Gracie Abrams is eking out a solitary existence, fighting day-in, day-out against the drain of working customer service and nursing two newborn kittens in her off time. Out on her own ever since her sister moved in with her boyfriend, the burden of...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Talia met my gaze. "It sounded like the air was crying." They steeled themself, and I wondered how this was going to get even worse than it already was. Fear and anticipation whirled in my gut, and I dared not even blink. "We went back to that alley, and I let the harmonies wash over me—the fabric. I immersed myself in it. It's—if you're not a witch, it's hard to—"
"Don't worry about it," I said, holding up a hand. "I don't need you to try to explain something I'll never understand."
Talia nodded. "I needed to heal the damage. It required a reverse summoning. Nobody was pulling him back from the other side, so that makes it challenging. Usually, summoning spells across vast distances have two groups of summoners that work in tandem towards the same goal. But this was a differentuniverse. To patch it up, I needed to create a new reality. By reversing the summoning spell, I was shoving him back through the exact same path he'd taken to get to this world. He needed to go back the same way, where my music could follow him and seal the damage to all the worlds in between. The holes the High Priestess and the Third Degree had made."
I let her gather her thoughts for a beat, then asked, "Did it work?"
They nodded. "Yeah."
"So why are you still here? It didn't work on you?"
Talia's shoulders bunched up. "My plan had been to enter as the final piece, sealing everything up behind me. I hadn't intended to make Tomura the new fabric. But..."
"But?"
"They found us." Talia shrugged. "And I had to send everything in me to get him out of there as fast as I could. In the process, I lost—everything." They met my gaze. "I don't have my magic anymore. When I said I couldn't help you, I meant I literally could not help you. Not anymore."
I covered my mouth with a hand. The shock was visceral. I felt like a flag on a pole being torn every which way.
"I'm sorry," I eventually said, hiding behind my hands. I felt them, then.
The tears.
"I'm so sorry," I cried, turning away from Talia completely. How embarrassing. It was obvious that I was crying. What was the use in trying to hide it now?
"Gracie?" Talia's heavy voice followed me. "What's wrong? I didn't think—I didn't know you would cry."
"I'm sorry," I repeated, walking around the bench. My eyes were covered, and I could hear Talia's footsteps clacking on the pavement behind me. This was a recipe for disaster, but I was stuck in utter humiliation mode. I couldn't stop now, not when there was yet more embarrassment to be had.
Talia ended up in front of me, monkeying over the bench to cut me off before I made another lap. "Gracie? Are you okay?"
"I'm sorry," I said, stubbornly holding my hands before my eyes. "I'm just being stupid and selfish right now," I said, my words stringing together thick and indistinct. "I'm so sorry."
