But that life wasn’t for me.
Alistair caught sight of me across the room and he must’ve seen the flush in my cheeks, or maybe the smile on my rouged lips or the state of my hair, because he halted his conversation with the group around him and beamed at me.
His gaze traveled from the crumpled parchment in my hand and back up to meet my eyes. He nodded, pride evident in the movement, and it was the warmth radiating from that single look that gave me the strength to cross the dining hall to him.
Alistair threw his arms around me and I made a startled ooomf sound before I laughed gently into his blazer and melted against him. He pulled me back to look at him, too soon.
“You did it?” he asked, though it was more of a statement than a question.
I cursed the burning in the back of my throat. Nodded. “I did.”
He took the parchment from me and I watched his eyes widen at the number he found there. Ninety-six. The highest ever score for a fifth-year ACE. I beat the previous high score by a whole two percent! I could hardly believe it, myself.
“I can’t believe—” he began but cut himself short. “Everyone,” he shouted and my blood instantly chilled. Oh no. He pulled out a chair and moved to stand atop it.
“Alistair, no,” I whined. “Stop!”
He easily disentangled himself from my hands and turned to give me a sneaky grin. “You deserve this,” he said. “You deserve to be recognized.”
I let him go, losing an exasperated sigh.
“Everyone listen up!” he called and the gathering of students in the dining hall quieted almost immediately, turning their attention to him. “Diana just broke the all-time record for highest ever grade on her fifth-year ACE!”
The way he said it, with his voice growing louder and more animated near the end left no opportunity for those watching to deny an applause. They cheered, and I did my best not to cower. Thank goodness their attention was mainly on Alistair. Though after a cursory glance I found that some were looking at me, too.
And not with excitement on their faces—no. With something that looked more like suspicion in some and jealousy in others. I swallowed hard and put my head back down, gritting my teeth against the opening of a yawning pit in the bottom of my stomach.
“A celebration!” Alistair proclaimed. “Tonight, at Sigilante—drinks on me!”
The dining hall erupted at that, and the students even stood to cheer, whooping their assent and excitement.
“You’re insane,” I said to him as he stepped down to a smattering of continued applause.
He shrugged, aloof as always. “Isn’t that why you like me so much?”
“Drinks on you?” I demanded. Everyone knew Alistair was wealthy—after his parents and little sister perished in a fire six years ago, he inherited everything. Including Rosewood Abbey—his family home, a massive mansion in the Irish countryside, and a mass of wealth that seemed never to dwindle.
Aside from his butler, the only other creature that resided there was his familiar, a wolverine he never gave a name. The animal wasn’t allowed on school premises. I supposed I could understand that. Even familiars could be wild at times. Couldn’t have a wolverine prowling the campus at night. Someone could get hurt.
He pursed his lips, bumping his shoulder against mine. “A wise use of my inheritance, I think,” he joked
I shook my head.
The headmaster, who must’ve heard the commotion entered the dining hall to stand stoically in the entrance, his hands clasped firmly behind his back. A no-nonsense stare penetrating anyone who dared look his way. The hall quieted until only the low sound of hushed conversation rose in the space. Satisfied, he left, and I started to breathe again.
“Hey,” Alistair said, his brows narrowing as he tilted my chin up to look him in the face. “If you truly don’t want this, tell me now and I’ll call it off.”
I chewed my bottom lip, not wanting to disappoint him. Never wanting to disappoint him. “No. I do. I do want it,” I rushed to say. “Thank you.”
“No thanks necessary, Granger. What are friends for, hmm?”
“Right,” I replied before Cedric and Professor Sterling stole his attention away with what looked to be a rather poor brewing of an aging potion. No doubt the second-year students would attempt using it to get into Sigilante tonight. Too bad the walls of the place were all laced with bindstone. The potion would fizzle out and show their true forms within minutes—if not faster.
Sterling clapped Alistair on the back and suggested that he show Cedric how to brew the potion properly.
