‘Only, it’s part of your prophecy, isn’t it?’ she said after a moment. ‘To awaken your sisters, to revive dormant magic? That could be me.’
‘Funny how you’re super keen for the prophecy to be accurate when it might concern you but not so much when it talks about defeating enemies and ending the world,’ I said, one eyebrow raised.
‘Not that funny. My part sounds badass.’
‘Then you must not have been paying attention over the last few weeks,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry, I really am, but I’m sure Catherine would’ve told me if there was a chance of bringing your family’s magic back. Your grandmother was –is– her best friend.’
‘Catherine said a lot of things, including but not limited to, I’m going to kill your parents and your friends, and I’ll get you, my pretty, and your little werewolf too.’
‘I don’t think they were her exact words,’ I replied with a frown.
But Lydia wasn’t about to give up that easy.
‘If it’s not written anywhere, how can you be so sure? You said it yourself: according to your ghosties, nothing is set in stone. There must be a test I can take. Can’t you prick my finger and drop my blood in the cauldron, see if the smoke turns white?’
‘Lyds, that’s the Pope.’
‘Then put me through theSurvivortrials you did with Catherine,’ she insisted, refusing to let the matter drop. ‘Let’s me and you go for a midnight stroll around Wormsloe, tiptoe through the headstones of Bonaventure or whatever. Just witch me up already.’
‘Being a witch isn’t exactly fun,’ I said, still hoping to changeher mind in spite of the fact I was well aware that had never, ever happened in the almost-seventeen years she’d been on this planet. ‘Besides, I have no idea how to even conduct the rituals. If I got something wrong and anything happened to you …’ I rested a hand on my friend’s knee. ‘I’d never be able to forgive myself.’
Lydia curled her hand around mine. ‘I know you would never put my life in danger on purpose, but don’t you have Witchipedia plugged right into your brain now? Can’t you press a button and pull it all up?’
‘It doesn’t work like that,’ I said with a wry smile. ‘Some things are meant to be passed down generation to generation.’
She was right in a way. All the knowledge of every Bell witch who went before existed within me, but accessing it wasn’t quite so straightforward. I wasn’t a walking encyclopaedia, it wasn’t like turning on my laptop and opening a search engine; more like chasing down a memory. Sometimes crystal-clear, sometimes fading away or just out of reach. There were things I knew instinctively, like which herbs to blend for a good night’s sleep, how to start a fire or summon the wind, but there were plenty of others that remained a mystery. Where the blessing came from, why had I been chosen and, most frustratingly right now, how was I supposed to awaken my sisters.
Lydia twisted a chunky silver ring around and around on her pointer finger and I had to stop myself from telling her it would all be OK, because I didn’t know if that was true.
‘It’s not only about the magic,’ she said, looking over at me with her head cocked to one side. ‘I want to help. You have no idea what it’s like, to know about all this stuff and feel so powerless. If there’s a way to get my family’s magic back, I want it. I want something to belong to.’
She hid it well, but the queer, mixed race girl twin who’dnever known her father, whose mother left her behind to live with her new husband, whose grandmother didn’t know quite what to do with her, longed to belong. Even her twin, who she loved more than anyone, made her feel like an outsider. Not intentionally; it was just that Jackson was all easy charm and inviting charisma, while she kept people at a distance. For all her bright colours, bravery and bluster, underneath it all, Lydia was just as lost as I was. We were two outsiders who never quite fit in, until my Becoming made me part of a magical tradition that, from Lydia’s perspective, I was refusing to share.
‘You do belong,’ I said, squeezing her hand tightly. ‘You don’t need magic to matter, not to me.’
‘But I want it,’ she whispered back. ‘Em, I want it so bad.’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘But your seventeenth is so soon and, from everything Catherine told me, if you had abilities, they would have manifested by now.’
‘Again with the unreliable narrator.’
She huffed and tossed her balled-up paper bag into the open mouth of my tote. ‘Just say you’ll help me. I’ll do all the research myself if you tell me where to look.’
And though I’d assured Jackson there was nothing I could do to connect Lydia to the blessing, there was a selfish part of me that wanted her to be my sister in magic. Against my better judgement, I nodded and her face brightened like the sun on a cloudy day.
‘I will,’ I said, guilty and relieved all at the same time. ‘I’ll check the books in Bell House again, and you keep digging for any information you can find on your ancestors. Anything could be helpful: family tree stuff, weird stories about the women in your family, that sort of thing.’
‘Theonlystories we have in my family are weird stories,’ she said with a snort. ‘I asked Virginia if she knew any goodones and she told me about a distant cousin of hers who ran away to join the circus. I thought that was just a thing people said, not something anyone would actually do.’
‘And you think she was a witch?’
Lydia shook her head.
‘Trapeze artist. Only she wasn’t so great at it – broke both her legs her first week on the road. Came crawling back to Savannah. Literally. Anyway, Virginia was a bust, but my mom gets in tomorrow. Maybe she’ll have some useful info.’
My head snapped around so sharply I felt a twinge in my neck. ‘Your mom is coming to town?’
Alexandra Powell wasn’t a witch but she definitely knew a thing or two about keeping secrets. My father’s childhood best friend, Alex had been close to both my parents. The matching lockets Lydia and I wore had once belonged to Alex and my mom. She’d even managed to stay in touch with my dad during his self-imposed sixteen-year exile. Ever since I found out how close our parents had been, I’d been pestering Lydia to introduce us, but Alex hadn’t been anywhere near Savannah in months, and their mother–daughter relationship wasn’t without its own complications.
