Chapter 19

CHAPTER NINETEEN

GWEN

T he sky was pink and darkening to crimson as I picked my way over fallen logs and mounds of pine. It had been two weeks since the eclipse, but as I walked, a dull ache still throbbed between my ribs. I'd grown accustomed to the feeling, a reminder of the violence of that day. I wondered if I was crazy for venturing back into the forest. Had anything good ever happened to me there? Still, I made my way with determination. Tonight wasn't about me.

In the distance, I could see a dozen figures mingling between the branches. They weren't gathered at the clearing where the charred traces of the killing circle still remained. This time, we'd have a new but no less disturbing meeting place.

Though my ribs cried out a little with each step I took, I was getting better. I still couldn't shake the feeling that I had never been meant to survive that day—that if I did not become an object of destruction, I was destined to die in destruction's path. I'd sensed it when I lay in the dirt, the life spilling out of me, but Valeria had kept me awake and Jayden's potion had kept me alive. I'd awoken the next morning in a hospital bed, tangled in IV tubes, the sun glaring through my closed eyelids. The doctor who spoke to me used the word miracle to describe my condition. I had to agree. It was miraculous in its own way, the divine intervention of the witches I'd betrayed.

Jayden had been there in the hospital at some point during those hazy hours of pain meds and lime Jell-O. I'd opened my eyes from a nap and he was staring down at me, his figure silhouetted against the fluorescent lights.

"Just wanted to make sure you weren't dead," he said casually.

"I'm not," I managed to reply. "Thanks to you."

He shrugged. "No more good people were gonna die on my watch."

"Good," I said, my eyes on the white tile floor. "I don't think that term applies to me anymore."

"Don't be so sure. You were lost at sea, but maybe you can still find the road home."

"Wait," I replied foggily. "Am I in a car or a boat?"

"Ask Valeria. It's her metaphor."

I pondered that a while. "Thanks," I said at last. "For being here."

"Don't go canonizing me or anything." He shrugged. "Max is down the hall. I've been with him all night."

The image flashed before me—Max's lifeless form sprawled beneath the fallen tree. Max had a fractured rib and a concussion, Jayden reported, but he was already healing up nicely, one more miracle for the doctors to puzzle over. I'd seen Jayden give him the same healing potion he'd given me. It was probably the only reason Max had been able to do the spell with us that night. The only reason we'd united as one voice.

After a while, Jayden ducked out with a curt nod, and as the hours passed, no more visitors came. The doomed black gown I'd worn to the ritual had been cut off me in the ER, and it would remain somewhere inside that labyrinth of sterile halls, ripped and bloodstained. I left the hospital the next day in a set of too-big nurse's scrubs and stepped out the door into a world of absolute uncertainty.

I breathed in deeply and began to walk, not toward the vast white house in the woods but to the tiny cement one on the river's edge. When I opened the rusty metal door, it didn't feel like home, but it felt easier than that other place ever had. There was no sign that my dad had been back—no takeout wrappers in the trash, no empty bottles on the kitchen counter. That was fine by me. I wasn't ready to see him yet. Still, a small, vulnerable part of me imagined a day when I'd walk up that gravel driveway and find him there, working on an old car or mending the hole in the screen door. Perhaps he'd nod hello. And then? I wasn't sure what would happen after that, or what I wanted to happen. The wounds were still too fresh on both sides.

I suspected my father knew a little about magic after all. Or perhaps he merely understood self-destruction, how it tugs at you like a current from within, stronger than your will. He and I had that in common now.

My new clothes were still at Luke's. Silk dresses and Tahitian pearls, gold rings and shiny satin, all the beautiful things he'd bought for me—I couldn't bring myself to step back inside that house for any of them. There was something sadly final about abandoning the glittering treasures he'd given me; it was like acknowledging he was really gone. I knew I'd never love anyone else the way I'd loved him. And that was okay. Our love had been a brilliant, deadly thing. It would have consumed everything around us until we ourselves were ashes.

I'd spent the last two weeks going through the motions of the life I used to lead: I picked up extra shifts at Diggin's and checked my bank account every time I made a purchase at the Bargain Mart. I sat alone at lunch. I even dressed in my old clothes, pulling on whatever remnants still hung in my bedroom closet as if squeezing myself back into a shell I'd long outgrown.

I was as alone as I had been before I met Luke, only now I owned my solitude. Being me was no longer the painful experience it had once been. Waking up every day as Gwen Foster was a gift. I'd bled for it, killed for it. And when I walked into school each morning, I took up space. I met the gaze of every person who crossed my path without fear.

Everyone except Valeria.

