Page 64
“Katie told me you were coming,” she says as I approach. Her hands are shoved deep into the pockets of her undersized coat. There’s a resigned sound in her voice. “I heard you were searching for Étienne. You need his location?”
The guilt stabs me again. All my life, I’ve felt like the one left behind—and yet, here I am, doing the same thing to Charlotte. Forgetting to be with her. Forgetting the day of her birthday. Only coming to see her when I need something.
“It’s not important,” I reply.
“Yes, it is,” she says. “Why else would you have come here?”
“For you, of course. I was worried about you.”
“Nothing to worry about. I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine.”
“I’m going to follow them,” she says. “I’m going to tell them to move back.”
I study her face closely as we walk. “You’re going to tell them who you are?”
“Yes. They’re going to know.”
I bite my lip and say gently, “Charlotte, they’re not.”
She reaches a tree and presses her hand against the trunk. Immediately, a twig bursts from the bark, tender green leaves springing from its end. “They’ll think I’m crazy at first,” she says. “But they won’t be able to deny what I can do, if I show them. They’ll know I’m telling the truth.”
“I don’t think this is a good idea.”
“Why not? How do you know? Have you ever tried reaching out to your mom? Maybe you could just ask her why she left you, instead of obsessing over it all the time.”
It’s as if she’d slapped me. I stop in my tracks. “She doesn’t know me,” I say, my voice hardening.
“Then just tell her!”
My chest tightens so much that it hurts. Stress cardiomyopathy, I think automatically. Broken heart syndrome is real and literal, interrupting the way the heart pumps blood, and right now, I can feel it straining me.
“It’s our curse,” I snap. “Grow up and accept it.”
Suddenly she stops and whirls on me, her eyes flashing. “Why do we just accept everything?” she shouts. Her voice echoes in the cold air, fogging white from her breath. “Why do you? Maybe we’re not the ones who need to be taking orders, especially if we’re the ones the gods need to survive.”
As she steps toward me, I see something move out of the corner of my eye. I look toward the trees to see Willow there, clad in a long, pale coat, watching in silence. And even though she is not my patron, I still feel the change in the air wrought by her immortal presence, as if the earth around us—the birds silencing for her, the trees sighing for her, the settling of the land—is called obediently to its creator.
Charlotte must sense her goddess, because she turns automatically in Willow’s direction. But instead of lighting up at the sight of her, or offering her a nod of deference, Charlotte marches toward her, balls her fists, and says, “I hate you.”
Willow just looks on, her dark eyes unreadable.
“Did you hear me?” Charlotte shouts. “I hate you. All of you! Playing games with our lives like this, forcing us to be cut off from our families in order to live.” She points an accusatory finger at Willow. “You could change that, right?”
Willow still says nothing.
“Cookie,” Katie calls out in warning, but Charlotte ignores her.
“You could change that!” she shouts. “You’re a damn goddess; you’re all-powerful! Every one of you could change this, I bet, if you wanted to. If you gathered in one of your meetings or something and just decided that maybe this isn’t how you want to treat your Harbingers, who do everything for you, fetch you whatever you need in the mortal world, keep you alive. You could, but you won’t! Because then what power do you have over us?”
Willow lifts her chin in a regal posture, and the living things around her—trees, grass, creatures—seem to tremble in answer.
“It’s not up to us,” she says, her voice resonating in my mind as surely as it ripples through the air. And in this moment, I find myself thinking that even if you didn’t know she was a goddess, you could never mistake her for being mortal. “There are forces in the universe greater, even, than ourselves.”
“Like what?” Charlotte demands.
“Fate,” Willow answers. “Truth.”
