Love, Lies, and Hocus Pocus Allies

by Lydia Sherrer

  With no small amount of effort, Lily managed to decline another southern supper, insisting that cold leftovers were sufficient. She really needed to get home at a decent hour. The goodbyes were brief but heartfelt. Jamie was still disgruntled about not being allowed to go with her, but he hugged her just the same, making her promise to come back and teach him some “cool spells” sometime soon. Lily rolled her eyes at that. Becca stayed in her room, which hurt a little, but Tom assured her she would come around, given time. All in all, four out of five mundanes accepting the existence of magic without a fuss had to be a record of some kind. Well…technically three out of four mundanes, since Jamie was a wizard even if he hadn’t known it until now.

  While some part of her was sad not to spend more time with her family, the constant worry of wondering what John Faust was getting up to spurred her onward. At least her family accepted her—well, mostly. They were a solid wall at her back should she ever need to retreat. It was a comforting thought, especially since, up to that point, she’d felt more or less alone in the world. It was good to have allies.

  As she drove away down the bumpy dirt road, she could see her family’s silhouette in the rearview mirror, Tom’s arm around Freda, her mother waving sadly. As she was about to look away, she noticed something else: a tiny, dark shape taking wing from the oak tree at the edge of the yard and the dogs racing futilely after it, barking at the sky.

  Lily rang Madam Barrington’s doorbell, then waited, carpetbag in one arm and a stack of books in the other, as Sir Kipling sat primly by her feet. It was Thursday evening and Lily had been coming over to her mentor’s house after work every day that week for training. It had taken some wrangling on her part to get away from the library, of course. Fall classes had started that week at Agnes Scott and she was supposed to be holding extended office hours. Well, there was no rule saying she couldn’t extend them earlier instead of later in the day—one of the perks of being a salaried, rather than hourly, employee. The workaround elicited a raised eyebrow from her boss, but the library director had let it stand. Just because students didn’t like getting up early didn’t mean they couldn’t.

  It was a good thing, too, since Lily had a great deal to learn herself, now that Madam Barrington was no longer colluding with her mother to keep her in the dark. They’d spent the past two days working on advanced magical theory and its practical application, with Lily memorizing fresh combinations of Enkinim and dimmu runes—the spoken and written language of power.

  Madam Barrington had also finally shown Lily the proper way to use her eduba, that ancient, magical archive of knowledge she’d passed down to her student while only telling her enough to use its most basic knowledge. The cursed thing had an index, for goodness sake. Not that Lily hadn’t looked for one before, but not knowing the proper words to call it forth, she’d simply been wasting her time. Seven years of looking things up the hard way when there’d been an index all along. Honestly. It was a wonder she wasn’t emotionally scarred from all the extra effort she’d been put through. And then, of course, she had to go back and properly index all her own entries, now that she knew how. She was still sore about it.

  At least today they were going to get to the meaty bits. Madam Barrington had promised to explain what she knew about John Faust, Morgan le Fay, and wizard politics in general. With that happy prospect ahead, Lily was able to summon a polite smile when her mentor finally made it to the door. The older woman was wearing a neatly starched apron over her austere, high-necked blouse and full skirt—all in shades of grey and black. She must have come from preparing tea in the kitchen.

  “Good evening, Lily, and you as well, Mr. Kipling,” Madam Barrington said as she held open the door and nodded them into the house.

  Sir Kipling meowed a polite greeting as he passed, making a beeline for the kitchen and his waiting saucer of milk.

  Lily shook her head at the sight of the swiftly disappearing feline. “Good evening, Ms. B.,” she said and stepped inside. After the fiasco with John Faust and her subsequent rescue, Madam Barrington had finally started addressing her as “Lily” instead of “Miss Singer,” and had tried to get Lily to call her by her first name as well. While Lily appreciated the closer friendship they had developed, she simply couldn’t bring herself to drop the polite address. It just felt wrong. Maybe someday when Madam Barrington was no longer her teacher. For now, “Ms. B.” would have to do.

