reached out to grab my hand. I wasn’t sure why I let her, but I did.
Emilia’s grip tightened as she closed her eyes. Her eyelids flickered fast like some kind of accelerated REM. Something deep inside me said she was using magic to read me, to determine if what I claimed was the truth. A minute later, she opened her eyes and gasped, “It’s true. And you are exactly like my daughter, too. You possess the same power in your blood.”
I pulled my hand away from her now.
“You must invite me inside. We have many things to discuss,” she went on.
“Hold up a second,” I said, blocking her from coming in. “We might be related, but as far as I’m concerned, we have nothing to say to one another. If what Ira’s told me about you is correct, I don’t want to have anything to do with you.”
My granny was a serial cheater. Wasn’t that just delightful? Not only that, but she was so bad at handling rejection that she cursed the man who refused her.
“I was young and impulsive when Ira knew me,” Emilia said. “Drunk on power. I’m not the same woman I was back then.”
“People don’t change that much, and you weren’t that young.” She had to have been what? In her early forties twenty-five years ago? That was certainly old enough to know better.
“You must believe me,” she pleaded. “I didn’t come here to bespell Ira again. I came to apologise. I’d completely forgotten about what I did to him until recently when I felt that the curse had been broken.”
“You forgot? How many people do you go around cursing that you could just forget? Ira was a young man with his whole life ahead of him, and you stole that from him just because he turned you down.”
Her gaze was beseeching, but she had another thing coming if she thought I was going to invite her inside for some long-lost family bonding.
“Darya disappeared not long after I cursed Ira,” Emilia explained then. “Many dark years followed for myself and my husband. Anything that happened previous to that faded into the background, became meaningless. All we thought about was our missing daughter.”
At this, my phone buzzed in my pocket. I pulled it out and saw Finn’s name. I held a hand up to Emilia. “Wait here. I need to take this.” I closed the door, shooting Ira an apologetic look as I lifted the phone to my ear and answered, “Hey.”
“I have Pamphrock here,” Finn said. “He wants to speak to you.”
Why did Pamphrock want to speak to me? I heaved a sigh. “Okay, put him on.”
A second later Pamphrock came on the line. “Tegan, you are aware of the trip I made last night?”
“Yeah, Finn explained.”
“Well, I now possess a vial of Felicity’s blood for the spell. I would like to move forward with this as soon as possible. Have you figured out the other components yet?”
I scratched nervously at my neck. “Um, not quite.”
“Not quite?” he clipped, displeased.
“Not quite, b-but soon,” I stammered, lying through my teeth.
“How soon? How many more days do you need?”
“Um, a couple.”
“You have three days. I expect results by then,” he said sternly before hanging up. Rude.
Emilia rapped her knuckles on the door. “What spell are you planning?” she asked, clearly having been listening in. She probably used some kind of eavesdropping magic because she’d clearly heard Pamphrock’s end, too.
I threw the door open. “You listened to my phone call?”
“Only part of it. You sounded distressed, and I grew worried. The man you spoke with wants you to cast a spell for him, but you’re not yet sure if you can achieve it. I could help you,” she offered.
I cocked an eyebrow. “Oh yeah? And what do you want in return?”
“All I ask is that you allow me a chance to get to know you. I am an old woman who had her daughter taken from her. Only now do I discover that this daughter wasn’t taken but instead ran away of her own choice. Not only that, but she had a daughter herself. I have a granddaughter, and I want to get to know her.”
I stared at her, gaze narrowed. “I don’t trust you.”
“And I would never expect you to. But please, allow me the opportunity to gain your trust.”
I didn’t reply right away, because I needed a minute to think. My mother performed the same spell on me that I needed to perform on Rebecca. If my