by Lucia Ashta
“Sir Lancelot will be arriving shortly with the wizards,” Fianna told Melinda, “but as to what happened, I have no idea. I’d like to know too.” The fairy with the flaming red hair, who was roughly the size of a hummingbird, but with enough sass to make her seem ten times that size, crossed her little arms over her chest and began tapping her tiny foot in the air, soundlessly drumming out her impatience.
Ky and Boone, wide-eyed, nodded, swallowed loudly, and then launched into telling the story. But once they were finished, it was clear from the looks of everyone there that we still had no idea what happened.
Only that something had—and whatever it was, was very, very big.
7
I was fed up with the crowd that surrounded me by the time the famous wizards finally arrived at my bedside, Sir Lancelot with them. Many of those gathered around were staring at me like I was some odd specimen, their brows scrunched in what looked too much like pity. Even the trolls gazed at me with more kindness than I’d ever witnessed before, and they only had one setting: cranky.
I’d had enough of the tender gazing last term, when my friends had stopped by the infirmary to visit every chance they got. Even the constantly-occupied Sir Lancelot had popped in regularly to check on Wren and me.
The intensity of the stares—and concern—was making my skin itch.
I wasn’t broken. I was just the recipient of the latest school screw-up.
Lucky me!
“Make way for the great wizards Mordecai and Albacus, along with the formidable headmaster, Sir Lancelot,” Nessa intoned in a voice that sounded like wind chimes. With her hands clasped behind her back as she hovered above my bed, her wings were a blur, making me mildly dizzy after what I’d just experienced.
“Thank you, Nessa,” Sir Lancelot said. The owl was a master of good manners and composure. “Lords Albacus and Mordecai, there’s room for you here.”
The owl gestured with a wingtip to the opposite side of the bed from where Ky and Boone stood. Neither of my friends showed signs of vacating their spots, not even for the greats of magical lore. Sir Lancelot, along with the wizards, were living legends of the magical community. It probably helped that all three of them had—more or less—lived for centuries.
As Mordecai and Albacus settled next to me, I stared, working hard to determine what they were.
Sir Lancelot cleared his throat loudly, and even though I realized it was a message for me to quit staring, I couldn’t help myself.
“You’re translucent,” I announced from my reclined position.
The owl spluttered indignantly. “Lady Jolly!”
Mordecai raised his hand before the headmaster could continue. “It’s all right, Sir Lancelot. The girl is merely stating a fact.”
But Sir Lancelot didn’t look mollified in the least. I suspected his feathered face hid a furious blush. He sniffed through his beak, and narrowed big, yellow, unnerving eyes at me. The gentle owl’s warning was clear: I’d better mind my manners. Or else.
Too bad manners and I didn’t much care for each other.
“How are you translucent?” I asked.
“Lady Jolly,” Sir Lancelot whispered, a wingtip to his chest proving just how aghast he was at my forwardness. “You must not realize whom you’re speaking to.”
Instead of cutting him off as he had last time, Mordecai smiled at the owl around a long, bushy, gray beard. “You’ve been a dear friend for many long years.”
Sir Lancelot’s eyes widened impossibly more, and this time I was absolutely certain he must be blushing beneath his feathers. He blinked repeatedly, emphasizing how small and cute the owl really was when he wasn’t taking life so seriously.
“Why, I thank you, Lord Mordecai. You and your brother have been dear to me as long as I’ve known you.”
Nessa sniffled overhead, and I rolled my eyes.
Albacus’ attention was on me. “I see the girl isn’t mild mannered.”
That was one way to put it.
He, like his brother, didn’t sound all that upset by the fact, intriguing me all the more as to who these two legendary wizards were—and why I could see through them.
“I doubt she’ll let us move on to what’s happening to her until we’ve answered her question,” Albacus added, sounding … amused.
“I agree, brother,” Mordecai said. “We are translucent, child, because many years ago I decided I’d rather continue my very long existence half alive than with my brother wholly dead. Now, what’s going on with you?”
