Unlike the other ancestors I’d been seeing in a new light, Elias Harlow was turning out to be every bit the stick in the mud that I’d thought—and not a very ambitious one, to boot. The communion with Thistle Grove was spectacular, almost unspeakably wonderful, he was right about that much; it was clear how deeply my father would miss it, once it fully passed to me. But why limit his descendants this way? Why hamstring us into being this and only this, never anything more? Who was Elias to decide that this was all any of us might ever want from our lives as witches of Thistle Grove?

I had no doubt I’d have seen and done things very differently, had I been in his shoes three hundred years ago.

But even so, this still changed things for me in a way I couldn’t have anticipated.

“So, if I leave,” I said dully, “I’ll lose it, forever. It’ll go to Delilah.”

“Unfortunately, yes.” My father nodded, glasses slipping down his nose. “That’s about the size of it, scoot.”

31

More Than Enough

I didn’t see Talia again until the Blackmoores’ masquerade ball on Samhain Eve, when she would be formally crowned as Victor.

I’d heard from Elena that she’d recovered well; the last of the shades haunting her had been banished with the dawn. The Avramovs had wrapped up their ghostly exorcism just about when I’d been discovering that I was now in a complicated relationship with Thistle Grove. But Talia hadn’t reached out to me herself, not even to thank me for stepping in for her, or for the proxy victory I’d won. Not that I’d done it for the props, but still; it was telling. It made me think that on her end, whatever had torn between us the night of the séance was still too painful and raw to prod.

And I hadn’t reached out, either. I hadn’t wanted to, not until I was sure I knew what I would say to her.

In the days since the challenge, I’d spent much of my time sitting by Lady’s Lake with Jasper beside me. Watching the sun wheel overhead, letting wave after wave of magic lap over me as I inhaled its incensey scent on the wind. Communing with the town below, until the soil felt as familiar as my own skin, the many breezes my own breath, the trees’ slow sap like my own blood, except blood that I could actually feel as it ran through me.

Was this enough for me, I kept wondering. Could it be enough? And if it wasn’t, and I decided not to stay; how could I ever forget how wonderful it had felt to be back, to find things both old and new to love about this town, before choosing to leave it behind all over again? But if I did stay, I still wouldn’t get to work anything like the kind of magic the other families could make—and I knew myself well enough to know how this limitation would continue to rankle me. Especially now that I was aware of my own contribution to their strength.