Page 4

“I hate coming here.”

Blinking, I tear my gaze away from the house and turn, reaching out for Nora, running a hand over her hair.

“I know, love, and I’m sorry,” I murmur, gaze swinging back to the house again, my mind only half on my daughter’s discomfort.

It makes sense—I hate coming here, too. Hate coming home to this ramshackle house on the hill, reminding myself of what it was like to grow up here.

To scrape my knees on the gravel driveway and pick out the rock chunks later, washing rubbing alcohol over the burns and gritting my teeth to keep from crying out.

Running from my brother in the backyard, first in play, then later realizing it was much more sinister.

That my ability to run was the only thing keeping me out of unsafe situations with them.

Watching him bring in unidentified substances, people, crates, and bags until my home didn’t feel like my own.

Until there were enough strange men leering at me from doorways and alcoves that I sequestered myself to my room, becoming a ghost, becoming invisible, but never quite getting away with being unseen.

“Mom?”

I jump, realizing Nora has been trying to talk to me. Turning to her, I ignore the metallic taste in my mouth. “What is it?”

“I just… I want to go.”

“I know, darling. When that car pulls away, I’ll run inside, and it will only take me a minute.”

“You’re going to talk to your mom?”

Nora is too smart for her own good, too observant. Only one other time have I done something like this—coming back here and going to my mom for help. Back then, Nora couldn’t have been more than a year or two old.

“Yes,” I say, because I’ve promised myself never to lie to her.

Once again, my eyes drift back to the house.

We’re perched behind it along a long gravel road that leads to a lifted crest in the mountains.

Far enough away that, with a little magic, they can’t see us.

But close enough that I can see the house perfectly, can watch when my brother gets in the car and leaves. Which I am very much willing him to do.

As the daylight dwindles and Nora and I wait in the humid car, I start to worry more and more that we’ll be sleeping in this car tonight. And that’s something I never wanted to make her do.

Sitting back in her car with a humph , Nora crosses her arms and looks out the opposite window. A long moment passes, and I keep on staring at the car until I’m sure it will be permanently burned into my retinas. Then Nora speaks again.

“Why don’t we just leave?” she whispers, and without asking, I know what she means. Why don’t we just leave Silverville? Get out of the place where nobody wants us?

I bite my tongue, knowing the reasons are dwindling.

It used to be that my grandmother was the only thing keeping me here—the one person who had ever shown affection to me, even if limited and strange.

Other people made it clear that my magic-wielding was disgusting to them, but the way my grandmother looked at me was almost like she understood.

I never asked her, but I’d always assumed I got the gift from her.

But once she was gone, it was her gift of a home that made Silverville the obvious choice.

A homeaid in full and gloriously big compared to what Nora and I were used to.

With enough space for a swing set and a garden in the back, and room for us to breathe and grow.

Nora had a bedroom and a playroom. I grew flowers.

We used homegrown tomatoes to make pasta and pizza sauce, sometimes slicing them and eating them with fresh basil and mozzarella.

Yes, our neighbors held disdain for us. But sometimes weeks could go by where we’d avoid interaction with them and things could feel somewhat normal. Nora and I were always enough for each other.

And now it’s gone. My grandmother is gone, and her home—which I had imbued with my magic, doing everything I could to protect it from the daemon fire—is gone, too. Nothing more than a pile of silken ash.

“Lucian’s leaving.”

When Nora says this, I realize I haven’t answered her other question, but it’s a relief that I have something to do instead. So I just nod, swallow, and get out of the car, leaving the question about leaving Silverville hanging between us.

When I’m out, I lock the car and cast a quick protection spell over it so I’ll know if anyone—or any thing —gets too close to her.

Nora just stares out the windshield, her hair braided back in two long strands.

Without a shower, dry shampoo and braiding were the best I could do to keep it from looking greasy.

It—and everything else—still retains the stench of the daemon fire, but aside from dabbing peppermint oil on her wrists, there was nothing I could do to keep the stench at bay.

Moving quickly, using magic to speed up the walk, I cut down twenty minutes to five, arriving at the doorstep of my old home breathless and feeling dried up.

I’ve been using more magic since the night of the fire than I’m used to, and I can feel it behind my eyes, in my temples, pressing at the bottom of my throat.

When I climb up the few creaking stairs to the porch, I have to swallow down the memories climbing up my esophagus and threatening to make me cry.

The same weathered bench sits on the front, though it looks worse now than it ever has.

The pillow nestled in its corner looks like it’s been through the worst—snow and rain and blazing heat without so much as a repositioning.

My mother must have heard me approaching because she pulls aside the curtain over the little arched window on the door before I even have the chance to knock. I hear her gasp, muffled through the wood. Then she says my name, more breath than word.

“ Seraphina ?”

Wincing, and wishing she would simply call me “Phina” like everyone else, I nod and wait for her to undo the fifteen different locking mechanisms on the inside of the house. When she’s finished, she throws it open and steps forward, her arms going around me.

I’m a small, slight woman, and I know that.

Not having much to eat growing up ensured I stayed skinny, scrappy.

