I nodded. I was suddenly exhausted in every possible way. All I wanted was to sleep until the world made sense again.
Practically in a daze, I shuffled over to where Ty and Maggie were standing stiffly by the bookcases. Maggie looked as overwhelmed as I felt; Ty’s face was unreadable. His shoulders were tense. He had his hands intertwined behind his neck, and his eyes were trained on the ground.
“You guys ready?”
Maggie nodded and Ty looked up, his strained eyes softening. “Yeah, let’s go.”
“Just a second, young man,” Serena called as they headed for the door. “A word, please.”
Ty muttered something under his breath and then jogged back to where Serena was standing.
“What do you think that’s all about?” Maggie asked, watching as Serena and Ty spoke in hushed tones.
“I’m too overwhelmed to even guess,” I said. I swayed a little, leaning on Maggie for support.
“Well, whatever it is, he doesn’t look happy,” Maggie observed.
Ty said good-bye to Serena and made his way back toward us. “It was nothing,” he said in answer to our expectant faces. “Something she saw in my aura or whatever.” He waved his hand in dismissal and pushed open the door to the shop.
I took one last look at Serena, who was already hunched over her tarot cards, and followed Ty out into the bright sunlight.
The car ride to my house was quiet, but I was grateful for the silence. Now that the adrenaline from everything that had happened had drained away, I was physically and emotionally spent. I doubted that I could’ve carried on much of a conversation even if I’d wanted to.
Maggie was passed out in the backseat, and I was having a hard time keeping my own eyelids from drooping. The radio was playing softly in the background, and as I stared out the window, I tried to not to think about anything other than the reassuring pressure of Ty’s hand holding mine.
It wasn’t long before he pulled the car into my driveway.
I glanced at the clock on the dash. It was a little after eleven in the morning. Gareth’s truck was missing from its spot in the driveway, and I was relieved. I wasn’t ready to face that conversation just yet.
“Thank you for the ride home.” I turned to Ty. “And . . . for everything else, too.”
Ty inclined his head. “Anytime.”
I gently shook Maggie’ shoulder, waking her. “I’m leaving, Mags.”
She sat up, looking bedraggled. “I’ll call you soon.”
I opened the car door and managed to keep myself upright long enough to unlock the front door and stumble inside. I gave a small wave to Maggie and Ty as he backed his car out of the driveway, and then I turned and fumbled up the stairs toward my room.
Sinking down onto my bed, I shrugged off my clothes and pulled my favorite worn sleep shirt over my head. The picture of my parents, of my mother wearing Josephine’s necklace, stared at me from the bedside table. I’d forgotten to ask Serena about the necklace.
There’s still so much I don’t understand.
An invisible hand wrapped around my heart and squeezed until I was sure it would break, the smiling faces of my parents as the only witnesses.
With one hand clutching at my chest, I pulled the comforter over my head, blocking out the world.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“There you are.”
I turned to see Maggie walking toward me, her hands plunged into the pockets of her jeans. Her face was pale, and there were purple circles underneath her eyes, similar to my own.
“How’d you find me?”
“It wasn’t hard to guess.” Maggie shrugged. “Besides, it’s a really small town.”
I nodded as she settled beside me on the picnic table.
“Why are you here, Lainey?”
“I really don’t know,” I replied after a minute or two. I’d woken up restless from my nap and grabbed my car keys. After driving around aimlessly for a while, I’d ended up back at the cemetery. “I guess I just didn’t know where else to go. I thought maybe if I came back here, where I saw her last, that Josephine might show up. Explain a few things.”
“Has she? Shown up, I mean?”
“No. It’s been frustratingly quiet.”
“And the trees?”
“I haven’t gotten close enough to find out.”
Maggie reached over, took my hand, and gave it a gentle squeeze. “I know all of this . . . isn’t what you expected. But it’s better to know, right? The truth will set you free and all that?”
“I did want answers,” I said. “But I don’t know what to make of the ones I got. Two weeks ago, I was plain ol’ Lainey Styles, and now I’m apparently some all-powerful . . .” I couldn’t say the word out loud. “The truth about my mom and Josephine. All the lies. How am I even supposed to process it all?”
“Well, step one is to not freak out.” Maggie gave my hand another squeeze.
“Yeah, but how can I not freak out? It seems easier to completely fall apart than to accept any of this as true.”
“But it is true. What else could explain all the weird stuff that’s been happening to you?”
“I know.” I pulled away from Maggie and dropped my head in my hands. “But it shouldn’t be. I had my life all planned out, ya know? Since middle school, I’ve been killing myself to be the best at everything, to be number one. All I ever wanted to do was to get into a good school with a great science program and be on my own, have the opportunity to see and discover the world. I wanted the chance to figure out who I really am. But this?” My voice cracked. “It’s not exactly what I had in mind. . . . It’s not fair.”
“No, it’s not,” Maggie agreed. “But this is your life now. This is who you are, and you can’t run away from it. You have to face it.”
My shoulders sagged. The whole story sounded too ridiculous to be real, but there was a ring of absolute truth to Serena’s words. And even stranger than that was the feeling of acquiescence that was gnawing away at me deep down—it was like being reunited with a long-lost friend or finding something valuable you didn’t even realize you had lost. It felt as though a part of me had already accepted the news of my newfound “witch” status without so much as a blink of an eye, while another part of me was convinced I had lost my mind.
It made me uncomfortable to feel so at war with myself, but I was trying not to let it show. “How are you so calm right now?” I asked Maggie. “You’re handling the news way better than I am.”
Maggie shrugged. “I think you’re forgetting who you’re talking to, Styles. I’m the girl who spends more time with fictional superheroes than I do with actual people, the girl who spent an entire summer learning Elvish, the girl who already believed in magic. It’s not that far-fetched for me, if you think about it. Besides, you’re my best friend and I believe in you.”