I squint in the dim light, trying to make sense of the furniture shapes. My bedroom? My temples pound like I have the worst hangover in the universe. And everything aches.
“Sam?” my dad says. He sits on my vanity chair right next to my bed.
“Dad?” My voice is scratchy and low.
Tension releases his shoulders. I rub my eyes and wince. My left arm hurts like hell. There’s a big bandage wrapped around it. I sit straight up.
He catches my shoulders. “Whoa, take it easy.”
“Dad, are you okay? Are you hurt?”
“Me? You barely make it out of some spell ship alive and you want to know how I am?” He shakes his head. “Sam—”
“Dad, I didn’t use magic. I—”
“Wait.” He holds up his hand. “Let me finish.”
I close my mouth.
“I don’t know if you realized, but I was conscious while I was in that trance. I couldn’t speak or react, but I could hear everything.”
So he heard us discussing the spell, heard me speaking to Elijah, heard the girls doing who knows what type of magic?
“At first I was furious and kicking myself. I thought that if I had just taken you back to New York sooner, none of this would have happened.”
I don’t say anything. I wouldn’t even know where to start.
“But, Sam, you should have seen the girls. Alice was barking orders. Mary was mixing some kind of memory spell.”
My eyes widen. “They used a memory potion on me?”
“Practically doused you in it.”
“It helped. I remembered who I was. I don’t know if I would have otherwise,” I say.
My dad nods. “Susannah was talking—or rather, writing messages—to someone named Elijah, trying to figure out how signature spells worked and how to break them. They dripped potion on that green dress and on the broken record.”
“It must have been so weird for you,” I say.
“No. It was heartbreaking. I realized that they were using a potion you asked Mae for days ago. That you and the girls wanted to mix the memory potion, and that you didn’t because of me. I actually robbed you of the tools you needed to stay safe.”
I pull at my fluffy comforter.
“You were right when you said that I didn’t know what you knew,” he says, an unusual heaviness in his voice.
“You were trying to protect me.”
“But not in the right way.”
I look up at him. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying…I’m still not comfortable with magic. But Mae was right; you need to learn how to control it more than you need to run away from it. If you want to live in Salem, we can stay. I don’t ever want to realize again that it was my own stubbornness that put my child in danger. I’ve learned this lesson twice. There won’t be a third time.”
Tears form in my eyes. “We can stay?”
“We can stay.”
My door creaks open, and Mrs. Meriwether comes in, bringing the scent of warm sugar with her.
“I heard voices and I thought…My girl!” Mrs. Meriwether puts her hand over her mouth. “What can I get you? Are you hurting? Are you hungry?” She crosses my room in no time and cups my face in her hands. “Let me look at you.”
I soak up her smile. “Jaxon…is he okay? Acting like himself, I mean?”
She nods. “And he’s here. Jaxon and the girls. If you thought we wouldn’t be keeping vigil until you woke up, then you thought wrong.”
My dad squeezes my hand.
“How long was I out?”
“More than twenty-four hours,” my dad says.
I guess all those nights of broken sleep finally caught up to me.
Mrs. Meriwether walks to my bedroom door. “She’s awake!” she yells. “Come on up!”
Their feet are fast on the stairs and down the hall.
Mary is the first one in, with Alice and Susannah right behind her. Mary has traces of Meriwether crumbs on her face and starts crying immediately. “Sam, I was so scared. I didn’t know what to do. A cut appeared. And your body temperature started to drop. You wouldn’t stop bleeding. I just…You don’t know…I was so scared. I’m just so happy you’re okay.”
I look at Alice. “Matt?”
“Dead,” she says quietly.
“They found him in Salem Harbor with a broken back and crushed bones. The cause of death was drowning,” Susannah says. “They can’t figure out how it happened. It’s all over town.”
I shiver, remembering his knife and the look on his face when he dropped from my hand. I nod, pushing the image away.
“Redd?”
Susannah shakes her head, and everyone falls silent.
Jaxon appears in my doorway, and his face lights up when he sees me. “Sam.” He smiles, and it’s a real Jaxon smile.
“Okay, okay. Let’s not overwhelm Samantha,” Mrs. Meriwether says. “Do you want me to bring you food, honey?”
“Not yet.”
They all exit my room, all but Jaxon, who looks anything but comfortable. He sits down in the chair my dad was using.
“That spell,” I say.
“Yeah…Sam, I didn’t know who I was, what I was doing. I just—”
“Believe me, I know. It’s an awful, gross feeling.”
Jaxon nods. “A nightmare.”
We’re both quiet.
Jaxon breaks eye contact with me. “I just don’t even know how to begin to—”
“Jaxon, don’t. You don’t need to say anything.”
Jaxon studies his hands. “Yeah, well…How do you feel about opening your get-well gift?” He looks behind him.
I follow his line of sight to a box on my vanity. “I feel great about that.”
Jaxon reaches behind him and picks up a present wrapped in blue tissue paper. He places it on the bed next to me.
I pull back the paper, revealing a wooden box with a boat carved on the lid. The boat is a perfect replica of the one down by the wharf where we had our first real conversation. “The Friendship?”
“I made it.”
I look up at Jaxon. “Stop. You did not.”
“I did. Take it as a peace offering. I should never have gotten mad at you that night after the restaurant. That was totally unfair. And, well, everything after that sucked, too. There are a lot of things I wish I could take back.”
I lift the lid, and inside the wood grain is smooth and beautiful. “Can we still have our trust arrangement?”
He smiles and it almost looks like his eyes glisten. “I’d really like that.”
“Jaxon!” Mrs. Meriwether calls from downstairs. “Sam needs rest.”
Jaxon stands up. “I guess that’s my cue.”
I lie back on my pillows and look at my present. Broome stretches his paws out from the blankets near my feet. He blinks at me and curls up.
I put the wooden box on my bedside table. There is a single lilac in the vase.
I sit bolt upright. “Elijah?” No response.
I pull my sore body out of bed, our last conversation, the one when I pushed him away, playing in my mind.
“Elijah?” I breathe.
“Samantha.”
I whip around.
His expression is unreadable. “Ada gave me your message.”
“She did?”
“Shortly after the spell was broken. And she gave me one for you in return. She insisted I memorize it and repeat it to her…three times.” His eyes smile. “She said that her mother always told her that if you come across someone sad and you do not try to make them smile, then you have disgraced your own humanity. And that even though they did not know it, the passengers on that ship were sad. But you made everyone smile again. She said you would know what she meant.”
I soak up his words.
He hands me a small stack of letters. “Some of the other spirits came as well before they passed on. They left these for you.”
I peek inside the first envelope and see Mollie’s name. I hug it to my chest.
“Also…Ada asked me if I was your boy.”
“My what?”
“Your boy…like the one in Stella’s diary, she said. And then she laughed at me.”
My cheeks warm. “She found me sulking after you and I talked again for the first time and you apologized for kissing me.”
He looks conflicted. “I was trying to—”
“I know. But I don’t need you to protect me.”
He raises an eyebrow.
“Besides, I’m not going to believe you if you say you’re leaving this time.”
“Indeed.”
“So what now?”
He moves toward me, stopping so close that I’m sure he can hear my heart beat. He smiles, dimples and all. “Now…here we are.”
“Indeed,” I say, imitating his old-world accent.
“And I am not apologizing.” He leans toward me, hovering over my mouth like a question. He gently presses his lips into mine.
I reach out and grab on to his shirt, ignoring my arm. His lips part mine, and our kiss graduates from gentle to insistent. He puts one hand on my lower back. My legs vibrate. He runs his other hand down my ear and over my neck. I press into him, melding my body with his.