Page 100 of Jinxes and Drumsticks

“Wren’s shop and reading, mostly, I think,” he says. “How has your independent research been going?”

He peers at me over the edge of the teacup he’s borrowed, and it strikes me that it’s the very look that used to make me breathless with its understated elegance. With the gravel of Damien’s morning voice still fresh in my mind, it just feels like drinking tea.

“Well enough,” I say. “I still haven’t been able to find any information on the original bargain that got my family into this mess, but I’ve picked up even more questions than I thought I could have about this whole thing.”

“Care to elaborate?”

“Well, some of the journals and grimoires seem to vacillate between these states of tenuous allyship with someone they call Aemon. Some of them refer to him as a familiar to the family, others seem to hate him. The description matches the demon who attacked me the night of Damien’s show, though. It’s hard to imagine them thinking of him as an ally.”

“Well, we know the source of magic is the union of metaphysical beings with mortals,” he says. “That’s how witches came to be.”

“Right,” I say. “And I think Aemon is where we got our power; I just can’t figure out why he seemed to be well liked by some generations and hated by others.”

“Well, perhaps we should ask him,” Bastion says.

I look at him, feeling the incredulity of my expression crinkling my face. He rolls his eyes.

“Think about it, Lillith. For the last, what, four generations? The story has been passed down to the next of kin that this is a curse haunting your family. But what if it was a bargain? An honestly struck one that someone decided not to keep?”

I shift a little in my seat. “Regardless, it’s a check I can’t cash,” I say. “I’m not marrying that guy.”

“Maybe the terms can be reworked,” Bastion says with a shrug. “Maybe we can renegotiate.”

“He didn’t seem interested in negotiations,” I say.

“No?”

“No, he was pretty furious,” I say. “He kept telling me to go home and drop the wards.”

“I wonder why he chose now to be so dogged about the whole thing. I mean—he’s mostly left your family alone these past hundred years or so, hasn’t he?” He props his chin on his hand as he looks out of the window, eyes unfocused as he thinks.

I nod, stomach twisting because I’m pretty sure I know exactly what has him in such a hurry. And I know Bastion is going to be just as furious with me for what I did as Aemon was. If not more. Still… If he’s going to help me, he deserves all the facts. And he deserves to hear it from me and not Aemon if we go through with this insane plan to try to contact him.

“Bash, I have to tell you something,” I say.

His eyes flit back to mine. Something in my tone has him straightening up. “...Okay.”

“Do... do you know how the Nightingale Pearl is made?” I ask. “How it forms and gets consecrated?”

“Theoretically,” he says. “The ‘sand’ for the pearl is usually the ashes of recently passed members of the family, right?”

I nod. “Except... the activating factor is an act of devotional pain.”

“What did you have to do to yourself?”

“Not to me,” I say, throat tightening. “I had to hurt Nan.” I swallow, trying to form the words through the haze of memories filling my head. “I didn’t want to do it at all. I refused, but she said I had to.”

The image of blood coating my hands, of the crunch of bones, the stretch of viscera—it all fills my mind’s eye as bright and real as it did the day she made me do it. I thumb the edge of my teacup.

“Lillith, you don’t have to say it,” he says reaching out for my hand. “Just let me see.”

I hesitate for a moment, not sure if I want to visit it as vividly as Bastion can retrieve it. It’s one of the things he’s good at—regressions, memory retrievals, mind reading. But in order for him to look at a memory, it has to play in my mind again. I’m not sure if I want him to see how horribly I had to hurt Nan. But maybe it’s better if he sees how fucked up it was. Maybe he needs to see it so he understands why I made the choice I had to make.

I give him my hand and he squeezes it once before wrapping both hands around my wrist, pressing his thumbs into the soft underbelly of my forearm. He closes his eyes, and the unsettling sensation of his rifling through my memories abruptly floods me. He finally lands on it, cracking it out of me with brutality I’m sure he doesn’t intend.

All the same, it feels like my ribs are being separated from my spine, and the softest parts of me are being yanked out—the emotional equivalent of a blood eagle. It doesn’t feel like a memory at all. It feels like I’m back there. Like I’m going it all over again.

“I won’t do it, Nan,” I’m telling her.