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“I didn’t come up here to get a lecture on my magic.” I sighed. “I love you, and I appreciate your concern, but please. That’s the last thing I need to discuss right now.”
“Walk with me.” Grandma Betty rose, set her teacup down on a small end table, and nudged me to follow suit.
She led me around to her backyard, through the white gate into the fenced in area where she grew all sorts of herbs and flowers and berries. My grandmother loved plants as much as me, as much as my mother. It ran in the family.
Grandma Betty tugged a few sweet peas off a makeshift trellis she’d erected out of bamboo poles. I copied her, snapping the sweet vegetable in my mouth, grateful to have something to buy me some time to think.
“Your mother lived a hard life,” my grandma said softly. “I tried to help her, but she didn’t want my help. She wanted her independence, which I respected. Unfortunately, I think her rebelling against me drove her into the arms of some men who didn’t deserve her.”
“Yeah,” I mumbled. “I’m well aware of Mom’s track record with men.”
It wasn’t that I remembered any one of the men in particular. It was the mind-numbing pattern of them that’d worn me down. The flurry of excitement my mother would feel after meeting a new man. The joy in her eyes as she’d sing and dance and wear makeup again. She’d twirl me around the kitchen to fifties tunes, promising that this time, it would be different. That this time, we would make a real family of ourselves.
Then there’d follow a phase where she’d be gone a lot, off on whirlwind dates with her boyfriend while I fended for myself. My memories of being left alone started around five years old. Hours at a time then, but as I aged, it grew longer. By seven, she’d leave me for a night or two. By ten, I had a memory of her going to Hawaii with a boyfriend for a week.
“I know it was hard on you.” Grandma cleared her throat. “During those years, I kept trying to find you, multiple times, but your mother didn’t want me to find you. She wanted to keep you to herself, Trixie, because she loved you more than anything. In her own way.”
I cleared my throat. “I know she loved me. But sometimes I wonder if she loved the idea of love more than she could handle the reality of it. She loved falling in love. It was being in love, in the monotony that comes with loving someone for a long time, that she struggled with.”
“Including her own child.” Grandma Betty wiped a tear from the corner of her eye. “Yes, I’m aware, sweetie. I’m so sorry. I would’ve taken you in if I could, but as you know, I couldn’t find you until you turned eighteen, and by then, you’d already been on your own for years and were very capable of taking care of yourself.”
I nodded, snapped another pea. My memories of my mother were complicated. It hadn’t all been bad with her. She’d loved harder than anyone I’d ever known. I had memories of her whisking me out of school on my birthday for a girls’ spa day. Anytime I had a nightmare, she’d curl up next to me in my bed and stroke my hair until I calmed. I remembered the way she’d whisper fairy tales in my ear when I was younger to soothe me, promising me happy endings truly existed.
But for her, it had never existed. She’d never learned her lesson. She’d never been able to put me above the concept of falling in love. Being a mom had not been enough for her. When Daisy Gardens was fully invested in being a mom, she was the very best mother. Then when she fell in love with a man, it was almost like she forgot she had a child at all.
Unfortunately, the fact that she had never learned her lesson had cost her everything.
It had literally killed her.
“Honey, the rumors are true.” Grandma Betty turned to face me. “There’s a faction of witches and wizards out there who are purists. They believe that a witch who represses her magic isn’t deserving of her powers at all.”
“So we’re back to discussing my magic,” I said. “Wonderful.”
“I know you don’t want to hear it, but it’s time.” Grandma Betty looked down. “You’re almost thirty.”
“What’s the big deal about thirty?”
“For most witches who are regularly releasing their magic, nothing. But for someone like you, someone who has been holding it in since before you were a teenager, that level of restraint could turn dangerous.”
I sucked at my teeth, still trying to be in denial, though even my denial was failing me.
“You have a lot of power coiled inside you,” Grandma Betty said. “That magic builds and builds. For most of us practicing regularly, we simply grow stronger. For someone who’s been bottling it up for years...”
“I could combust?”
Grandma Betty shrugged in a very non-reassuring way. “Not to mention, you’re in the spotlight now. Like it or not, you’re a nominee for The Circle. People are going to notice if you’re repressing your magic. Including the wrong kind of people.”
“I do not understand why other witches care what I do with my magic.”
“It’s a small group, a minority, but a very dangerous minority.” Gran’s gray eyes took on a stony sheen. “Nothing is going to change their minds. They believe that by you not using your magic, you’re defying your nature. The very genetics that make you a witch. They believe a proper punishment for that is death.”
“I’ve heard the rumors of these sorts of witches. I understand what they believe, but I still think it’s stupid.”
“Stupid exists in this world, honey.”
I broke a few peas off, held them in my hands, looked down at the fruits of my grandmother’s labor. Maybe I should move up here to the Crystal Rivers retirement community and work as a taxi driver for all the grannies. It would be a much simpler existence. Then again, I couldn’t even do that now because the Big Stupid Vampire had cursed me into getting lost tying my own shoelaces.
“No amount of explaining is going to make it make sense,” Gran said finally. “It’s their belief system. The purists have been around for centuries. As long as they keep recruiting people into their little circle, it’s not going away anytime soon, and that means you’re in danger.”
