by Kallie Khan
Chapter 24
KAIDEN
“I can’t see you anymore.”
Those were Tobie’s words, and they hit him like a fist to the chest. He’d stopped by the nursery to pick up some flowers and to ask Tobie for coffee once her shift was over, but then the words fell out of her like pebbles scattering along a sidewalk, and all the wind had gone out of his lungs.
“I’m sorry. I can’t see you anymore.”
“Oh...I...was it something I did?” he said, too shell-shocked to really grasp what she was saying, and how incongruous it was to the nice time they’d had yesterday—it had been nice, hadn’t it?—at his dad and stepmom’s house.
She shook her head dully. “No. I want to see you. But I can’t.”
“You want to, but you can’t?” he repeated.
“Please don’t make this harder than it already is,” she said. “I do want to be with you—I want to be with you terribly—but I can’t.”
“If you’d just tell me why—”
She made a noise that sounded halfway between a grunt and a snarl. Then she marched out from around the counter, eyes ablaze, and grabbed his arm.
She yanked him outside, around the back of the nursery, and said, “I’m a witch.”
“W-what?”
“I’m a witch. I do magic.”
Her face was deadly serious, but the ridiculousness of her words cut him like a knife.
“You don’t have to lie,” he said, trying to keep his voice level. “If you just decided you don’t like me, that’s fine, I just—”
“I set your pants on fire.”
“What?”
She held out her hands. “Not to hurt you or anything, but to give me an excuse to throw that dirty water all over you. I was having a rough day.” Then she held her hands up, as though in surrender. “I am absolutely not proud.”
“Wait—”
“And then I caught Gadise at the restaurant. Remember? She fell, but I caught her.”
Her words started to connect with these incidents in his brain, like the sun dawning after a long night.
“And the Tiffany lamp at Rabbit’s Babbits.”
“It didn’t have a bulb,” he said, voice distant and astonished as he remembered.
“Exactly,” she said, nodding.
“And the sparkles coming out of your hair and your eyes—”
“When you kissed me, it was like I became a magical firework. A silly, stupid little firework who thought she could actually be happy, do her own thing, be—ugh. I want you in my life,” she said, collecting herself. “But my family—my mom—I can’t do anything I want. My mom is Old Ways to the core. We do things the right way,” she said, a sneer curling her lips.
Dimly, he recalled Phoebe saying that Tobie’s mother was a “hard one.” Good family, traditional.
“I—I—” he grasped for words. “I can convert to your religion! I can go to all your family things. I can—”
But she was shaking her head, a small, sad smile on her face that dissolved quickly into an expression of utter defeat. She hung her head. He thought he saw tears falling from her cheeks.
“Hey,” he said, leaning forward to grasp her elbows gently. “It’ll be okay.”
But she was inconsolable, hiding her face in her hands, shoulders shaking with silent sobs. “It won’t be okay,” she said hoarsely a moment later.
“Tobie—”
“Please. Just go.”
Her words didn’t break his heart completely, but they put a crack so deep through him that they might as well have.
Chapter 25
TOBIE
“You can’t let Mom control your life,” Mystia was saying, gesticulating and working pale cheeks into an angry flush.
“I can’t jeopardize studying with Pepper Keeling,” said Tobie, shaking her head.
Mystia gave her an exasperated look. “Tobie, you can do anything. You don’t need Mom to get you an apprenticeship.”
“I do, though! She’ll sabotage me otherwise. You heard her!”
Mystia put one wrist on her hip, hand folded under. She pinched the bridge of her nose with her free hand. “She won’t. She just wants you to think that. And I can’t believe you actually broke up with him because Mom told you to.”
Tobie was normally a very even-tempered person. Sure, she’d set Kaiden’s pants on fire (and then saved him, really), but she was usually calm and cool as a toad in a garden.
But a rage so potent filled her in that moment that everything was tinged with the vaguest of reds. When Mystia returned her expression with one of abject fear, Tobie suspected her eyes were actually red, too.
