A Grave Dilemma

"I won't!" savannah shouted, her voice echoing across the vacant park. "I won't do your stupid Coven ceremony! I'd rather have no ceremony at all than be a useless Coven witch."

"Like me."

"I didn't mean that, Paige. You aren't like them. I don't know why you waste your time with them. You can do so much better."

"I don't want to do better. I want to make things better. For all of us."

She shook her head. "I wont do your ceremony, Paige. I won't. It's mine or nothing. Don't you understand? This is what my mother told me to do. It's what she wanted for me."

When I didn't respond fast enough, Savannah's face contorted with rage.

"That's it, isn't it? You won't do it because it comes from my mother. Because you don't trust her."

"It's not that I don't trust-"

"No, you're right, it isn't. It's because you hate her. You think she was some kind of monster."

I stepped toward Savannah, but she flung me off with such force that I tripped and fell against the picnic table.

"My mother looked after me. She wouldn't have let Leah come near me again."

I flinched. "Savannah, I-"

"No, shut up. I'm sick of listening to you. You think my mother was evil because she practiced dark magic? That didn't make her evil. It made her smart. At least she had the guts to get out of the Coven, not hang around, learning stupid little baby spells and thinking she's queen of the witches."

I stepped back, bumping the table again and falling hard onto the bench. Cortez hurried from the woods, where he'd been burying the Hand of Glory. I shook my head to warn him off, but Savannah stepped into my line of vision and towered over me.

"You know what?" she said. "I know why you won't do that ceremony for me. Because you're jealous. Because your mother made you go through that useless Coven ceremony and now it's too late. You're stuck. You can't go back and do it over again. You can't get more powerful. So you're going to hold me back because your mother didn't-"

"Enough," Cortez said, pushing Savannah away from me. "That is enough, Savannah."

"Back off, sorcerer," she said, turning on him.

"You back off, Savannah," he said. "Now."

Savannah's face fell, as if all that anger suddenly gave way.

"Go back to the swings and cool down, Savannah," he said.

She obeyed, giving only a tiny nod.

"Let her go," Cortez whispered when I made a motion to stand. "She'll be fine. You have a decision to make."

With that, he sat beside me and didn't say another word while I made that decision.

Would I forceSavannah to settle for less than her full potential? Once the choice was made, there was no reversing it. A witch had exactly one night to turn the tide of her destiny. Melodramatic, but true.

Was I jealous of Savannah for still having the opportunity to become a more powerful witch? No. The thought hadn't occurred to me until she mentioned it. Now that she had, though, it did give me something to think about. The chance had passed for me. If, as Eve claimed, this other ceremony would make a witch stronger, then yes, it stung to think I'd missed out. Given the choice, I'd have picked the stronger ceremony without question. Even without knowing whether it worked, even without knowing how much more power it could give me, I would have taken the chance.

Did I trust Savannah with this power? Give me the ability to kill and you'd never need to worry about me suffocating some jerk who cut me off on the freeway. Knowing I possessed the power would be enough. But Savannah was different. She already used her power at the slightest provocation. Yesterday, when we found that investigator in our house, Savannah had thrown him into the wall. Would she have settled for that if she could have killed him? Yet I couldn't wait around to see whether she'd outgrow her recklessness. Either I performed that ceremony tomorrow or I never did it at all. With that came another responsibility. If I gave Savannah those powers, I would need to teach her to control them. Could I do that?

Savannah's mother may have passed along some attitudes with which I strongly disagreed, but Eve had loved her daughter and had wanted the best for her. She'd believed that the "best" was this ceremony. Did I dare dispute that?

How could I make a decision like this so quickly? I needed days, maybe weeks. I had only minutes.

I walked up behind Savannah as she swung, her sneakers scuffing the dirt into clouds.

"I'll do the ceremony," I said. "Your ceremony."

"Really?" She twisted to look up. Then, seeing my expression, her grin collapsed. "I didn't mean it, Paige. What I said."

"What's said is said."

I turned and walked back to the car.

I drove in silence, answering only questions directed at me.

"Can I see the grimoires, Paige?" Savannah asked, bobbing from the back seat.

I nodded.

"Maybe I can help you learn these. Or we can learn them together."

I had to say something. I'm no good at holding grudges. It feels too much like sulking.

"Sure," I said. "That… sounds good."

Cortez glanced back at the grimoire in Savannah's hands, then looked at me. He didn't say anything, but his look oozed curiosity.

"Later," I mouthed.

He nodded, and silence prevailed until we reached the outskirts of East Falls.