“Of course,” Alistair replied with a smile. Sterling was his favorite teacher, and he and the Ancient Language Studies Prof would often work together on extracurricular projects after classes. Though I couldn’t see why Alistair liked him so much. I found him cocky and rather daft compared to some of the other professors.
Friends, he’d said. What are friends for… My mind rewinding to the word. I hated that word. I moved to take my place in the serving line—supposing I should eat something if my night was to be filled with drinking.
Perhaps I should finally tell him how I feel, I thought. I’d been friends with Alistair Hawkins since I was a first-year student at Arcane Arts Academy. I was only sixteen then, and he was seventeen. I was being hazed—like all students were their first year. The older boys had taken it a bit too far when Alistair found them—and me, cowering away from the glow of their sigils as they tried to remember the incantation to make me fall asleep.
I still shudder to think what they could’ve done to me if they’d succeeded. But Alistair made sure they didn’t. He told them to get lost and they did—even then he had this authority about him. He took me under his wing from that very first day and never once let me go.
It was him I had to thank for nearly five years of not having to worry about fitting in or making friends or being safe. He was all I needed. I fell in love with him so hard and so fast it shocked me, but in hindsight, it wasn’t shocking at all because who didn’t love Alistair?
The trick was getting him to love you back. In five years, he’d had only one girlfriend, and that lasted barely a month. Some of the other students thought maybe he preferred male company, but I knew better. I knew him best of all.
One day he would see in me what I saw in him, I knew it. I just had to wait a little longer.
He’ll be gone soon, a voice in the back of my mind whispered, and I scooped an extra serving of breakfast hash onto my plate. It was his last year at the academy and classes would be finished in a little over a month. No matter how many times he told me he wouldn’t, what I feared most of all was that after there wasn’t this place holding us together, we would fall apart.
That he would forget about me.
I wasn’t about to let that happen.
2
Rufus bounded along behind me to the portaling room. The hallways were empty, and I thanked my smart thinking in taking the extra sigils class last year that gave me this free last period this year. Where everyone else had to wait in line at the end of the day, I was able to leave anytime after third.
“Come along, Rufus,” I hurried my familiar, a salt and pepper ferret I’d bonded with at the age of fourteen. Every witch bonded to a familiar after coming into their powers. It was the universe’s way of giving us a helping hand—that’s what Ma said, anyway. Though she was less than impressed when I bonded with Rufus.
Both my mother and father had bonded with formidable beasts. My father a mountain lion, and my mother a king cobra, which was quite fitting if you asked me. But Rufus was smart. And he was sly. I wouldn’t have traded him for even the grandest of beasts.
I closed the door behind me when I entered the portaling room, a small ten by ten space with nothing inside of it but a cushioned carpet and a couple light orbs.
Not wasting any time, I drew the sigil to open a portal, pushing my intended location into the magic by thought. The house, I thought, and then drew a tall rec
tangular shape onto the wall with my finger. The arcane magic pulsed before the wall within the rectangle disintegrated to reveal the inside of the back-door entrance to the Granger household.
Sucking a breath in through my teeth, I stepped inside, and the portal closed behind me. “Ma?” I called. “Pop?”
No answer came. I kicked off my black school shoes and shrugged off burgundy AAA sweater, tossing it onto an empty hook before I strolled into the kitchen. The horrid yellow paint was almost blinding during the hours closest to sunset, and I grimaced at my mother’s lack of anything resembling good taste in design.
“Ma?” I called again, pulling out the parchment with my test score on it, smoothing out the slight wrinkles in the page, not wanting to give her a reason to chastise me. Another year, I reminded myself. Just one more year of school—of living in this house—and then I’d be twenty-one. A graduate of Arcane Arts Academy. Free.
I was unsurprised to find that neither of them was home. Sometimes they left for days at a time for work, and they rarely stayed at home on the weekends, preferring the peace, solitude and Diana-freeness of the little stone cottage they bought in Newport last year.
