Page 80 of The Magic We Made

“You’ve helped enough,” he says. “The rest of this is up to me.”

“This is ridiculous.” I kick my legs, struggling to get away, but his grip on my hips is like iron. I should have known he’s this strong—I saw him lift an unconscious girl as easily as if she were kindling, after all. But I’m not a half-starved teenager. “Have you lost your mind? Put me down right now so we can discuss this like—”

I was going to say,like adults,but my voice dies in my throat because I’ve caught sight of something out of the corner of my eye... something that shouldn’t be there. It’s another glow through the trees—only not the blue-white glow of the rising moon, but the orange-and-yellow glow of flames.

Center Island is on fire.

Okay, maybe not the whole island. But this isn’t just a campfire, either, like Troy was talking about. There are enough flames to light up Satan’s Seat like it’s the grand opening of a used car lot. No magic spell, like the “glamour” Ash was talking about, could hide it, not with the scent of woodsmoke already beginning to fill the air.

Someone finally did it: someone is burning down the haystack to find the needle hidden in it.

Ash realizes it at the same time I do. His grip on me tightens.

“It’s starting,” he says, and begins striding much more swiftly toward my front porch. “You need to get inside.”

“Ash.” The darkened shadows of my porch loom ever closer. I can’t see Daisy waiting in the window for me because she’s back in her laundry basket with her kittens, and I never turned the living room lights on anyway. “Put me down right now, and let’s talk about this.”

“I can’t. You need to get inside. Please, just do me a favor, and get inside—”

But instead, I thrust an elbow into his spine. He gives anoofof surprise and finally lets go of me.

That’s when I whirl around to give him a piece of my mind... then get a good look at his face. The orange glow from the fire down on the island mingled with the blue glow from the moon overhead has cast his features in high relief. I can see every laugh line, every shadow, even the cleft of his chin... but most of all, I can see his eyes.

Ash, I suddenly realize, is scared. Really scared. And that’s makingmescared.

“Whatis it?” I demand. “What can’t you tell me? What’s really going on down there? You can’t—”

“Look, I didn’t want to tell you before, but now you need to know. Gaia is real.” He says it low, and he says it fast. “Okay? That’s what this is all about. That’s who I work for. That’s who asked me to find Emma. That’s who I bought the house for, as an investment, but also because she likes it here in West Harbor. I used to think it was because Derrick lives here, and she loves Derrick, but now I know—it’s just this place. It’s West Harbor.”

I blink at him. “Gaia? You meanGuy?” That’s the name of hisboss at Olympus. He’d told me. Guy. “That’s who you said you bought the house for.”

“That’s right.” He lifts a hand to run his fingers through his hair, making the curls stand almost on end. “Only her name isn’t really Guy, it’s Gaia. When I was a little kid, I couldn’t pronounce the words GaiaorGrandma, so I called her Guy, and it stuck.”

I feel frozen in place. I’m home, in my own yard, and yet I can’t move, because the world is suddenly tilting so violently on its axis.

“You... you call your grandmother Guy? Olympus isyourfamily’s charitable trust?”

“Yeah.” His shoulders are hunched, almost as if he’s embarrassed by his own words.

“You’re telling me,” I say, with a calm I’m only able to summon because of all my years of training and experience, “that you believe your grandmother is Gaia, the mythical creator of all life on this planet?”

“I don’tbelieveit, Iknowit,” he says, his shoulders still hunched apologetically. Everything—from his voice to his body language—indicates that he genuinely believes what he’s saying. “It’s a fact. I’m sorry. I know you’re a scientist who doesn’t believe in the supernatural. But I’m telling you, it’s real. I’d love to stand here and convince you, but I have to—”

“Hold on.” He’s right. I am a scientist. That’s how I know I have to keep him talking until I can get him the help he so desperately needs. “Guy is your grandmother, as well as Derrick Winters’s mother, and your boss, the head of Olympus—cute name, by the way—and... Mother Nature?”

“Look, I know how it sounds—”

“You told my mother that you’re Catholic.”

It’s funny the things we focus on when our world is suddenlytumbling down around us. My mother’s heart is going to be broken because the Catholic boy I brought home to Sunday Gravy is... well, I’m not surewhathe is.

“Iam,” Ash insists. “My mother raised me in the church. But—”

“Isshea goddess, too?”

“Who, my mother? No. I mean, Guy’s her mother, so she definitely wasn’t like all the other moms, but mainly only because she has a special gift, too, just like me, only hers is gardening. My mother can make anything grow anywhere—”

He looks back at me, his words tumbling over one another in his eagerness to get them out. He’s been holding all of this in for a very long time.