The three witches around me laugh as though I’ve just delivered the best stand-up routine they’ve ever heard. It bounces around the room offensively and lands like bird shit on the ground at my feet.
“What was therealreason, Lennox? And don’t think the lies you’ve been telling yourself for far too long are going to hold any sway here,” Eleanor snaps, all pretense of the jovial elderly woman she’s been playing up until now, gone.
I glare at her unimpressed. “What? The kindly grandmother routine not working for you the way you thought, so you just drop it all together?” I accuse. “Did you really think I’d warm up to the inadequate job you just did of trying to emulate my grandmother? That I’d be too grief stricken to see right through that crap?”
Eleanor chuckles, but there’s not an ounce of genuine humor in it. “Lennox, you can talk to whoever you want, the attractive friend,” she declares, gesturing toward Fiona next to me. “The calming father figure,” she goes on, tilting her head toward Orion before pointing at herself, “the representation of a lost loved one. You could even spill all your secrets to a girl you feel sorry for, the one you want to help,” she adds, pointing behind her at the witch with the tablet, sitting separately from the rest of us.
“This is the collection that our analysis showed would be most effective, but if this isn’t to your liking, I can call in the gay BFF option, the stern authority figure, or my personal favorite: handsome and broody. Truly, Lennox, you can pick your poison, but in the end youwillanswer our questions. Youwilltell us everything we need to know,” she states matter-of-factly.
Heat rushes to my cheeks and anger simmers in my stomach. I’m an idiot. Here I was thinking I had one up on them. That I was staying one step ahead, milking them for information and navigating their stupidity, but they’ve been playingmethe whole time. Probably before I ever even set foot in this room. Eleanor just bitch-slapped the overconfidence right out of me, and now I’m at a loss for what to do.
I clench my jaw and breathe through the embarrassment and frustration I feel. I thought I was smarter, that I was dealing with a bunch of amateurs, but it was the other way around. I’m the rookie here, and it’s obvious that I have no idea what I’m up against. I sit back in my chair and fold my arms over my chest protectively. Eleanor’s eyes light up with the movement, like she takes it as my waving a white flag of surrender.
“Good,” she coos cruelly. “Now, where were we, yes, that’s right...what was the real reason why you and your grandmother didn’t talk shop? Why was she so willing to leave a descendant in her line, one who she knew could potentially inherit, so ignorant?”
Pain slams into me like a massive, unexpected wave at the beach. One minute, I’m appreciating the feel of warm sand and cool ocean water, then the next, I’m being pulled under and drowning in it. Flashes of my father’s face, his note, and the devastation left in its wake hollow me out, and I wish I could climb inside of myself instead of having to answer these pointless painful questions.
I shake my head, pissed that I’m here, that they’re forcing this hurt to resurface, and all for what? Is this really about them trying to understand me, my grandmother, the prophecy she thought she had? Is there more to this than I realize? I struggle to find my footing to see where this is going, but I can’t. I tell myself to just get it out, answer their stupid questions regardless of how invasive or useless it might be. Witches are missing, and if this gets them to focus on finding them, then it’ll be worth it in the end. I fix a resigned stare on the bitch of a witch sitting diagonally across from me, thefuck youclear in my fiery gaze, and with a deep fortifying breath, I answer her question.
“When I heardchondrosarcomafor the first time, it was the scariest word I’d ever heard. I was sixteen and didn’t know what it meant. When my dad explained that it was cancer and that it was very advanced, I thought my world was over. And then I heard the wordsbone cancer, and it was like all my worry turned into sparrows and just flew away,” I tell them, gently shaking my head at the memories, at how young and dumb I was then.
“Most people wouldn’t feel excitement at the wordsbone cancer,but most people didn’t know a Bone Witch. I just knew my Grammy Ruby would save the day. After all, what’s cancer compared tomagic?” The rhetorical question floats on the tension in the room all around me, and I look up at the ceiling, blinking back the emotion and fury welling in my eyes.
