‘But things can change for the better,’ I insisted, wanting to believe it was true. ‘Someone always stands up for what’s right eventually.’
‘Usually after too many lives are lost. Way I see it, the worldis like a pendulum, it swings one way and then the other. Sometimes it swings a little harder or a little faster in one direction but it swings back the other way after a spell, for better or worse.’
‘Can we go back to how and when Wyn’s mom is going to eat my heart?’ I asked, utterly miserable.
‘If I had to guess, I’d say they’re eating it in wolf form,’ Ashley replied, far too enthusiastic. ‘And let’s be real, they’re serving it rare.’
‘So glad I didn’t get ice cream,’ I muttered.
Growing up as the only child of a historian, I was well aware of the darker side of human nature. My dad used to say, to love the present, you had to acknowledge the past and want better from the future. I’d always taken that future for granted but now I was a lot more wary of what could be. But I wanted it so badly. I wanted to sit on this bench with Ashley fifty years from now, the pair of us crotchety little old ladies, bickering over silly, inconsequential things rather than whether Wyn’s mother would consume my heart bloody or broiled. I wanted to watch the seasons change and the city grow, and I wanted to do it all with Wyn by my side.
When my future was an unwritten book, I hadn’t worried too much about the shape it might take. There were certain things I took for granted: college, travelling, falling in love, my dad walking me down the aisle, a family of my own. That was something I wanted. A partner, two kids, maybe three. My childhood was full of love, lousy with it really, my dad never once let me question how proud he was of me and how my mother would have adored me, but growing up with just one parent, no aunts, uncles, siblings or cousins was miserable in its own way. Sometimes it was suffocating with just the two of us. Sometimes his love was smothering, sometimes I was just being a brat. If anything, my dad was too tolerant, alwayswriting off my teenage tantrums as just that, when I wanted him to yell and shout then ground me or take away my screentime, just like the parents I saw on TV. But no. When I acted out, he disappeared into his books and waited for my emotions to blow over. Every now and then I had to wonder if he was afraid of me, scared an outburst might unlock something inside me and unleash my magic. The thought made me ache. But the thought of my future family, the vision I had of kids on a swingset, my heart catching on fire every time I looked at my partner, that was something I cherished. Except now, I had no idea how to make that dream a reality.
The only person I could ever imagine in my future was Wyn. The only person I ever wanted in my future was Wyn. Just the thought of him left me breathless. It was only a few hours since he left Bell House and it already felt as though he’d been gone for a month; the warm buzz that hummed around me had devolved into a low-level hiss, anxiety replacing anticipation. There were so many obstacles for us, so many reasons why the future I’d imagined for myself would be impossible. Could a witch and a Were build a life together? Not if he had to keep me a secret from the pack. And if we did manage to exist as a couple, would we be able to have children? Would they be witches or Weres? I had a duty to continue the line, but any child of mine would be doomed to the magic-less life of a caretaker, just like Ashley. If they chose to be initiated into Wyn’s pack, what would that do to their magic? If I didn’t find a way to satisfy Emma Catherine’s prophecy, none of it would matter anyway.
Even knowing all this, I let myself daydream for a second and saw us years from now, walking together, hand in hand. Wyn’s hair was shorter, his jawline more defined, my hair was longer and my body softer, a ring glinting on the third finger of my left hand.
It wasn’t a vision, only a fantasy, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t worth fighting for.
‘Am I being naïve?’ I asked, cutting into our contented silence. ‘Thinking things will work out for me and Wyn?’
‘You’re not naïve, you’re seventeen,’ Ashley replied. ‘I don’t know, maybe? Doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try, but like I said, it’s not always easy to be brave.’
I brushed my hair out of my face, my waves still loose, the way Wyn liked them, and gazed over at the Owens-Thomas House. For a moment, I thought I saw someone standing on the veranda that jutted out from the side of the house, a man in a blue-and-white coat with gold tassels at the shoulders and oddly white hair but when I blinked, he was gone.