  Heading down the dim, cool hall, Lily enjoyed the soothing relief from the sweltering weather outside. She laid her belongings on the dining room table, then proceeded to the kitchen to help with tea. There she found Sir Kipling cleaning his whiskers of sticky whiteness, having already scarfed down his allotted bowl of milk. She wished Madam Barrington wouldn’t spoil him so. Before she knew it, he’d be expecting her to feed him milk, and pet him on demand, too, no doubt. Nothing good ever came from spoiling a cat. They already thought they were gods. It was unwise to feed into their fantasy.

  Ah, well, Lily thought. The Madam’s house, the Madam’s rules.

  By the time preparations were done and everything carried out to the table, Sir Kipling had vanished to wherever cats went when they weren’t sitting on your lap or demanding food. He would reappear when it was time to leave.

  While it was a bit more work than making a sandwich or warming up leftovers, high tea with Madam Barrington was entirely worth the effort. Not to be confused with afternoon tea—held earlier in the day as a bridge between the midday and evening meals—high tea evolved as the working class’s evening meal. Unlike the privileged upper class, who had nothing better to do in the afternoon but socialize on low, comfy sofas over a lovely pot of tea, the working class didn’t get home until the evening, and so drank their tea with the evening meal at a normal, “high” table. Thus the name, high tea. Of course, the upper class developed their own variation, and nowadays the terms were often confused. Many establishments such as hotels and teahouses used the terms incorrectly so as not to bewilder the happily ignorant tourists.

  Madam Barrington’s high tea, however, hearkened back to the old days. Though she rarely discussed her early life, Lily knew she’d been born in Aylesbury, England to a family of note, and so had probably grown up with servants. Since immigrating to America, however, she’d obviously learned to take care of herself while still maintaining her English traditions. She had prepared steak and kidney pie, pickled salmon, crumpets, potatoes, and a cheese casserole. This delightful spread was accompanied by copious amounts of Russian Caravan, an aromatic and full-bodied black tea blend with a smoky taste that Madam Barrington had only recently introduced to Lily. One could only drink so much Earl Grey, after all.

  Their dinner conversation covered the generalities of wizard society and politics, some of which Lily was familiar with but most of which she’d been dying to know for years. For instance, there was no formal international wizard political system. Attempts had been made several times throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries but had always come to naught. Nationally, there had been a bit more success, and most countries had at least a semi-formal conglomeration of stewards whose job it was to preserve what knowledge they could and resolve disputes. But, by and large, the wizard’s way was to keep to one’s self. The only universally agreed-upon rule was: never meddle in mundane affairs. There was a second, unspoken rule, of course: don’t reveal magic to mundanes. Any non-wizard family members—initiates as they were traditionally called—were expected to keep the family secrets.

  Lily took a long sip of her tea as she digested all this information, finally putting down her cup to finish the last bites of her pickled salmon. “So,” she ventured, “if the stewards of the American territories knew John Faust was plotting to multiply the wizard race so as to rule mundane society as benevolent dictators, they would be displeased, to say the least?”

  “To say the least,” Madam Barrington agreed, taking her own sip of tea.

  “So why don’t we just tell them and let them
deal with my insane, egomaniacal excuse for a father?”

  Her mentor sighed and put down her teacup. “Because half of them would secretly agree with him, and the other half would be too afraid to do anything about it. You must understand that, traditionally, no wizard has accepted the, shall we say, oversight of any formal body. None are likely to start now. The stewards are more caretakers and mediators than enforcers. In the past few hundred years, anyone foolish enough to indulge in wild schemes has ended up dead by their own hand long before they could do any public damage. That was not always the case with some of our more ancient ancestors, which is why mundanes have legends of wizards like Flamel, Merlin, Morgan le Fay, Ptolemy, and others.

  “No, Lily,” she continued, “wizards deal with things internally. It is the responsibility of the family to manage its members and keep things quiet. So that is what we must do.”

  “But you’re not family,” Lily pointed out.