“I dove headfirst into the spells and potions and remedies that should have cured him. We attacked chondrosarcoma with everything we could, human treatments or witch, it didn’t matter, we went for it. For two years, getting my dad better was all I could focus on. But it didn’t matter what my Grammy Ruby made or magicked, he deteriorated right in front of our eyes. I couldn’t make sense of it, and instead of accepting that not even magic can save everyone, I worked harder to find some spell, some tincture that would keep my dad with me. And then he died.”
My throat grows tight as too many feelings all try to spill out of me at once. I’m quiet for a moment as I struggle to rein it all in. Fiona takes my silence as the end of my story.
“You turned your back on magic because it didn’t do what you wanted it to?” she snarks, her tone painting me as a petulant child who’s been having a temper tantrum for far too long.
I release an empty chuckle and shake my head. These people may think they know who I am, what I’m about, but they don’t know shit.
“No,” I answer simply, a sad smile taking over my face. “My dad never even gave the magic a shot.”
Confusion sneaks across Fiona’s features, and I fight the urge to slap it off her face.
“You see, I found this note in my dad’s things when I was forced to pack them up after he died. I found boxes of untouched potions, neatly packed and protectively wrapped in his closet. It seems he wouldn’t take them, but he also wouldn’t waste them, so he saved them. Each and every remedy my Grammy and I had worked on for years was just sitting pristine and untouched. His note said that he loved me, and he hoped someday that I would understand, but that he’s with my mother now, and he’s happy.”
The smell of stale carpet and magic wafts up around me, and it’s like I’m sitting in that closet again. I can feel the notebook paper in my hands, smell the faint hint of cardboard. I remember looking down at my dad’s slanted scrawl, his words simple and direct, just like they always were when he was alive.
He said he loved me, but he left.Hewas happy, but did he care that it shatteredmyhappy?
A tear rolls down my cheek, and I blink, mentally pulling myself from the small space in the trailer I grew up in. I look over at Fiona, leveling her with my anguish. “I didn’t turn my back on magic because I didn’t get what I wanted, I walked away because I wantedtoomuch from it. Putting all your faith in someone, in something, is dangerous. I made sure it never happened again. My grandmother understood how I felt. She knew there was no pushing me on this. Besides, we thought my cousin would be the chosen one.”
I say the last part out of habit. I now know that wasn’t the case, but in the end, it didn’t change anything. My Grammy knew I needed time, that I needed space to find the beauty in magic again, the power in it. These people may not get that, but she did, and I’m eternally grateful that she lovedmeenough to let me find my way.
“What if I told you that your grandmother didn’t push you to learn magic like she was supposed to,notbecause she empathized with your situation, but because she never intended to pass it on to you?” Eleanor spews, her face smug and her eyes predatory.
The statement is so random, so ludicrous, that I bark out an incredulous laugh. “I’d say you didn’t know my grandmother,” I answer simply, done with the questions for the day. I need to get out of this enclosed hell hole and breathe some fresh air. I need to sit with the emotions I just dug up and let them settle once again.
“No, Osteomancer, I’d sayyoudidn’t know your grandmother very well,” the elderly witch snaps, and with her vitriol goes my last ounce of patience. I open my mouth to tell her to go sit on a wand, but she cuts me off. “You may not have known Nikki Smelser, but do you want to know who did?”
Orion conjures another picture and slides it my way. The photo bumps against my arm, ricocheting back a couple of inches before going still on the table. A familiar cherubic face looks up at me. One I’ve seen in a frame in my grandmother’s house since I can remember. It takes me a second, but as I study it, I start to see.
Large brown eyes stare up from an adorable little oval face. Short brown curls stick out every which way, a happy smile stretched wide on the kid’s face, exposing a single dimple. She didn’t have glasses then, and her face hadn’t yet started to morph from the squishy cheeks and button nose of a child into the beautiful woman that she becomes. But there’s no doubt...I’m looking at Nikki Smelser.
Befuddlement clamors through me as I take in the little girl’s picture I’ve seen and dismissed a thousand times.
“Your grandmother was close friends with her grandmother until she died, and Nikki became her successor. Ruby looked in on the Soul Witch from time to time. So imagine our surprise when this otherwise innocent seeming witchling appears to be smack dab in the middle of an attack on Osteomancers,” Eleanor sneers, looking far toocat that got the creamthan I have the patience for.