Since it was Friday, I had to assume I wouldn’t be seeing them again until Sunday night at the earliest. I tossed the ACE scores onto the counter next to the kettle and wondered how long it would take for them to notice, or if they would even care. Then I grabbed the decanter from the cart at the other end of counter and poured myself a healthy amount of bourbon.
No time to sulk. I had a celebration to get to.
Before I could get more than a few swallows of the drink past my lips, or even make it to my bedroom, a knock came at the back-door. There was only one person who never came to the front. I downed the rest of the bourbon in a long swallow and licked my lips.
“Nico,” I said in greeting.
“Hey,” he said, rushing in and closing the door behind him. “Your folks home?”
I shook my head.
“Care for some company?”
“Sure,” I told him, and turned to back through the kitchen and up the stairs to my room, not bothering to check if he would follow. “I’ve got to get ready to go out in a bit, but you can stay until I leave if you like.”
He rushed to keep up with me, taking the stairs two at a time. “Where are you going?”
“Out,” I replied simply. “Alistair invited me to go to Sigilante with him tonight.”
It wasn’t the whole truth, but it wasn’t a lie either. Nico didn’t need to know it wasn’t just Alistair and I who would be there.
“Oh,” Nico replied, entering my room after me. I could tell he wanted an invitation but was afraid to ask. He had been my friend and neighbor for almost a year now. Nico moved into the loft above my father’s boathouse out back by the lake as payment of a debt my father owed to his father.
Nico was training to be an Arcane Officer and travelled with my father to the Department of Arcane Inquiry each morning and returned with him each evening. The training facilities for officers-to-be could only be accessed through a static portal there, and nowhere else. At twenty-three he would be among the youngest officers to get his mark.
A match with Nico was encouraged by my mother and father, which naturally made me lose all interest in him romantically. A shame because Nico was a work of art. With soft gray eyes, thick, coiled muscle beneath his clothes, perfect olive skin, and thick deep caramel hair he could’ve been a god. And when he sat astride his black mare familiar, Shadow, he certainly looked like one.
But we were just friends… well, other than that one time. We agreed that was a mistake, though, and it never happened again.
It was easy to bond with someone who hated being around my father almost as much as I did. Nico and I had an easy friendship, without the unspoken words and tensions of my friendship with Alistair.
“Sounds fun,” he added, clearing his throat.
“Yes,” I said, attempting to sound more enthused than I was. Truth be told, I was nervous as. Sometime between breakfast and third period I’d convinced myself tonight would be the night. I would tell Alistair how I really felt and accept whatever came of it.
I could handle it if he denied me, right? We could still be friends, couldn’t we?
“A drink?” Nico asked as I began rummaging through my walk-in closet to find something suitable to wear. Something that said I wasn’t a damsel in need of saving, which was sometimes what I thought Alistair saw when he looked at me, but instead a woman who could take him to his knees.
“You read my mind,” I called out from my den of garments. “Thank you!”
For someone who didn’t normally mess with trivial things like rouge and lamp-black liner and curlers, I actually thought I didn’t do half bad. I managed to tame my light brown hair into supple curls with my mom’s rollers. And my eyes were lightly lined in such a way that I though it didn’t look too unnatural. I added my signature rouge—the fact it matched the deep red of my evening dress a happy accident—and I was done.
I looked like myself, but a prettier version. It was amazing what a little color and a simple beauty spell could accomplish.
I took Nico’s enraptured silence as he sipped his bourbon to mean I’d done it right.
“What do you think?” I asked him, giving a little twirl.
He swallowed hard and blinked as though surprised that I would ask him. “Uh,” he stammered. “Great. You look great, Diana, like you always do. Beautiful.”
My brows pulled together at the way he said the word beautiful. Like a whisper. Like he didn’t really mean to say it aloud.
