A Handful of Hexes

by Sarina Dorie

  I nudged Josie. “Mmm?”

  Josie whispered, a reverent hush in her voice, “Starlight.”

  I didn’t know how he had captured stars, nor could I ask. Thatch clamped a hand over the jar before hurriedly slapping the lid back on. It was only half full now.

  Flurries of light drifted around him like fireflies. It was beautiful. His hand glowed and twinkled as he brought it to my face and covered the place my mouth should have been. He held my chin in one hand as he drew the shape of lips with his wand.

  I held my breath, trying not to move. He leaned in, squinting in the dark. Josie held the jar closer to my face, shining it on me like a lamp. Thatch’s hand tingled against my chin. He was so near that his breath whispered across my face and tickled my hair against my neck. The intimacy of the moment made me blush. I tried not to think about his lips pressed against mine. I didn’t want my Red affinity to mess up his spell. Or for him to get mad and decide not to finish.

  If only Felix Thatch wasn’t so grumpy and distant all the time. I didn’t want to be attracted to this man who thought I was a nuisance that he had to babysit.

  Derrick would never have called me a nuisance. He might have teased me, but more likely he would have been appropriately concerned and caring. I wondered if I would ever see him again. Hadn’t he told me in my dreams that we would see each other again after I broke my curse? I was free of Julian’s enchantments now. Where was he?

  Gradually the light in the room increased.

  “Smile,” Thatch said, his stiff monotone in place.

  I didn’t feel like smiling, but I did so, first a little smile, and then a big one. I had a mouth again. Yay!

  “I don’t know. She doesn’t look the same,” Josie said.

  “I’m not done. Perhaps you should leave before you distract me further.” He retrieved his sketchpad, looking at his drawings and then back at me. He grunted and set the book down on the desk.

  He smoothed the tip of his wand across my lips. I could almost imagine it was his finger touching me, tracing the line of my lower lip in a sensual caress.

  It tickled, and I tried not to laugh.

  “Hold still,” he said.

  Being this close to him was a pleasant torment. It would have been so easy to reach out and hug him or kiss him—not that I would with Josie standing right there.

  My thoughts flickered to Derrick. I wondered if I was being untrue to him by being attracted to Felix Thatch. What if I did kiss Thatch, and then I found Derrick immediately afterward? On a scale of one to ten, I wondered where being seduced by a pit of hands fell. I didn’t think it was quite as horrible as thinking about kissing Thatch since I hadn’t asked to be pushed in, and it had been a matter of life or death.

  Just the memory of what had happened made a strange feeling of warmth flood through me.

  Behind Thatch, Josie flipped a page in his sketchbook.

  Without looking away from me, Thatch said, “Continue to touch the things on my desk without my permission, Miss Kimura, and I will do more than glue your mouth closed. I will also glue your hands to your sides.”

  She plopped into his comfy chair, dwarfed by the seat meant to accommodate his tall frame.

  A moment later he was done, a pleased smirk on his lips. I stretched my mouth and used the mirror view of my phone to examine myself. My mouth looked as good as new. Gratitude swelled up inside me.

  “Ow!” Josie squealed, jumping up from Thatch’s chair. “What was that for?”

  Thatch prodded her away with his wand. “That wasn’t me. It was the chair. My chair is very selective about whom it allows to sit here.” He opened the top drawer and dropped the drawing book inside.

  “Thank y—” I started.

  He put up a hand and cut me off from speaking further. “You needn’t say more. One shouldn’t get in the habit of thanking people in the Unseen Realm. Fae and Witchkin alike will take advantage of you for it.”

  More rules. “What should I say instead?”

  “Nothing. Just incline your head in acknowledgment.”

  That wasn’t going to cut it. I looked to Josie.

  “Some people offer a compliment, but don’t actually say the words ‘thank you.’” She shrugged. “Then there’s my mom. She complains when someone does something nice for her. It’s her way of complimenting.”