  Madam Barrington smiled serenely “Perhaps not by blood. But I am your teacher, and your mother’s before you, and—”

  “You taught Mother?” Lily asked, aghast. “She never said a word!” Her lips thinned slightly and she raised an eyebrow. “No wonder you two were in cahoots to keep me away from John Faust.”

  “Yes, our connection as teacher and student played a part, but it certainly was not the only reason.” Madam Barrington’s voice was dry, but amused. “A greater factor was my impartiality to the situation. I do not care for politics, nor am I part of either family’s social circle. I am also one of the few wizards in the area whom John Faust would hesitate to cross.”

  “Fascinating,” Lily murmured, wondering if she would ever know how much she didn’t know about her mentor. “And speaking of John Faust, I believe you promised quite a tale where he is concerned. I must know my enemy if I am to defeat him.”

  “Indeed,” Madam Barrington agreed, pushing away her plate and dabbing at her mouth with a napkin. “But before we venture into that topic, might I suggest—”

  She was interrupted by a raucous commotion outside as a cacophony of yowling, hissing, and cawing set Lily’s hair on end. They hurried over to the parlor window to see Sir Kipling, perched precariously on a lower limb of the backyard maple tree, swiping furiously at a large black bird. The bird was fighting back, pecking aggressively at her cat’s eyes as it beat its wings. When Sir Kipling attempted to back up to escape the onslaught, his back paw slipped and he tumbled out of the tree. Lily almost screamed at the sight, but managed to swallow it as Sir Kipling twisted in mid-air to land on all four paws in fine feline fashion. He wasn’t out of danger, however. His attacker dropped from the branch in a dive-bomb that her cat barely dodged.

  Lily had seen enough. Not only were ravens not native to the area, but she recognized that diving attack. It seemed John Faust had sent his magical raven construct, Oculus, to spy on them.

  Turning from the window, Lily rushed out the back door followed closely by Madam Barrington, both of them readying spells. They needn’t have bothered. As soon as Oculus caught sight of the humans, it broke off its attack and winged high into the air, disappearing quickly among the neighboring trees with one last caw of defiance. Leaving her mentor to keep an eye on the skies, Lily hurried over to Sir Kipling, who crouched, panting, on the grass. She dropped to her knees, hands fluttering in distress as she saw blood on his nose. The aluminum and leather ward collar around his neck was only spelled to protect him from magical, not physical, attacks.

  “Kip, you’re bleeding! Are you hurt? Should we go to the animal hospital?”

  “Calm down. It’s just a scratch.” Sir Kipling had gotten his breath back and was sitting up now, grimacing, though just as likely in exasperation as in pain. He licked his paw and made to swipe it across his nose, but drew it back involuntarily before it had barely touched the cut. Obviously it was sore.

  “Just a scratch? There’s blood all over your nose, you stubborn cat. Why in the world did you attack that nasty construct? Why didn’t you just warn us it was there?”

  “Psh, and let it think it could get away with eavesdropping? You seriously underestimate my truculence. Now quit trying to wipe my nose. It will heal perfectly fine without your interference.” He expertly dodged her attempt to pick him up, then sauntered toward the back door, though a slight limp in his gait belied his air of nonchalance. Lily sighed and gave up. Animals were notorious for hiding sickness and injury, so she’d just have to keep a wary eye on him.

  Standing, she went to join Madam Barrington. The older woman’s eyes were closed and her brow furrowed. Lily guessed she had magically enhanced her hearing and was listening for signs of the construct. Normally, searching the area for magic would do. But the mechanical bird hadn’t tripped any of Madam Barrington’s perimeter enchantments, and Lily hadn’t felt even a whiff of magic off it in the brief moment before it had fled. All of which meant it was protected by a very effective cloaking spell.

  “It is gone,” her mentor finally said, opening her eyes and heading toward the back door. “If you will help me straighten the kitchen, I suggest we retire to the Basement to continue our discussion.”

  “An excellent idea,” Lily agreed. Despite Madam Barrington's assurance, she eyed the trees around her one last time before going inside, wondering where else Oculus had been spying and how long he might have been following her.

