A Flicker to a Flame (Mosley Coven)

Ten

TEN

CATO

So long as you keep it close

G randma Sarah’s favorite form of magic was love. She told me that in the hours before she passed, when all her lessons felt pressing — because they were. Because Grandma Sarah had been ready to pass on for years before she did. I heard her lesson and thought I understood it in those woods with David, but I didn’t. It’s only now, lips tingling from Xavier’s kiss, that I understand what she meant.

Xavier can’t see how our joining brought life to these woods, but I can. The air smells fresher, leaves are rustling gently in the wind, and when I look up at the sky, the Moon has passed, leaving a beautiful splatter of stars in its place. This was the magic Grandma Sarah had been talking about, and now that I’ve seen it, I can’t help but agree.

“What’s got you smiling?” Xavier asks, pulling my attention back down to earth.

I can’t help but laugh. “Same thing that’s got you smiling,” I reply.

He ducks his head, fingers fumbling to put his shirt back in place. Every time he raises his eyes, hoping to catch a glimpse of me while my attention is elsewhere, our gazes crash together. In my entire world, nothing is more fascinating than him.

Our time together is coming to an end. I can feel it, and I think he can as well. I think we both know there’s no point in trying to stop it. So I watch him with open desire. I let him see my longing. I hope he remembers this long after I’m gone.

I can see a lot when I look in Xavier’s eyes, but not enough. Tomorrow, he’ll wake up in a bedroom in a house I can’t see. What happens after that I’ll never know because I can see years and years into my future — bits and pieces of days to come — and Xavier’s not in any of them. So I try to remember all the little details — the way the Moon bounces off his midnight skin, the smell of tree sap in the air, and the way his heart beats strong in his chest.

“What’s your favorite word?” I ask out of the blue.

Xavier’s hands freeze on his chest, caught halfway between smoothing out the creases on his shirt. “What?”

“Word. What’s your favorite word?”

“Who has a favorite word?”

“I do,” I laugh, smoothing my hand down my own chest so he’ll mirror me.

He lifts an eyebrow and walks in my direction with a languid strut. Wet leaves rustle under his shoes. “What is it?” He asks me that question with a quick lift of his head, casual but wholly betrayed by the heat in his gaze. I wish we had more time.

I have many favorite words actually, but this query is deception, like so much magic. That little flicker of power I felt inside him has grown. I can see it — I can feel it — and I don’t want it to stop.

“My favorite word is bloom ,” I breathe. His other eyebrow lifts and his mouth twists into a smirk.

“Say it again.” His voice is a low rasp and his eyes are trained on my mouth, just like mine is trained on his.

“Bloom.”

His hand cups the side of my head. His thumb ghosts over my bottom lip. I put my hands on his soft waist. “Now it’s your turn.”

He bends forward. I close my eyes in anticipation of his lips.

And then he whispers my own name into my mouth.

* * *

XAVIER

B y the time we step out of the forest into the clearing, I feel like a brand-new man — like there’s fresh blood pumping in my veins. We stop at the edge of the grass and I look left and right, searching for something familiar in the landscape, but come up empty.

“Where the hell are we?” I whisper.

Cato laughs and squeezes my hand. “Middle of nowhere, looks like.”

I laugh and turn toward him, forgetting my surroundings again. “Thanks for stating the obvious.”

“Welcome,” he says, smirking and looking at me out of the corner of his eyes, pulling me forward across the parking lot toward the back door.

“Can’t believe this place didn’t fall down while we were gone,” I say, only to make Cato laugh, and it works.

He reaches for the door and wraps his fist around it, but I stop walking and yank at our joined hands.

He turns toward me, knowing and care etched in his brow. “It’s okay,” he says again.

I shake my head, panic rising in my chest. “Am I ever gonna see you again?”

He opens his mouth, and the world goes dark.

* * *

CATO

I gather Xavier’s body against my chest before he can fall to the ground. “What the?—”

“Told you he was pretty,” Fredi says, cutting me off.

I turn toward the far corner of the building as my sisters walk into view. Billie’s face is covered in perpetual shadow, but I find her eyes in the darkness. “Too pretty for Cato,” she teases, laughing low and feral.

“Don’t you two have something else to do? Some ones to do?”

“Been there. Did that,” Fredi giggles.

“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” Billie says in a voice that sounds a little too much like mama’s for my liking. “We gotta go.”

“Not… Not yet,” I plead, bending down to grab Xavier’s boneless body behind the knees so I can heft him up into my arms.

“How sweet,” Fredi sighs.

“I don’t relish this,” Billie says gently. “If it were up to me…” She takes a deep breath and glances at Xavier, then freezes for a second. I watch her watch him, knowing she can see at a glance what it took me a while to realize. When her eyes lift up to mine, her gaze is gentler than I’ve ever seen. And that’s how I know there’s no point in pleading my case. “I’m sorry, Junior. If it were up to me, I’d give you all the time you needed.”

