“It doesn’t matter. The great Caruthers family is in danger of dying out. You’re his blood. He saw something in you. That’s my theory, but we shall see. Maybe you are meant to be a sans pareil, and if so, you’re in the right place.”
I saw my dad’s worried face when I left for Merlin College instead of a normal university. My arm throbbed. But I think what scared me most was the look in Master Blair’s eyes.
“I think that Charlotte needs to be alone right now,” Firian said, in a low, serious voice. “She’s hurt. She’s inhaled a lot of smoke. And all of this is new to her. Come back later.”
Master Blair looked at him. “It isn’t your place.”
“If you rush her, what will that drive her to?” Firian said, not backing down.
“Ignatius, I’m going to start cleaning the office,” Stuart said, opening a closet and taking out a mop bucket.
A male nurse walked over and opened the curtains wide. He had a cart with some medicines and stuff. “You can check on Charlotte later,” he said. “She is still a female. She needs her rest.”
Master Blair nodded and rose, although I wasn’t sure I liked the turn this had taken. As they were leaving, Montague came striding in with some flowers in a vase. Wow, word spread fast and I couldn’t help but feel excited that a guy was bringing me flowers already. He ran into Master Blair and Stuart in the middle of the room.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Xarra,” Master Blair said. “Charlotte needs her rest, I think.”
“Good afternoon to you, sir. I hope she’ll rest well, and that’s why I brought her some flowers to soothe her sleep,” Montague said, smooth on the surface but with underlying tension.
“Oh, she won’t be staying in the infirmary,” Stuart said. “She’s fine. Nothing broken, just a little sprain.”
“Then, she can bring the flowers to her room,” Montague said. Hmm. He didn’t like Master Blair. I was starting to wonder if I could trust the head of the school.
Montague nodded at Firian in the most cursory way, probably because Firian was glaring at him, and put the flowers on my bedside table while the nurse was mixing some medicine into a cup. The nurse kept an eye on Montague the entire time. Montague looked at my forehead. The nurse immediately wiped my forehead off with a cloth. “You shouldn’t be in this place, vampire.”
Ohhh. Right. Blood. No wonder everyone seemed upset that he’d come here.
“I am a warlock, not a monster,” Montague said, but his mouth suddenly had these very glaring fangs. “Charlotte, I came as soon as I heard.”
“Thanks. It sounds like everything’s okay except the books Professor Jablonsky threw out the window.” I tried to make light of it, because as it turns out, setting things on fire in real life is not as much fun as it is in Fortune’s Favor.
The nurse gave me some nasty smelling medicine. “Drink this and you can go,” he said. He steered the cart away toward the hall, still looking back at Montague. I suddenly considered just how many beds this infirmary had. I felt like there might be more down the hall. Half the population of the school could sleep here. Hmm.
“I think someone’s watching you,” Montague whispered. “From the woods.”
“Watching me? Oh, of course…pile it on. Did you hear that Samuel Caruthers is dead?”
“No.”
“You’ve only been here for twenty-four hours. This doesn’t bode well,” Firian said. “Why do you think someone’s watching her?”
“I caught a rustle and a scent in the woods. Right after I sent you off to orientation,” Montague said. “It could be a demon. And here I thought you were here just to drive us to madness with your charm, Charlotte.” He gave me a wicked twist of a smile.
I wasn’t sure I should take Montague seriously, but he was the only person looking out for me right now, besides my familiar. It sounded like I needed all the help I could get. He was also undeniably attractive, even with fangs. Especially with fangs, even. And I didn’t think I was that kind of girl. But I guess there was something primal in the idea of a guy wanting to drink the life out of me. No one had ever looked at me the way he did, and even if I knew it wasn’t personal, it wasn’t without a certain charm either. My eyes trailed down to his sleeve, rolled up to show his forearms, his skin a light warm brown that seemed too healthy to belong to a vampire.
Still, I knew how cold his skin was.
