“She wants to be there,” Stuart said. “Ignatius would be very upset about all of this, but in the end, I am a faery. I covered up my nature with friendliness, but I must say, it’s been such a relief not to pretend to care about human concerns anymore.”
“So Charlotte’s welfare is just a ‘human concern’ to you?”
“I care,” Stuart said. “I care about her very much. I simply trust that it will unfold the way it should.”
Penny offered me some hot tea, moving quietly in the background, and added another log to the fire that was slowly drying out my clothes. The presence of servants reminded me of home, except that Stuart was living in a humble cave.
I wasn’t sure what to do next. I didn’t want to just return without accomplishing anything.
I glanced at Firian. The fox had followed me all the way here. Charlotte loved him more than anyone, and she loved him the wrong sort of way. I hadn’t even see my familiar in human form in many years.
But for Charlotte, his situation was as heart-breaking as if Alec or Montague was turned into an animal.
“What about Firian?” I asked.
“The curse?” Stuart said. “Her great-aunt cast it.”
“Her great-aunt is not going to break it,” I said. “I’ve heard enough to know that.”
“Hmm.” Stuart sipped his tea leisurely. “I wonder what would?” His eyes lifted.
“Is there something we can do about it?” I asked. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Do you think there’s something you could do about it?”
“Well, nothing that wouldn’t cause even more permanent and lasting damage to my relationship with home…”
“So,” Stuart said, “you could do something about it. And that is the price you would have to pay.”
“I think I liked you better when you were covering up your nature with friendliness.”
“You’re not the first one to say that,” said Orson, who was just hulking in the corner peeling potatoes. Well, Stuart’s servants were a little different from the ones at home. They were more intense, more woven into the place somehow. Orson was only of average height but he had a tall presence, with thick black hair and a warrior’s wildness, what my father would have called “a Pictish barbarian look.” My father had all of Europe dialed down to regions and tribes, even the ones that hadn’t existed in centuries.
Stuart shook his head. “I can only tell you the truth, Harris. Sometimes there is no easy choice; a hard one is all you will have. I can’t save Firian or Charlotte for you.”
“I have a feeling you could. If you wanted to.”
“I don’t need saving,” Firian growled. “Not from you, anyway.”
“Samuel and Ignatius are trusting me to guide Charlotte and everyone close to her by extension. The best skill a wizard can have is the ability to figure out solutions on their own,” Stuart said. “I also need to be careful. If I’m the last one standing, I have knowledge of Wyrd. Connections you’ll need. I can’t get captured by the council.”
“Ignatius isn’t dead,” I said. “I mean—he isn’t, is he?”
“No,” Stuart said. “Not dead.”
The look on his face seemed almost like he wished Ignatius was dead.
So where is he, then? The Haven?
I wondered what they did to women who lived as men—became men, even—in the Haven.
“Aw, fuck,” I said.
“It’s not your fault.”
“I wasn’t apologizing.”
But it almost felt like it was my fault. The councils? They were my people. My family, my family’s friends. I had been clinging to that world, afraid to stand up to them for fear of losing my own wealth and power.
I was starting to realize how hollow it was.
“I know what to do, Stu,” I said. “Thanks for the talk.”
Orson got to his feet and handed me an umbrella for the walk back. “Are you finally going to get your lady?” he asked.
“People need to stop making assumptions.”
“I know a lovesick man when I see one, and I saw one as soon as you showed up here, though I didn’t know the object until I saw the lady Charlotte.”
I grabbed the umbrella. “Damnit, how does everyone see it so plainly when I make every effort not to wear my heart on my sleeve?”
“When it’s there, it’s there,” Orson said.
“Not for faeries.”
“Not true. Most faeries just take a little longer to crack, that’s all,” Orson said, glancing sideways.
“What? Orson, you sly dog,” Firian said. “Was Stuart ever in love?”
Orson raised his thick brows. “Servant’s oath.” He shoved me along. “Go on.”
Chapter Fifteen
Charlotte
In the morning, the church doors opened and I stirred sleepily.
“Get up!” Piers cried, marching in. “I’m glad you got a little beauty rest, my dear. You are going to be reborn this morning.”
I think he was annoyed that I didn’t seem scared. But that faded quickly as I walked out, stumbling a bit on my lingering exhaustion and wishing for a toothbrush, and realized the entire school was gathered around outside looking up the church steps.
What if the faery blessing didn’t work?
“You stay right here,” Professor New Jersey ordered me, jabbing his wand at the ground in front of me. “This is a special lesson for everyone here and a lucky day for Charlotte, here. Her grandfather was a werewolf, which means—she has a natural draw to Sinistral. Last night, if you came to my demonstration, you saw what happens when we purify a Sinistral ghost. This morning we’re going to demonstrate something a little more pleasant. We will purify her blood and banish her wickedness.”
I saw Montague and Alec shoving their way to the front.
“Stop,” Montague said. “This is—a bad idea.”
“You need to be purified!” Henry Wells jeered. “Purify the vampire!”
Alec’s face cut to him. “You want to say that again?”
“Guys, don’t fight,” I said. “It’s okay. Proceed.” I stood there and tried to look serene.