“Look, it’s easy for you to say to just ignore whatever threats Mom throws at me. But unlike you, I’m actually passionate about my career. I have talent! And I’m not going to throw it all away for some cute guy!”
Tobie regretted the words immediately, but like vomit, they’d spewed out of her and left a stinking mess. “I’m sorry,” she gasped. “I didn’t mean—”
Mystia’s eyes were suddenly bright and wet. The flush across her cheeks was splotchy and almost yellow in places. “I’ve always looked up to you,” she said quietly, voice shaking. “Even though you were my little sister, I always thought, ‘I want to be like her.’ I wanted to be smart like you. Be talented and passionate like you. I thought, ‘If I were like Tobie, I could do anything and be anything I wanted.’ So when I see you throwing something you want away all because Mom told you to do it, I can’t help but try to help you.” She blinked, and fully formed tears streamed down her cheeks. “But clearly, that’s not what you want from me. Go ahead. Be the good daughter. What do I care? I’m just your sister, and I love you.” Her voice cracked over the last words. She whirled away and stomped through the hall, throwing the back door open and slamming it shut again.
Tobie felt it slam like a concussive blast to her heart. She blinked angrily, willing her tears to suck themselves back into her tear ducts.
But as anyone who has ever willed their tears back into their eyes knows, it worked about as well for Tobie as trying to scoop the ocean into a teacup.
“Meany,” said Veronica. Then she hissed delicately at Tobie—actually, literally hissed, which she had never done once in Tobie’s life—and padded out of the room.
Having alienated Kaiden, her cat, and now her sister, her most beloved and fiercest advocate, she sat on the couch, turned on Scarface, and cried.
The world is yours.
Hah. Yeah, right.
Tobie’s world was immediately stuffed full of bad dates with wealthy young warlocks from good families—her mother made sure of that. They were varying degrees and types of horrible, but just as the adage about unhappy families went, they were all horrible in their own way.
One young man in particular was nice (at least over dinner), but boring. His name was Emerick and he had a lisp, and while Tobie knew she shouldn’t judge him for it, when they sat in the garden together to take dessert (Tobie slouched and burped once, loudly and his direction), he lisped about how she was “tho thweet” and how he would give anything for just “one kith,” and it so offended her sensibilities that when he leaned in for this “kith” that she smacked him so hard he fell into a bed of juvenile hydrangeas.
Dracon Harbinger seemed to think she’d jump into bed with him.
Harvey Pendulum read her poetry he’d “written himself” (it was Rumi mixed with John Mayer lyrics that gave her (a) flashbacks to middle school and (b) the strong impulse to commit minor violence to get him to stop). She ended up shouting “MY BODY IS NOT A WONDERLAND AND NEITHER IS YOURS” at him, then stormed into the house where she locked herself in the downstairs half-bath and positively refused to budge until her father gently tapped on the door and told her that the offending Mr. Pendulum had been picked up by a cab.
Erasmus Dirge was incredibly handsome and incredibly kind but also, when they went out into the garden, revealed he was gay, and confided to her t
hat he’d been with his boyfriend for three years and was pretty sure he was the one. He said he was working up the courage to tell his parents; she told him to go for it. He looked pleased, had said, “You really think so?” and Tobie had nodded enthusiastically. But then her face fell and she said, “I mean, I think you should go for it, but I don’t know if I could take my own advice.”
The understanding in his expression had gone through her heart like a harpoon.
And to make matters all the more intolerable, each night she’d return home and collapse in a heap on the couch, Mystia would studiously ignore her except to answer direct queries in clipped, monosyllabic replies. “Yes. No. In the fridge. Whatever. Okay. Sure.”
Tobie knew she should apologize, but somehow, the words stuck in her throat. Each time she opened her mouth, the words died on her tongue.
So she just gaped like a fish every once in a while at Mystia, who didn’t look at her anyway, and thought about how horribly everything had gone, and went to bed early most nights.