“So who is this demon?” I asked.
“If I knew, I would tell you. But—I’ll find out. I just want you and your familiar on your guard. Don’t leave her side,” he told Firian.
“I was definitely not planning on leaving her side. I hear there are vampires at this school,” Firian shot back.
“Still…am I right to be nervous?” I looked at them both. “Master Blair looked way too excited that I set his office on fire. He said Samuel might have left his powers to me. Like maybe he planned his death? But what if…he didn’t, and whoever killed him is coming for me next?”
No one had a chance to reassure me. Harris suddenly stormed through the doorway. “Monty, what the hell?” he said, giving me a look of disgust.
“She was hurt!”
“She hurt herself. Look at her face.”
My face? I touched my cheeks. I had no idea there was anything wrong with my face. My fingers came away with green ointment on them. “Gah!”
“Oh, by the way, hot candle wax exploded on your face and there are dabs of green ointment all over it,” Firian said. “Luckily, it wasn’t too bad and it’s already healing up. Unfortunately, it didn’t stop vampires from flirting with you.” He handed me a handkerchief.
“We’re leaving,” Harris said. “I hope those flowers didn’t come from you.”
“So much for gentlemanly conduct,” Montague said. “I am the only person in this school who brought flowers or asked concern for the welfare of the only lady here.”
“You’re already enough of a pariah,” Harris said. “No one is going to associate with you this year if you support the attendance of a witch.”
“Too late.” Montague stood up. “I’m a vampire now. I’ve already ruined my reputation. And as soon as your parents find out we’re still friends, I know you’ll drop me too. I might as well cast my lot in with a fellow outcast; at least she looks good in the uniform.”
“She’s a nice piece of ass, but she’s a witch. We should be meeting her at a ball.” He looked at my appalled face. “It’s what everyone’s thinking, okay? You just proved that you can’t handle warlock magic, but you are a nice piece of ass.”
I threw off the blankets and lunged at him. Montague barely held me back.
“Master Blair doesn’t think I can’t handle warlock magic. He thinks I could be a sans pareil. I’m going to show you.”
“A sans pareil? Yeah? I’m really looking forward to our demon summoning contest now.”
I forgot about that whole thing. “Yeah, me too,” I said. “My demon is going to take a piece of your ass, carve it up, and eat it for dinner.”
“You are going to botch this and get banned from performing magic by the council,” he said smugly, which showed me that realistic threats were actually much more effective than trash talk. Aw, damnit.
“You two are not going through with this,” Montague said. “It’s too dangerous. There’s already something afoot. You’re my best friend, and Charlotte is a lady I’ve been developing a considerable affection for considering the length of our acquaintance.”
“You’ve been getting really pretentious since you became a vampire,” Harris said. “And if summoning a demon wrecks your developing affection for Charlotte, I’ll consider that a bonus. Come on, we have classes.”
“I was always pretentious.” Montague kissed my hand. “Take care of yourself.”
Once they left, Firian crossed his arms. “I’m glad you’ve learned to stand up for yourself. I was this close to scorching him with some flames of my own. You also have class, by the way, if you want to attend. Dean Blair suggested
you just sit and observe the first week. Professor Jablonsky said you can just rest today if you want. We could get in some Fortune’s Favor uninterrupted…”
“I can’t look like I’m a poor weak girl who can’t handle class on my very first day,” I said. “Though I do need a change of clothes and…I definitely need to get this ointment off my face!”
“Whatever you wish,” Firian said, but I think my familiar had definitely been enjoying the life of a slacker.
I had until the end of the year to learn how to control my magic, to hopefully figure out why I was here and what happened to Samuel Caruthers, and most especially, to summon a demon. I wasn’t going to spend time doing magic in a game until I got my real life magic straightened out.
Chapter Fourteen
Firian
The thing about losing someone is that it doesn’t always come with a big tearful goodbye. Sometimes the person is right there in front of you, unaware of what’s even happened.
