“No. I’m tired of hiding,” I murmur. “I’ve been doing it all my life.”
It’s a strange thing to go from feeling small and nonexistent to being seen. Stone had a lot to do with that, and so has my family lately.
I knew the firing was coming, and of course it’s risky to be out in public at a bar. But it’s time I face the music.
Luke stomps over, the heels of his boots hitting the floor so hard it sounds like the boom of a shotgun.
He reaches the table and glares down at me. He really is intimidating—angry eyes, big, muscled shoulders. This man is no shrinking violet.
Ishouldbe shrinking, but I’m done with that.
Luke raps his knuckles on the tabletop. “You need to leave this town. Get the hell out of here and never come back.”
“Why?”
He drops his head back and laughs. “Why?Are you kidding me? Because of what you did. Because of what you are. There’s a lot of things we’ll accept in Mystic Meadows, but devil-worshipping is not one of them.”
“I don’t worship the devil.”
He spins around, arms wide. “She doesn’t worship the devil,” he shouts to the crowd, people he clearly sees as his loyal supporters.
“Did you hear that, folks?” he adds, trying to get a response from the crowd. “Coco says she doesn’t worship the devil.”
“I’m warning you, man,” Isaac tells him.
“Warning me about what? I’m not hurting her. I’m not even touching her. I’m just telling her like it is—that her kind is not wanted in this town. She’d do best to vacate the premises and leave Mystic Meadows. For good.”
Knots of worry twist inside me. This whole scene makes pressure build in my hands.
Several weeks ago I would have shoved my hands in my pockets, knowing that blue sparks would come and that they’d hurt.
But that was before, and I’m not the same person I was then.
“I’m tired of what this town believes,” I say quietly.
“What’s that?” Luke says, cocking his ear.
“I said, all my life I’ve heard what you said: Creatures with magic are good. People with magic are bad. But I didn’t have a choice in this.When the ley lines came back, when the magic returned, it entered me, too, and I refuse to believe it’s wrong.”
“Itiswrong,” he sneers.
“How can this be wrong?”
I lean over and place a hand to the floor. With an exhale, I push all the power building in my body through the floorboards. My body glows from the inside out, down to my hand and into the floorboards.
The room goes quiet.
Folks might be about to jump me. I don’t know—I’m not looking.
The magic inside me flows into the ground. I feel it talk to the land, mingle with it, coax it lovingly as if the two are meant to be partners and not combatants.
That’s what took me so long to learn. I’m not separate from this land. I’m part of it, someone who needs to work with it and help it. Protect it.
“Stop,” Luke warns.
“No,” I whisper.
“She’s going to kill us all!” he screeches.