“Wait,” I said. “What do you mean you’re half alive? You both are?”
The brothers nodded, their faces old and wrinkled, but their eyes sharp as tacks between all that bushy, hoary facial hair. With long hair that passed their waists, braided into dozens of tiny plaits and capped with tinkling beads, and long, dark robes that trailed the ground, they reminded me of an Albus Dumbledore who’d spent a stint in the Caribbean islands, absorbing the inhabitants’ chill demeanor while sucking on a joint.
I cracked a smile at that thought, before realizing all eyes were on me. I let the smile drop.
“Will you tell us what happened now?” Albacus asked.
“If you tell me what you mean when you say you’re half alive.”
“Lady Jolly!” Sir Lancelot exclaimed, clearly unable to contain his shock. “One does not make demands of wizards of their pedigree and reputation.”
“It’s all right, Sir Lancelot,” Albacus said. “I don’t think this girl is interested in decorum.” Albacus steepled his hands in front of him. “Nearly a century and a half ago, I was struck through with a sword. I died minutes after. But I didn’t leave this world. Rather, I remained behind as a spirit, tethered to my brother as I was.”
Mordecai nodded, the tinkling of his beads detracting from the gravity of their story.
No one else made a sound. Every student, teacher, and creature there hinged on their every word. The history of the wizards had long been shrouded in mystery.
“Albacus and I have always been close,” Mordecai agreed, “even if we did have our squabbles.”
“I lived as a ghost alongside him for decades before my brother’s runes suggested another path.”
Mordecai shook the hidden pockets of his robes, where many somethings clattered against each other. “The runes always reveal the way.”
Albacus nodded. “It’s proven to be so. My brother shared his life force with me, and here we are.”
“How’d he do that? And how are you still alive all these years later?” I asked right away.
The faces of Albacus and Mordecai stretched into identical grins, their eyes alight with a well of mischief.
“In all the years we’ve lived,” Mordecai said, “magic has never once ceased to surprise us. It can do amazing things—with the right knowledge of course.”
“But how—?”
Mordecai shook his head and tsked. “Right now, we have more pressing matters to attend to.”
“That’s right,” Albacus said. “Tell us what happened.”
I looked to Ky. The pain might have passed, but its intensity had left me exhausted.
He opened his mouth to answer my unspoken request, when Albacus shook his head, tinkling as he went. “No. We need to hear it in your words. Your experience, not his.”
“Fine,” I said, and relayed what had happened as best I could. Even Ky, Boone, and the trolls, who’d been there for the entirety of … whatever had happened, seemed to hang on my every word.
When I finished, I asked of the wizards, “So? What happened?”
“We don’t know,” Albacus answered right away, excitement riding his words.
“I must be missing something,” I hedged. “Why would that be a good thing?”
“Wizards as long-lived and experienced as Lords Albacus and Mordecai,” Sir Lancelot explained, “don’t come across situations they don’t understand often. The idea of new magic—”
“Or new applications of familiar ma
gic,” Mordecai interjected with as much enthusiasm as his brother.
“Challenges them,” Sir Lancelot completed.
“And there’s nothing we enjoy more than a fantastic challenge,” Albacus added, beaming.
The old wizards shed centuries from their visages as they lit up. Their eyes gleamed as they trailed across me and their movements became jittery, as if they simply couldn’t wait to get to solving the problem that I’d somehow become.
And to think I’d imagined this semester at the academy would be catastrophe-free when I’d set off for school this morning.
That reminded me…
“Sir Lancelot, do you have to tell my mom about what happened?”
“Your mother,” he said on a sharp inhale. “No, I don’t think I do. Things will go much smoother if we don’t involve her.”
As if he just heard what he said, he rushed to amend, “That’s not to mean that I don’t … appreciate your mother. It’s just that—”
“She can be incredibly and undeniably intense?” I offered.
