Page 17 of Magic Blooms

sixteen

Once the council meeting ended, the people from the audience formed small groups all around the large spacious room. The council members dismissed themselves and exited via a door tucked into the back corner, possibly one that led to a smaller, more private setting.

Joshua yanked me to the door, pushed me outside, and then dragged me over to Old Sparky.

“That was not okay,” he seethed, once we were both securely fastened into our seatbelts. “That outburst of yours could have cost Lorraine dearly.”

“What do my actions have to do with Lorraine? I make my own decisions.”

“Yeah, well, maybe consider others a little more before making the next decision. You’re here as her guest. As far as everyone knows, you’re her niece, even. If you cause trouble, she’ll be the one to get punished for it.”

I shut my mouth at that, no more arguments from me. As much as I hated what was happening here, I couldn’t let Lorraine take the fall for my disrespecting authority. No matter how wrong they were in their decrees and decisions.

“I don’t want Lorraine to get hurt,” I murmured as Joshua eased the vehicle out of the parking lot.

“I know you don’t,” he said tenderly, even though his jaw was still set like granite.

“But I also can’t stand back and do nothing. That woman—Fawn—she killed Karen Harrison, and she doesn’t even feel bad about it. What if she kills again in the name of her self-assigned mission to save magic?”

“I don’t know.” Joshua kept his eyes glued to the road ahead. “I really don’t know.”

“In it to the end?” I asked hopefully, reminding him of our promise from the night before.

“Polly, things are way more complicated now,” he said with a sigh. “I don’t know if—”

“In it to the end?” I demanded, sharper this time.

“Maybe,” was the most he’d commit to now.

We rode the rest of the way in silence with me becoming more and more irate by the minute. If he didn’t even plan to talk to me, then why hadn’t he let me ride home with Lorraine instead?

We reached Fox’s End before Lorraine. Perhaps she’d hung back to chat, but how she could act so casually with Fawn’s upcoming stay, I just couldn’t understand.

“I’ll put the coffee on.” Joshua crossed the kitchen like he owned the place.

I glared at him, still too angry to speak, as I took a seat at the knotted wood table.

“It’s for the others. Not everything is about you, you know?” He grumbled to himself as he filled a glass with water from the sink and then set it down in front of me.

Luckily, Lorraine arrived with Jasmine by the time the pot had finished brewing.

Each of us took over one side of the table, sipping our drinks in shared silence.

When at last I couldn't take it anymore, I decided to reason with the women. There didn’t seem much point in trying to persuade Joshua to see logic. “I’m sorry if I caused any trouble for you back there, Lorraine, but—”

“If?” Jasmine interrupted with a snort, drawing my ire.

“It’s okay, dear,” Lorraine responded with a sad smile. “You’re new here. You didn’t know.”

“I still don’t know why nobody’s willing to speak out against the council’s decision. Why are we all ignoring what Fawn is? That she killed someone and made it look like you were at fault? And why does she have to stay here now? None of it makes any sense.”

Lorraine hid her face behind her mug, letting the steam warm her cheeks, while Joshua and Jasmine shared a pained look.

“It might not make much sense, but it’s the best course of action for the time being. The council isn’t totally wrong to trust her,” offered Jasmine with a shrug. “If we can work with her, we can also help keep her dark magic under control. It’s better for everyone this way.”

“Tell that to Karen,” I shot back.

“If Fawn is right about magic being under threat—and it definitely sounds like she is—then we should be concerned and we should do whatever we can to prevent her vision from coming to pass. By any means necessary.”

By any means necessary? Like murdering the innocent?

How could Jasmine say that? Didn’t she have a conscience at all?

I let my head fall into my hands. I was sure my friends thought I was being melodramatic, but I couldn’t help it. They needed to know this wasn’t okay. They needed to be as upset about this as I was. It was the only way we could set things right. I needed them, but they needed me, too.

