Page 104 of The Witch's Pet

“Because bringing you would have meant watching you burn.” She lifts her hands, and the fires blaze hotter, the heat stinging my face even from a distance. “I can’t protect you from this.”

“I know I don’t understand what it’s like to discover you’re a witch,” I say, “but I know what it’s like to have everything change overnight, and to realize the world is completely different from what you thought. I know what it’s like to have everything you thought was real turn out to be a lie.”

Riley looks away, blinking back tears. “I never wanted to lie to you.”

“What we had was beautiful.” I reach out and take her hand, feeling the buzz of magic beneath her skin that was never there before. “I’ll always love you. But things are different now, and neither of us can go back to who we were.”

“She will destroy you, eventually,” Riley says quietly.

“This isn’t about her.”

She lets out a cold laugh and pulls her hand away. “Keep telling yourself that.”

I bite my lip. In truth, I don’t know where Julia and I stand. We might never see each other again after this. Or maybe…

Well, this isn’t the moment for hopes and wishes. I don’t have to explain this to Riley.

So I back up, ready to go. “Bye, Riley. I want you to be happy. With your magic, with your coven, with whoever you become. You deserve that.”

“So do you,” she says softly. “Even if your happiness looks like something I don’t understand.”

I nod. This goodbye is both better and worse than her text message. Both easier and harder.

As I return to the foyer, I catch my reflection in one of the mirrors. I’m a mess of tangled hair and bruises, with shadows under my eyes that weren’t there before. But instead of defeat, I see courage. I see a new version of myself, bold and unafraid.

Rebecca passes me going the other way, and she scans me up and down with a cold, mistrustful look. I stare right back.

As she enters the kitchen, I hear Riley say to her, “Teach me the binding spell. I want to know how to trap monsters.”

Rebecca laughs. “The best way to trap a monster is to become one they fear.”

I leave them behind to go find Julia, my stomach twisting at the idea of my ex learning spells from a woman who imprisoned someone in a journal for 118 years.

But that’s none of my business.

Whatever Riley’s future in the coven entails, I know she’ll be good at it. She was always good at everything she tried. Soccer star, honor student, girlfriend.

Now she’ll be good at magic too.

I just won’t be there to watch.

Julia is gone.

I realize it as I travel from room to room, the house’s emptiness slowly settling over me. The air doesn’t hum with her presence anymore.

But I call anyway. “Julia?”

My voice echoes through the vast house, bouncing off high ceilings and antique furniture, getting swallowed by velvet drapes and Persian rugs. The answering silence mocks me.

“Julia!” Louder this time, more desperate.

Nothing.

I move through the rooms like I’m searching for a ghost. The parlor, the sanctum, the upstairs bedrooms.

That hollow feeling expands in my chest until I might collapse inward.

At last, Elizabeth pokes her head out of her bedroom, dressed for the day in jeans and a T-shirt. “She left, dear.”