Page 121 of Haunting the Deep

“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.