“Char, are you crazy?” Alec cried. “What did they do to you in there?”
Was I a little nervous? Sure. But if you couldn’t trust magical fish and priest ghosts, who could you trust? I mean, basically I was in a whole new world of logic here. I tried to ignore the fact that Firian was tricked by fellow Ethereals. I needed to go with my gut here.
Harris was in the crowd, too, further back from Montague and Alec. I saw him cough. He looked kind of sick. I saw some of the old professors, too, looking nervous. Professor Adams was shaking his head and muttering something. But the other professors had been laying low. As powerful as they were, they were afraid of the council, too.
Piers and Professor Pacetti stood behind me and crossed their wand in front of me. “You can all repeat my words,” Piers said. “Etherium, I have here a witch who has a dark soul in her blood. We want you to turn her to the way of order.”
The students repeated it. Some of them enthusiastically, but there was a solid background of mumbling.
Professor Adams was shaking his head now. I tried to look more serene so he wasn’t tempted to intervene.
I need to go through with this, I thought. I need them to know they can’t mess with me because I have Samuel’s magic. And if I’m wrong, I’m probably doomed anyway.
“Shine the light of Etherium upon her!” Piers cried. “May she fight only for good, all her life and unto death! Bless this child, holy spirits of Etherium!”
Their wands sparked together and a circle of light wrapped around me.
Oh, crap.
I shut my eyes and huddled a little, braced for pain.
My forehead burned. My wand burned in my hand too. I felt something trying to break its way through my natural defenses, a wave of nausea crashing over me. I wanted to drop my wand as it grew warm, but I made myself cling to it more ti
ghtly instead. They wanted to take my magic from me, and I couldn’t let them.
I felt their spell shatter.
Piers made a little strangled, angry sound that came out like, “Hruuu!?” It was a delicious sound to hear in the course of surprising and annoying someone I hated, but I hoped it wasn’t a sound that ran in the family. If Harris said “Hruuu!?” during sex maybe he wasn’t meant to be part of this after all.
“Should we try again?” Professor Pacetti hissed.
“No,” Piers snapped. “It didn’t work. Her magic blocked the whole thing somehow.” He grabbed me and hauled me into the church.
“How did you do that?” he asked.
“Well, I guess the faeries gave me this wand and now they’re protecting me.”
“Like Samuel before her…”
Pacetti suddenly made a grab for my wand.
“Stop!” I wrestled with him. “This is my wand! What’s the problem? I spent the last two years ‘unpurifed’ and I was fine, so is it that big of a deal?”
“It’s not Ethereal magic. This is an Ethereal college. We have to look it over before it’s permitted.” Piers tapped my arm and it suddenly went limp, allowing Professor Pacetti to take it easily.
“If it’s safe, we’ll return it,” he said.
“You hurt my familiar, tried to warp my blood, and now you’re taking my wand.” I was seething. “Give it back.”
I was pissed off, and I could feel my anger flaring up into power. I’d never felt such a direct flow of emotion into magic before.
All the candles in the church lit at once.
“Give me the wand,” I repeated.
Piers handed me the wand without any resistance.
I ran out of the church before he realized what he was doing, but as I shoved the door open, I felt giddy.
Is this how Mom felt when she learned to use her magic?
Is this feeling what the Withered Lord promised her that made her stay?
Because I gotta say, it felt pretty intoxicating. I felt like I’d gotten a little of my own back after what the council did to Firian.
Montague, Alec and Harris were huddled together, talking, but they looked up when I ran out.
“I told you she was going to save herself,” Harris said.
Montague threw an arm around me. “Let’s get out of here.” Some students were glaring at me. It was pretty clear at this point that the school was divided into two factions: the ones who were glad Master Blair was gone, and the ones who weren’t.
“Are we going to talk about what happened back there?” Montague asked. “How did you defy the purification spell?”
“There was a magical fish on the floor of the church,” I said. “And it was actually a faery that wanted help. Which I realize sounds…strange…”
“As faery behavior goes, it sounds normal,” Montague said.
“So I put the fish in the holy water, and then a magical priest ghost appeared, and I thought he might be mad, but he said some wise things and put the holy water on my forehead and said it would protect me.”
“So you didn’t really do much,” Harris said. “You really are a Chosen One. Whenever you’re in trouble, some spirit shows up and bails you out.”
“Harris, I am telling you this after the fact, but when it first happened, all I knew was that a fish was dying on the floor and I picked it up and tried to save it, and it was slimy. I’m sorry I didn’t learn to cast Fortune’s Wheel, or throw the One Ring into Mount Doom or behead a demon, but I didn’t do nothing.”
“You tossed a fish into some water.”
Harris didn’t look well. We made it to Lancelot House, but when we reached his room, he stumbled toward his bed. He still was with it enough to stay stubbornly on his feet and glower.
“Are you sick, Harris?” I asked.
“I caught a chill in the rain last night, I guess.”
“You can’t actually get sick from being cold. Maybe there should be a science class at magic school.”
“Maybe it’s different for warlocks,” he growled, and then coughed.
“That makes no sense.” I put a hand to his forehead. “You’re burning up.”
