“You’ll have to wait and see, won’t you?”

“Oh, I’m so excited!”

Rosetta and Terracotta joined them. “Excited about what?” asked Rosetta.

“Mika says she’s going to brew us fairy wine on the Solstice!”

“Is it really something fairies drink?” Rosetta asked eagerly.

“Is it really going to be wine?” was what Terracotta wanted to know, even more eagerly.

Mika bit back a laugh. “Like I told your sister, you’ll have to wait to find out. Why aren’t you two practicing on the horse?”

“That horse is stubborn,” Terracotta said roundly.

“You’re stubborn,” Rosetta corrected her. “We’re supposed to be working together.”

“We always got told not to cast spells together, remember?” Terracotta replied. “Before Mika, we never would’ve even tried.”

“Before the three of you, I’d never tried it, either,” Mika admitted. “In the Very Secret Society of Witches, we share spells with one another, but we never cast them together. The four of us are unusual that way. In fact,” she added, as a thought struck her, “one might even say we’re irregular.”

“Irregular?” Altamira repeated.

“Primrose always says I have the most irregular ideas,” said Mika. “It occurred to me that maybe it’s time to embrace that. We can all be irregular together.”

“Maybe we could have our own Very Secret Society of Witches,” Rosetta offered.

“Yes!” Altamira cried. “Just for the four of us!”

“The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches,” Terracotta said, grinning. “What do you think, Mika?”

“I think it’s perfect,” said Mika, her heart too full to say anything more.

It was a beautiful moment, but it was also proof of just how badly she’d failed at the one promise she’d made to herself for almost all her adult life: don’t get attached.

She wanted that promise not to matter anymore because, after all, this place and these people were not like any of the others she’d known before. They knew who she was. They knew her secrets. Here, she was accepted, understood, and even liked. So would it really be so bad to get attached? Would it really be so bad to admit to herself that she really fucking loved it here, and she loved these people, and she wanted nothing more than to stay?

But she couldn’t stay, could she? This was Lillian’s house, and when she came back, she might not want Mika here. And even if she did, even if she decided that Mika’s lessons with the children were worth the risk of having another witch living in her house, who was to say that the others would feel the same way? In a month or three months or six, who was to say they wouldn’t decide, like everyone else she’d tried to love before, that she was simply not worthy of being loved in return?