The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches — Chapter no 26

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

ika put the kettle on, and waited for it to whistle. Around the corner, she could hear Jamie and Circe in the front room, a mixture of low,M deep murmurs and joyous barks. She closed her eyes, resting her forehead on the cool surface of the fridge door, fighting the urge to walk back into the other room, burrow into his arms, and hold tight.

By the time the tea was done, she felt like her calmest, coldest mask was in place. She took the cups out to the front room.

“The girls miss you,” Jamie said quietly. “We all miss you.”

“Did you tell the girls why I left?”

“We told them everything. They’re furious with us.” He smiled faintly.

“Not for lying about Lillian. For taking you away from them.”

Mika swallowed. She returned to her spot on the sofa, holding her hot, comforting teacup close. “Why are you here, Jamie?”

“I’m leaving a window open.”

“Am I supposed to understand what that means?”

He sat down on the opposite end of the sofa, giving her space. He didn’t look at her, staring instead at the cup of tea in his hands. “It means we know we fucked up. We know why you might leave for good. But we wanted you to know that we want you to stay. Not just for now. Always. So we’re leaving a window open so that, if you ever want to come home, you’ll know you’ll always be wanted.”

God, he’d only been here ten minutes and she was already about to fall apart. She swallowed, the lump in her throat almost too painful to bear.

“The thing is, it would be so easy to forget the lies and the tricks,” she said.

“Because I know why you did it. You did it for those three children and for the weird, wonderful family you’ve made together, and that’s something I

understand. You didn’t want a spell to break an ATM. You wanted me to help you save your family. I can forgive that. I have forgiven that.”

She stopped, her breath shuddering out of her. He waited, knowing she wasn’t finished.

“The part I’m struggling with,” Mika said, “is the fact that I can never know how much of it was real.”

He put his cup down with a thump and turned to face her dead on, his brows knitted. “It was all real. Mika. Look at me. The only thing we lied to you about was why we needed your help. Everything else, everything, was real. Is real. The way we feel about you is real.”

A wayward tear escaped, and she dashed it off her cheek. “No, I don’t believe that. If you really knew me, if you really trusted me, you would have told me the truth a whole lot sooner. But you didn’t. You thought I’d tell the other witches!” Her voice throbbed with anger. “Why would you think that? I didn’t tell them the girls existed! Why would I tell them this?”

“Because of the wards,” Jamie said hoarsely, and understanding struck her like a blow to the chest.

“The day we took Rosetta into the city . . .”

He nodded. “We were going to tell you everything that night. Then you and I talked about the other witches.”

“And I said something like, if Lillian wasn’t around, it wouldn’t be safe for the girls to grow up together without the protection of the wards,” Mika finished for him. She sank back against the fluffy throw pillows behind her, suddenly exhausted. “I said you’d need help.”

“We were afraid that if you knew Lillian was gone, you’d feel differently about keeping the girls’ existence a secret from the Society,” Jamie said quietly.

Mika was quiet for a few minutes, the hamster wheel running wild, her tea growing cold in her hands. She put it down.

She wished she hadn’t left Nowhere House the way she did. She had a right to be angry that she had been lied to and manipulated, and the sense of betrayal had been viscerally real, but sitting in this house now, this house with all its ghosts and all its monsters under the beds, she knew her abrupt

flight had been a kneejerk reaction to the pain. She’d reacted as if it had been just like every other time she had been used and betrayed, but it hadn’t, had it? Because nobody at Nowhere House had lied to her or betrayed her for their own gain. They’d done it to save their family.

Mightn’t she have done the same if she’d had a family to save?

“I only had part of the picture, Jamie,” she said at last. “If you’d told me everything, I might have said that I do think you need help recasting those wards, but I agree that keeping the girls with you, in their home, is more important. I wouldn’t have told them.”

“I know that.” He shook his head. “I knew weeks ago, but I didn’t want to admit it. Because if I admitted it, it would mean you mattered a whole lot more than I ever wanted you to.”

“I wish you’d told me the truth sooner,” Mika said softly. “You did tell me in the end, and that means something, but you were right about me.

About the way I run when I’m hurt. I have to. Because everything here, deep inside me, says I should trust and believe that Nowhere House was real, but I don’t know if I know how. I’m afraid.”

“I know that, too,” Jamie said. He got off the sofa and knelt on the rug in front of her, his hands on her knees. “You’re afraid of feeling like this again. You’re afraid that if you come back, if you climb through the window we’ve left open and let yourself belong, you won’t survive if it’s taken away from you.”