“Yes, that will work.” The owl fanned himself with a wing to defuse his fluster. “Though please don’t ever mention to her that I agreed with that statement.”
I took in the way his eyes widened at the thought that I’d do so, and chuckled. “Don’t worry, Sir Lancelot. My lips are sealed.”
He exhaled loudly, whistling through his beak.
“You’re in possession of a powerful magical object,” Albacus said, cutting the silence like a knife.
Every head, including his brother’s, swiveled to look at him.
And then at me.
The wizard could only be referring to one thing.
“My patient needs her rest,” Melinda cut in. “Look at her. She went all pale. I haven’t even had the chance to properly examine her yet.”
“It’s okay, Melinda, thanks,” I said, because it was impossible not to love the gentle badger who looked out for everyone at the school like we were all her children. “I feel fine, just tired.”
At that moment, Wren and Dave ran into the room, skidding to a stop when they were met with a wall of creatures. Wren, who was as gentle as Melinda, surprised me by elbowing her way through trolls to reach my side.
Her panicked gaze scanned the length of me.
“I’m fine, Wren, really.” She hadn’t let go of the guilt she experienced from hurting me last semester, no matter how many times we all told her it was an accident.
Dave appeared behind her to wrap a comforting arm around her waist. He nodded a smile at me.
“Well, don’t stop now, child!” Mordecai exclaimed. “You seemed on the verge of a realization.”
“Yes, well, I think I know what the magical object is.”
The wizard brothers leaned forward as if their curiosity were driving them. Fianna and Nessa buzzed annoyingly lower to my face, and Ky squeezed the hand he still clasped.
I really didn’t want to share my pendant with any of them, but I didn’t want to go through something like what I’d experienced with the determinator again either.
Slipping my free hand beneath the scoop neck of my tank top, I pulled the violet, triangular crystal free of my shirt, the fine silver chain that held it slinking across my hand.
“Is this what you’re talking about?” I asked the wizards when no one seemed in a hurry to break the hush that had settled across the otherwise empty infirmary.
“Oh yes,” Albacus said like he was a greedy Gollum, two words away from calling my special pendant his precious. “That is precisely what I was referring to. I sensed its magic.”
“Is that…?” Mordecai trailed off. “No, it can’t be.”
“I don’t know, brother, it might be.”
“But it would make no sense. What would it be doing here of all places? And with a shifter.” Mordecai shook his head side to side as if the repetitive movement would clarify whatever the hell it was they were going on about.
“You are a shifter, correct?” Albacus asked me.
“I am.”
“And what do you shift into?”
“Does that matter?”
“Perhaps, perhaps not,” Albacus answered most unhelpfully.
“What do you shift into, child?” Mordecai parroted.
“A skunk,” I muttered.
“A skunk?” Mordecai boomed.
“Why, how marvelous!” Albacus rejoiced.
I scowled at them both, deeply and steadily. I didn’t see a single fucking thing to celebrate about the fact that I turned into a skunk instead of something cool like Ky’s mountain lion—or even Boone’s wolf.
But the wizards continued on with their enthusiasm as if I were damn Pepé Le Pew and I’d leapt straight out of a cartoon for their amusement.
I glared at them some more, but they didn’t pay me any mind. “So,” I said, “what about all of it? What about my pendant?”
“Oh, but that isn’t really your pendant, is it now?” Mordecai said.
“Ugh, of course it is. Finders keepers and all that,” I said. “Its previous owner was no longer in need of it, so now it’s mine.”
“Flawless logic.” Albacus smiled some more. With the current level of enthusiasm of the brothers, it seemed like they’d smile at anything.
“How did you come by it?” Mordecai asked.
“It used to be a fae’s. He didn’t need it anymore. Now it’s mine,” I said, making sure they registered that one point.
“May we see it?” Albacus asked.
I nodded warily, extending the pendant toward them the extent its long chain would allow. But once I had two very old, and two very half-dead wizards up in my cleavage-business, I rethought things.