I was so afraid of losing Charlotte.
She didn’t even realize, of course. I’d been in the background all this time. I was the fox who sat in the bushes. When I was a kit, I watched her play in her kiddie pool. (Well, maybe that wasn’t the best memory to bring up first. We were the same age, but it still sounds creepy. She played in it a lot when she was little, that’s all.) I watched her dad grill steaks, and toss me one when she wasn’t looking. I watched her sit on the back deck reading. I watched her take walks where she admired spring flowers and walks where she moped and stared at her phone.
Usually, she had no idea I was around, but if she spotted me, I was just a regular old fox, wary of humans. Her dad kept me updated on her life.
It was a really strange way for a familiar to live, so I didn’t talk to the other familiars in Etherium much. I wasn’t ashamed of Charlotte, of course. She was a good person. Kind-hearted, with inner reserves of strength that kids who lost a parent often had, but also very fun. I knew the other familiars and their witches would judge her for various reasons. She slouched, she dressed like a slob, she used words like “fuck” and “mansplaining” that witches were too ladylike and old-fashioned to say, she sometimes crammed an entire muffin in her face. She spent way too much time on the computer, which was where I really got to know her. By the sickly blue light of a computer screen at three o’ clock in the morning when we were fighting dragons with a dwarven healer from Singapore, I thought, Doesn’t she need to go to high school tomorrow?
Familiars, they say, grow and adapt alongside their humans, the way trees grow low and bent by a steady ocean breeze or twisted around a rock face. I existed because of Charlotte, and in a large sense it was my job to be what she needed me to be. Even though we weren’t close like other witches and familiars, I still grew around her. I couldn’t fight my nature. Not that I’d really tried. I also liked shoving an entire muffin in my face.
The tragedy, in my mind, is that she didn’t fully appreciate what I meant to her. She had never needed protection before, or help casting spells. I could already tell she was used to doing things on her own and it wasn’t in her nature to seek my help, the way other witches would. A good instinct on her part, because she was too old for a familiar anyway.
But I couldn’t stand the idea of being shunted aside.
And on the flip side, she didn’t understand that I was supposed to be shunted aside. She saw me as a person, not a familiar. I could see why some familiars urged their witches to turn dark, addicted to the heady power of being human.
I would go rogue politely. I wasn’t going to let Charlotte turn into a sinistral. Job number one was keeping her safe for her dad, who was as important to me as she was, the way it had worked out.
Still, being a familiar in the real world at this age wasn’t easy. Everywhere we went, guys were staring me down. And now, Charlotte was stepping into her first class.
We had to walk a ways down the tree-lined paths of the campus. I kept track of her schedule for her. “Your first class is Necromancy and Dark Arts,” I said.
“Ooh. I should be good at that, if I really got magical powers from Samuel Caruthers, right? When is Potions class?”
“There is no potions class.”
“There isn’t? Damn.”
“You know Alan Rickman won’t be teaching the class, right?”
“May he rest in peace, Firian.” She rolled her eyes. “I just think the idea of making a potion sounds fun. What are the classes?”
“Literature.”
“Literature?”
“Well, warlocks and witches learn normal stuff as well, and they have their own canon of great works. Then you have a break in there for lunch. Then Magical History, then Enchantment and Illusion, then Theurgy. That’s it.”
“What’s theurgy?”
“Summoning and communicating with higher spirits.”
“There are a lot of types of magic left out.”
“Oh, you think? And what do you know about real magic?”
“Well, what about divination? Surely that’s a thing.”
“Mostly, the other forms are for women. Women specialize in healing, divination, and enchantment. Both sexes learn theurgy and glamours. Later, you might learn alchemy and conjuring and more elemental skills. The dark arts and enchantment classes are going to have a heavy focus on defense. They won’t teach you any dark magic, obviously, but they will teach you to speak to the dead.”
