Witch's Pyre (Worldwalker 3)

“Just some toys for the cat,” Samantha said sheepishly.

“We don’t have a cat,” Lily and Juliet said at the same time.

“Oh, good!” Samantha said, relieved. “That would have been terrible.”

Lily’s eyes followed her mother and Juliet as they went upstairs. “You know, in some universe we’ve got a cat,” she said, recalling that her mother had said something similar before. “And something really bad happens.”

“But to you or to the cat—that’s the question,” Rowan said.

Lily shrugged and looked at him. They were left relatively alone at the table while Una and Breakfast busied themselves making sandwiches for everyone at the counter.

“Tell me all of what?” she asked. She hadn’t forgotten what her mother had said to him.

Rowan buried a regretful smile and shook his head. “I can’t.” He cut Lily off before she could argue and took her hand to remove some of the sting from his words. “Just leave it alone, okay?”

She watched him tentatively run his thumb around the whorls of her knuckle, up the side of her finger, and back down again. He was waiting for her to stop him, and she knew eventually she would, but for just a moment she let herself pretend she didn’t understand what it meant. She heard his breath deepen and felt the air between them spark with electricity. She noticed the table again, the same table where she and Tristan had sat together so many times, and thought that if Rowan had been there when they fought the Hive, Tristan would be sitting at it right now. She took her hand from his. If he was hurt, he didn’t show it. They were both starting to get used to this stumbling back and forth as they danced around what they felt and tripped over things that couldn’t be undone.

“Your mother is going to need a willstone to worldjump,” Rowan said.

“Right,” Lily gasped, remembering. “What do we do?”

“I grew far more than we needed when we were last here, and I stored them,” he said. He stood and briefly ran the back of his fingers across her cheek. “I’ll take care of it.” He went upstairs after Samantha and Juliet.

Lily heard the dull thunk of an ax hitting wood and looked out the window. It wasn’t quite dark yet, but Caleb had already started cutting down a tree for Lily’s pyre. Tristan came back inside, shrugging at Lily and following Rowan upstairs.

“Eat,” Una said, putting a container of hummus and a bag of pita chips in front of her.

“Yeah, don’t worry about Caleb,” Breakfast added, sliding a jar of pickles across the table to join the hummus. “He just needs to blow off some steam.”

Lily knew it was more than that. “Do you two have anything you want to say to me?” she asked as she started in on her food.

They shared a look, and Breakfast decided to go first. “It would have been nice for you to tell us what you were doing, rather than letting us find out this way,” he said, keeping the reproach in his voice to a minimum.

“We understand that you did it to protect us,” Una began.

“I didn’t even know I was doing it against the Hive,” Lily interjected. “I swear, it just sort of happened.”

“And we appreciate that,” Una continued, “but you still should have said something once you did know.”

Lily stirred her hummus with a chip, watching the swirl pattern rather than meet their eyes. She thought of what it meant to make a mind mosaic, and how Rowan had said that witches did it all the time. “You guys are making a big deal out of nothing. It’s not like I’m using you for fun, or rifling through your minds, looking for secrets,” she said. “There are so many thing witches do to their claimed that are way worse than what I did to protect you.”

“Yeah, but we’d never stay the claimed of that kind of witch,” Breakfast said, giving her the subtlest of warnings.

“Are you saying you don’t want me to do it again?” Lily said. She watched them share another look, and this one was more troubled.

“You’re asking us to choose between our freedom and our safety, but there’s a middle ground here,” Una said. “Ask our consent first.”

“I was busy saving your lives. I didn’t have time to stop and ask if that was okay with you,” Lily snapped acidly.

“Lily, there are a lot of things that you can justify when you say you’re doing it to save lives,” Breakfast replied in an uncharacteristically harsh tone. “It starts with the little stuff. Going through emails— the people don’t even notice, right? Like we didn’t notice when you possessed us. But that’s the start of a long and slippery slope. Are you sure you want to go down it?”

Given a moral equivalent from her world, Lily couldn’t maintain the illusion that she was right anymore. She shook her head and dropped her chip. “Do you think Caleb will forgive me?”

“I don’t know,” Una answered. “You haven’t lost him yet, but you might if you don’t knock it off. Got it?”

“I got it,” Lily said.

“Good.” Una relaxed and smiled at Lily. “And thanks for saving our lives.”