Chapter 26
KAIDEN
Phoebe was throwing her knives with clean, efficient precision. She wasn’t showy about it, and she gave Kaiden simple pointers each time his went wide or fell short or pinged off the wood block like a grasshopper against a windshield.
After his eighth miss (he had been getting better, honest), he sighed and slouched back into his lawn chair.
“That girl’s got you in a state,” said Phoebe, and her normally sweet tone (albeit laced with an edge) was just downright steely. “It’s her mother’s fault, make no mistake,” she said, and threw a knife over her shoulder.
It stuck in the wood with a satisfying THUNK, but all Kaiden could think about was Tobie’s lopsided smile and the one dimple and the way she said, “I can’t see you anymore.” (There was no smile or dimple when she said this, but that’s how his brain put it back together in his memory—a beautiful girl with a wicked smile, utterly dashing all his hopes.)
“You should go see her,” said Phoebe. She levitated another throwing knife in her hand (Kaiden had asked her point-blank if she was a witch like Tobie, and after some coyness and calling him silly, Phoebe had admitted her magical persuasion).
“She doesn’t want to see me.”
“She does.”
“And you know that because of your magical powers?” he asked, rolling his eyes over to her skeptically.
“Kaiden, a person doesn’t need magical anything to know that.”
His heart gave a painful thump at her words—half hope, half doubt. “You think she’d talk to me?”
She shrugged. “She’s not worth your time if she doesn’t.”
“Maybe I should talk to...I mean, if it’s her mom that doesn’t want her to see me, I could…”
Phoebe looked sharply at him. “Remember what I told you about Isidora Takahama Moon,” she said. “She’s a hard woman. She’s good, down at the core somewhere. But the woman’s covered in iron. There’s no getting to the core with her. Not when it comes to her daughters.”
But, for better or worse (probably worse, Kaiden thought), Kaiden’s mind had started to whirr with an idea.
Phoebe seemed distinctly suspicious of him, but they spent a pleasant afternoon wherein Kaiden actually landed a few throws, and then they went to Dogget’s to throw some more knives, this time in the company of the old crowd headed by Mr. Yi, and plied in no short supply with beer.
Chapter 27
TOBIE
Her mother sent a car to pick her up (apparently Isidora Takahama Moon didn’t trust her own daughter to drive the thirty minutes to her childhood home—and actually, she was probably onto something). It was an enchanted vehicle, spelled so it would slide under the mundane eye and become semi-corporeal, and big and shiny, with chrome rims and plush leather seats. The driver was a vampire of indeterminate age. She looked as though she could be anywhere from twenty to forty-five—at least in human years. She was likely much older.
“Hi there, dearie,” she said, grinning, as she stepped out of the car to help Tobie in. Her left incisor was gold and appeared permanently extended, with a jewel set right in the middle.
“Hi,” Tobie replied glumly.
The vampire’s smile slipped a little. “Bad day?”
“They’re all bad,” she said.
“Had a rough patch like that too,” she said, sliding back into the driver’s seat. “It gets better, I promise.” She caught Tobie’s eye in the rearview mirror.
“When?” Tobie asked, voice bleak.
“Well...I don’t know if I’m a great example. Took me dying to turn things around. But Industrialization was a different time, so pay me no mind.” She flashed another gold-toothed grin.
When Tobie arrived at her parents’ house, she realized with a muted sort of angst that she didn’t even know who she was having dinner with tonight.
Which lasted for all of thirty seconds.
“Ah, there you are, October. Come through. Alistair’s been here for thirty minutes already,” said Isidora.
She didn’t even bother reminding her mother that she was the one who’d scheduled and sent the car.
What she did do was march into the sitting room where Alistair and her father were taking tea, pop an angry hand on her hip, and say, “So how’s my mother’s spy this evening?”