Both generations of the coven stood crowded among the trees before me, the parents bending their heads to speak closely to one another. I could hear their voices floating toward me. Their conversations were casual enough, but their words were edged with nervous energy.

They were circled around the stump of a recently felled redwood, its trunk cleanly severed by human machinery. This was the tree Valeria had discovered the day the forest died, the tree Luke and Alexis had cut down in the spell that had robbed the parents of their power. We were standing in the place where all this madness had begun. Luke and his father had tried to wipe it away, but I could still make out a faint streak of red on the stump where they'd written each adult coven member's name in blood to seal the spell.

The voices hushed as I approached, and I felt every pair of eyes settle on me. Valeria and Ms. Garcia stood at the front of the crowd, Valeria in a brilliant yellow sundress, her long hair straight, her feet in sandals. It was her mother who wore the high priestess robes and crown of gold on her head. Guess they really believe I can pull this off, I thought warily.

Max was beside Jayden, one arm comfortably around Jayden's waist. There was something unfamiliar about Jayden, a new ease in the way he stood, as if he'd finally let go of some immense weight. I nodded at them. Jayden met my gaze with a hesitant smile, but Max beamed back at me. He even gave me an encouraging thumbs-up. The gesture was so silly, so contradictory to the circumstances we found ourselves in, I grinned back in spite of my nerves.

Just as she had on the night of my initiation, Valeria led me into the circle. We stepped right up to the edge of that enormous stump.

"You sure you know what you're doing?" she whispered.

I fixed my eyes on the forest floor and mumbled a few less than reassuring words.

I had found myself unable to face her since the eclipse. Sorry felt painfully insufficient, but the word had repeated in my mind ever since that day, its echo keeping me awake as I stared into the darkness of my bedroom. I was sorry I'd let my anger fester like a wound inside me. I was sorry I'd fallen for a boy who cared as much for power as he did for me. And I was sorry I let that boy hurt her. But all those apologies sounded empty and selfish when I rehearsed them in my head, so I kept my head down each time we passed in the halls at school, just like I used to back when Valeria Garcia was the scariest thing in the world to me. Those times felt distant, inconsequential. Now I understood there were far worse things to fear.

One day, she'd walked up to me during lunch as I sat reading in the quad. After seeing her fight for her life in a blaze of fire, she looked out of place in such a Mundane locale as the high school's grassy knoll. The other kids passed around her, blissfully unaware of the events we'd lived through, how close we'd all come to destruction. She didn't seem to feel out of place, though. In fact, there was a new serenity about her. Valeria had always walked around school like she was posing for the paparazzi; she didn't just greet people in the halls, she gave them her good side. Today, she looked just as beautiful as ever, but she moved as if she didn't care who was watching. She casually placed an ancient, slightly charred piece of paper on top of the book I'd been reading.

"This is more important than your latest Gothic romance," she said.

"Believe me, I'm off those for the foreseeable future," I replied, closing my copy of The Yellow Wallpaper before turning my attention to the page in front of me.

I held Elizabeth Foster's letter in my hands, the one the Nichols family had passed down through their generations. The single piece of paper that had kept them waiting, all these years, for their destiny.

"Luke said something interesting the day I dropped the chandelier on you guys," she told me matter-of-factly. "He said in her letter, Elizabeth begged Levan to restore her power. She even told him how to do it." Valeria twirled a lock of shiny brown hair. "I figured if that spell could restore her power, it could probably restore power to any witch."

I understood immediately. She meant her parents.

"It has to be done by a witch with malevolent magic. You jerks are the only ones who can reverse your spells," she said, a little grin on her lips.

"Where did you get this?"

"Where do you think?" she replied, her smile vanishing. "This is the result of one supermorbid visit to the Nichols' house."

The house had stood empty since the eclipse, cobwebs gathering on its front porch. She'd found the letter in Alexis's study, tucked away in his roll top desk as if he'd planned to come back to it that night.

Now, as I held the paper's charred edges, I wondered how different things might have been if it had burned to ash all those years ago. On the page before me were the words For the Restoration of Magic. My heart quickened and I read on.

Unlike other malevolent rituals, the restoration of magic does not claim a sacrifice. All it requires is an offering.

I inhaled the letter's musty scent, thinking of the witch who wrote it. Elizabeth Foster had been tempted by malevolent magic, just as I had. But in the end, it was Levan who'd turned his back on it forever. I hadn't told anyone yet, but I'd vowed to do the same the minute I awoke in that hospital bed. I would never use my power to control the Mundanes again.