“But it’s not up to any of us. I can feel the portal shrinking,” Fredi says, a note of urgency caressing those words.

Billie nods. “We have to go.”

“Wait.” This isn’t how I wanted to say goodbye.

“Can’t wait,” Billie says. “We go back through the portal we made or find out how to sneak through The Night Gate. I don’t wanna have to do that, do you?”

“I—”

“Or do you not want to come back at all?” Fredi asks in a shaky voice.

I turn sharply in her direction. “How’d you know?”

She smiles sadly, jutting her chin defiantly in my direction. “It’s not easy to feel what I feel or to know what I know.”

It’s not an answer. It’s not even a complaint. It’s a simple declaration about our lives. Our magic isn’t good or bad; it just is, and it is all-consuming.

“This is your chance to leave,” Billie says. “You can stay with your pretty boy and forget about David.”

“How’d—”

Billie shrugs. “I’m just nosy.”

“But if you do that,” Fredi interjects, “we won’t ever be together like this again.”

“You can see that?” I ask, shocked for the first time in a long while by Fredi’s power. She nods sadly in return.

“Is that what you want?” Billie asks. There’s no judgment in her tone. Not even anger or sadness.

Fredi sucks her teeth. “We wouldn’t do that. We won’t guilt you or be cross.”

“You wouldn’t, but?—”

“Don’t,” Billie says in a sharp tone. My lips snap shut. “You’ve spent all your life worrying about what other people think of you. What the family needs from you. But what about you?”

“What about me?” I say, accidentally echoing the last words David said to me.

Fredi’s face bunches in anger and she crosses her arms in front of her chest. “We love you and would keep you with us always if we could. But if leaving will make you happy, we’ll let you go.”

“You can’t let me go. I’m a person.”

Billie rolls her eyes. “You know what we mean.”

“And I don’t believe you.”

Fredi giggles. “Yes, you do. We’re your sisters. No one knows you like us. No one knows us like you.”

“Unfortunately,” Billie says with a smirk. “And if you decide to leave, we’ll kiss you once on each cheek and send all our love with you. It’ll keep you warm when you’re cold. It’ll remind you that you’ll never really be alone. Even when you can’t remember us, you’ll have that at least.”

“You’ll always be a Mosley. You’ll always have a home.”

I’ve managed to keep my own tears at bay for maybe hours, but with my sisters echoing mama’s words from earlier in the night, I lose the battle. “Don’t finish,” I say. “You don’t have to finish the spell. I’m coming home.”

Fredi’s face lights up.

“Are you sure?” Billie asks seriously.

I take a deep breath and glance down at Xavier. He looks peaceful. “I’m sure. I know where I’m supposed to be.”

“I’m sorry,” Fredi says softly. “We honor your sacrifice.”

“We honor your heart,” Billie says.

I roll my eyes, dislodging a few more tears. “You can honor my back and help me get him inside.”

“There are rooms upstairs,” Fredi says excitedly.

“And how do you know that?” Billie asks.

Fredi sucks her teeth again. “Like I said, been there, done that. Some of us have standards.” She tsks at Billie. “A storage room?”

Billie laughs, closing the distance between us. She grabs the doorknob and smirks at us. “I don’t believe in regrets,” she says in a haughty tone before pulling the door open.

“Oh, sister…” Fredi groans. She moves past me and steps carefully into the building. “Gimme a second to make a way outta no way,” she trills, flouncing inside.

Billie’s eyes move to Xavier’s face again. “Is he really…?”

I pull him close instinctively. “Yes.”

I can’t read her expression for a second, but then it blossoms into a smile. “How’d he get here?”

“He doesn’t know.”

Her eyes are bright when she lifts them to my face. “Leave it to you to love a man who can’t ever know how amazing you are.” She shakes her head.

“Naw,” I whisper, walking carefully toward the door. “He knows how amazing I am. He just won’t remember in the morning.”

She places a hand on my shoulder. “That’s a lot to give up,” Billie whispers. “Are you sure about this?”

“Yes,” I whisper, breaking my own heart.

* * *

T he walk back to the portal feels slower. We left The Witch’s Snatch still under my sisters’ influence — music blaring, dance floor full of tired, sweaty bodies, people pressing one another into dark corners to kiss and more. The silence outside is overwhelming, but we leave it intact.

We follow Fredi’s directions down empty roads, our fading magic calling to us, the Moon lighting our path. Once we’re close, Billie overtakes Fredi, and my baby sister falls into step beside me. I don’t want to ignore her, it’s just that the longer we walk, the less I can feel Xavier’s presence. And simply knowing he exists isn’t the same as having him in my arms.

“There’s still time to change your mind,” she says carefully.

“I know.” I don’t stop walking.

Billie leads us off the road into a clearing. I can feel the portal our magic made, open but still strong as ever.

