Page 129 of Rituals & Rivalry

“Did you hear that?” I ask, holding the potion bottle tighter.

“Hear what?”

Ghosts don’t haunt places. They haunt people.

I shake my head. “Nothing. Let’s get you patched up.” I inhale shakily. “We’ll deal with the rest later.”

An hour later, we huddle in the living room, joined by Leo and our mom.

“Sterling really won’t come over?” Leo is sprawled out on the wet floor. “What’d you do? Scare him off?”

He’s drenched. We all are. It’s the coldest day of the season so far, and the cottage has decided not only to make it impossible to light a fire without injury, but to rain down on us. Again.

Truthfully, I haven’t asked Sterling to fix this. He set a boundary, and I’ve heard those are important in relationships. Besides, wouldn’t that be giving the ghost what she wants? She wants Sterling, and he so clearly doesn’t want her. I mean, who would want a ghost?

“We can take care of this ourselves,” I chirp, sounding brighter than I feel. My teeth chatter, and I push my wet bangs out of my face.

“Looks like you can’t.” He sits up now, gesturing to where Luke is on the couch. His hands are starting to heal, but they’re still bandaged. “You had to go and get Luke hurt. Who’s next? Me? Mom?”

“I’m fine,” Luke mutters, shivering.

I recoil. There’s nothing for me to say.

Leo is right, more than he knows. If I hadn’t upset this cottage by sleeping with Sterling—multiple times—and if I hadn’t asked Luke to start the fire… none of this would have happened.

But I would never hurt my brothers, my mother, or anyone. Leo should know that, but he’s hardly around. Maybe he doesn’t know me at all anymore. There’s a chance he never did.

Then again, the cottage didn’t seem to react badly when Sterling and I were sleeping together. Is there something else she’s trying to communicate? Gods, can she please just send a text or something?

The cottage lets out a low, loud cry. Closer to a sob than her usual wails.

“Leo Seren.” Mom scolds him, her thick eyebrows drawing down. “That’s enough.” She turns her attention to me, her expression soft. “This wasn’t your fault, sweetheart.”

“He’s right.” My jaw tenses, and I look away. “I should be able to take care of this. I was for a while—or Sterling was—but I can’t anymore. I’m sorry.”

I care about Sterling as much as I do my family, and I won’t ask him to help. Coming to the cottage hurts him. If I’d known that from the start, or at least from the time we became friends, I wouldn’t have let him keep coming over.

My mother sighs softly, clutching the umbrella she’s holding over her head. It takes a few long moments for her to say anything, but it’s clear she has a lot on her mind. “Perhaps moving to Starbrook was a bad idea after all.”

“You realize that now?” Leo mutters.

His disdain for the town may be greater than I realized, but he’s wrong. Starbrook is good. I thought I would hate it here, but I’ve fallen in love with more than Sterling. The people here are kind. The coven is surprisingly large and full of vibrant witches. There are so many adorable little shops.

The idea of leaving breaks my heart. It’s all I wanted when we moved here, but now I want to stay.

Not just for Sterling. For everyone.

“We could get another house here,” I say. “Or the apartments—I mean, I don’t know if they make them big enough for all of us.”

“No one will want to buy this one, and my money is all tied up in it at the moment. I’m afraid they took advantage of me not knowing about the situation—about what happened here.”

She puts words to what we’ve all known from the start, and Leo and I exchange a look. If she’d realized she was taken advantage of sooner, we wouldn’t be in this mess. Then again, there’s a lot of beauty within this particular mess.

For me, at least.

“You know about what happened here?” I ask, sitting down on the couch—somehow, though it looks wet, it doesn’t feel wet. The ghost’s illusions are so selective, so off-putting, as if I’ve stepped into a world where the laws of nature no longer exist. My clothes are drenched, but the sofa isn’t.

Small wins, I guess.