Now I stood before the coven, a traitor here to make my offering. I took a breath and began the spell as Elizabeth had described it.

From my pocket I withdrew eight hyacinth seeds. I held each seed to my lips and whispered each of the parents' names. I felt the heat of malevolent magic stirring in my blood with every name I spoke, but the now-familiar anger didn't come. Instead, peace settled over me, like I was no longer fighting against a current but moving with it.

I knelt at the foot of the stump. The ground seemed to hum with anticipation as I covered each seed with dirt. Heat radiated against my skin, but whether it came from me or from the earth itself, I couldn't tell.

Valeria handed me the ceremonial dagger. How strange it looked now, its blade clean and shiny. I would forever imagine it covered in rust-colored stains, Luke's blood mixed with my own. I took its simple wooden handle and drove the knife into my palm. As I did, I felt power pour out of me. It didn't bubble and fester inside like a poison—this power felt more like letting go.

I watched the blood pool in my open palm, then I let it drip over each seed's hiding place, its deep red color blending with the deep red of the soil.

"‘Earth, give back what was stolen,'" I said, quoting the incantation in Elizabeth's letter. "'Earth, restore what was lost.'"

It was as if everyone present held their breath at once. The forest seemed to hold its breath, too, the wind silent in the branches. Everything hung in suspense as we watched my blood seep into the tiny mounds where the seeds were planted.

The slightest movement caught my eye. A green stem emerged from the dirt. Leaves unfolded around it as it rose until, at last, a tiny red flower exploded from its center. I'd witnessed magic on a larger scale before, but these fledgling blooms were purer magic than I'd ever seen. Before I could speak, another mound erupted into a blood-red hyacinth, then two more followed. Soon, all eight had sprouted around the stump's gnarled roots. The petals were brilliant amidst the pale shades of dead things.

As I stared at the vibrance I'd created, cries erupted behind me. I didn't need to see the faces of the parents to know that magic had bloomed inside them too. I'd done it.

When I did turn around, my eyes met Ms. Garcia's first. She nodded at me with unspoken gratitude before her expression gave way to one of pure joy. Valeria rushed to her, and the two queens clung to one another in victory while Valeria's dad wrapped them both in his arms. Jayden's mom nearly fell to her knees, doubled over with laughter and tears. Celeste and Max ran to their parents, colliding in a group hug. Max's dad broke out in an impromptu victory dance, and Max joined in as if we'd all just won the Super Bowl.

The only ones who didn't move were Petra's parents. They stood together on the edge of the circle, hand in hand. Slowly, a smile spread across their weary faces. Though they didn't jump or shout for joy, there was something different about them. I could see it in all the parents. It was like a flame had ignited within them, and if you looked closely, you could see its light just behind their eyes. They were alive again.

Jayden approached me first, pulling me into a hug.

"You did it, you crazy witch," he whispered. "Thank you."

Max piled on after him, squeezing us both in his strong arms.

"That was pretty cool of you," Celeste said, planting an air kiss on both my cheeks.

Max hit me with an unpredictable barrage of high fives and fist bumps.

But as Valeria rejoiced with the others, she seemed to avoid my gaze, the way I'd been avoiding hers the past two weeks. Disappointed tears stung my eyes. Suddenly, I was embarrassed. What had I expected? For her to walk up to me and tell me all was forgiven? Luke had almost made her his sacrifice. She didn't owe me anything.

I watched as a party materialized before my eyes. Music floated out of portable speakers as Celeste and Max squabbled happily over the playlist. Jayden's parents produced jugs of ceremonial wine from a wicker picnic basket, and Valeria strung lanterns from branches and ignited them in a burst of orange fire. Their flames glowed cheerfully in the dimming light. The coven celebrated like people who had come out the other end of a long, dark tunnel and were seeing light for the first time in months. They shouted and danced in giddy, silly happiness.

The giant stump lay before me, its rings expanding in uneven circles, too many to count. I thought of the other felled tree, the one with moss that hung like a curtain over its child-sized hollow. The solitary hyacinth that had appeared at its stump the day the trees died was mine, the flower that grew when Luke restored my magic. It was the best gift Luke ever gave me. In spite of everything, I was grateful to him for that.

I gazed through the trees toward the distant silhouette of the Nichols' house. It had only been vacant for two weeks, but the ivy seemed to have grown thicker than that brief time would have allowed, overtaking its walls as if the wilderness would claim the house as payment for what the Nichols men did.