“Polly, you’re new here,” Lorraine pointed out carefully, setting her mug on the table and using both hands to tuck her long gray hair behind her ears.

“Magic here is… tenuous. It’s rare. Powerful.

And it’s an integral part of our world. If it were to disappear, entire societies would collapse.

There would be complete and utter chaos.

Our lives would turn into a waking nightmare. ”

“Isn’t it better to sacrifice one for the good of the one hundred?” Jasmine questioned, her large, bespectacled eyes boring into me.

I shook my head. “No. There’s no justifying murder.

No matter what’s at risk. There’s always another way.

” But even as I said it, I didn’t know whether my assertion was true.

I could not accept a world where someone was actively murdered to prevent a possible threat to the future.

It wasn’t right, and it never would be in my mind.

“You’re both being too harsh about this,” Lorraine interrupted. Her pinched expression made me wonder if she actually agreed with me but was too afraid to speak out. “Let me put it this way, what would happen if magic were to disappear from your world?”

I blinked at this sudden turn. If magic collapsed…

everything would fall. Food wouldn’t grow.

Weather would tumble out of control. Vilea would be overtaken by volcanoes and storms the likes of which no living person had ever even seen.

All of these things were closely monitored and kept in check by the elementals.

Was it worth letting one innocent person die to possibly save thousands?

No, because there had to be another way. We just hadn’t looked hard enough to find it yet.

“This really isn’t the time for an ethical debate. What’s done is done,” Joshua said sternly. “We can’t go back in time and save Karen, but we can make the most of her sacrifice now.”

Her sacrifice. I almost laughed bitterly at that. It hadn’t been Karen’s sacrifice at all. She hadn’t been given any say in the matter. Her decision—her life—had been stolen by a literal thief in the night.

“Polly, I’m sorry about all of this,” Lorraine whispered into her coffee.

“You didn’t ask to be here, and yet we’re pulling you right along.

You wanted to solve Karen’s murder, and you did.

We know who killed her, and we even know why.

Stop worrying about Elyria, and start thinking about going home. ”

A victory of sorts? Too bad this victory felt hollow and rather similar to a defeat.

“I’m still here,” I said, finally taking a gulp of water to soothe my dry throat. “And I still want to help.”

Joshua was right about this not being the time for a debate. It was the time for action. I didn’t agree with Fawn killing as part of her master plan, but maybe my being here could stop even more from dying at her hand.

The people around this table were my teammates. We’d be stronger together, and that meant I needed to stop arguing about what had already happened and start planning for what would happen next.

“So what is Fawn anyway?” I asked, drawing curious expressions at the sudden change in tone.

“That’s hard to answer.” Jasmine, the local magical expert, took the lead in formulating a reply. She was the most callous of the lot, but also the most likely to give me a straight answer—something I was very grateful for in that moment.

“I’ve never seen someone so corrupted by black magic before,” she continued with a sniff, “but they tend to keep to the shadows. They live under moonlight and darkness.”

“So, see, if you’re in bed between dusk and dawn, you’ll probably never have to deal with her or her kind,” Lorraine added with an encouraging nod.

“Except she’s coming to stay,” Joshua countered.

Lorraine returned her attention to the coffee cup in her hands. “Oh, I know. I bet everyone here’s worked up quite the appetite after all of tonight’s drama. Let me put dinner on.” She stood up so fast, her chair fell backward and clattered to the ground.

Joshua jumped up to assist her. “It’s okay,” he told her. “We can grab leftovers or takeout. Today has been hard. Yesterday was hard, too. Take a break, Lorraine, we all know you need it.”

She put a hand on each of his arms and stared at him intensely. “I need this,” she murmured, before slipping past him and making her way to the other side of the kitchen to start on meal prep.

That exchange told me everything I needed to know about where my two friends stood on the matter of Fawn and the dark ritual she had planned. They felt the same way I did…

So why were they so afraid to voice their opinions?

And what would that mean for whatever happened next?