She took a sip of tea, then asked the question I felt coming even before she spoke it.
“How did you become a witch? Like actually. How did we become this?”
The way she said we again made my chest tighten.
Because it was wonderful, and it was also a mirror held up to everything I hadn’t told her.
I looked at her across the table, at the young woman who’d been living her own life at college while mine had cracked open and spilled magic everywhere, and I felt a quiet ache bloom beneath my heart.
“It wasn’t sudden,” I began carefully. “Not really. It was a return. To something that had always been there.”
Celeste’s gaze sharpened. “And you didn’t tell me.”
“I didn’t know,” I admitted.
Her expression didn’t harden, but it shifted, thoughtful in a way that made her look older.
“Why?” she asked gently, which somehow hurt more than an accusation would have.
I stared down at my mug, watching steam curl upward.
“My mother, your grandma, was afraid,” I said honestly. “Afraid of the Priestess, yes. Afraid of the Academy, of what it would ask of us. Afraid of my own grandmother and what she’d expect. But…” I hesitated because the rest of it sat like a stone in my throat. “But more than anything, she just wanted to keep me safe, keepyousafe. I didn’t understand that at first, but it is clear as day now. And there’s so much more to this world that I haven’t even seen.”
Celeste waited, patient and searching.
And in that warm tea-scented corner of Stonewick, with pumpkins outside and a false fall pretending everything could be cozy forever, I realized I was going to have to tell her what that more was, because my daughter’s magic had woken up, and whatever was coming next wasn’t going to allow half-truths the way my old life had.
Chapter Nineteen
The tea shop felt like a pause the world had granted us out of mercy. The scent of bergamot and baked sugar lingered in the air like a promise that some things could still be simple.
Celeste sat across from me, her hands wrapped around her mug, eyes bright and thoughtful in that way that told me she was piecing things together faster than I’d anticipated. Stella hovered nearby under the pretense of wiping down an already spotless counter, which meant she was listening without appearing to.
“So,” Celeste said carefully, “you were saying your mom was a witch. Grandma, the one who you couldn’t pry from a cruise ship’s rails, is magical?”
I nodded. “Yes.”
She tilted her head. “Not like… just a dabbling witch with crystals and affirmations.”
She knew more than I realized.
I quietly laughed. “No. The real kind. Her instincts kept us safe, and I dare say that was also the magic speaking to her.”
Stella drifted over then, setting down a small dish of sugar cubes between us.
“Celeste, your mom has excellent magical instincts, too,” she said mildly. “Questionable taste in men, but excellent magical instincts.”
“Hey,” I muttered, though I didn’t argue.
Celeste’s brow furrowed. “So she left to protect you.”
“Yes,” I said. “At least, I think that’s the truth of it now.”
She studied her tea for a moment, watching the steam curl upward. “Is that why she was always cold to us, to you?”
Her honesty bit hard because that was the truth of it. The kind mother I remember from my young childhood had been replaced with a guarded shell of a woman once she married my stepdad.
“I suppose,” I admitted. “But it didn’t make it feel better.”