The Mundanes, of course, had demanded a story to account for one dead boy and a girl with a stab wound in her back. Alexis had been an easy scapegoat. The coven told the authorities that Alexis had snapped on the day of the eclipse. He'd attacked me and killed Luke before taking off into the darkness. He was officially considered a fugitive. The police put out wanted posters, APBs, all the usual stuff. They could search all they wanted, but they wouldn't find him. Valeria's parents, along with Petra's, had stolen Alexis's body away that night and burned it, then they'd gone to the spot where the forest met the river and tossed his ashes into the rushing water.

Jayden had told me all this in the hospital with the wide-eyed zeal of someone relaying a juicy piece of gossip. He claimed when they burned Alexis's body, Mrs. Sarich had roasted marshmallows over the open flame. I was pretty sure that part was his own embellishment. But I believed him when he told me the river seemed to flow faster after they dumped the ashes, as if the forest were purging itself of the thing that had harmed it.

Now I looked around at the trees, tall as buildings around us. Maybe the forest had magic of its own. Or perhaps Delfina's spirit had hurried the waters along, ridding her coven of evil as she'd tried to do in life.

Luke was buried in the family plot, his grave not far from Levan's. The coven didn't hold a funeral. I wouldn't have attended if they did. There was nothing more I needed from Luke, living or dead.

I stood apart from the revelry, my arms crossed against the subtle chill in the air. I should leave, I decided. This joy was theirs, not mine. A familiar loneliness crept into my bones. Suddenly, I wanted to retreat, to hide under the covers of my lumpy old bed and sleep for a week.

"Got a minute?" Valeria stepped away from the celebration to join me on the periphery.

I couldn't help but laugh at the absurdity of the question. "Not a lot of pressing social engagements on my schedule right now," I replied.

We stood there a moment in uncomfortable silence. I longed to speak, but all my words felt inappropriate for the magnitude of what we'd been through together.

"Valeria—" I began.

"I get it," she interrupted. "I've been thinking a long time about what I want to say to you, and I want you to know I get it."

"What?"

"I get what you did. I mean, what you almost did." She sighed. "If I'd been offered limitless power and the eternal love of Luke Nichols, there was a time when I would have wanted nothing more."

"I appreciate the sentiment," I replied. "But you never would have gone along with the Meteoric Union. You're better than that."

"And so are you. I knew you'd realize it in the end." She shifted her eyes to the ground, her sandaled feet tracing lines in the dirt. "So…how have you been? You know, since... "

"A little lost," I answered honestly. "I walked away from my destiny, so I guess I'm not really sure what to do now."

"You could start by talking to your friends."

I forced myself to ask the question at the center of this strange moment. "Are we...friends?"

"I don't know." She looked at me now, her brown eyes serious. "But I think we're supposed to be. Maybe that's your destiny, the fate you and I have always shared."

The light was fading overhead. It was that rare time of evening when the sun and moon occupied the same sky, sharing the brilliant, darkening heavens in equal beauty.

"Maybe." The air didn't feel so chilly anymore.

Ms. Garcia approached us, the flames of the lanterns dancing off the golden crown on her head.

"Well?" she said to Valeria. "Did you ask her?"

"I was getting to it!" Valeria said, clearly annoyed that her mom had interrupted.

"We want you to come live with us," Ms. Garcia said bluntly.

"Excuse me?" I searched her honey eyes for mockery, for a hint of that old Garcia-brand cruelty, but I found none. She was sincere.

"I'll never forget the day I found you playing with Valeria in the forest," she said. "I didn't see the magic in you then. I turned you away, burned the bridge, and banished you from this place." She paused as if lost in the memory. "I regret that to this day."

I felt my face flush. My fists closed, grasping for what little dignity I had left.

"If this is some kind of charity thing—" I began.

"It's not," she insisted. "Please let me finish. This is a story you need to hear. A few years after I burned the bridge, I was here in the forest, practicing the sunfire spell. I'd had some stupid fight with Valeria's dad. I wasn't focused. The spell got out of control. It began to cling to me, burning me. I was deep in the woods and alone. It could have killed me. It would have, but suddenly, your father was there. He had a hunting rifle on his shoulder and a dead rabbit slung at his hip. He knew he was trespassing, but he still came to my aid."

I stared at her, speechless.

"He called to me and shook me by the shoulders, as if by some miraculous instinct he knew how to pull me out of the spell's grip. He saved my life. When it was over, I tried to convince him he'd seen some light show, some trick of the eye, but it was too late. The strange thing was, he didn't seem afraid of what had happened. He said his grandmother used to tell him stories about witches in Cascabel Woods, about the power his own family had possessed long ago. He'd never believed them until he saw what I could do.

