“ . . . I don’t actually have a mailing list. Not in the way you’re thinking.”
“No, I’m sure your version has a feather quill and a centaur trotting along with the delivery sack for saddlebags, but I’ve already taken care of it.”
She couldn’t even be mad over the dig. He was right, and besides, she didn’t care. It had been awildlysuccessful day. She bounced on her toes, unable to keep still, her fingers trembling from the suppressed desire to hug herself. She had talked to people. She had stammered and tripped over her words and flushed repeatedly, and it hadn’t mattered. There had been a fair number of passersby who’d nudged each other upon their approach to her table, with knowing looks they didn’t bother hiding. Holt had quickly worked out a system of pointing them out discreetly, and to those customers, he made a point of casually bringing up the Araneaen waiting for them at home.
She wasn’t sure how well she would manage on her own, and Holt might need to accompany her for a while longer before she could even consider it. A fair amount of conversations still took place a bit above her understanding, she laughed like a limping sparrow, and she needed to practice smiling in front of the mirror, but she had lived through it. It was a good day.
“Elizabeth. I thought that was you. You know, when we saw the name, I thought perhaps it was a mistake.”
Her back stiffened, her jaw clenching. Ladybug turned slowly towards the voice of one of her longtime tormentors, a queen bee in the junior coven. Ismeralda Lattimore looked as smug and superior as she had on that last Hexennacht, the night she had been expelled from the coven.
“Although, I do hope you know better than to be claiming to be a fully accredited member of any coven,” Izzy admonished her in a tone of voice normally reserved for young children. “That’s a big no-no. That’s a misrepresentation of your licensing and I would hate to have to report you.”
This was the confrontation she had been avoiding for a year. This was why she slipped out of line at the grocery store, backed out of the fruit market, ducked down behind aisles at the pharmacy. She had managed to go nearly an entire year without having this conversation with one of her former sisters, not that they had ever felt like sisters.
This was probably the moment when she would have stammered and turned beet red, her tongue twisting itself into knots until the other two witches laughed at her and walked away. Unfortunately for them, Holt still stood behind the table, triggering that impulse inside her, something that made her braver, angrier, less concerned with appearances. Maybe it was Willow’s residual energy, the memory of Authricia hitting the familiar in the face with her broom, his occasionally nasty, hissing cattitude that rubbed off on her.
It didn’t matter what it was, only that rather than lowering her eyes and removing herself from the situation, Ladybug felt a bubbling pool of rage within her.
“I haveearnedmy full accreditation,“ she snapped back. “Probably twice over, to be honest. But you don’t have to worry, Izzy. You can let Evelyn know that I am absolutely not claiming accreditation with the coven. I would sooner burn my license than be affiliated with any of you.” The two witches huffed, and Ladybug held her ground. “I can’t imagine I would keep many clients if they knew I was a part of an amoral group of carnival charlatans.”
That last thought had definitely not been her own, but she didn’t care. Beside her, Holt snorted. The witch standing beside Ismeralda gasped in offense.
“I’ll have you know that this coven has never been stronger or more united.”
“Ohhhh, that’s not atallwhat I’ve heard,“ Holt purred from over her shoulder. “I’veheard that some of you have been telling tales out of school, Izzy. I’ve heard there’s quite a drop-off in attendance as well. Shedding numbers at a critical juncture in our history is not going to be a good look when the state board does its annual review. You’ve left the door wide open for secondary practitioners to form. Who knows if Evelyn will even be able to keep the charter at this point? It would be such a shame for Cambric Creek to lose that . . . of course, you’re not the only coven who can carry it. I do wonder if your sisters are keeping you intentionally in the dark, Izzy. Or maybe you’re part of the whispers and you’re just afraid of saying it in public.”
Ladybug knew the other witch by face, but not her name. She had been relatively new to the coven, only in town a few months before Ladybug’s expulsion, and this witch did not know Holt at all. Ismeralda Lattimore did. Her face screwed up in a scowl, but she said nothing in her own defense. She didn’t dare.
“I didn’t realize the two of you were working together now,” she grumbled at last.
“Why wouldn’t we be?” Holt demanded. “I have been the familiar of a Brackenbridge witch for longer than our histories are recorded.Weare family.”
Izzy pursed her lips, and the other witch sneered.
“Just make sure you’re not misrepresenting yourself here,” the nameless witch huffed. “Because if I find out that you are, I won’t have a choice but to report you.”
Ladybug took a breath to retort, her fists balling once more, but again Holt did not give her the opportunity.
“That’s an interesting word you keep using,” he mused. “Reporting. So quick to use it. You know, reporting is an epidemic. Once someone puts the thought out in the world, everyone starts doing it. I wonder if you know the severity of punishment that comes from magical law being broken. And it all starts with one . . . little . . .report.”
Ismeralda grabbed the other woman’s arm, silencing her, and they departed. She watched the witches move across the hall, heads together, not breathing until the door had swung shut behind the pair.
“Well, that was a fun way to end the day.” Holt’s voice was cheerful, and although her blood still sizzled with the desire to argue, Ladybug grinned.
“You are aterriblybad influence.”
He shrugged, unbothered. “The degree of difference between being the best and the worst is a hair’s breadth. It doesn’t matter if you’re at the bottom or the top. The whole world’s a circle, and you’re just that much closer to meeting in the middle.” He dropped the washtub onto the dolly with a grin. “Come, Elizabeth. Let’s hurry up and get out of here, because we’re celebrating with sushi tonight. And it’s your treat, so that’s like, a double celebration for me.”
There was something magical about the attic on nights when the sky was clear and the moon shone brightly. Ladybug did not need to envision the way the moon cast her glow across the lawn, did not need to wonder if the branches in the trees outside her window resembled skeletal arms and grasping hands, for from this vantage point, she could see them plain.
The waxing gibbous moon in the sky was bright and shining that night, casting her white light over the still bare trees, the shadows of which stretched and danced across the attic, bony fingers nearly plucking out her web, making her feel as if she were the helpless marionette at the center of their macabre puppet show.
“I talked tosomany people.“ It was the tenth time she had told him. Anzan hummed against her skin as she closed her eyes, giggling, still giddy, still wired and filled with too much adrenaline. “Somany! And I probably sounded like a fool, but it didn’t matter. I didn’t have time to overthink it. There were too many of them, one right after the next!”
He had been waiting for them. Ladybug saw the outline of his silhouette in the third-floor window as they returned from the market, Holt’s car sliding into the driveway behind her. By the time they made it into the house, carrying the single box of product that had remained on her table, Anzan was pacing in the kitchen, waiting.
“Well?” He’d demanded, not even giving her a chance to shrug out of her coat.
