I had no doubt I’d have seen and done things very differently, had I been in his shoes three hundred years ago.
But even so, this still changed things for me in a way I couldn’t have anticipated.
“So, if I leave,” I said dully, “I’ll lose it, forever. It’ll go to Delilah.”
“Unfortunately, yes.” My father nodded, glasses slipping down his nose. “That’s about the size of it, scoot.”
31
More Than Enough
I didn’t see Talia again until the Blackmoores’ masquerade ball on Samhain Eve, when she would be formally crowned as Victor.
I’d heard from Elena that she’d recovered well; the last of the shades haunting her had been banished with the dawn. The Avramovs had wrapped up their ghostly exorcism just about when I’d been discovering that I was now in a complicated relationship with Thistle Grove. But Talia hadn’t reached out to me herself, not even to thank me for stepping in for her, or for the proxy victory I’d won. Not that I’d done it for the props, but still; it was telling. It made me think that on her end, whatever had torn between us the night of the séance was still too painful and raw to prod.
And I hadn’t reached out, either. I hadn’t wanted to, not until I was sure I knew what I would say to her.
In the days since the challenge, I’d spent much of my time sitting by Lady’s Lake with Jasper beside me. Watching the sun wheel overhead, letting wave after wave of magic lap over me as I inhaled its incensey scent on the wind. Communing with the town below, until the soil felt as familiar as my own skin, the many breezes my own breath, the trees’ slow sap like my own blood, except blood that I could actually feel as it ran through me.
Was this enough for me, I kept wondering. Could it be enough? And if it wasn’t, and I decided not to stay; how could I ever forget how wonderful it had felt to be back, to find things both old and new to love about this town, before choosing to leave it behind all over again? But if I did stay, I still wouldn’t get to work anything like the kind of magic the other families could make—and I knew myself well enough to know how this limitation would continue to rankle me. Especially now that I was aware of my own contribution to their strength.
And there was, of course and most of all, Talia to consider. If she hadn’t changed her mind about me, after everything.
The day before the ball, I’d twitched in surprise as Delilah dropped down to sit beside me, having snuck up on ghost-quiet feet; even Jasper hadn’t noticed her approach.
“It’s not just your hill, you know,” she remarked, a faint smirk tugging at her lips as she clocked my surprise. “Even if you’ve been bogarting it like a pro.”
“Sorry,” I said, huffing out a laugh. “Didn’t mean to make Lady’s Lake all about me. Even though, apparently, it sort of is.”
My cousin tipped her head, questioning. Ostensibly I wasn’t allowed to share my new status with anyone besides an elder, but honestly, fuck great-gramps Elias and all his stodgy-ass rules. Delilah was a Harlow, and if anyone deserved to know about the specifics of our tricky legacy, it was her.
This was where I could start changing the game for us, shifting the power dynamics that had always left us out.
“I knew it,” she said when I finished giving her a recap, thumping a fist against her thigh. “I knew Elias wasn’t just some two-bit scribe.”
“And you were right. Though from where I’m sitting, he’s not exactly hero-worship material, either. I’m finding myself questioning the wisdom of many of his calls.”
She gave a vague nod, like we were going to have to agree to disagree on that front. “So, what are you going to do now?” she said, turning to look at me head-on, and to her credit, this time I couldn’t detect any pressure or judgment swarming in her eyes. “Have you decided?”
“I don’t know yet,” I admitted, resting my chin on my knees, a faint but brisk breeze wafting over my cheeks. “I’m sorry, Lilah. I know this decision doesn’t affect just me—and I also know how major it’ll be for you, if I do decide to go. But there’s a lot of stuff in the air, still. So many factors in play.”
“Your work in the city, right?” she said, nodding sagely. “And obviously, Talia Avramov. Oh, don’t look at me like that, I do have eyes, Emmy. And even a functional heart. It’s clear she means something to you.”
“She does,” I murmured, my throat welling up. “And the work . . . yeah, that matters, too. So does Chicago, in the bigger picture. And then there’s my parents, and Lin, that whole other side of things. The side that makes me want to stick around.”