"I was stunned. The man had no magic of his own, and yet he knew more about magic than any Mundane should. Neither of us could explain it. All I knew for sure was I owed him my life. He'd discovered our secret, so I offered to make a pact with him. He would never tell anyone about what he'd seen, and in exchange, I'd use my power to give him something he wanted. I'm embarrassed to admit I thought he'd ask for money or maybe luck at the blackjack table, but he didn't even consider those things." She held my gaze in hers as if willing me to listen to what she was about to say. "He asked me to look out for you, Gwen. If the time ever came when he could no longer take care of you, he wanted me to make sure you always had a place to call home."

The air left my lungs, her words striking me in the chest. I thought of the note my dad had written me the day he drove off and understood it for the first time. You'll be all right without me. I pictured my dad, the weathered lines around his eyes, the quiet sadness he always seemed to carry. Even after I'd hurt him, even as he left, he believed I'd be taken care of.

"I did a sacred ritual swearing to honor his wishes," Ms. Garcia went on. "All I needed was a lock of that beautiful black hair of yours."

My hands traveled to my hair instinctively, recalling that hazy dream from years ago—a man and a woman at the river's edge, a lock of hair changing hands in the orange glow of a cigarette lighter. It had been real. It had always been real.

"I wish he'd told me," I said.

"He had to keep our magic a secret. Those were the terms. He couldn't tell anyone, not even you." She hesitated. "I just wish I'd done a better job with my end of the bargain."

"You mean, besides offering her snacks and sparkling water like an overzealous flight attendant?" Valeria said.

I laughed, but I was still reeling from everything I'd learned.

"And all this time, no one else knew about your pact?" I asked Ms. Garcia.

She sighed, and I got the distinct feeling she was embarrassed again. "When I lost my magic and yours returned, I didn't want to tell the rest of the coven about the deal I made with your dad. If they thought I'd had any reason to believe you had witches' blood and I'd kept that knowledge a secret...I worried it would look bad. Like I'd ignored some kind of threat."

"The Garcias are really into hiding their mistakes," Valeria interrupted. "It's something we need to work on."

"I'm sorry, Gwen," Ms. Garcia went on. "At first, when I heard you'd moved in with Luke, I was glad. I thought maybe he was the home your dad had wanted for you. By the time we found out what Luke really was, I feared you were already lost."

"I was," I replied, turning away. "I would have stayed lost if it wasn't for Valeria. She kind of saved me."

"She hid the dagger for you."

"I think she saved me before that," I said thoughtfully. "Luke had me convinced I was alone. That he was the only person who would ever care about me. But when she shouted up to me on the trellis and I heard those words only she and I understood, I knew Luke was wrong."

"He certainly was," Ms. Garcia replied. "So, Gwen, what do you say?"

"In case you haven't noticed, our house is huge. And empty on, like, a metaphorical level," Valeria said. "It would be a lot more fun with you around."

A hundred excuses raced through my mind, all the reasons to stay hidden in my loneliness. But I didn't say any of them aloud. I was already nodding, already accepting their offer. And then Valeria was hugging me, and Ms. Garcia was taking my hand in hers.

"We won't treat you like a charity case," Ms. Garcia said. "But be damn certain we are going to treat you like a member of this coven, because that's what you are."

I felt my heart leap in my chest. I looked to Valeria. Was I still part of the coven?

She nodded, understanding before I'd asked.

"Yup, we're one big dysfunctional family," she said. "The coven is a lifetime gig. I mean, I hope it is. Now that you restored our parents' power, they'll stay right here, keeping the magic alive in Dorado. And our generation gets to spread our wings. When school's over, you'll go into the world and do amazing things. We all will. But me and Jayden and Max and Celeste will be back here someday to carry on the coven's legacy. I hope when that day comes, you'll be with us. It's where you belong."

"Belong," I repeated, smiling. "That doesn't sound so bad."

She smiled back, and it was like ice beginning to break over frozen water. My eyes traveled to a scar on her palm. I recognized it immediately. It was the place where the mirror shard had cut as she aimed it at Alexis. I bore a matching one on my own hand.

"Jayden could probably come up with something to get rid of that," I said, pointing at the mark.

She shrugged. "I think I'll hold onto it a little longer." She held a finger to the uneven surface of her palm. "I feel like I've earned it."

I understood. None of us had come out of this unscathed. The scars on my skin weren't the only ones. More covered my heart, the tender part of me that had loved for the first time. And I'd earned those scars too.

Above us a sparrow sang, its voice high and clear in the evening air. It was the first bird I'd heard in the forest since the trees died. How strange it sounded to me, that pure, hopeful song. Before long, it would be spring.