But that feeling goes out the door when I wrap my arms around my mother and feel her ribs grating against me.

I pull back and take in the wan, exhausted expression hanging under her eyes and around her cheeks.

Now, her shadows are more purple, more drained than I remember from childhood.

“Mom,” I say, swallowing again through a thickness in my throat, adrenaline already pulsing through my body at the sight of her, at the feeling of being in this house.

I love my mother, but the fact that she did nothing to protect me when I was younger means that she feels just as unsafe to me as the others.

“I could feel that you would come,” she whispers, though nobody else is home. She draws me inside and closes the door again, notably not locking it. I silently thank her for that—I don’t want there to be a delay if I need to leave. “And I was just waiting. It’s been so long—where is Nora?”

The last time I came, I made the mistake of bringing Nora inside with me. When she was a baby, I’d struggled with the choice of leaving her behind in the car or bringing her with. Back then, it always felt safer to have her on my hip, no matter where I was going.

But now Nora is old enough, and smart enough, that it makes more sense to leave her in the car. To hope that she knows enough to get out of that situation if she has to.

“She’s not here,” I say, feeling bad for rushing through this, knowing the specific ache I might feel if my daughter only ever came to me in a crisis. If the only time I got to see her was when she had nowhere else to go.

But I also know that I would do anything to protect Nora—and that includes leaving.

And yet, for years and years and even now, my mother chooses to stay with my father and brother rather than leave them.

Despite my brother’s treatment of me and my father’s indifference to it.

Despite knowing it would mean seeing more of Nora and me.

“How is she doing?”

“Just fine. Enjoying the book you gave her.”

My mom lights up at the sound of that, and I wish again that everything could be different.

For a wild, hopeful second, I think of pitching the idea to her—that she, Nora, and I could take her emergency fund and run off together.

Between the money and my magic, surely we could shake them, get away from the family that’s been holding us down, keeping us here.

But just as soon as I think it, I meet her eyes and know that she would never agree. More than the fear of them finding her is the fact that, somehow, my mother still loves my father. My brother.

So instead, I clear my throat, eyes darting to the hallway that leads to her sewing room, where I know for a fact she keeps an emergency fund. Since I was a teenager, she’s been squirreling away money there, a tiny bit from each round of mending she does.

Just in case.

She gave it to me the night I told her I was pregnant with Nora. And she gave me more before Grandma died. Both times, I worked my ass off to pay her back, mailing the money to her in fake birthday cards, greeting cards, magazine renewal envelopes.

“You need money,” she says, saving me from having to ask, and I balloon with relief when she stands at my nod, already moving in the direction of her sewing room.

Quietly, I sit and fidget on the couch, desperately wishing I wasn’t here but grateful we have someone to come to. As I sit, I turn over Nora’s question in my head. Why not leave Silverville?

I come up with no answer. No justification for staying.

As I wait, hearing the gentle shuffle of Mom looking through her things in the back room, I imagine what it will be like. Finding a cheap motel and sleeping with a hand on Nora at all times. Driving out of the mountains—would we go west, to California?

Not likely. With only a little money and nowhere to say, it would make more sense to head east. Maybe to the Midwest. We could settle in Nebraska, or Iowa.

Somewhere with a low cost of living. Find a little town where I can go back to doing laundry and making a decent paycheck.

Somewhere my father and brother would never want to follow.

Without the weight of our family name, Nora could go to middle school and then high school. I picture her going to prom, smiling up at me as I take pictures of her and her date.

Then the daydream comes crashing down when I feel the pinch and pull of magic at my stomach. Someone is nearing the car. Nearing Nora.

“Mom—” I stand up, start to tell her that I’m going and will have to come back later, but then the front door slams open, and without looking, I know that my brother is here.

“Sera phina ,” Lucian says, drawing out my name like he used to when we were kids, a stupid little smile on his face as he leans against the door, which looks like it might fall right off the hinges from too many times of being kicked open.

But I’m not paying attention to him—someone is getting close enough to the car that my ward around Nora is going crazy. If I focused on myself, I might be able to turn and run out the back door, use my magic to keep him away until I could lose him.

Of course I don’t. There’s only enough for me or her.

And I will always choose her.

Focusing all my energy on Nora, I locate her, surround her with protective energy, and throw my weight into moving her far, far away from here. I know she will land without injury and in a safe place. I will just have to retrieve her later, using my magic to find her again.

When I come out of the haze, Lucian is snarling, his hands landing on my shoulders as he jerks me roughly to him. Mom appears in the doorway, gasping, her hand coming to her mouth.

But, like always, she says nothing to stop him.

“Really, sis?” Lucian hisses into my ear. “You’re going to do that shit right in front of me? You know what it means. Time for a punishment. ”

Fear rolls through me at the sound of that word—a callback to our childhood, when it meant he would hold me down in the dirt, tie me to a tree, and leave me there.

Then he’d force me to eat something wriggling and alive while I gagged and choked, trying to scream around the feeling of it in my mouth.

As he slaps a hand over my face and starts to drag me from the room, I get the feeling that this time, the punishment is going to be much, much worse.