Cold Kiss

voice shakes, but the rest of her is fiercely sturdy, clinging to me like a monkey. “Promise me.”
    “I do.” I kiss the top of her head, and her hair is earthy and unwashed. “I’m so sorry, Binny. So sorry.”
    She squeezes me, hard, and my ribs pinch in protest. “You better be. Where were you?”
    “Not far, really. I’m okay.” I take a shaky breath when she finally lets go, and Mari walks around the car to grab Robin’s hand.
    “Inside, huh?” She tugs and Robin follows, but not before grabbing my hand so we’re walking up the porch steps like a crooked daisy chain.
    And at the top, standing just inside the screen door, is Mom.
    “We brought cookies,” Mari says brightly, but Mom doesn’t even seem to hear her. She’s staring at me, only at me, and steps aside just far enough to let Mari and Robin into the house before she says a word.
    “Wren.”
    I can hear so much in the single word, love and regret and relief and even anger, and I wonder if it will sound the same if I say, “Mom.” Instead, I push the screen aside and walk in. We’re only inches apart, so close I can smell the clean cotton of her shirt, the faint citrus of her shampoo, but the distance seems like miles. Just as I decide I should keep walking, she grabs me and pulls me against her.
    “I guess we need to talk,” she murmurs into my hair, and I nod.
    “You’re not off the hook here, you know,” she adds as she sets me away from her. “I’m still angry.”
    “I know.” I steady my voice. “So am I.”
    Her mouth twists as if she’s trying not to smile. “Fair enough.”
    The fire is hypnotic, long fingers of flame reaching for the flue, the grate, flicking and snapping with the wind outside. Now that Mari’s taken Robin upstairs and Mom and I are settled on the hearth, it’s hard to know where to begin. I watch the fire instead, holding my palms up to let the heat seep in.
    “So this is awkward,” Mom says mildly, and I can’t help but snort. “I guess I should have read one of those parenting books, you know?” She’s looking at the flames, too, instead of at me, and I can’t tell if she’s joking or not. “ Teenage Rebellion and You or something like that.”
    “I’m not rebelling, Mom.”
    “Aren’t you? I made something forbidden and you decided to go ahead and do it anyway. Unless this isn’t about the magic.” She finally turns to face me, and maybe the fire is magic, too. As the flickering shadows move over her face, I can see myself there in the set of her jaw, and Robin in the hair falling across her forehead, and Mari and even Gram in the shape of her eyes.
    “It is,” I admit, wrapping my arms around my knees. “And it isn’t.”
    “I’m too tired for riddles, kiddo.” She gives me a wan smile, and tucks a stray feather of hair behind my ear. “It’s been a long couple of days.”
    “I know, and I really am sorry. I didn’t mean to make you worry. I didn’t mean…” I shake my head and rest my chin on my knees. “I didn’t mean for a lot of things to happen.”
    “Can you tell me what they are?”
    “I’d rather not?”
    She sighs. “But you’re not pregnant, and you’re not on drugs, and you’re not wanted by the police.”
    “Right.”
    “You know, if you want to be honest from here on out, about our power and everything else, it’s a two-way street.”
    I nod. “Can’t we just start fresh, from right now? I promise you, I’m okay. Or I will be. I’m trying to clean up my own mistakes here, and that has to count for something, right?”
    She sets her jaw, and the flames in the hearth jump a little higher. “It’s not going to be that easy, Wren. I’m not just letting you off the hook free and clear because you had a bad day.”
    “I’m not asking you to!”
    She levels a gaze at me, and for a second our power and our anger is tangible, crackling in the air between us. “Oh no? But you won’t tell me what went on this weekend? You have to understand that it’s hard for me not to know what you’re going through.”
    “It’s hard for me not to know, well, a lot of things,” I say carefully, and glance sideways to watch her face. She doesn’t smile but she doesn’t flinch, either, and that’s good, I guess. “Things about what I can do, what I am, what … the limits are, I guess.”
    She swivels around to face me then, and we’re like one person, reflected in a mirror—her arms around her bent knees, her chin propped on top of