She paused. I could see her pondering the entire scope of life and death and afterlife and the mysteries of the universe in the space of a moment. Her dad wasn’t religious and she’d never lost anyone really close to her. She’d never confronted existential questions.
“Hey,” I said. “Don’t freak out. It’ll be okay. They’ll take it slow.”
“I’m not freaking out.”
“You have your freaking out face.”
“You don’t know my faces.”
I do, though, I thought. Charlotte was my witch. She didn’t know just how well I knew her. It wasn’t just from watching her. It was woven through my entire being. I knew when she was sad and when she was scared.
She took a deep breath. “I want to curl up with a blanket and watch baking shows all day.”
“Fortune favors the bold,” I said. “Not just in video games.”
Her face took on a more determined look.
We headed for the class. It was inside a stately brick building, of course, and up steep stairs. If anyone in a wheelchair had ever attended this school, I don’t know how they managed. But I thought I already knew the answer to that. Merlin College was not for anyone with any perceived weaknesses, unless that weakness was a desire to blow stuff up or summon demons. I didn’t trust any of these privileged little assholes, and even I was shocked by how stuck in the past this place was. My protective instincts were bristled at all times. I knew I should go to Etherium for Charlotte’s own good, but I wasn’t sure I could ever relax there again. She needed me.
We were slightly late. The door was shut. A gold plaque marked it as the Necromancy and Dark Arts room. I opened the door for her, and stepped back. Dread rose in me at the thought of walking in there with about twenty unknown dudes. The second Charlotte walked in, every head shifted to watch her.
Charlotte was cute. I’d noticed that, even if I shouldn’t. She was of average size, neither short nor tall, with appealing curves, a little stomach pudge, and…very flexible. Sometimes she did yoga on the back deck. She didn’t usually mess with her appearance much, which any familiar would prefer. I spent too much time in the woods living life as a fox to care about human appearances. Charlotte would have made a really cute fox. Ponytail, brown eyes, explosive little laugh, healthy appetite: that was my Charlotte.
I shouldn’t be thinking about her like that. It was only because all these other guys were around suddenly, making me possessive.
Being attracted to your witch was a huge taboo. In the magical community, it was one hundred percent normal to date your c
ousin but akin to a first-degree offense to notice that your witch had a really adorable smile. So I would keep that thought to myself. Maybe it was because I’d had to keep so much of a distance from her. We didn’t have that brother-sister relationship familiars and witches usually did. Instead, I’d watched over her from afar, and she seemed a little untouchable.
Yeah, and also, I probably shouldn’t have agreed to become her girlfriend/boyfriend in an online RPG.
Stupid.
The guys, despite being well-dressed warlocks, were still acting like guys everywhere. They were checking her out, giving each other looks, snickering a little in a private way. Then they noticed me behind her and the ogling turned more nasty. I heard some whispers, and a couple of not-so-much-whispers. “A familiar…” “She brought her familiar…” “Weird looking dude.”
Alec and Harris were both in the class, sitting together, and I found myself actually missing Montague. At least he treated her decently, even if a little too decently. Harris, at least, didn’t leer or whisper, but he looked disdainful. Alec, well, he was an incubus. Whatever he said, dangling a single woman in front of an incubus was a bad idea. He looked at her like he wanted to do things to her, as he always did, and she glanced back at him and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.
Ugh.
There was one empty seat at the back of the room. It was obviously for her. She sat down, and I stood in the back against the wall. I fully expected what came next.
The teacher was your classic dark arts/necromancy guy. He was tall, a little skeletal, in a funereal suit complete with waistcoat and watch chain, disheveled black hair. He looked about forty, which meant he was probably sixty. He had a sort of pained look on his face. “Familiar,” he said, waving a thin, pale hand. “I think you had best go.”
“I won’t say anything,” I said. “But Charlotte is untrained, so I’m watching over her for this first week or so.” I knew setting a time limit on my presence might help calm everyone down, but I already had no intention of leaving.
A few guys laughed again. They were going to drive her to send me away in no time.
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