“Hold on. Let me take it off,” I said, fully planning to keep one hand on the chain at all times.
But when I went to unclasp the fine metal chain, I couldn’t find the clasp, and even after Ky, who I didn’t mind up in my cleavage-business one bit, tried to locate it, neither one of us could. The clasp had … vanished.
I scooted back in bed until I was sitting up and slid the necklace over my head.
Only it wouldn’t budge past my forehead.
“What the fuck?” I muttered, causing Sir Lancelot to gasp in affront. But I had way bigger problems than my potty mouth. “I can’t get it off!”
I pushed and pulled and waggled it up, but it was as if it were hitting some invisible force field or some shit.
As a last resort, I yanked hard at the chain.
It stretched like a rubber band.
Exasperated, I let it drop to my chest, where it landed with a doom-filled thud against my breastbone. “What in hell’s name is going on?” I grumbled, fully fed up with my first day back. Classes hadn’t even started yet and my life here was fast morphing into a clusterfuck.
“We don’t know what’s happening,” Albacus said, sounding positively giddy about the fucking fact.
“But we won’t stop until we find out,” Mordecai added, grinning until his cheeks made his bright eyes squint, turning him into a deranged-looking Dumbledore.
“We’re off to research,” Albacus said, he and Mordecai half walking, half floating toward the open door of the healing wing.
“We’ll update you as soon as we know something. Go ahead and attend your classes and proceed as normal,” Mordecai called over his shoulder.
Fat fucking chance of that, was all I could think as all remaining eyes trained on me like I was the bloody Holy Grail.
Life had just gotten unreasonably complicated. And unlike the cuckoo wizards, I was none too thrilled about the fact.
Wrapping my fingers around the warm pendant, I sensed a subtle zing that confirmed magic ran through it.
Whatever this pendant really was, and whatever it could do, it was definitely mine now. Its magic was ensuring it’d remain so.
8
Moving on as if nothing odd had happened seemed an impossible task when the wizard brothers first suggested it, but the e
nsuing weeks were less eventful than I’d feared. I settled into a steady rhythm of classes and hang-out time with my friends, and convinced myself that the situation with the pendant would resolve itself all on its own.
The pendant occupied its place on my chest with little more than a warm hum of constant magic. It was as it’d been when I first put it on, after discovering it on the forest floor where I’d last tangled with Jabar.
I’d noticed the necklace on him earlier, of course. The sparkly violet gem was hard to miss against the glorious canvas of his naked body. But I didn’t bother trying to return it. We’d said our final goodbyes; the summer fling was over. Besides, finders keepers. A pendant wasn’t the kind of thing you gave back unless you were forced to.
I managed to all but forget the half-alive and fully eccentric wizards, who hadn’t made another appearance, presumably off researching somewhere. Even Sir Lancelot was more scant than usual.
I grew to hope this semester could be normal despite my rough arrival at the school.
Until I shifted onto my side in bed, reaching for an extra pillow to tuck between my knees … and bumped into a warm body instead.
Now, I was all for warm bodies lying with me—when they were the right ones—but I’d gone to sleep last night as the sole occupant of my queen-sized bed.
I screamed—embarrassingly just like a screechy girl—and scrambled to the edge of the bed, hopping out of it. In one smooth sequence, I flipped on the light on the bedside table while throwing back the covers…
To reveal Ky in all his—mostly—naked glory.
He groaned his annoyance at the sudden light and lack of covers until his eyes squinted open. Then he let loose a manly scream of alarm, blinking rapidly to adjust to the glaring brightness. “What…?” he muttered. “The fuck?”
Adalia shot straight up in her bed, which was on the opposite side of the room from mine. “What’s going on?” she exclaimed in a rush.
“Ky … Ky’s in my bed,” I stuttered.
“So?” she asked, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. “I thought that’s where you wanted him.”