Rachel’s lips twitched upward, something dancing in her eyes. It might have been excitement, but it might have been relief, too.
“How much do you know about your family history?” Rachel asked.
I frowned, scratching the back of my neck as I began to pace. “I don’t know. A little? Why?”
Rachel stared at the destruction before us, chewing the inside of her cheek. “I’m guessing that if we look back far enough, we’re going to find out there’s a witch somewhere in there. A great-, or maybe even a great-great-grandmother.”
I blinked, the words taking a moment to sink in. When they did, I tried not to laugh. “Are you telling me that I’m a witch?”
Rachel shrugged. “It certainly looks like it. I sure as hell didn’t do it, and Jessie wasn’t the one with heightened emotions when all of it started.”
“I didn’t have heightened emotions—” I argued.
Jessie and Rachel laughed.
“Yes, you did,” Jessie said. “We could see it all over your face.”
Heat flooded my face. Instead of responding, I glanced around at the destruction, letting the notion wash over me. Me, a witch? It didn’t make sense. Surely, I would have known about it before now.
Then I remembered the glass of water the other day, the one that had fallen off the counter without any sort of explanation. Yet again, that had been when I’d been thinking about Drake.
Was it possible?
I didn’t buy into the stigma some of the town had about witches. How could I, considering one of my best friends was a witch? It was the opposite, really. Witches were so incredible, so powerful, so helpful to the town that there’s no way I could be one of them.
I didn’t know how to articulate any of that, so I settled for a simpler response. “I don’t know anything about any witch blood in my family tree, though. I would surely know about it, wouldn’t I?”
“Considering the stigma that’s plagued the town for years, it’s not like that’s a shock, is it?” Rachel said. “I mean, I didn’t know about it until my own powers developed. It looks as though witch blood might have been a bit more prominent than we expected.” Rachel rolled her eyes with a smirk. “Leave it to our grandparents and great-grandparents to be complete and utter hypocrites. They hate witches, but they apparently can’t stop having sex with them.”
“But…” I trailed off. How much did I actually know about my family? Mom and Dad had died a few years ago, and I have never bothered asking them much about our family history. There was a chance that there was a witch buried somewhere in my family tree.
As if able to read my thoughts, Rachel bobbed her head enthusiastically. “Try it intentionally,” she encouraged.
Glancing around at the items on the floor, I stared at the spilled wine, not entirely sure what to do but trying to tap into whatever instinctive thing had allowed me to make things begin flying around in the first place. For a moment, nothing happened. Then, the wine began to rise, even pulling itself out of the carpet, the stain evaporating. The blob of burgundy liquidhovered in the air for a moment before floating and dropping back into the glass.
Rachel let out a low whistle. “And here I thought that magic had to be element-based,” she mused. “I guess there’s a lot more to magic that we need to learn.”
I didn’t answer, not right away. My mind was spinning, reeling with the realization. I stared at my hands as if expecting sparks to shoot out of them at any minute. I gave a half-laugh of disbelief as I continued to gawk.
“You all right?” Jessie asked.
“Of course I’m all right! This is amazing!” I said. My hands were still trembling, but more with an influx of adrenaline than dread or anything else. “I can help. I can actually do something against the wraith and this new demon.”
I had to stop myself from bouncing on the balls of my feet. I shouldn’t have been this ecstatic about putting myself in the line of fire. If the wraith or Azaret discovered what I could do, they would start wanting to go after me the same way they had Rachel and Emma. Except I couldn’t be terrified. I had been given an incredible gift: the chance to help. Despite everything that happened to me when I was a kid, I loved my pack. I always had. Now, I’d been given the opportunity to help save it. How could I not be excited?
Rachel rubbed her chin as she scrutinized the destruction. “I’m going to have a word with Emma,” she said. “She needs to know. Then we’ll get some plan together to start training. If you’re going to help, you’re going to need better control than, well…” She gestured around. Even as she did, she gave a broad grin.
“Yeah…I kind of made a mess of things, didn’t I?”
“A bit,” Rachel admitted.
I giggled. That tiny giggle mutated into a chuckle, which morphed into a genuine laugh. Rachel joined in, followed a moment later by Jessie. Within a minute, we had all started laughing. I couldn’t help it. It was all too incredible, in the best possible way.
I had been agonizing about what I could do to help the town, had been racking my brain trying to come up with something. Now, the answer had been delivered to me on a silver platter, hovering in the air. I wasn’t useless. There was something I could do.
For the first time since this had all started, I didn’t feel helpless.
Chapter 16 - Drake
