But maybe that had never quite cut it, not for the inner judge and jury that presided over my own conscience.
“But trust me, I hear you,” she went on. “I know how this place can conspire to make you feel small, if you didn’t happen to pop out with the right last name. And you’re like me that way, peep. We weren’t built to live small, neither one of us.”
“But it’s still so nice here,” I admitted, closing my eyes at the sheer relief of saying it out loud after thinking it in secret for so long. “Just, incomparable. The smell of the magic, the way the air here buzzes. The night sky and the fall weather and the sheer stupid perfection of it all. It shouldn’t even exist, but it does, it’s real, and I’ve been lying to myself for years about how much I missed it. And it still . . .” I took a deep breath, girding myself for the worst part. “Even after all this time, it still feels like home.”
There was something apocalyptic about this admission, like I’d opened the Pandora’s box I’d kept buried in the cellar of my heart, along with all the other pale and withered truths I didn’t want to exhume. As if it couldn’t be unsaid or undone, now that I’d let it come swirling out.
“And you still love it,” Nana finished for me. “You love Thistle Grove, and you love our magic—even if we Harlows did get the raw end of the deal, in the grand scheme of things. Bitch of a thing, but the way it is.”
I burbled a sad little laugh at that. “Definitely a bitch.”
“The thing is, you’ve been trying to outrun this place for nearly a decade, peep—but maybe it’s time to admit that you can’t. Because like it or not, you’re a Thistle Grove witch, and a Harlow to boot. This town is in your blood, in a way you might not even understand just yet.”
“But you travel all the time,” I said, almost accusatory. “You’re always going somewhere else.”
“But I come back, peep,” she said, with infinite gentleness. “Every damn time. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
When I shook my head, turning away, she put a light finger under my chin, turning my face back toward hers.
“Because that’s what it means to be a Harlow, my Emmy. Thistle Grove is where we become who we are. Which means that no matter where you turn, where you visit or escape to, this will always be the place that calls you back.”
22
You Beastly Child
Talia’s bedroom was not what I expected.
I’d arrived at The Bitters at half past eleven for the séance Talia and I had planned. Over the past few days, we’d all come up empty on practicable suggestions from our respective elders. The Thorns had chosen to stay out of our scheming altogether, and once I’d calmed down enough to give Nana Caro the scoop about the pact, she hadn’t had any secret battle magics up her sleeve, besides the sheer ferocity with which she approved of our intentions; as far as she was concerned, the Blackmoores had had it coming for a long, long time.
So unless you wanted to count Elena Avramov’s philosophical musings about what really constituted a curse—which Linden and I were not willing to do—we were back to square one.
Then inspiration struck, and Talia had the notion to summon Margarita Avramov’s spirit for help.
“And the best part is, it won’t be cheating,” Talia had said when we met to talk it over at Angelina’s Diner the day before, her eyes shining with that brash eagerness I was coming to recognize as her default state. “I won’t ask her anything about what’s going to happen, which is the biggest faux pas, right? I’ll just politely request any . . . thoughts and comments she might have on the Gauntlet. Leave it nice and open-ended, let the Dread Lady take it from there. I mean, she cowrote the rules, she’ll know what’s out of bounds.”
“Welp, that’s a no from me, buds!” Lin said, slapping her palms onto the table. “Count me right out. Any ancestor that goes by “Dread Lady” is one ancestor I do not need to meet.”
I considered the idea, arms crossed over my chest.
“I don’t think it violates any of the Gauntlet rules,” I said, with cautious interest. I was still so rattled by the revelations that had come to light at Nana Caro’s that even planning a risky-ish endeavor felt like a nice change of mental scenery. “I mean, we’ll be playing in the gray, like you said, but it’s not like soliciting advice is prohibited. If we’re careful about our wording, I think we should be in the clear.”