Wedding Bells and Midnight Spells

by Sarina Dorie

  Hailey coughed. “It’s upside down.”

  I blinked, noticing Imani hadn’t completed setting up yet.

  Maddy kicked at a wadded-up paper on the floor. “Mrs. Lawrence, I need your help with something. Can we talk?”

  Mrs. Lawrence. My throat tightened. That was my mom’s name, not mine. Why did everything have to remind me that she wasn’t here anymore?

  I headed toward where Maddy had set up her art. She exchanged a nervous glance with Hailey. Maybe it was obvious I was having trouble holding it together today. Some days were worse than others.

  Maddy lifted her canvas from the easel and slipped closer to the back stairwell where the closet was located. She cast a furtive look at her friends again. The moment I joined her in the corner, she whispered, “There’s something I want to discuss with you. In private.” Her gaze flickered to the door.

  I unlocked it, and we headed into the stairwell. I used the spell my friend Josie had taught me to light the bulb on the landing below so that we could see. Maddy quietly closed the door behind me. Obviously she wanted to talk about more than her art.

  “What’s going on?” I asked. “Is everything all right?”

  “I need your help.” She stared down at the stone steps. A sheet of blonde hair obscured the side of her face still scarred from the incident with the golem, though it didn’t detract from her beauty. “You remember my bargain with the King of the Pacific, right?”

  “Yes.” There was no way I would ever forget it. I was the one who had negotiated on her behalf so that she would be granted her freedom from the underwater Fae sovereign. He had only permitted her to go because she’d promised him her firstborn.

  I was the one who ensured the King of the Pacific gave her a couple of years to get through school and wouldn’t harass her until after she graduated and turned eighteen. She still had another year. Plenty of time to fulfill her contract.

  Maddy bit her lip.

  I knew what it felt like to have a Fae contract looming over my head. Instinctively, I touched the amulet Elric had given me. If I could have been free of it, I would have.

  I worried Maddy had done something rash. “Are you pregnant?” I asked.

  She shook her head, tears filling her eyes. “That’s the problem. I’m not.”

  I sighed. “That’s not a problem. You’re still in high school. You’re too young to have sex and get pregnant.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “I’ve probably had more sex in my life than you have.”

  I was almost ten years older than her, but she was probably right. She was a siren, and sex magic was part of her affinity, whether she wanted it or not. The topic didn’t faze her. Even so, I wasn’t comfortable with the direction this conversation was headed.

  She went on. “I’ve been trying to get pregnant all school year.”

  I covered my ears with my hands, wishing I could unhear her. “Why do you have to tell me this now? Are you using siren magic to seduce boys? We already had a talk about consent before.”

  “I’m not coercing anyone with magic!” Maddy held up her painting like a shield. “Why do you assume I’d do that? I haven’t done anything illegal . . . yet.”

  Craparoni. I had a bad feeling about this.

  “What do you mean? What are you planning on doing?” I asked.

  “I’ve had three consensual partners in the last eight months.”

  I groaned. If only this school taught a sex-ed class and gave kids lessons on sexually transmitted infections.

  “I haven’t gotten pregnant yet. That means there’s a good chance I’m infertile. I looked it up.”

  I could see where she was going with this. “You think you won’t be able to get pregnant when you graduate? You still have a little over a year. Let yourself finish your education first.” That was the pragmatic thing Thatch would tell her.

  Maddy set her painting down on the steps, the canvas tearing through a cluster of spiderwebs. “Don’t you get it? I don’t want to be forced to bear an heir for someone. I want the father to be my choice. Don’t you remember what Mr. Thatch said?”

  I did. I couldn’t blame her. Thatch had advised against the bargain, explaining that the King of the Pacific wouldn’t give her a choice in the father. The king might force her to try to conceive every night until she did so. But the bargain had been Maddy’s choice to make, not Felix Thatch’s.

  The fear in her eyes communicated her awareness of her impending doom. This wasn’t the kind of burden any kid needed.

  I placed a hand on her shoulder, giving it a squeeze before letting my hand drop. I didn’t want my affinity to draw out hers and make it difficult for her to control her magic. The time she spent with Imani probably made it difficult enough for her.