  “How can a complaint be a compliment?” I examined the symmetry of my lips. Were they pinker than usual, or was that how they always looked? “I don’t understand how that works.”

  “I do.” Thatch drummed his fingers against the table. “Suddenly you make so much more sense, Miss Kimura. All those times you complain about your schedule, you’ve been complimenting me as your supervisor.”

  “No.” Josie rolled her eyes at him and turned back to me. “Let me give you an example. One time we had this problem with a neighborhood oni sneaking into people’s yards at night and eating their pets, but no one could prove it or catch him at it. I cast a spell to signal any intruders who came onto our property. When I caught him with our pet in his jaws, my mom said, ‘You are such a clever daughter. So good of you to intervene. Too bad you didn’t let him eat Buddy first.’ That was our inugami, a dog with two tails and an ability to curse enemies if you give him a dog treat first. Mom won Buddy in a poker match from Yama Uba, but we always said my mother should have lost that game because Buddy smells bad and eats a lot.”

  Josie had told me she grew up in Seattle. I took it this wasn’t any regular neighborhood. “So I should show my gratitude by complaining?”

  “Just like Miss Kimura does,” Thatch said. “All those times she tells me how much she hates me for eating her prophecy chocolate, that actually means she’s grateful and … loves me.”

  “Shut up! I do not.” Josie stormed off toward the door. “Are you coming, Clarissa?”

  I looked to Thatch, trying to keep a straight face. “I really hate how you made my mouth exactly like it was before. It’s so perfect I want to puke. Gosh, I really despise you.”

  His eyes twinkled with mischief. “The feeling is mutual. Now if you would be on your way and stop bothering me, I have more important things I would rather be doing … like figuring out how to temporarily remove the mouths from all my students in third period tomorrow.”

  How I envied Thatch that his greatest problem was how to give out as many detentions as possible and make his students’ lives miserable. Mine was surviving the day.

  I didn’t know how I was going to survive my next encounter with Vega.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Bird is the Word

  I stayed away from my dorm room for the rest of the day, working in my classroom for as late as I could. When I returned, I found Vega in her silk pajamas in bed reading a fashion magazine from the twenties. She was seriously behind in the times.

  She turned a page, not looking up. “I heard Josie botched your face up, and you had to go to Thatch for help.”

  I didn’t reward the comment with an answer. I retrieved my bathroom bag and pajamas from my wardrobe so I could undress down the hall without talking to Vega.

  “That’s cheating, just so you know,” she said.

  “What’s cheating?” The resentment simmering inside me came to a full boil. “Getting help undoing a hex I had no idea how to fix on my own? A spell you cursed me with?”

  “It wasn’t a curse or a hex. It was a simple charm—or it was until Josie fucked it up.” She waved a hand at the desk. “I left the remedy on the desk in plain sight. If you’d been studying Latin like you were supposed to, you might have recognized it for what it was.”

  “How was I supposed to speak Latin when my lips were glued together?”

  She snorted and kept flipping through her magazine. “It was simple enough even you could have fixed it.”

  I dropped my bag on the floor and stomped over to the desk, about to throw that book with the charm on it in her face. As my eyes
fell on the Latin, I paused, reading it. The spell she’d used on me was explained in detail, including the chant involved to create it. Undoing the charm was as simple as splashing water on one’s face.

  No magic was involved in the solution. I could have done it on my own. I didn’t know whom I was more furious with—her or me. I flopped onto my bed, groaning.

  “That’s all right,” Vega said. “Some people learn their lessons the hard way. Maybe you’ll look around for clues next time.”

  The following evening after dinner, I translated and decoded Alouette Loraline’s journal in the privacy of my locked classroom. In part, this was because there was no place to read or write with the books Vega had left open on the desk. Also, I wasn’t ready to spend time near my roommate. There was no telling what she might do.

  I still couldn’t believe her last “lesson” for me.