Alistair clamored to his feet, sloshing tea over his fingers. “Ouch!” he hissed, followed by, “Oh, Tobie, it’s good to see you again—”
She gave a derisive laugh. “That’s cute.”
“October.” Isidora was frowning in the threshold, a regal, smooth frown that didn’t muss or wrinkle her face at all.
Alistair’s face had fallen when Tobie looked back at him, and a twinge of guilt pricked her—but she didn’t care. He’d played a major part in ruining anything that might have gone on between her and Kaiden, and he’d played an even larger part in ensuring Isidora’s grip on her life was nothing short of iron.
The night dragged, and while Alistair tried to catch her eye and pique her interest with gentle, inquiring words, Tobie was having none of it.
“Have you heard about the opening of Helga Batiste’s Phytological Art Exhibit?” he asked tentatively.
“No. I live under a rock.”
“October.”
And: “I’m dying to know how your apprenticeship is going.”
“Really well, aside from my mother threatening to end it all.”
“October.”
And: “Oh, I was wondering, my mother has extra tickets to Wolfgang Klaus—would you like to go? If you’re free?”
“It’s tempting, but I think I’d rather spend the evening with my head in the compost bin.”
“OCTOBER.”
Once outside in the garden, left alone, much to the consternation of her mother but with deep reassurances they’d “manage” from Alistair, she rounded on him.
“You sold me out!” she hissed.
To his credit (and her mild guilt), he looked like a puppy who’d just been scolded for doing normal puppy things. “I—I didn’t, I swear.”
“Oh-ho! Don’t play that game with me. My mom told me. She said you told her I’d been ignoring your texts. I hadn’t even been ignoring them!” Well, not really, anyway. “It’s not like you texted me a ton anyway for me to ignore you,” she said, scrubbing her hands over her face and grumbling wordlessly through clenched teeth.
“I told her nothing of the sort!”
“She said you did. My mom doesn’t lie.”
“Well she’s apparently not great at the truth, either,” he said peevishly. “My mother asked very casually if I’d heard from you recently, and I said I texted you two or three times but you hadn’t responded. And then she said, ‘Oh, that’s too bad, dear,’ and you know what? I agreed with her. Because I like you, Tobie. And I wouldn’t intentionally ruin someone’s life—especially someone I liked—because they didn’t text me back right away.”
Tobie wanted to con
tinue to be furious. She wanted to rage at him. She wanted to hurl harmless but stomach-turningly fragrant skunk spells at him. She wanted him to hurt—not a ton, but an appropriately stinging amount.
But like the wind being knocked from her lungs, all the rage went out of her, despite how she tried to hold onto it.
She sank to the bench, staring at the midnight blue of the larkspur growing at the lip of the cobblestones.
She’d planted those herself, years ago, before she left for college. Her mother had helped.
The memory stung.
“I’m sorry,” he said softly, sitting down next to her (but with enough space between them that suggested an expedient escape route if she decided to attack him). “I knew...I knew you didn’t like me the way I liked you, but I thought...” He sighed, and gave a defeatist little shrug. “I just—I told my mom I liked you a lot, and I was a little disappointed I hadn’t heard back. I...I shouldn’t have told my mom anything.”
“Are you kidding?” she said, the memory of planting the larkspur and laughing over something silly with her mother, face bright and streaked with soil, playing over in her mind despite her best efforts to quash it. “You should tell your mom things. If you have the kind of relationship where you can tell her things...it’s not my place to tell you otherwise.” She shook her head gently, still staring at the flowers. “Wish I had that.”
“Well,” he said dryly, “I love her dearly, but I also wish my mom didn’t have such an apparent fondness for sharing what I’d told her in confidence with her friends.” He gave her a wry smile.
She returned it shakily. “I’m...I’m sorry I didn’t text you back,” she said after a moment.
“It’s okay. I knew it was too good to be true anyway.” He gave her an utterly stunning smile and dipped his head toward her in a concessionary sort of way.
“What was too good to be true?”
