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.”