lies in me can't look just like yours."
She nearly choked on the next words. "You feel sorry for me. Because my brain is different. You've tried to accommodate that, and I'm grateful. But I am a witch of reasonable power, not a small autistic boy who spins.
"Coming here was my choice." Her smile wobbled. "And I'm sorry that I expected your amazing magic to make you smarter and wiser and more able to work with this difficult head of mine. That was silly and wrong." Her words had come full circle. "You couldn't possibly do that - you don't know what it is to live in my head. But I do."
She sought Nell's face. "I knew what could happen when the spell released. Even a small spell often overloads my brain. It was my choice to make."
Nell's arms cuddled her knees like a small, scared girl, but her eyes never wavered. "Why did you do it?"
"For the same reason you would have." For butterflies and snickerdoodle crumbs and a fiery girl with magic hands. "Because it was the best choice. The one where the risk was mine, and Kenna was as safe as I could make her."
She met Nell's eyes for one last moment, woman to witch. "And because I am not entirely different from you."
-o0o-
Nell walked down the stairs, feet feeling a thousand times heavier than usual. It had been a long pre-bed chat with Shay, and then with all three of her girls.
Honoring their wisdom. Respecting the right of a grown woman to make choices for herself - and of young-women-in-the-making to think hard thoughts and say difficult things.
Shay had been right, and so had Beth.
And as Nell walked down the stairs into the dark, she wondered exactly where she'd gone off the rails.
Or if she had.
Nell Sullivan Walker didn't like change, and she didn't like failure, and she didn't like fighting battles she couldn't see. But none of that explained the personal clenching of her gut every time Beth touched Witch Central's magic.
Warriors trusted their guts. They had to.
Turmoil churned her insides like a living thing. She followed the walls into the living room, leaving the lights off. The dark and shadows suited her mood. Slowly she walked the room, seeking comfort in the familiar.
And used the shreds of solace she found to hold a mirror up to her gut.
It took three circles around the room before she found the courage to name what she saw there. It wasn't dislike lurking in the depths. Or impatience, or even lack of respect.
It was fear.
She was a warrior. And her warrior heart feared Beth Landler.
A witch who was different.
Nell felt the tears starting to fall as the true awfulness sank in. At the core of Witch Central was acceptance. And this time, her warrior couldn't accept. She slid down the wall, her legs no longer willing to hold her up. And felt the shame slicking her soul.
Hot tears ran down her knees, the silent crying of a mama who didn't want her children to hear.
The arm that wrapped around her shoulders wasn't a child's - and it nearly shattered her. Daniel's gentle crooning finished the job.
Self-respect already vanished in wet trails down her knees in the dark, the warrior crawled into her husband's lap and let the tears rain.
With hands and sounds and the beating of his heart, he gave her space to crumble. Wiped her tears and warmed the shivers coming for her soul. And made her believe that love flowed into even the deepest places of the darkest night.
When she'd slowed to the occasional hiccupping sob, it was his fingers that pushed the curtain of hair back from her eyes. "Tell me."
"I feel like she doesn't belong here. I don't want her here." Nell's words whispered into the night. "And I'm horrified that kind of ugliness lives inside me."
But not horrified enough to make it go away.
His hands never stopped their gentle soothing. "Why don't you want her here?"
It wasn't rational. And it wasn't right. She was simply broken. "I don't know."
His arm stretched up to a nearby table. And came down, a small photograph in his fingers. He tilted it to catch the dim rays of a streetlight. Aervyn at two,