  “What do you need me to do?” I asked. “Do you want me to try to renegotiate with the King of the Pacific?” I would need to convince Thatch to help me. We would need a plan, something to offer him in a baby’s stead. I worried the Fae king wouldn’t take anything less than Maddy’s servitude for the rest of her life.

  “No,” Maddy said, lifting her chin. “I want you to cure my infertility. We know you have the secret to the Fae Fertility Paradox. I want you to use it to help me.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Oh, Baby!

  “What?” I asked. The shock of her knowing I knew how to cure Fae and Witchkin infertility was overshadowed by the jolt her words sent through me at the idea of her getting pregnant now. “No! You’re too young.”

  “Stop telling me I’m too young!” Maddy’s voice rose, taking on an inhuman quality full of rhythm and song. Music danced in the air and tasted like the bitterest notes of chocolate. “Am I too young to kill? Because I’ve done that before. Was I too young to be captured by Fae? Was I too young to be molested by my stepfather?”

  She’d been abused and had lost her virginity at an early age. It pained me that so much of her innocence had been stolen from her.

  Maddy’s face turned to liquid before smoothing back into flesh. Her voice returned to normal as she calmed herself. “I’m old enough to decide what I want to do with my life. I can decide what I want to do with my body. I want to get pregnant so I can move on and stop living in fear that I’m going to be assaulted by mermen for the rest of my life.”

  I nodded. She was right. Who was I to tell her what she needed to do with her body?

  “I know you know about the Fae Fertility Paradox.” She lifted her chin. “You can help me.”

  “How do you even know about that?” I asked.

  “I get to read a lot of off-limits books in the library.” That was one advantage of being the librarian’s assistant. The corners of her lips curled up into a sardonic smile. “Your biological mother was the former headmistress here. Alouette Loraline had discovered the cure. Everyone knows that’s why the Raven Queen wants you. It’s why the Silver Court made you an honorary member of Prince Elric’s household. The Fae want you to solve their fertility problems. Am I right?”

  She was more clever than I’d given her credit for. Or I was really bad at keeping secrets.

  “Well?” she asked.

  It was better if my students didn’t know about my secrets. It was less dangerous for them. I swallowed the lump in my throat. “I don’t know all the answers. I don’t have a cure.”

  She crossed her arms. “Miss Bloodmire was being taken care of by Imani’s grandfather, the king of the Silver Court, because she was carrying Prince Elric’s heir. You used magic to figure out how to solve the Fae’s fertility problems. I’m Witchkin. It should be easier to help me if I sleep with another Witchkin instead of a Fae.”

  If she was a Red affinity, it wouldn’t matter. I wondered who else had figured out that Vega had been pregnant. She had used glamour to hide her belly. After she’d returned from Elric’s castle days after the attack, she looked as she always did: lean, mean, and deadly.

  “Miss Bloodmire isn’t pregnant,” I
said firmly.

  Not anymore.

  “She’s why the Raven Court attacked the school. Because they’re enemies with the Silver Court. They won’t let Prince Elric have an heir.” Maddy scooped up her canvas and hugged it to her chest. “Imani said so.”

  I shook my head. “The Raven Court didn’t know. Vega was an innocent bystander who got caught in the crossfire. And don’t you dare repeat any of that about her.” Besides the fact that it would hurt Vega and Elric, it wasn’t true. It all had been my fault.

  I had been the reason the Raven Court had attacked. It was my fault Vega had lost her baby. It was my fault my friends had gotten hurt and my mom had been snatched. I had caused Bart the unicorn’s death. If I had never gone to Derrick, my hex-boyfriend, in his dreams, he wouldn’t have come to try to save me. Everyone would be safe, Derrick included.

  Safe from me.

  My misery made it difficult to breathe.

  “I can’t help you.” If I did, it wouldn’t be the King of the Pacific who would want to use Maddy. It would be the Raven Queen. As horrible as her fate might be with an undersea monster, the Queen of Pleasure and Pain was far worse.

