IT WAS SEVEN DAYS before the full moon, and Gigi’s letter was following her everywhere. And she kept steadfastly ignoring it. She’d memorized it, anyway.
When she got back from a walk to the garden, it was waiting for her on the back steps. When she got out of the shower, it was there on the counter, its edges curled from the steam like a finger beckoning her. When she opened a drawer to pull out her favorite socks, the letter was underneath. She finally had enough when she opened the sugar cannister for her tea and the letter was curled, like a scroll, inside.
“Fine!” she said aloud to the empty kitchen.
She mixed her tea and sat at the kitchen table and took a deep breath, her rib cage aching. Her shoulders were tense, the knots behind her shoulder blades sharp points of pain, physical manifestations of her stress. She rolled her neck and unrolled the letter, placing her mug on the top corner to keep it from curling back up.
“Hi Peapod,” she started to read. And damn it all if her eyes didn’t start to sting. It didn’t make sense. The words were etched into her memory, but seeing them on the page, in Gigi’s handwriting again—it was too much. Certain parts meant different things to her now than they had even days ago.
“I know how mad you can get sometimes.”
Understatement.
“God knows Revelares are too good at holding grudges, and if there’s one thing I regret, it’s not letting go of them sooner.”
She thought of her mother.
“It’s always been so easy for you to forgive, except when it comes to the people you love the most.”
Jake. Seth. Florence.
And then she got to the words that had been echoing in her head on repeat since she first read them.
“If you sacrifice yourself, Seth will be safe. When you give up who you are, you become someone new. And that means all the old debts are forgiven, the dark magic nullified. You’re a new creation. It’s a baptism of sorts, that kind of sacrifice. Just make sure you’re prepared for it.”
She reread those lines. The first time she’d opened that letter, when the paper was crisp and new, she’d gotten caught on “If you sacrifice yourself, Seth will be safe.” But it was the words that followed that caught her attention now. “Give up who you are,” Gigi had written. But what did that mean? Who was she?
She climbed through the words again.
Become someone new.
She thought of who she’d become, the place she’d allowed herself to get to, the bitterness that curled its seductive fingers toward a living death where she made everyone as miserable as she was. And she longed to be someone new. To let go. To find joy even in the face of this utter heartbreak. But how? She wasn’t strong enough.
“Give up who you are,” she thought again, holding her head in her hands and exhaling through pursed lips. Gigi hadn’t meant for Sadie to sacrifice herself by giving up her life, but by surrendering who she was. And she was many things. Bitter? Yes. Grudge holder? Gigi had been on the money about Revelares holding on to things for far too long. But more than that. She was rigid and wild, fearful and brave—and, most of all, afraid of being left behind. Alone. Because of her curse. The curse of heartbreaks. Which she’d taken on to keep her magic. And that, she realized, was who she was.
She was magic.
And that was what she had to sacrifice.
She swallowed hard, wondering why the thought of taking her own life had been easier than thinking about giving up her magic.
She remembered the look on her mother’s face when she told her she wished she’d never come back. The way Seth kept trying to make up for leaving. Time and again they’d tried to prove that they weren’t leaving. She needed to listen. Magic couldn’t be her crutch anymore.
She would sacrifice her magic for her brother’s life. But first, there were a few things she needed to do before it was gone forever.
She started to pull down the ingredients for another batch of honey vanilla chrysanthemum scones. Jake deserved to know. She couldn’t tell him, but maybe she could get Bethany to.
She spotted a bag of pecans and remembered then that Jake had never had pecan pie. Not to mention the chrysanthemum had been a little risky, and if she ground up a little coltsfoot to mix with the pecans, neither of them would ever be the wiser. It had a different effect—justice shall be done to you—but the outcome, well, they could work that out for themselves.
As the pie was baking, she opened her text thread with Raquel and felt guilty about the ten unanswered messages her friend sent. Sadie swallowed around the tightness in her throat.