Mika nodded, tears spilling down her cheeks. “I care far, far too much about all of you already, and it makes me dangerously happy to be somewhere where I can be myself, but it’s also way too easy for me to be hurt by you, even if you don’t mean to hurt me.” The words spilled out of her in a rush. “I should have stayed to talk this through, but I don’t know if I can come back for good. I don’t know if I can gamble my stupid, fragile heart again.”

His voice was very, very low. “Your heart’s the strongest fucking thing I’ve ever known. It makes me want to be braver, and happier.” His eyes held hers. “Stay. Stay with me.”

“Would you still want me if I wasn’t a witch?”

Jamie’s eyes lit with laughter. “No.”

“Christ, you could say nice things sometimes, you know.”

“No, I couldn’t. I want you, Mika. There are a million things that make you you, like your laugh, and the fact that you care about Primrose in spite of everything, and the colour of your skin, and the fact that when you decided you needed a mask to fit into the world, you chose one that was sunny instead of scowly like mine. Those are a few things. You know what another one is?” He raised an eyebrow. “The fact that you love magic. You need it like you need to breathe. You wouldn’t be you if you weren’t a witch. And it’s you I want. All of you.”

The room fell quiet. Circe had gone to nap beside the oven in the kitchen because it was the warmest spot in the house, so even her usual sleep snuffling was absent. The clock on the mantelpiece ticked. Mika scrubbed at her wet eyes, her heart full and raw and still desperately afraid.

But also desperately wanting.

“We’re going to need new cups of tea,” Jamie said, giving her space again. He straightened up, took their cold tea out to the kitchen, and flicked the kettle back on.

Mika got off the sofa and went to the fireplace to light it. It was one of those electric ones, with fake brickwork. Mika watched the artificial flames flicker and frolic for a moment, then ran her finger over one brick that was a lot redder and chalkier than the others. She’d gotten red crayon on it when she’d been six or seven years old. She had expected to get in trouble for it because Primrose, who had been here at the time, liked things just so.

Instead, Primrose had only shrugged and said, “Art is art, poppet. Show it off with pride. In fact, why don’t I help you colour in the rest of that brick?”

She’d forgotten that small kindness, and others like it. Even in this house of ghosts, there was a little bit of light.

“The tea’s steeping.” Jamie came to stand beside her. “You okay?”

“I think so.”

“You know, when I first got to Nowhere House, I was fractured.”

Firelight flickered in his eyes. “I flinched at the slightest noise. Refused to let anyone touch me. Locked myself in my room. Lillian gave me a home,

but it was Ian, Ken, and Lucie who put me back together, piece by piece. It took me a long time to let them in. I was afraid, too; afraid of what it would do to me if I lost them. It’s a leap of faith to love people and let yourself be loved. It’s closing your eyes, stepping off a ledge into nothing, and trusting that you’ll fly rather than fall. I can’t step off the ledge for you, Mika. It’s something only you can do. And I know you will. It might not be right now, but I know you. Sooner or later, you’ll fly.”

Mika had no difficulty with the loving part. She loved him, loved all of them, with a ferocity that hurt. She had known that for some time.

But to allow herself to be loved? That was so much harder. That required bravery and trust and the vanquishing of the monsters that lived under the bed. Jamie had said, rightly, that he couldn’t step off the ledge for her. Only she could do that.

Could she? Could she go to the very edge of that ledge and, even knowing there was always a chance that she would fall, still jump?

“What if I can’t?” Mika asked out loud, her voice little more than a whisper.

“Then I’ll take anything you can give me,” Jamie replied. He took a step closer. “But just so you know, you can have all of me. If you want it.”

“I do want it. I want it more than anything.”

He smiled crookedly, but he didn’t touch her. Instead, they had their tea, and Mika showed him the potion still simmering in her cauldron and explained her hope that it would confuddle Edward into believing whatever lie they told him, and for a little while, they both let themselves hope that this would work, that after tomorrow they’d never again have to worry about a spiteful solicitor or a pile of bones hidden in the garden.

And for the first time in days, Mika laughed—really, properly laughed— when Jamie told her what the girls had said when they’d told them the truth about Lillian. “I think we expected them to be suitably solemn and respectful about it, but in hindsight, that was an absurd expectation.” He paused. “Altamira said we should have buried Lillian in the woods.”

“No, I don’t think so,” Mika said wisely. “Foxes dig things up in the woods, you know. It’s a terrible place to hide a corpse.”

Jamie gave her a wry look. “Yes, that’s exactly what Terracotta said, too.”

They opened a bottle of mulled wine, demolished a lemon cheesecake for dinner, and played a drinking game that involved taking a swig out of the wine bottle every time someone next door shouted “Jesus fucking Christ, Granddad!”

