Page 36 of Dragon Fires Everywhere (Witchlore #4)

Everyone tries to comfort me, but I’m not comforted. Though probably not for the reasons they think. They think I’m scared, knocked back, sad.

Maybe I am a little.

But mostly I’m wondering why Azrael is suddenly afraid of a past he already knew. Because there’s no possibility that he didn’t

already know this. That he wasn’t fully aware our stories always end in violence and blood.

It did not stop him from acting like I was his.

Or from putting that ring on my finger.

What I’m wondering is, what changed? What about that black magic attack and the Joywood’s insistence on imprisoning him made

him suddenly so afraid of the past? Afraid of working with us?

It’s getting late, and Zander and Ellowyn make their excuses. Rebekah and Frost head out not long after. Before I can collect

Octavius, Emerson puts her arm around my shoulders.

“I don’t want you going back to Wilde House alone.”

I am about to say what I always did, that I’m never alone because there’s a dragon in the banister, but I can’t. He isn’t

there anymore.

I wish I sounded less shaky when I reply, “I’m fine, Em. It was the crystals that put me in danger. They’re gone now.”

“You were attacked today,” Jacob says in that no-nonsense Healer way of his. Like there’s no argument I could make to that.

But there is. “Yes, but—”

“You can either spend the night here, or Jacob and I will follow you back to Wilde House. I’ll leave the decision up to you.”

Emerson smiles at me.

I scowl at her. Because she knows that even if I took a stand and flew back to Wilde House, making them follow me, I would

feel guilty. I would end up sleepless and awash in apologies and regret.

“Fine,” I grumble.

Emerson links arms with mine and starts pulling me toward the stairs. “I’ll make up the guest room for you.” Octavius takes

his time following us. Cassie, who almost always sticks close to Octavius when I bring him out here, is right behind per usual.

Upstairs, Emerson takes me into the guest room. She flings a hand up and murmurs the company spell, and magic flows out so that everything is instantly dusted, straightened. The bed is turned down, with a stack of fluffy

towels and a robe at the foot. Anything else I could possibly need, from hand-milled soaps made right on Main Street, St.

Cyprian, to a selection of shower gels and bath salts, is set in a happy little basket on the desk.

But she doesn’t leave me to it. She takes a seat on the corner of my bed, looks right at me with that Emerson battle light

gleaming hot in her gaze, and asks the question I don’t want to answer. “Are you really okay?”

We’re alone. Two best friends. This isn’t coven business now. It’s us.

I let out a breath. “I don’t know what I am.”

“That’s fair.” Emerson frowns a little, reaching for the fairy tale, which has apparently magicked itself to the end of the bed beside her. “This book really loves to follow you around, doesn’t it?”

“Yes.” I stare at the book. “I’m being stalked by an unhinged fairy tale.”

Emerson flips through it. “I still feel like there’s an answer in here we haven’t figured out yet.”

I don’t want to look at the book right now. I don’t want to think about dragons at all. But then Emerson kind of jumps to

her feet, holding the book open like it bit her.

“Georgie, did you...?”

She doesn’t finish. She just hands me the book. It’s opened to a page in the front that has always been blank. There are only

two words there now, small but unmistakable:

For Georgie .

It doesn’t make sense. There’s never been a dedication before.

Certainly not to me.

Then again, it’s a stalkery, magical book. The cover changes all the time. Why shouldn’t there be a dedication page?

The bigger question is, why do I see it now? Why have I never seen it before?

I think of the archives giving me what I needed today. I think of the necklace I’ve been wearing since I was sixteen that

Frost destroyed not that long ago at Azrael’s command.

But before I can really sink into all those terrible feelings surrounding my mother giving me a black magic necklace, I notice

that Emerson is gesturing for me to flip the page, so I do.

And pause.

It’s the title page. Where there’s more new information.

There’s an author and illustrator listed when I don’t recall there ever being one before.

Particularly this one.

Lillian Wilde.

My gaze snaps to Emerson. My breath seems to be stuck somewhere between my lungs and an exhale, and I think she’s struggling to breathe too.

“That has to be wrong,” I say, though part of me wants to sob. Because Lillian would have been my grandmother too, but if she wrote this to me...

Does that mean she knew? And never told me?

Emerson is shaking her head. There are tears in her eyes, and I know how much she misses her grandmother. We all miss her,

but Emerson is the one who walks into her bookstore almost every day. Emerson is the one who took that Wilde family responsibility

on her shoulders.