Whenever the Elders told us stories of the Lost Ones, they reminded us that once we step through The Night Gate, our choice is made. Even if it comes a second after we leave, return isn’t an option. A decision made is a pact with yourself — unless, apparently, you have the gift of Mosley magic.

I can’t help but think of Xavier. I wonder which of his ancestors left Mossville. I wonder if they regretted it immediately or months later, if at all. I wonder if they tried to pass down what they could remember, but I know it was futile.

“We shouldn’t be this strong,” I whisper to myself.

“Yes, we should,” Fredi says with a shrug. “And if not us, someone else. That’s just how it is.”

“I guess.” I don’t have it in me to fight.

Fredi grabs onto my arm as we walk. “It’ll hurt less tomorrow,” she whispers. The women in my family are powerful beyond measure, but Fredi is still so young.

“No, it won’t,” I tell her. “And stop saying spells over me.”

“Somebody’s got to,” Billie says, turning around to face us. “I can smell the melancholy on you two.” Her face is bunched in pain.

“So what if I am melancholy?” I spit back.

“I’m not,” Fredi sighs. “Are you?”

If I hadn’t been watching her, I might’ve missed Billie’s flinch. Billie never flinches.

“What exactly did you get up to tonight?” I ask. “I saw you?—”

“Mind your business,” Billie warns. She doesn’t bother to lure me in with a bright tone and a smile like Fredi does. She never lets someone feel safe before she bites. And she gives no warnings.

“Then mind yours,” I reply.

Fredi interrupts us with a soft clearing of her throat. “How about we make a pact?”

“We’re too old for that.”

“We’ll never be too old for this,” Fredi says, surprisingly serious, moving between Billie and me.

It might be a trick of the moonlight, but I swear I can see Grandma Sarah in her eyes. “We’re three sides of the same dial. That’s how this works. None of us is the same without the other two. None of us leaves while the others stay. We move as one, and we carry ten generations of Mosley blood on our backs.”

“Not a bad proverb,” I tell her with a smile.

“Or warning,” Billie laughs.

“Both,” she whispers, beaming under our attention. “Anyway, if you two wanna fight about whatever happened at the bar, we can. Wouldn’t be the first thing we fought about or the last.”

“True,” Billie says, crossing her arms over her chest.

“As long as it’s still us in the end. And after.”

“Is that the pact?” Billie asks.

“No, that’s a given. We don’t need to agree about that. It is. It was. It always will be.” Fredi aims her smile at both of us before she continues. “The pact is that we leave behind whatever happened there.”

My heart seizes. I can’t do that. I will give my family anything, but not these last few hours. I can live with Xavier forgetting our time together so long as I remember.

“That’s a little too dictatorial for me,” Billie says, shaking her head. She steps forward and reaches out her hand, holding it between the three of us. “I say we make a pact to do what we always have — protect each other’s hearts and secrets.”

“That’s so vague,” Fredi warns. “Imprecise language is the easiest road to ruin.”

“Stop quoting Uncle Eamon. It’s creepy,” I say.

“It’s not creepy, it’s a warning,” Fredi says, rolling her eyes.

“A warning we don’t need,” Billie says. “All we’re promising is to love each other. There are no barriers on that for me.” She looks from me to Fredi and then down at her hand.

I can hear the echo — the sure sign that her words aren’t all she means— but whatever she’s hiding doesn’t make it any less true. The things bonding me to my sisters will transcend death; this is a pact I know I can keep.

I place my hand into the warm cradle of Billie’s, and we turn to Fredi. Our baby sister hesitates for a few seconds, but that’s just for show. She joins us eagerly, placing her hand palm down into mine.

What does a pact feel like? A nail through blood, meat, and bone. Binding. One more thread tying me to the other two parts of my soul.

When I asked mama why it felt that way, she hadn’t minced words. “Magic isn’t a thing to play with and it reminds you every time. A pact you make with blood isn’t simple or light. A pact you make with your sisters can never be broken. The pain is a reminder that there’ll be dire consequences if you go back on your word.”

We yank our hands apart and I stare at my palm, looking for a puncture that doesn’t exist.

My sisters are doing the same, but it’s Billie who rallies first. She rubs at her palm and looks at us with a smile. “Alright, let’s go home. I’m hungry. Mama said she might make hoppin’ john.”

“She did. And cornbread,” I offer.

“Oooh,” Billie trills, rushing forward.

They race toward the portal. Billie makes her way through first with Fredi hot on her heels.

I follow willingly but with much less enthusiasm. Before I leave this world behind and walk back into Mossville, I stop and turn to look behind me. I close my eyes, and in the darkness, these trees feel almost the same. Old magic, secrets, Xavier’s steps over wet leaves. I open my eyes, wipe away the tears, and turn toward home.

“I was just about to worry you wouldn’t return,” mama says as soon as I step back into Mossville.