By the time the night quieted down at last, they were tipsy and Mika was feeling just a bit braver, and Circe had wisely taken herself off to the kitchen for the night.

“I’m going to bed,” Mika said, pausing at the bottom of the stairs. “You

want to come?”

“Fuck, yes.”

He kissed the back of her neck halfway up the stairs and caught her as she stumbled. She turned, pressing her mouth to his, and for a few minutes, it looked like they wouldn’t even get all the way upstairs.

But they did. Jamie pressed one hand into the door by her head, the other tracing her kiss-swollen mouth with his thumb. She bit his thumb, then licked it. He groaned. She reached up, playing with the edge of his rolled- up sleeves, tracing a finger down the muscles in his forearm.

“Forearms are my ruin,” she said dreamily.

He kissed her brow. “You’re my ruin.”

“If you keep saying things like that, we won’t make it to the bed.”

“I promise to nobly bear that sacrifice.”

She laughed and darted under his arm. He pivoted, catching her around her waist, and pressed the length of her back against him. He used his other hand to sweep her hair over her shoulder, the soft, silky strands slipping through his fingers, and then he lowered his head to the back of her bare neck.

They made it as far as the rug on the floor. She pushed him down on his back and sat astride him, her hair curling over one shoulder as she kissed him. Her fingers fumbled with the buttons of his shirt and she rocked against him, needing the friction. His hands clenched on her hips to hold her in place. He broke the kiss and dropped his head back, his breathing ragged.

Mika straightened to pull her dress over her head. She didn’t have a bra on. His body jerked and he flipped them, getting her beneath him while he shrugged off his unbuttoned shirt. A groan slipped between his teeth as he hovered over her for a moment, unmoving, just gazing in wonder at every inch of golden, sweat-salty skin she’d uncovered.

She let him look until she grew impatient and bit softly at his mouth. He made a low sound, partly a moan and partly a laugh. “Sorry.”

“I don’t think you are,” she whispered against his mouth.

He kissed his way down her neck, pausing at the wild pulse fluttering at the hollow of her throat, and then his mouth was on her breasts. He nipped and licked and kissed until she was writhing and whimpering and nothing more than fuck and please and so fucking good.

“God, I could watch you coming apart all day.” He whispered the words between kisses, his voice low and raspy. “I want to see it again and again and again. I want bruises on my shoulders from your fingers. I want my tongue between your legs. I want to be inside you.”

“James Kelly,” she whispered. “You’re really good at this.”

He tore himself away long enough to grin at her, a shy, boyish grin that splintered her heart. She couldn’t believe she’d ever thought him scowly, cold, and unreachable. He was the purest alchemy, lead to gold. Each time he looked at her, it was like he was looking at her for the first time, and each time he looked at her like that, she was lost.

She skimmed her hands down the lean, muscled planes of his torso, delighting in the way he shuddered at her touch. It seemed only fair, considering every part of her that he’d touched and kissed had turned electric. “We should probably get on the bed,” she said. “You’re not in the first blush of youth, you know. You could do your back in if we stay down here.”

Eyes twinkling, he licked her nose. Mika curled her fingers around the back of his neck and pulled him back down to her, kissing him until her body softened with heat and his eyes went hazy. He broke the kiss and kissed his way down her neck, then kept going, making her laugh helplessly as he nuzzled her along her ribs. She’d never known sex like this, this

absurd, bewildering mixture of lust, mind-boggling pleasure, laughter, and silliness, but it was perfect.

He hooked her legs around his waist and scooped her into his arms, and then they were on the bed. He kissed her, one hand between her legs. He swore under his breath. Her hands were on the button of his jeans. “Now,” she whimpered, writhing beneath him. “Please.”

He kicked off his jeans. His eyes held hers. “Are you sure you want this?”

“I don’t know, Jamie,” she said solemnly. “You’re the one with your hand between my legs. What do you think?”

He made a low noise, his fingers still stroking her, and then he pulled his hand away and braced his arms on either side of her head. In one thrust, he was inside her. She bucked at the wild surge of pleasure. He shuddered, pulling out and thrusting in again, his eyes falling closed like he was helpless.

It was too much and not enough and everything.

After, Mika buried her face in his damp neck, breathing in sweat, pine needles, and the ocean. Jamie pressed a kiss to her hair. She yawned, stretching like a cat. He pulled his jeans back on, watching her with such awe and tenderness that she had to look away or else be knocked down by a wave of emotion too powerful to hold at bay.

“Stay.”

He climbed back into the bed with her, smiling crookedly, one hand fitted to the curve of her waist. “I’m not going anywhere.”

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