  On the way to McCain Library, Lily called Sebastian. Though she suspected Madam Barrington would be more than displeased at the prospect, Lily decided her witch friend needed to be there when they discussed John Faust, Morgan le Fay, and how to stop the former from finding the latter. After all, as troublesome as he was, he was still her closest ally in this fight…or at least, she thought he was. He sent mixed signals sometimes, and her feelings toward him were one, big, complicated mess. But he’d always been there when she needed him, even if he was less than forthcoming about a great many things.

  The phone rang five times, then went to voicemail. Lily growled under her breath, hung up, and called a second time. He’d better not have broken his phone again, she thought darkly.

  On the third try he finally answered, though it sounded as if his head were turned and he was talking to someone else. “Just gimmie a second, okay? Sheesh—Hey, sorry, is this quick? I’m kinda in the middle of something.”

  Lily suppressed her annoyance. “Well, if it’s not of vital importance, I suggest you bring your ‘something’ to a swift conclusion. Madam Barrington and I are meeting in the Basement to discuss a certain odious wizard and how we’re going to foil his nefarious plans. You should be there when we do.”

  “My, my, my, Lily. Are you actually encouraging me to stray onto your women’s-only campus? I thought I’d never live to see the day.”

  Though he wasn’t there to see it, Lily still rolled her eyes. “Men are technically allowed on campus as long as they’re accompanied by a chaperone. You just never bother with that.”

  “That’s because my sterling reputation is all the chaperone I need.”

  Lily snorted, glad she wasn’t drinking anything since she probably would have choked on it at a statement like that.

  Sebastian ignored her. “I agree, I should be there. But what I’m doing now is pretty important too. Can we meet later?”

  “No, we can’t. And what could be more important than figuring out how to fight John Faust?”

  “The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting,” he quipped.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” she demanded, no longer trying to hide her annoyance. It didn’t help when, glancing self-consciously to the side, she saw Sir Kipling watching her from the passenger seat with half-lidded eyes.

  “Weeell, it’s kind of obvious, you know, to win without having to—”

  “No, no. I meant, what are you doing? What in the world would subdue John Faust?”

  “Uhhh…I’ll tell you about it later. Let me wrap up what we’re doing here and I’ll—”

/>   “We?” Lily demanded sharply, now annoyed at both her friend and at her own inexplicable nosiness.

  “Yeah. We. Tina is helping me dig up some…well, she’s helping me out.”

  “I knew it! You shouldn’t associate with that witch, Sebastian. She’s a disaster waiting to happen.” Though a part of her mind was silently begging her to shut up, she plowed on anyway. “Not that you aren’t your own disaster in the making, but you should be surrounded by sound judgment, not someone who will compound your foolishness.”

  “Foolishness, huh?” His voice sounded cool but amused. “Foolish, like running off to the private compound of a suspicious stranger who has already threatened you once? That kind of foolishness?”

  She closed her mouth, very glad he wasn’t there to see her blush. Half of her was furious at him for pointing out her mistakes, the other half was humble enough to admit he was right. But why did he always have to be so vexing?

  “Look, never mind,” he said, perhaps sensing her conflict. “I’ll come. Just give me twenty minutes.”

  “Fine,” was all she could manage.

  There was an awkward silence. “See you then, I guess.”

  “Good day,” she said, and hung up.

  Having arrived at the library, she pulled into her usual parking space, turned off the car, and rested her forehead on the steering wheel. She staunchly avoided looking at the seat next to her, but for once Sir Kipling held his tongue, allowing her to sort out her thoughts. The cool surface of the steering wheel against her forehead helped soothe the heat raging inside. How did that man always manage to tie her in such knots? She was usually even-tempered. But something about Sebastian Blackwell, professional witch and troublemaking reprobate, got past all her carefully constructed defenses.

  Heaving a deep sigh, she sat up and got out of the car just as Madam Barrington pulled up. While her mentor parked, Lily opened the door for her cat, who jumped down and disappeared into the bushes beside the tall, red-brick building. He would find his own secretive way inside. Cat magic, she was certain.