A Special Place for Women, Laura Hankin [brene brown rising strong .txt] 📗

“By holding the Coven back, Caroline’s not just punishing me for my mistake. She’s punishing everyone that we could help. Stand with me at the next meeting, and we’ll talk to her, and then we can start fresh. Find a stronger Nicole, someone who can break that last glass ceiling and lead the country with the interests of women in mind. There’s so much potential, if we work together,” she said, her eyes shining with hope. “Will you help me?”

I hesitated.

She gave me a searing look, one that seemed to cut all the way inside of me. “It’s a way to keep your promise. To use your power for good,” she said, calling me back to that moment in the woods when she’d held me in her arms and spoken to me as my mother. I shivered.

Tears began to well in her eyes as she reached for my hands. I looked down at her palm, at the scar at the base of her thumb that matched mine. Her nails were bitten, uneven. Her voice wavered. “We can make things right. Get Vy back in. I know you’ve only seen a little bit of the magic so far. I wanted to be able to show you more before I asked this of you. But please, will you think about it?”

“I—”

“Let us be your family,” she said. I’d heard those words before, recently, hadn’t I? I just want you to have a family, my mother had said to me in the woods. Or perhaps the only person who’d been saying it was Margot. My eyes flickered to the clipping of my mother’s obituary, the photograph I’d sent the paper of her, where her face wore that classic look of wry empathy. The look that Margot had given me by the fire.

“I don’t need to think,” I said. “I’ll do it.”

FORTY-EIGHT

I closed the door after Margot and collapsed against it, one thought racing in my mind: Fuck that manipulative bitch.

Was everything she’d done this whole time, all the intimacy she’d cultivated with me, simply so that I’d be her faithful lieutenant in her fight for more power? It wounded my pride, sure, injured the small part of me that had believed that, through my own merits, I’d made someone like her interested in someone like me. But that wasn’t why I ached with anger.

I ached with the knowledge that, during Samhain, summoning my mother must have been an act too. Margot wanted me to see magic, so she’d put on a show. What had she done and said that had convinced me so fully? Nothing all that special. Are you keeping your promise? People made promises to their dying mothers all the time. My mother’s look. She must have studied the photograph until she got it just right. Everything else she could have found out from looking up my mom, or from Raf, when they’d spent a whole party talking about me. I’d wanted to believe she was channeling something bigger so badly that I’d made it easy for her to pull the wool over my eyes.

Sure, it was tempting to just believe Margot’s big speeches, to throw myself into this new family now that she’d told me I truly belonged. But I wasn’t going to be a naive little fool again. None of what had happened over the past two months was sisterhood. The reason our magical weekend together had felt so magical was because I’d been high off my ass. Them bringing me into the inner circle wasn’t proof that they were rising above their elitism, like I’d been telling myself. I was a legacy, the most elitist choice of all. And all the magic I was just beginning to think about without rolling my eyes, that sense of possibility outside of my understanding? It wasn’t magic at all, just a puppet show with Margot pulling the strings.

I was going to burn them all to the ground. Maybe they’d drag me down with them. But at least I’d go down in a blaze of glory.

I texted Miles. Call me when you wake up, I wrote. I have a plan. And then I sat down at my computer and began to write.

FORTY-NINE

Two nights later, I paced in my living room, waiting for a knock on my door. I thought of the time, way back at the beginning of this whole saga, when I’d gone to try on clothes for Margot’s party. I’d ended up trying on a whole life, a life where a place like this was my home. But I wouldn’t be here much longer. I’d left the tags on this life the whole time, and now I had to return it.

The knock came, quiet but firm. Miles. He had his hands in his pockets, and wore a black jacket over a dark blue shirt. “I don’t think anyone saw me in the hallway,” he said as he ducked into the living room.

“After tonight, it won’t matter anyway.” I’d get the proof tonight, then turn in my article. When the payment came, I could stay at a cheap motel or something until I could figure out a new housing situation. Besides, Margot had promised to stop keeping tabs on me, and she couldn’t risk breaking my trust, at least not until I helped her take over the Coven.

Miles registered my surroundings, then let out a whistle. “Wow, I can see why you wanted to milk this as long as possible.” I glared at him. “Sorry.”

“Thanks,” I said, and we went over the plan. I’d text him when we were heading up to the roof. I would make sure that I walked through the door last, so that I could slip a piece of cardboard over the automatic lock, leaving it just slightly ajar. Then Miles and one