“Alright,” I replied, drawing out the word with an awkward laugh. “Well, thanks.”
Snapping himself out of whatever strange haze the bourbon had lain over his eyes, Nico cleared his throat and rolled over on my bed, kicking away the decorative pillows. “What are you doing after Sigilante?” he asked, looking up at the ceiling.
I pulled on a pair of laced leather heels and wobbled when I tried to stand in them.
I went for my small clutch by the bed, dropping my little pot of rouge inside. “I’m not sure. It’ll probably be late, though. Why? Did you have something in mind?”
His jaw twitched, and by the way he squirmed, I thought he seemed uncomfortable. Nico was sweet. Kind. But he was also confident. Strong. I didn’t think I’d ever seen him so fidgety.
“What is it?” I prodded when he didn’t respond.
“There’s going to be a bad storm tonight,” he said in a rush. “I hate being out there on the water when it gets bad like that. Can’t sleep.”
“So?” I asked, sitting down next to him on the bed, nudging his bare arm so he’d look at me.
He turned, propping himself up on one elbow, looking deflated. “So, I was hoping since your parents aren’t home that I could sleep on your couch?” he added a big, forced smile for effect. As if to say pretty please.
I barked a laugh, wondering why I was so worried about what he wanted to say. “Of course you can,” I said, my face screwing up into a pucker at the request. He’d spent the night plenty of times, though I supposed it had been a while. “Just stay out of the ice chest. It was a little hard to explain to my folks why a whole brick of cheese and half a ham suddenly vanished last time.”
“Promise.”
He stood in a rush, held up a hand, palm out, with a devilish smirk on his full lips as though making a vow before the church. My heart sputtered for an instant before I tamed it into indifferent submission. Alistair was who I loved. He was the one I wanted. Nico was my friend. Sometimes I needed to remind myself. Nico didn’t want me, and I didn’t want him. If that ever changed, it would ruin the only friendship I had outside Alistair, and I couldn’t have that.
“You are a strange one, Nicolas Belmont.”
“Accurate. But so are you.”
I rolled my eyes at him. “I should get going. See you when I get back?”
Nico offered me a bem
used grin, swallowing down the rest of his drink. He saluted me with the empty glass and a beastly grimace as the liquid slithered its way down his throat. “Yes,” he said, his voice tight. “I’ll be here.”
3
Sigilante was near the French Quarter of New Orleans. It masqueraded as an old desiccating building to the mortals. It was heavily spelled. With wards and sigils worked right into the brick to repel the mortals from wanting to enter.
On the outside it looked like a place dreams would go to die, but it was where I was going to try to make one of mine come true.
We would be in the cellar of the establishment. The other part of the club was a small smoke-infested parlor where old witches went to smoke cigars and drink brandy, or at least, that’s what we’d heard… since your name needed to be on a list to even get in.
But downstairs, in The Cellar, was where you wanted to be, anyway. It’s where everyone went on the weekends, or at least, those who were old enough to get in.
I’d been getting in since I was seventeen, though I knew that was only because I had Alistair beside me. But now, at twenty, and a semi-regular customer of the establishment-—when Alistair deigned to drag me out of my study cave—I didn’t even need to wait in line.
I threw a ward over myself, the sigil so second nature that I didn’t need to draw it. It sprang from my hand and I let the cloak of invisibility fall over me as I exited the warded alleyway across the street.
Sigilante didn’t allow witches to portal into the building. With all the bindstone in the wall, I doubted you could even if it was allowed.
Under the light of the bright near-full moon, I passed through the crumbling exterior. The building’s true form revealed itself as though it’d always been there; to my right was a curving staircase that lead up to a vacant veranda and the other, forbidden part of Sigilante, where the soft tinkling of piano keys could be heard faintly floating down to greet those who went there.
Looked downright stuffy. The doorman wore a tailcoat and an expression that wreaked of absolute boredom.
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