  “Please,” Maddy said.

  Solving the Fae Fertility Paradox would only bring her greater problems. I couldn’t look her in the eyes. “Mr. Thatch and I will go to the King of the Pacific and negotiate a new bargain.”

  Her façade of sternness crumbled. Desperation leaked into her voice. “You have to help me. You helped Miss Bloodmire. Don’t you care about me? I thought you liked me.”

  “I do like you, Maddy. That’s why I don’t want to do this to you.” I hugged her around the shoulder. “I almost killed Miss Bloodmire. I might kill you.”

  Tears filled her eyes. She threw her arms around me, squashing her canvas between us. “Please. You’re the only one who can do this for me.”

  The edge of a stretcher bar from Maddy’s painting dug uncomfortably into my side.

  I hated to see her so afraid. “I don’t have the ingredients for the spell.”

  Maddy’s wet tears spilled down her cheeks and into my hair. “I’ll gather the ingredients. I have friends. They’ll help me. Please. I would do anything for this. I’ll owe you a favor. I can make a formal oath that I’ll do something for you. Please. I really will do anything.”

  “I don’t want you to make a magical oath.” I didn’t want anything bad to happen to her if she broke it. She thought her problems could be solved by using Alouette Loraline’s secrets to make her fertile. What she didn’t understand was that if we used the Fae Fertility Paradox, I would use magic to make her a Red affinity. Then her true problems would begin.

  I took her firmly by the shoulders. “I will help you find a solution to this problem. I promise. But I need you to let me think about this. The cure for a Witchkin’s infertility comes with a high price. Let me figure out if there’s another way first. We have over a year. There’s no rush. As long as you can conceive next year, you’ll be safe.”

  She nodded, a tentative smile twitching the corners of her mouth upward. “Thank you, Ms. Lawrence. I was right to count on you.”

  I knew I should remind her about the danger of thanking people in this realm. Before I could get a word out, Maddy’s painting dropped down the stairs. I ducked to grab it, getting a face full of spiderwebs, and handed it to her. She darted up the stairs to the classroom and opened the door to exit.

  The load on Maddy’s shoulders looked lighter as she stepped into the rays of sunshine. She glowed with a confident beauty.

  The burden she’d dropped was now piled onto my shoulders, the weight too heavy to bear alone. I trudged up the steps after her.

  I would need to get help with this. I needed a Witchkin more skilled than me to assist me in making the potion. I could ask Thatch, but he would probably object. If I asked Vega, I didn’t know how she would react. I saw so little of her, now that I’d moved out of our shared dorm room.

  I told myself it was the barbs in her prickly personality that kept me away, but in reality, it was the blame I suspected I would see in her eyes.

  Surely Vega still had to be hurting emotionally over her miscarriage. I could imagine how she would loathe me for her unborn baby’s death. If she was willing to help me, the price would be high. I was more likely to solicit her help if she thought the idea was her own—if she thought she had something to gain from it.

  Easier said than done. I had a lot to do.

  “What happened to you?” Imani gestured at me.

  I looked down. A red glob of paint was smeared across my clothes. It looked like someone had stabbed me.

  “I guess that was me. My artwork.” Maddy laughed nervously, showing me her painting. The canvas was covered in crimson hearts. One of them was now smeared.

  “Are you using oil paints?” I asked. “Acrylics don’t do that. They dry in a minute.”

  Trevor held up a crumpled tube of brown paint. “This one says oil.” He was still small and skinny, but he’d grown four inches over the school year, now surpassing me in height.

  Something brown was smeared on one side of his mouth.

  “Did you just eat that oil paint?” I asked.

  “No,” he said indignantly.

  I eyed the brown smudges on his fingers, uncertain whether it was the same shade as the paint crusted around the cap on the burnt sienna he had shown me. “Oil paints have minerals in them that can be toxic to the human digestive system. Those supplies aren’t meant to be ingested. They’ll make you sick.”

  “I didn’t eat any paint today!” Trevor insisted.

  Greenie leaned in toward him and sniffed. “It’s okay, Ms. Lawrence. It’s chocolate.”