“I’m fine.”
“Do you need to go to the infirmary? Is there a magical cure for colds?” I turned to Montague and Alec. “Why don’t you guys go see if you can find him something.”
I had an edge to my voice. They could definitely tell this was as much as me having it out with Harris as anything else.
“As you wish,” Montague said, with a smirk, and they left.
Harris and I hadn’t been alone much.
“So what is your problem?” I said. “I’m sick of it. More than two years of this bullshit. You really think I’m just some stupid ‘Chosen One’? You’re jealous.”
“I ran miles in the cold last night to get to Stuart, trying to save you,” he said. “I thought you saved yourself and it was actually faeries and ghosts.”
I actually slapped him. It just popped out and it felt so good that I realized why women in movies slapped men’s faces so often. I wasn’t usually violent, but I thought Harris could take a slap.
Hell, maybe he liked getting slapped. “I deserved that,” he said, with a crooked smile.
“Yeah, you did. You want to tell me why you always do this? One minute, you seem like you’d do anything for me, and them—” I gestured at the space Montague and Alec had just left. “But what comes out of your mouth is another story.”
“I’ve been an ass since Monty got turned into a vampire. I know I’ve been an ass, but it kinda feels like all I have. That’s what my family does. We climb social ladders, hoard money, cut out people who disappoint us…”
“You ran away from home,” I said. “It’s not all you have.”
“But—you can’t run away. Not really.” He looked pained. “I have to go back home for autumn break.”
“You don’t have to. Do you need money or social ladders? I mean, what do I know? I know I didn’t grow up in a mansion as a fancy warlock. I grew up in Ass-End, Georgia, so normal that I guess it pains you, and no one there is rich, but my dad sure wasn’t the richest there either. But we had each other. My family has my back, no matter what. And I think Montague and Alec would have your back, too. And so would I, for that matter, if you didn’t keep trying so hard to push us away.”
He walked closer to me, his breathing a little strained. “I saved you because I had one of the Hapsburg treasures. I was able to get you home to your dad your first Christmas because I pulled strings. I got Monty a car. It won’t be the last time I save you because I’m a rich asshole, Charlotte. So if I give that up—”
“You’re still a hell of a warlock,” I said. “You’ll find other ways to save us.”
“What if I don’t?”
“You would—”
He cut me off, his tone like acid. “What if I know a way to make Firian human again but it only works if I go home and grovel to my parents?”
“Is—is that—for real?” I stammered.
He grabbed my arm. “You need Harrison von Hapsburg Nicolescu,” he said. “You don’t need Harris Nobody.”
“Okay—fine.” I swallowed. “But you don’t have to act this way when we’re alone.”
He was standing so close now that my eyes met his collar. He spoke in my ear. “How do you want me to act?” His words were more bitter than sexy, but I still felt a weird thrill race through me.
“I want you to be yourself,” I gasped.
“Do you really, truly want that?”
His fingers brushed my chin. I looked up at him now, his blue eyes meeting mine with icy, yet barely pent desire. My skin shivered under his touch even though his skin was so warm.
“I want to know what’s inside your head,” I said.
He trailed the fingers back down my neck, and then he kissed me softly.
At first.
Oh…
His lips brushed mine, tasted mine—his hand
slipped to my lower back and pressed me against him. I kissed him back, following his lead.
“I can still feel the sting of your hand on my cheek,” he said.
“I’m not usually so violent.”
“I don’t believe it. We have something in common,” he said. “You have a kind heart, Charlotte. But you also have a taste for…taking what you want.”
I swallowed, glancing away as he remained so close to me that I could smell the scent of him beneath the clean, rich boy scent of his clothes and aftershave. That was the wolf in me, I guess, the wolf I barely knew but had almost lost.
Harris had seen the look in my face when I walked out of the church. I felt like he was the only one who saw something I barely acknowledged in myself.
When I came here, I was scared of being hurt or losing something, but even from the start, the idea of having power thrilled me. I had been warned a hundred times or more that I might die or lose someone close to me—that it was likely, in fact. Why didn’t I run away? Why did I take risks to return?
I wanted to be a Chosen One.
I wanted to be the heroes and heroines I idolized. Not anyone real. Never anyone real. In the Princess Bride, Wesley could get out of any situation. In Game of Thrones, Arya could take out her enemies without them seeing it coming. I wanted to be cool and composed, like my dark mage alter-ego Larius, who could wave a problem away with his hand and a dark spell.
Now I knew the truth about Ignatius, Samuel, Stuart, and my mother and grandmother. They broke ancient rules and did what they wanted. Anything seemed possible for me.
It gave me such a thrill, such a desire, that I couldn’t stop even though I knew at some point, I would be hurt. Which meant, Dad would be hurt. Which meant, my heart wasn’t that kind after all.
And Harris saw that.
“You’re right…,” I said.
I reached a hand to his hair, dragged it through my fingers, and took a kiss from him now.
His hands moved to my waist and gripped me. When I slipped a tongue into his mouth, he pushed me back, claiming my mouth instead.
A Witch Among Warlocks: The Complete Series Box Set Page 59