Back in a Spell (The Witches of Thistle Grove, #3)(2)
Letting the oblivion glamour that was cast over the town take hold of her, erasing her memory of whatever spell I’d worked, would have felt . . . traitorous. A little gross, even.
And it would have been a cop-out at best. Jessa was the kind of delightful whirlwind of a person who effortlessly transformed strangers into friends—or short-lived partners, as the case may be—wherever she went, and I knew she’d been hoping a little of that joie de vivre might rub off on me. Tonight’s jewelry-making class was the fourth hopeful outing of its kind, following a disastrous wine-and-paint night (during which I’d gotten the not-artistically-conducive kind of wasted), an equally catastrophic pottery class that had reminded me of Sydney’s love of ceremonial teacups and sent me spinning into a meltdown, and a flower-arranging class that had only managed to unearth memories of the ivory-and-rose-gold palette I’d chosen for the flowers at my own wedding.
A wedding that was never going to happen, much like the perfect life with Sydney that had been meant to materialize thereafter. A life that now seemed not just fictional, but so fantastically unbelievable that I, a flesh-and-blood descendant of the sorceress Morgan le Fay, couldn’t conceive of it as a reality.
“You’re talking about me like I’m some archeological dig, Jess, and we’re troweling for ancient potsherds of joy. What if there’s no zest to unearth? What if I’m just a barren wasteland?” I dropped my chin, the familiar, hateful well of tears pressing against my eyes. I was so damn sick of crying at the slightest provocation, like some weepy damsel stuck in a mire of never-ending distress, but I’d apparently won the sob lottery. Team #Leaky4Life over here. “Permanently broken?”
“Everyone’s fixable, sweetheart,” Jessa assured me, slipping a soft arm around my shoulders and tilting her temple against mine. She favored those subtle skin-musk perfumes that you couldn’t detect on yourself—the kind I’d never go for, because what was the point if you couldn’t catch indulgent whiffs of it throughout the day?—but that made her smell gorgeous, a vanilla-cedar scent that hit somewhere between gourmand and woody. Being hugged by her felt like free aromatherapy.
“Even that guy you dated with the towering manbun?” I asked, a little damply.
“You say that like there’s only been one . . . which, would that were the truth.”
“The one who drank so much Bulletproof Coffee it was like he was speaking in fast-forward all the time,” I clarified. “And did biceps curls while taking dumps.”
“Fuck no, not him.” She shuddered delicately against me, sticking out her tongue—which was pierced, something no other estate lawyer I knew could ever have gotten away with. Apparently a deceptively angelic face like Jessa’s covered a multitude of sins, even when it came to the most uptight of clients. “Everyone but Chasen, then.”
“Of course that was his name. And what about dictators? Or sex cult leaders? Or serial killers?”
“Now you’re just being difficult. Allow me to rephrase, counselor.” She shifted sideways against me, just enough to boop me on the nose. “You are fixable, sweetheart. Eminently so.”
“Then why can’t I get into even this, the most emotionally undemanding of activities?” I asked her, that relentless ache lurching in my chest again. A panging disorientation that felt almost like homesickness, as my gaze skimmed over the dozen or so other people happily crafting beneath the cherry cutouts dangling from the ceiling, the recessed lighting spilling over them in a mellow glow. Mostly clusters of women around Jessa’s and my age, along with a few mothers with their tweens in tow.
Even the solitary goth enby with the pentagram neck tattoo—likely a tourist drawn to the Silver Cherry by its affiliation with Lark Thorn, who not only was teaching this class but also sold her line of enchanted jewelry here—looked to be having a more exuberant experience with this mortal coil than I was.
“What kind of mess can’t focus on stringing beads together? Or letting loose on a pottery wheel?” I swiped at my eyes, trying in vain to keep from smearing my eyeliner. “It’s been a whole year, Jess. How long is this emotional fugue state even supposed to last?”
My voice rose enough that on the other side of the room, Lark Thorn abruptly straightened from where she’d been instructing one of the tweens. She turned just enough to flick a concerned glance at me over her shoulder, deep brown skin glowing against the vivid turquoise of her scoop-neck sweater, her dark eyes liquid with sympathy. The Thorns were empathically attuned to one another’s feelings, and acutely sensitive to others’ emotional landscapes, too. Though I doubted Lark even needed their particular brand of ESP to detect the seismic rumble of my distress.
The Nina I used to be had been unshakably sure of herself, vacuum-sealed into her composure. But these days, the old me felt like a fossil, a crumbling memory. These days, I was more of a tempest in a teacup.
A flailing, distractible tempest that just could not seem to get it the hell together.
I twitched my lips into an “everything’s just peachy over here” smile, wincing inwardly as she gave me a lingering look before turning away. I wouldn’t have agreed to come here tonight at all, had I remembered Lark’s connection to the studio. Given how the Blackmoores’ standing in this town had declined since the debacle of last year’s Gauntlet of the Grove—not to mention the fact that my little brother, Gawain, had briefly come under suspicion when one of the Avramovs’ dearly departed ancestors cursed the Thorns this past Beltane—the last thing I needed to be doing was signaling weakness in front of a member of one of the other families.