  I found a section in my mother’s journal that was written in a foreign language I couldn’t translate and moved on to one in nice, simple Spanish. I was a little rusty since college, but I remembered enough. I returned the library books I’d checked out on Fae lineage and borrowed a Spanish-English dictionary to assist with the words I’d forgotten.

  Everything would have been easier with the Ruby of Divine Knowledge, but I decided to trust Thatch on this one and not pursue it.

  After using the cipher and translating the Spanish section, I copied a passage into my own journal:

  When I spoke with Odette and Priscilla about the need for more Fae as test subjects, they assured me the Raven Queen would send devoted subjects from her court who were strong enough to withstand the pain involved. Should I succeed in making them fertile, she will continue to fund the school.

  What? No! My mother had been working with the Raven Queen? She couldn’t have. In Womby’s: A History of the School, the book had given anecdotes demonstrating how Alouette Loraline had cared about Witchkin and devoted hours of her personal time to helping students. She might have gone down the wrong path or made mistakes that led to dealing with Fae, but I couldn’t understand her motivations to work with the Raven Queen.

  No wonder people were afraid I might be like her. It made my chest ache, knowing she’d collaborated with the evilest Fae.

  I wanted to translate more, but the next section was written in what looked like Gaelic. I checked out several books in the library to help me with that translation. My fairy godmother, Abigail Lawrence, spoke Gaelic. If I copied the text into one of my notebooks and concealed that the excerpt came from a book about the Fae Fertility Paradox, she might assist me when I went home for Thanksgiving in two weeks.

  I wondered who Odette and Priscilla were, the Fae Loraline had mentioned. The latter sounded familiar. Perhaps she was one of the emissaries of the Raven Court I’d encountered before.

  I kept thinking about her name, knowing I’d heard it somewhere before. I went to the library before it closed and looked at old yearbooks from twenty-five years ago when my biological mother had been the headmistress. I didn’t find any Priscillas listed in the yearbooks.

  Finally, I gathered up the courage and approached Mrs. Periwinkle at the counter where she stamped books. The animal skull she wore as a brooch at the nape of her neck and the witch hat covered in dead flowers and animal bones didn’t exactly make her the most approachable librarian.

  “Have we ever had a student or teacher named Priscilla at our school?” I asked.

  “I’m sure we’ve had many students named Priscilla at our school.” She crossed her arms, giving off a bigger aura of unfriendliness than usual. “Why do you want to know?”

  “I thought I might have heard the name around.”

  “Probably you just heard Professor Thatch say her name.”

  Now that she said it, I was certain she was right. “How does he know Priscilla? Is she a … mutual friend?” I tried to think of something not suspicious to say, something that didn’t sound like I’d read about Priscilla in my mother’s diary. “I think I ran into someone named Priscilla a few months back. I just can’t match the face to the name.”

  Mrs. Periwinkle eyed me like she thought I was the stupidest person in the world. “Priscilla is Professor Thatch’s pet crow.”

  It might have been a coincidence that the Raven Queen had a servant named Priscilla and Thatch had a bird with the same name. Or my suspicions about his bird being a spy for the Raven Court might have been correct all along. Thatch had insisted his pet bird was a crow and therefore not associated with the Raven Court.

  I didn’t actually know what the difference was between a raven and a crow. I looked up birds in the school library.

  Ravens were large and had curved beaks. Thatch’s bird was larger than most black birds I saw flying around and the beak reminded me of a hooked nose. The feathers on a raven’s tail fanned out into the shape of a half circle whereas a crow’s opened to a flat wedge.

  In the days that followed my research, I snuck down to Thatch’s office before and after school, hoping I might catch him taking his bird out of her cage or see her cage empty—which would mean I could go outside and see if I saw her flying.

  No such luck.

  One of the days after school that I peeked into his office, his bird croaked at the exact moment I was spying on them. Thatch looked up before I could duck away. “Miss Lawrence, stop skulking outside my office. What can I help you with?” He set his feather quill aside.

  Caught like a mouse in a bird’s beak, I trudged in. I figured I might as well ask, not that Thatch had been incredibly forthcoming in the past.

