“And then…I did something bad. Something very bad.”
“Bad?” I repeat before I can stop myself. To say Aunt Penny isn’t the most mature twenty-eight-year-old is like saying Lindsay Lohan has had a bit of trouble with the law. But Aunt Penny’s always been the first one to brush off her problems. Like the time she was fired from a bistro for putting Tabasco sauce in an ex-boyfriend’s drink—the tips were crappy anyway. If Aunt Penny thinks what she did was very bad, I’m willing to bet it’s impressively bad.
Aunt Penny’s face flushes, and she bites a corner of one manicured nail. “It was years ago, Ind. I was stupid, stupider than I am now. I wasn’t really thinking. I mean, I knew I shouldn’t have done it, but I was blinded. I just loved him so much, and—”
“Oh God,” I say. “This is about a boy, isn’t it?”
“It wasn’t just any boy,” she pleads. “I was in love with him! His name was Nate. God, he was so cute. The bluest blue eyes and the darkest hair. And he had these dimples.”
I wave my hand impatiently.
“He was a sorcerer,” she blurts out, then buries her face in her hands. “From the Priory.”
“Oh, Penny.” I mash my own palms into my eyes. “What were you thinking?” Hooking up with a member of the governing body of sorcerers everywhere? Sorcerers whose sole mission in life for centuries has been to maim and kill witches?
“I wasn’t thinking, obviously. But you know how it is—I was in love! It could have worked out too if that wench Kendra hadn’t followed me.” She mutters swearwords under her breath, her brows drawn down over angry eyes.
I shake my head, my own anger boiling my blood. Right now, best-case scenario, Paige is somewhere scared for her life, and I’m sitting here listening to Aunt Penny’s sexcapades.
“You know what?” I stand up so quickly the chair topples back. “This is too much. I really don’t have time for this crap.”
I storm up the stairs and slam my bedroom door so hard it’s a miracle it doesn’t come off the hinges. And then I fall facedown on my bed.
I won’t cry.
I won’t cry.
I will. Not. Cry.
My eyes sting with the threat of tears, so I think of everything that makes me mad—Mom’s death; the fact that the Family used us as bait and didn’t care if we all died; that Paige was kidnapped by Leo, the vilest sorcerer I can imagine, after our friendship had only just begun; that we killed Leo without knowing he’d kidnapped Paige, leaving us no way of finding her or even knowing if she’s alive or dead somewhere. That I can’t just be a normal sixteen-year-old girl whose biggest problem is a zit on prom night. Who answers Seventeen magazine quizzes to find out if my crush really likes me, and who drinks too much and regrets it the next day.
I don’t want to cry—it’s just so much easier to be mad.
But all my tricks don’t work this time, and a tiny gasp escapes me.
So I’m going to cry.
As soon as I give myself permission, the ragged hole in my chest opens up, and I sob. I bury my face in my pillow to muffle the sound, but I’m sure I can be heard blocks away.
God, I’m so mad at her.
When Mom died, I felt like I’d been tossed into a raging sea in the middle of a storm, struggling to stay above water and losing strength by the second. But then Aunt Penny moved in, and between her and Paige, I felt like I’d been thrown a life preserver. Penny’s the only family I have left with Mom gone, and to discover she lied to me, didn’t help me when my life was on the line, made me feel like that life preserver had been violently ripped away.
By the time a few minutes have passed, my pillow is warm and damp, my eyes are hot and puffy, and my head pulses with the promise of a whopping headache.
I hear the door creak open, but I don’t have the energy to get up and tell Aunt Penny to go away. She doesn’t say a word, but I can feel her lingering in the doorway. Finally, her footsteps pad across the carpet and her weight sinks onto the end of my bed. A long minute passes in silence, save for my raspy breath.
I speak without turning to face her, finally asking the question that’s been plaguing me since it all happened. “Why?”
I don’t have to explain—she knows what I’m asking her. I’ve thought about this every day since that night at that swamp, and I’ve come to the conclusion that Aunt Penny might not have known about the trouble I was in before Mom died. But sometime between her death and the night of homecoming, Penny knew. Instead of helping me, she waved me out of the door in my crystal and taffeta gown, giving me some cryptic message that only by sheer luck I figured out was the key to saving our lives. I was chased by a fire-breathing dragon through the sewers of Los Angeles, starved, nearly drowned in a marsh in the middle of nowhere, and barely escaped being stabbed to death by the same sorcerers who killed my mom, all while I had a powerful witch living right under my nose. I want—no, I need—to know why she didn’t help me. Even without using magic—why she didn’t do anything at all. Call the cops, for God’s sake. Do something!
She sucks in a shuddery breath as if holding back tears of her own.
“I think about it all the time,” she says, her voice high and tight. “There’s no good excuse. There isn’t. There’s nothing I can say that will make my actions okay.”
It’s not like Aunt Penny to admit she’s wrong. And it’s so surprising, I’m glad I’m not facing her so she can’t see the tears that brim suddenly in my eyes.
“All I can do is tell you what went through my mind and hope”—she presses her hand against my calf tentatively, but when I tense, she draws it away—“hope you can understand, even in some small way, why I did what I did.”