Even when she didn’t know she was a witch.

Emerson reaches out for my arms. “Of course she wrote it for you, Georgie. Of course she did. She’s your grandmother.”

There is something about the way Emerson keeps that in the present tense that makes me want to sob, deep and hard. But there’s

a bigger issue here. “If she wrote it for me, that would mean she knew I was her granddaughter while she was alive... and

she never told me.”

I don’t like it any better out loud than I did when it was only in my head.

Emerson doesn’t look away. “I won’t tell you how to feel. But I would just say... we don’t know. What she knew. What she

didn’t. She was the best, but I’m not saying that she couldn’t have made mistakes. I’m just saying that if anyone deserves

the benefit of the doubt, it’s her.”

Emerson is right. But how will we ever know for sure? Lillian has shown up for Emerson and Rebekah upon occasion, but that’s

been rare. It takes considerable energy for a ghost to reach out to the side of the living.

And Lillian has never reached out to me.

I look down at the fairy-tale book in my hand, thinking about all those changes. And no doubt more changes to come. Maybe

this is Lillian reaching out.

Emerson says good-night, then charms the guest room for deep sleep on her way out. I can feel myself getting sleepy immediately, despite everything, and I’m grateful for it. I’m not sure I have the energy to find a charm for myself.

And I sleep well. Deep, no dreams.

When I wake up, there’s no evidence that I was burned yesterday. Nothing to indicate I was attacked. I look, but there are

no marks on me. There’s also no hangover-like feeling from seeing all my past lives whirl all around me.

There’s just a rested feeling, and a big, fat cat curled at my feet. He glares at me a bit when I get up out of bed, but I

give him a nice long pet until he purrs. Then I get dressed. I have archives to search today. Work to do.

I want to bury myself in books, just like the good old days. It’s the first day of Christmas Around the World. Saturday morning

we’ll have a parade, but the crowds will start today. The bookstore and tea shop will be packed, so I’ll be helping Emerson

and Ellowyn as needed.

Focus on the present and the future. I frown at Azrael’s words. Because he’s wrong. He’s just wrong . There are answers in the past, and not just us bloody and dead, trussed up in the red thread of our sad destinies, but real answers hidden

somewhere in there.

And I have to find them.

I walk down to the kitchen to find Jacob and Emerson almost done with breakfast preparations, and I can tell that they did

their own cooking. They move in the kitchen like a perfectly oiled machine. It’s beautiful to watch.

Emerson sits me down, piles my plate high with food I won’t be able to eat all of but I know will taste like my feelings anyway,

and then chatters happily about St. Cyprian things.

Like she knows I need an Azrael-free conversation first thing in the morning. And she does know that, because she’s not my best friend for no reason.

With breakfast done, the three of us walk back to the cemetery together. Cassie is bounding ahead on the path. I see Jacob’s

stag familiar, Murphy, watching from a winter-empty field.

Octavius, naturally, opted to stay inside the warm farmhouse.

We meet up with Zander and Ellowyn on the path, walking up from their house closer to the river. Ellowyn looks flushed and

annoyed, and I don’t ask why. We all know she’s furious about how hard it is to get around with her pregnant belly and incredibly

touchy about it too.

Zander walks beside her, looking proud and indulgent, like her crankiness is the best part of his day.

Like they fit together in every possible way.

Rebekah and Frost are ahead of us at the cemetery gate, no doubt having flown over. As we walk closer, I study the way they

stand so close together. Rebekah smiles up at him the way she smiles at no one else, and Frost smiles only for her.

More things that hurt.

More things I want.

We all come together just outside the cemetery gates, that big statue of a dragon grinning dangerously down at us.

Or snarling, I guess, depending on your perspective.

I look past it, into the cemetery. Azrael is standing in man form in the center, and he’s not alone. He’s surrounded by the

ghostly apparitions of many a witch and familiar.

I can’t hear what he’s saying from this distance, but his expression is grave.

“Mom,” I hear Zander breathe out. He moves forward toward the ghost of his mother, Zelda, and Ellowyn isn’t far behind. I

realize that all my friends are rushing to their lost loved ones.

Except Frost. And me.

We remain outside the gates. I can’t tell what Frost is doing. Thinking about all his dead, wherever they might be in space and time, at a guess. But I can’t focus on that because I’m still looking at Azrael. Studying him.

Like if I stare at him long enough, the way I would any piece of lore I can’t make sense of—a string of dead languages or