  He crossed his arms, sulking. “This is so insulting. You treat me like I have no will power. When is the last time I ate your art supplies?”

  I examined Trevor’s tube of paint. It definitely was oil. He pulled a crayon out of his pocket, trying to subtly nibble on it without anyone noticing.

  None of our donated paints had been oils, but perhaps some older paint had gotten mixed in from what I’d purchased from the teacher supply thrift store. I’d gathered a small crate of half-used materials from MECCA.

  I waved my hand to get everyone’s attention. “Art Club students, stop what you’re doing. Examine the paints you grabbed. You aren’t supposed to mix oils and acrylics. Nor do we have the proper chemicals to dissolve oil paints and properly clean your brushes.”

  “It’s okay,” Maddy said. “I used magic to clean my brush last time.”

  She held up a stained paintbrush that was definitely still crimson with oil paint. Her spell must have been water soluble. It hadn’t cleaned her brush.

  It was a relief to focus on the small problem of using the incorrect art supplies for a few minutes rather than trying to solve the problems of underaged teens wanting to get pregnant despite my moral compass pointing me in the opposite direction. It was nice to think about something I had the power and the skills to fix instead of politics and magic in the Unseen Realm.

  After sorting out the paints, I focused on the stain on my polka-dot blouse.

  I hadn’t brought up my apron today. I’d placed it in the hamper to be washed. I hadn’t thought I would need it because I wasn’t using acrylic paints. My own painting medium of choice was watercolors. Even so, I should have known.

  I washed the stain off the best I could at the sink. Josie had taught me a spell to use magic, but I didn’t want to use it on synthetic materials. Magic tended to react poorly on Morty-crafted fabrics.

  “I’ll be back in a few minutes. I’m going to get my apron from downstairs,” I said.

  I used the student stairwell at the front of the classroom to head down to the dungeon. The back stairs past the closet was a spider den that few people used. Thatch might occasionally venture up the back stairs, using magic to clear his path, but I didn’t have that skill. Not without injuring th
e spiders. And I didn’t want to provoke Josie’s wrath if I murdered any of her little friends.

  On the landing to the ground-level floor, movement caught the corner of my eye. My biological mother’s portrait on the wall drew my attention. Alouette Loraline was depicted in her youth and beauty. Emerald snakes coiled around the black sleeves of her high-collared dress, reminiscent of the green-and-black striped leggings I wore. A pointed witch hat topped her head, her dark hair flowing in an invisible breeze. It was difficult to tell the color of her hair, black with red highlights or a dark shade of auburn cloaked in shadows. Her face was much like mine, only her creamy skin was smooth and unblemished with freckles.

  When I looked directly at her, Alouette Loraline’s smile was confident. Her lips were sealed together, as though she meant to conceal a secret. It was only out of the corner of my eye that I noticed the raven in the corner flicker as though it were in flight. My biological mother’s expression wasn’t so much one of certainty as haughtiness. She seemed to be looking down at me, a hint of cruelty in her eyes that spoke of her wicked side.

  I shivered under her stare. I wouldn’t be a wicked witch like her. I had been given a choice in life and had refused the dark side. I would do what was right. I would help my students learn to protect themselves against Fae and their bargains.

  Alouette Loraline had experimented on people to try to prove her theories about the Fae Fertility Paradox. Perhaps she had started off with good intentions before she’d turned bad. I would use her knowledge for the purposes of good, not evil.

  That’s what I told myself anyway. Yet out of the corner of my eye, I would swear I saw her smile spread larger, a knowing there that told me she would have told me otherwise.

  I now shared quarters with my husband in one of the nicest rooms in the school. The dungeon might not give that impression with the black mold growing on the walls and the colony of mushrooms taking up residence on the ceiling. Sconces lit the walls with blue flames that made the stairwell look even more ominous. At the bottom of the stairs, I headed into Felix Thatch’s classroom, a windowless room with black lab counters in the back like a chemistry class might have. Only instead of microscopes and Bunsen burners, the equipment consisted of cauldrons and spell books.