“Yeah. When I first realized I had this power, I didn’t want it. As soon as I find whoever killed my mom, I’m out of here, and this amount of power is wasted on me, you know? And then I realized I could use it to help me search, and to protect me along the way, and I started thinking ‘hey, maybe it’s not that bad after all.’” I used my finger to draw a star on the condensation forming on my glass. “But I don’t want to be this person.”

“You don’t want to be feared for your power.”

I nodded.

“When I was a kid, no one knew I had any power,” she said.

I angled my head. “I can believe that.” Even now, Selina kept her power tucked away so tightly that I couldn’t sense if she was a gray witch, or wholly white. I occasionally got a glimpse of a deep well of power, but only if I was paying attention.

“My power manifested young, but it wasn’t celebrated. My mother had fallen in love with my father at a young age. She was black, he was white. She was a witch, he was a human. Their differences were stark, but they had a deep love for each other. Unfortunately, while I still have a deep respect for my father, I can recognize that his ignorance around power did no one any good.

“He’d insisted that my mother break from her coven. We weren’t living with them, but he didn’t approve of her visiting, even weekly. Once she left, he made it clear that he was completely disgusted by magic. Any urge she had to use her power was met with disdain and revulsion.”

“I can’t imagine how hard that must have been.”

Selina nodded. “My mother was a powerful witch. To her, using that power was as natural as breathing. When I was born, she couldn’t feel any spark of power within me. For a while she mourned, wondering if her insistence on never using magic while she was pregnant had magically crippled me. After a few years, she had decided it was a gift. She had moved far from her coven, and we lived in a human neighborhood, close to where my father worked. Everything was great. For a while.”

Selina swallowed, briefly closing her eyes. “My mother was a smart woman, but she was young. Her parents had been abusive— her father an alcoholic, and when she met my father, she’d fallen so deeply in love that she’d lost all reason. When he decided I would be sent to a human school, she didn’t object. After all, it seemed likely that I had no power.”

My lips went numb. “But you did.”