‘Did I ever tell you how I found out Catherine tethered me to Bell House?’
Ashley was staring straight ahead when I turned back to her.
‘No?’
Her mouth made a grim line, an ugly impersonation of a smile.
‘It’s simple magic, really, all you need is something that connects the subject to the location and something sharp.’ Holding out her left hand, Ashley ran a finger along a delicate silver scar that sliced across her palm. ‘Catherine told me it was a surprise for my birthday. Not a lie, I guess,’ she said, splaying her fingers wide then closing her fist. ‘For months I’d been growing sunflowers from seeds and I kept one in a pot in my room, watering it, feeding it, using a heat lamp. It’s honestly sick how proud I was of that plant. At the time I didn’t realize it, but Catherine was using magic to keep it going, I only realized too late that sunflowers don’t usually bloom in November, but I was so pleased with the flower and so wrapped up in Ellie, I didn’t think to worry about it.’
Ellie. Ashley’s lost love and a name I hadn’t heard uttered since she first told me the story of how they’d met and how her own mother drove Ellie away.
‘My birthday came around, I had plans to meet Ellie and spend the day together, only Catherine wanted to do this birthday ritual first, a spell to keep me safe, she said. Even caretaker generations come of age at seventeen in witch families and she made a big show of wanting to protect me, so I went along with it. Let her take me into the garden, slice open my palm and bleed all over my favourite flower.’
The thought of it made me shudder, imagining Ashley when she was my age, still openhearted and trusting. She didn’t often volunteer anecdotes from her life before I arrived; hardly surprising when I considered everything she’d been through, so I kept quiet, holding space for the rest of her story.
‘I felt it right away, a stronger connection to the house, but I didn’t question it. Catherine said it would protect me, I had no reason to question her until I tried to walk out the front gate and couldn’t.’
‘Couldn’t, you were physically incapable or just couldn’t, you didn’t want to?’ I asked, trying to understand the magic.
Ashley sighed. ‘Both. Neither. It wasn’t an option. I stood in front of the gate, stared at the damn thing for an hour, but I couldn’t move. When I didn’t show up, Ellie came looking for me. She was crying, all upset because her dad had been offered a job back in New York and they were leaving right away. I couldn’t go to her, couldn’t even open the gate to let her in. She didn’t wait around long – I guess she thought I was punishing her.’
She didn’t want my pity, I knew that, but it was impossible not to listen to her story and feel my own heart break, and I wanted her to know that. I rested my hand on the bench next to her leg, allowing the slightest contact between my pinkyfinger and her thigh. Ashley allowed it, tossing the briefest hint of a smile my way.
‘She was almost out of sight by the time I got the gate open,’ Ashley said very softly. ‘At first it was like a headache but with a cramp at the same time. It got worse with every step I took away from the house, pressure building in my ears like I was going deeper and deeper underwater. My lungs burned like they were on fire and I was truly afraid my heart was going to explode. I remember falling to my knees, trying to crawl after Ellie, but somewhere between the corner of the block and the front gate, I blacked out. Can’t have made it more than a few yards before I quit.’
‘You didn’t quit,’ I told her, actively not noticing when she wiped away an errant tear. ‘You survived.’
She shrugged as though the difference wasn’t much. ‘Slept through the rest of my birthday, woke up two days later to see my sunflower wilting on the windowsill. After Catherine told me what she’d done, told me I was tied to the house for my own good, she took it away and put it in that awful room. I didn’t see it again until you broke the tether.’
Oglethorpe Square seemed to honour Ashley’s pain, the oak trees bowing their heads, the Spanish moss swaying. Footpaths that had been swarmed only a moment before were now completely empty and even the sun dimmed itself with a cloud out of respect.
‘All of that is to say, no, I do not think you’re being naïve,’ Ashley said. ‘I would have happily died for one more moment with Ellie. You and Wyn, you met for a reason. You shouldn’t give up on one another, no matter the obstacles.’
