Page 92 of Spirit Storm

I look around slowly.

The kitchen doorway with its beaded curtain. The pile of half-finished knitting projects on the coffee table. The collection of garden gnomes on the windowsill, all of them facing inward as though watching the room. The smell of something sweet on the stove.

Every inch of this is exactly as I remember.

I spent five years in this apartment building and visited Birdie's home often. Asher and I ate Birdie's terrible shortbread and watched her argue with her houseplants, and I fell asleep on this sofa when my own apartment felt too quiet.

I had no idea she was the Goddess Mother. It's still hard to make sense of at times.

Birdie is sitting in her chair by the window, knitting needles moving, wearing a violently orange cardigan over a floral skirt that belongs to no recognizable era. Her silver hair is pinned up with what appears to be a pencil and a dried sprig of rosemary.

"Am I really here?"

"Does it feel real?"

The texture of the crocheted blanket beneath my fingers. The specific way this room smells. The faint tick of the clock on the bookshelf.

"Yes."

"Then pull yourself together." She doesn't look up from her knitting. "You've been in quite a state, and it's not doing anyone any favors."

I fold the throw and set it neatly over the arm of the couch. "I think I deserve a bit of a meltdown. I was possessed by a demon and inadvertently handed Tharuzel everything he needs to release his master and end humanity as we know it."

She loops her threat around the top of the needles and knits as if my entire life isn't detonating around me. "And?"

"And what? Isn't that enough?"

Birdie finally looks up. Her eyes are warm and endlessly old, and she tilts her head at me the way she always did when she thought I was being thick.

"Things move the way they are meant to move, Petal. You know that."

I drop my head back and stare at the ceiling. "Don't tell me that. I don't believe that. What's the point if I was destined to fail from the start?"

"I said it was meant to happen, not that you're destined to fail. Those are not the same things." She sets the knitting in her lap and gives me a patient smile. "You were marked before you drew your first breath. You didn't choose that. But you chose the blood bond because you were trying to keep your sisters breathing. You chose to walk into that cave because you were trying to repair what was broken. You chose, every single time, to move toward the problem instead of away from it. Those weren't mistakes. That was you."

I look at the troll dolls, their cheerful, ridiculous faces, and feel something in my chest that is very close to a laugh and very close to tears. "But my choices have made things worse. Tharuzel knows where all thirteen lockstones are."

"And now so do you."

Before I have a chance to consider what she means by that, she stands and heads over to her shelves. She picks up Trolliver Queen and pulls up his wild, slime green hair. "Everything is about energy, Poppy. You know that."

"Yes, energy and intention, I know."

"Did you intend for any of this Tharuzel mess to happen?"

"No, of course not."

She hands me the plastic doll, and I look at his insanely goofy grin. "And what are your intentions now?"

I shrug. "I don't know. I guess… I need to regroup."

"What do you do about the broken stones?"

I take a steadying breath. "We're working with a stone witch to fix them."

"And the ritual to restore them?"

"We'll have to gather enough spirit witches to learn the ritual Khylie's family preserved."