Page 141 of Cold Curses

Tears welled in her eyes now, and although I didn’t take myeyes from her—my beautiful mom with her pale blue eyes, now gone silver—I could hear Aunt Mallory sniffling to my left.

“Why didn’t you tell us?” she asked.

I took a sip of the milkshake, which gave me a moment to compose myself. It was stunningly good. The only thing possibly better than coffee was coffee with chocolate.

“I was afraid you’d feel guilty or that I’d remind you of the Egregore and all the…pain of that time.”

Heat flared in my mom’s eyes, and she stood up. “You were trying to protect us. But you didn’t need to do that. We can take care of ourselves, and you don’t have to worry yourself over us.” The heat in her eyes, I realized, was a ferocious kind of love.

I swallowed and looked at Aunt Mallory. “I also wasn’t sure if this was a mistake in the magic, and I didn’t want to put that on you.”

“Oh, sweetheart,” she said, her voice so kind that tears started to flow again.

“Both of you,” Dad said, rising to stand next to Mom and looking between me and Lulu, “have tried so hard for so long to protect us from yourselves. Put those burdens down. You don’t have to hide yourselves from us.”

“You could have told us,” Mom said kindly. “And that’s the last thing I’ll say about that, because it’s in the past. You didn’t tell us, which means you braved this on your own for all these years.” She paused to compose herself. “You’re a brave and strong woman. And don’t let anyone tell you different.”

“It wasn’t a mistake.”

We all looked at Aunt Mallory, whose expression had cleared. And now she looked surprised.

“What?” I asked, and my chest felt funny.

“I mean, god knows and evidence shows I can make a mistake. But I don’t think this was a mistake. The spell was to bind the Egregore into the sword, right?” She looked around at us forconfirmation. “And because Merit was holding the sword, a little of that magic got passed to her.”

“And boom, nine months plus later, Elisa,” Lulu said.

“Yep. But nothing about that process would put part of the Egregore into Elisa. You can’t accidentally make a cat out of a toaster.”

An extremely Mallory Carmichael example. Or at least I assumed it was only an example, and not something she’d learned by trial and error.

“So how did it get there?” Lulu asked. “Could Sorcha have done it?”

“She was dead at that point,” Mom said quietly.

There was silence for a moment. And then I understood.

“The Egregore did it,” I said, and felt monster’s agreement.

“What?” Dad asked. “How?”

Tell me if I’m veering away,I told monster. “Maybe it wanted revenge?” I proposed, and then winced when monster metaphysically kicked me. “Ow,” I said aloud, and rubbed my abdomen. Then found Mom looking at me curiously, one corner of her mouth raised.

“It kicked you, didn’t it?”

“Yeah,” I said, startled that she guessed so quickly.

“I know that because I carried you for nine-plus months.” She was grinning full out now, and that expression had me feeling a lot of relief. “You kicked me the entire time.”

“Maybe she was under the influence of monster,” Lulu said with a smile.

“Anyhoo, it didn’t like that answer. It wanted freedom,” I finally said, and felt warmth spread in my abdomen. Monster approved. “Maybe it knew what was coming and tried to split itself into two pieces. Or did it accidentally because it was trying to squeeze all of itself somewhere else, but didn’t quite manage it.”

Everyone looked down at my abdomen, as if monster might pop outAlien-style and give an answer.

“No response,” I said. “I don’t think monster has all the details about that part of it. But I don’t think it disagrees.”

“So, that begs the real question,” Dad said. “What do you do next?”