Lilith's Arc

Chapter 19 of 40

Lilith reached home with the sealed book warm under her arm. Gabe would sit for readings now. But the book warned her Novalee was losing her grandmother's face, and fast. She found her daughter on the cottage floor, knees drawn up. Novalee looked at Lilith and shifted back. The girl's eyes were wrong. No trust in them. "Come sit," Lilith said. "I have something to read you. About your grandmother." "You're not my mother," Novalee said. Her voice shook. "My mother wouldn't take Gabe to a cave. He told me. You trapped him." She stood and put a chair between them. "You take things. I don't know what you took from me, but I feel it gone." Lilith opened the book. "Then let me give it back. Sit, and I'll read you your grandmother's face." "No." Novalee backed toward the door. "You'll say words and take more." Lilith could not force her. Water on the wall had worked for Gabe, but it had also broken his trust. She would not chain her daughter. So she set the book down and sang instead. Her siren song reached for the girl. Novalee flinched, as if the sound were a stranger's hand. She shook her head hard and covered her ears. The song only pushed her further away. Lilith stopped. Song and force had both failed. She needed someone Novalee would believe. She spoke a name into the air. Mnemora came. The goddess of memory had once found Lilith sitting in the dirt after a thief stole her family's memories, and had sealed what was taken back into the book. She had promised to keep the spell holding. Now she stepped through the door, small and plain-faced, gold light at her fingers. "She won't sit," Lilith said. "She thinks I'll steal from her." Mnemora looked at Novalee. "She's right to be careful." She knelt to the girl's level. "I sealed the book. Nothing in it can be taken again. Your mother reads. I make sure the words stay." She held up her hand. Gold light pooled in her palm, steady and warm. "Watch the light. If it goes dark, she lied. It won't go dark." Novalee stared at the gold. Her shoulders dropped a little. "You'll stand there? The whole time?" "The whole time," Mnemora said. Novalee sat. Not beside Lilith. Beside Mnemora, watching the light. But she sat. Lilith read. She read the grandmother's face, the gray braid, the hum she made washing dishes. Her voice carried the memory. The gold light held it in place. Novalee's eyes filled. "I remember her hands," she whispered. "She had a ring." "She did," Lilith said. When the reading ended, Novalee did not run. But she stayed close to Mnemora, not her mother. She trusted the goddess and the gold, not Lilith. Lilith had saved the grandmother's face. She had not won her daughter back. And the book was warming again.