  I sat in the metal torture chair. “Who is Priscilla?”

  “My pet bird.”

  “Is she … was she… ?”

  His eyebrows lifted as I fought to find the right words.

  “Everyone says Priscilla is a crow, but she’s not. She’s a raven. I looked up the difference in the library.” I wasn’t a hundred percent certain. I kept my best poker face intact.

  The bird croaked again—the sound exactly how the library book had described a raven’s call.

  “You are mistaken.” Thatch glowered at me. “Priscilla is not a raven, nor is she associated with the Raven Court.”

  “But there’s a Priscilla who works as one of the Raven Queen’s servants?”

  “No,” he said quickly. “Who told you that?”

  He was lying about that, so he was probably lying about his bird as well. The bird ruffled her feathers in her cage.

  “A lot of the Raven Court servants can change form,” I said. “They shift from woman to bird.”

  “Priscilla is a good bird.” Each word he spoke was laced with calm venom. “She obeys me, not the Raven Queen. She follows directions when I send her on errands and only kills when she needs to hunt. She doesn’t work for the Raven Queen.”

  His pet bird beat the wire of the cage with her wings.

  He stood abruptly, and so did I. Thatch didn’t whip out his wand or stalk toward me. He walked over to the cage. “Calm yourself, Priscilla. No one is going to hurt you.” He glared at me. “You’ve upset her with all your talk about the Raven Queen and her court. You should be on your way, Miss Lawrence.”

  This wasn’t over yet … even if I ruffled Thatch’s feathers in the process of discovering the truth.

  Before bedtime, Vega lay in bed perusing old yearbooks from the twenties. I changed into my pajamas behind the screen, disturbed by Thatch’s lies. He obviously cared about his bird. Maybe that bird was his lover, and he was keeping her identity secret so the Raven Queen wouldn’t snatch her. Or maybe she was wicked, but he loved her anyway and didn’t want Jeb or anyone else to know she was his tie to the Raven Court.

  My imagination thought up elaborate explanations. I stepped out from behind the screen and threw my laundry in the designated pile under the mirror since we didn’t have a basket.

  Vega tossed one yearbook aside and selected another. “There’s a lot of hot dead peopl
e in this one.”

  “That’s nice,” I said.

  “There was this teacher, Dox Woodruff, who worked here a hundred years ago. He was descended from a fairy prince and looked like a god.” She held the book open for me to see. “His body is in the crypt under the school, and he is still just as fantabulous to look at dead.”

  I nodded to show I cared, even though I didn’t want to know how she knew that.

  Vega must have taken that as interest because she went on, “It caused quite a scandal at the school when they realized his father was a Fae in the Silver Court.”

  “What? Did you say the Silver Court?” I asked.

  “Duh, weren’t you listening?”

  “Was he the son of Elric the Light Bearer?”

  My mother’s journal had talked about the Silver Court. Prince Elric was the only one in the Silver Court who kept having children.

  Vega didn’t answer. She watched me coolly. I might have learned to decipher code, but I hadn’t yet figured out how to decipher her expressions.

  “Do you want to see what he looks like?” She shoved the book in my face.

  The photograph was black and white. Most of the photos were of unsmiling students standing rigidly in place. In this one, a handsome young man stood over a group of students huddled together over a blurred shape that might have been a fire—or it might have been magic. The man grinned at the camera, his hand caught in a blur of motion as he pointed to the students. He was clearly proud of something.

  He was unnaturally beautiful in the way many Fae and Witchkin were.

  “And he’s dead now?” I asked.

  “He lives on in my dreams.” She sighed and went back to perusing old yearbooks.

  My thoughts kept going back to the Fae Fertility Paradox. I opened my notebook and reread my notes. There was something I had to be missing. The Silver Court had discovered the secret to fertility, and the Raven Court wanted it. According to the diary, Thatch’s pet bird had been Loraline’s accomplice and the Raven Queen’s servant.