colors of its own garden across the horizon, gold and rose petals stretching outward and beyond—the soul garden of the morning.
I tiptoed to the kitchen as a song of light breaths and snores filled the house, the girls sleeping so peacefully. There was a natural glow around the house as if it had been a while since it had embraced life and witnessed, for the first time, drunken laughter during a stormy night. Dust particles floated in the sun’s beams through the kitchen. Everything was bright and alive, but me.
I put a pot of coffee on, needing to go to Julian, planning to go to Julian.
He wanted me to go to him, and I would.
